This post is a summary of the article “Small Hinges, Great Doorways: How Some Descendants of an Enslaved Youth Unexpectedly Became Prominent Utah Citizens” by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw in Volume 63 of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. All of the Interpreting Interpreter articles may be seen at https://interpreterfoundation.org/category/summaries/. An introduction to the Interpreting Interpreter series is available at https://interpreterfoundation.org/interpreting-interpreter-on-abstracting-thought/.
A video introduction to this Interpreter article is now available on all of our social media channels, including on YouTube at https://youtube.com/shorts/Cgdlh-6JQ4Q.
The Takeaway
Bradshaw tells the story of Abner Howell, a prominent African American Latter-day Saint in the early 20th century. Bradshaw proposes that Abner’s grandfather may have been a slave boy that Wilford Woodruff recorded teaching in Arkansas in 1835, and presents new records that shed light on Abner’s mission to reactivate Black members in various parts of the U.S.
The Summary
In this article, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw outlines proposed solutions to longstanding historical mysteries regarding Abner Howell, a prominent Utah citizen and African American Latter-day Saint. Some of those mysteries involve Abner’s father and grandfather”; page 392), Paul and Jackson Howell—Abner suggested that his father had been taught by Wilford Woodruff while Woodruff was on a mission in Arkansas. However, Woodruff’s mission took place 20 years before Abner’s father had been born, suggesting to some that Abner’s account was a fabrication. Bradshaw suggests that it was instead a mis-remembrance, and that Woodruff may have taught Abner’s grandfather instead. Woodruff’s 1835 journal does record a visit to the farm of a “Mr James P Kelleam” where he taught to an attentive congregation. This may have been a phonetic misspelling of the name “McClelland”, which is the name of the slaveholder for Jackson Howell. Though this does mean that Abner would have been confused on a number of points regarding his father and Woodruff, it could support the type of interaction with his family that Abner suggests.
There have also been questions regarding when Paul and his family emigrated to Utah, which Abner places in July 1887, but Abner’s biographers accept as 1890, based on the dating of the birth of Abner’s sister. Abner recalls attending John Taylor’s funeral in 1887, and the biographers’ dating of his sister’s birth turns out not to agree with available census records. Bradshaw goes on to outline the history of the Howells after their arrival in Salt Lake City, with Paul serving as the city’s first Black police detective (with early encouragement from President Woodruff and Abner becoming a star high school and college football player. Abner was baptized as a teen in part due to the race-positive content of the Book of Mormon and eventually served an unusual mission with his wife in 1951.
It’s that cross-country journey that serves as the final mystery that Bradshaw addresses, as the purpose of that mission has long been unclear. Historians have suggested that it was part of an effort to explore the creation of segregated congregations for Black saints, but direct evidence of that has been elusive. But a newly published transcript of a Pasadena California stake fireside by Abner provides much stronger confirmation of that purpose, indicating that he worked with Claude Peterson to bring Black members back to activity and explore establishing separate church units “as had been with some Spanish-speaking congregations, if it might make returning easier”. The focus was not on excluding Black members from otherwise White congregations, but on accommodating the wishes of Black saints.
Abner’s life of faith and service represents a broad doorway of devotion that hinged in part on small acts by a variety of church leaders, ones that may have gone back several generations to a young Wilford Woodruff. As Bradshaw concludes:
“If, in the challenging circumstances of his life, Abner ever had doubts about the gospel he wholehearted embraced and lived with great vigor, no extant record of his life gives any indication of it… He was asked… ‘Why do you stay with that church?’ ‘Because it is the true church’ was his answer.”
The Reflection
The charge of racism continues to be one of the most frequent ones I see leveled against both the church and the Book of Mormon, and though one can understand such critical impulses, I think such charges are seriously undercut by stories like Abner’s. If a Black, Protestant teen facing relentless racism by his peers can find unique solace and validation in the words of Book of Mormon—validation that appeared absent to him in the Bible—then that ostensibly racist book is doing a pretty terrible job at being racist. And Abner’s conversion and his mission story help reinforce for me that so many in the church in that period were doing their best to demonstrate love and compassion for Black members of the church, even while supporting policies that made it hard to do so. That Christ-like example can be one that we all work to follow, even when maintaining and reinforcing doctrine and policies that will likely be more permanent than the priesthood ban.