Renegade Mormon Apostle: Hugh B. Brown’s Attempts to Lift Racist Priesthood & Temple Bans | Ep. 1928

The Apostle Who Almost Ended the Ban: Hugh B. Brown’s Lost Battle for Racial Equality

In April 1962, Hugh B. Brown walked out of a First Presidency meeting convinced the end was near. The Mormon Church’s ban restricting Black members from priesthood ordination and temple ordinances, Brown believed, would be lifted within weeks. He told Sterling McMurrin, L. Brent Goasland, and two African American Latter-day Saints, Abner Howell and Ruffin Bridgeforth, that change was imminent. He even whispered the news to George Romney, the Michigan governor whose presidential ambitions were being torpedoed by his church’s racial policies. Then nothing happened. The Brethren blinked. The ban remained for another sixteen years, leaving Brown isolated and the church exposed to accusations of cowardice that still stain its historical record.

Background: The Liberal in the First Presidency

Hugh B. Brown was an anomaly in mid-century Mormon leadership. A Canadian convert with a military background and a reputation as one of the finest orators of his generation (Franklin Roosevelt reportedly ranked him second only to Winston Churchill), Brown joined the First Presidency in 1961 under David O. McKay. Unlike the Utah-born hardliners who dominated the Quorum of the Twelve, Brown brought political savvy and a convert’s lack of patience for institutional inertia. He entered office at a moment of intense external pressure. The civil rights movement was dominating national headlines, Malcolm X was challenging moderate Christianity, and Nigerian converts were flooding church headquarters with letters begging for baptism and local leadership.

According to Matt Harris’s research in Second Class Saints, featured on Mormon Stories Podcast, Brown viewed the priesthood restriction not as immutable doctrine but as mutable policy. McKay reportedly agreed with this theological distinction, confiding to Brown that the ban lacked revelatory backing. Yet McKay faced a bloc of apostles who treated the restriction as sacred tradition. Brown’s elevation to the First Presidency created a rare window where the church’s highest executive body contained a member willing to publicly challenge the racial hierarchy.

Key Claims: The Politics of Revelation