BLACK AND MORMON, edited by Newell Bringhurst and Darron Smith, University of Illinois Press, 173 pages, $34.95.

In commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the LDS Church revelation announced by President Spencer W. Kimball to bestow the priesthood upon all black males, Newell Bringhurst and Darron Smith have written an introductory article and then assembled eight historical essays by students of the issue — Alma Allred, Ronald Coleman, Ken Driggs, Jessie Embry, Darius Gray, Cardell Jacobson and Armand Mauss.

Generally, this is a welcome collection, especially in the desire of the authors to chart the cultural comfort or discomfort that blacks are feeling now that the priesthood ban has been lifted. They find that discrimination on the basis of race still exists within the LDS Church.

The viewpoint of black authors seems most important in a volume like this, but only three of the nine writers here are black — Darron Smith, Darius Gray and Ronald Coleman, all of whom make astute observations in this volume. But Coleman and Gray restrict their analysis to two 19th-century black Mormons, when their knowledge and experience qualify them to say much more about modern blacks and their interactions within the church.

Smith makes the most important contribution, presenting personal issues of racism as they affect him and other black Mormons. His strongest point is his assertion that in the years since the 1978 revelation, almost nothing is said in church meetings about either blacks or the issue of race as it affects the church. He also sees "an overrepresentation of whiteness" in church callings and offices.

Mauss' contribution is typically handicapped by its sociological jargon and graphs, and the other white authors included simply expand on earlier works for which they are justly recognized. (Unfortunately, Lester Bush, the most important white scholar to treat this problem, is not included in these pages.)

Bringhurst continues to repeat his inaccurate claim that "the most thoroughly researched work linking black Mormon priesthood denial to church difficulties in Missouri was Stephen L. Taggart's widely circulated 'Mormonism's Negro Policy: Social and Historical Origins.' " Published in 1970, after several other pioneering works had already been written by such scholars as Jan Shipps and L.H. Kirkpatrick, Taggart's small book is singularly undistinguished, repetitive and incomplete; Taggart, a young college student when he wrote the book, lost his life while still in his youth, cutting short his academic career. For Bringhurst to constantly refer to his one small contribution as if it were a seminal work is disingenuous.

"Black and Mormon" is a welcome addition to scholarship on "the black question," but it adds little to the body of scholarship already established. What is needed now is a volume written completely by black Mormons to assist white Mormons in gaining perspective and understanding the problems of modern-day blacks in the LDS Church.

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