Mormon Prophet Ezra Taft Benson taught against the Civil Rights Movement #lds #mormon

Ezra Taft Benson Opposed the Civil Rights Movement. The Church Has Never Apologized for It.

Ezra Taft Benson, the thirteenth president of the LDS Church and a former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under Eisenhower, did not quietly hold private reservations about the Civil Rights Movement. He preached against it. From the pulpit, in conference addresses, and in published materials, Benson argued that the movement was a communist-inspired conspiracy. That is not a fringe interpretation of his record. That is the documented record.

For members trying to reconcile faith with history, this is one of the harder stops on the road. Benson was not a peripheral figure offering a stray opinion. He became the prophet, seer, and revelator of a church that claims divine leadership.

Background: Who Was Ezra Taft Benson and What Did He Teach?

Benson served as an apostle beginning in 1943 and as church president from 1985 until his death in 1994. Long before leading the church, he was a vocal political activist with deep ties to the John Birch Society, an organization that opposed civil rights legislation as a Soviet plot to destabilize American society.

Benson promoted this framework explicitly in LDS settings. His 1967 book "The Red Carpet" and his speeches from that era treated Black civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., as tools of communist infiltration. He recommended John Birch Society materials to church members and urged them to resist the movement politically.