What do you know about Jane Manning James? I was recently asked a question about her and decided that since I was putting so much time and thought into her story, I should share those ideas here. Jane has been trending lately. Between Elder Ballard’s tribute to her in his October 2017 conference address, the “Be One” celebration marking the 40th-anniversary of the revelation on the priesthood and the new Jane and Emma Movie coming out in October it’s likely you’ve heard her name and know that she was one of the earliest faithful black members of the church.
In fairness, with this topic, like nearly everything I write about, I’m not an expert. Two of the women involved with making the movie, Tamu Smith & Zandra Vranes, wrote this blog post that probably says everything better than I can and also explains Jane’s legacy from the perspective of black, female saints.
Sister Emma asked me one day if I would like to be adopted to them as their child and I did not answer her. She said, “I will wait a while and let you consider it.” She waited two weeks before she asked me again. When she did, I told her, “No, Ma’am!” because I did not understand or know what it meant. They were always good and kind to me, but I did not know my own mind. I did not comprehend.
It seems that there weren’t any race-based restrictions during Joseph’s lifetime, but things got more complicated afterward. It’s easy to just call Brigham Young and his successors racists and make it simple, but I think we lose a lot when we fail to look more deeply.
I wish I had a deeper knowledge of how events in history impacted the church and its members, but I know enough to see that we can’t really understand early Mormonism outside of the social and political climate in which it existed. We know that the period following Joseph’s death in 1844 was a particularly tumultuous time, and the Saints’ relationship with the government and society at large was complex. The saints suffered serious persecution in both Missouri and Illinois, both strong slave states at the time. When the first pioneers started leaving Nauvoo in 1846, they thought they are leaving the U.S.–because the area that is now Utah still belonged to Mexico. The 1848 treaty that ended the Mexican American war put them back into a country that they viewed as hostile. President Buchanan sent Johnston’s army to Utah (1857-1858) in what is now called the Mormon or Utah war. During all this time, the country was building up to and fighting the Civil War (until 1865) and then grappling with reconstruction.
The Mormon Church, at the time, was an odd mix of recent converts who, agreed on some issues and held completely opposite views on others. There were abolitionists from the north, slaveholders from the south (some who brought their slaves with them) and a wide array of European immigrants speaking a variety of languages. Church leaders had a lot on their plates: building homes and towns, helping converts immigrate, establishing order and community, sorting out a new religion, negotiating their place in the nation, and—possibly most pressing—figuring out how to keep the people from starving in a desert with crickets eating their crops.
It’s easy to look back and judge their faults from our perspective, but I have to question whether I should be harsh with church leaders when Jane, who was there and suffering with them, didn’t. She recorded:
Oh how I suffered of cold and hunger, and the keenest of all was to hear my little ones crying for bread and I had none to give them. But in all, the Lord was with us and gave us grace and faith to stand it all. I have seen Bro. Brigham, Bros. Taylor, Woodruff and Snow rule this great work and pass on to their reward, and now [we have] Brother Joseph F. Smith. I hope the Lord will spare him—if ’tis his holy will—for many, many years to guide the gospel ship to a harbor of safety, and I know they will, if the people will only listen and obey the teachings of these good, great and holy men.
I’m not saying that Brigham Young and the others didn’t have racist beliefs. I would assume that as products of their time they did, but there is evidence that they were trying to be kind and that they saw Jane and others as valued members of the kingdom. As examples, when Joseph died, Jane went to live in Brigham Young’s household, in her later years, church authorities regularly reserved seats in the center front of the Tabernacle for Jane and her brother, and the prophet Joseph F. Smith spoke at Jane’s funeral.
In recent years I have come to view prophets differently. I believe we get into trouble when we expect too much perfection from them. I believe they are only human like the rest of us, on the earth to be tried and tested, to learn and grow. I feel that each has special qualities that enable them to fulfill particular preordained missions, and I think they get revelation as answers to specific prayers or in response to the particular challenges the Lord wants the church to address, but I don’t think they are required to have all the answers or even to know all the questions. I often hear others hold prophets to impossibly high standards when we know that only Christ was perfect and everyone else is flawed.
I believe that when President Wilford Woodruff said that the Lord won’t allow him or any other prophet to lead the church astray, he was talking about general direction—that following the prophets will help us come closer to God and Christ individually and grow and progress as a people. I am most comfortable seeing that as a bumpy and sometimes winding road. I think of Moses leading the people of Israel to wander for forty years in the wilderness before they reached the Promised Land. God had a purpose in making them wander and they were supposed to follow Moses, but they must have questioned whether he had any idea what he was doing or where he was going, or if judging him in hindsight, they surely could have pointed out lots of wrong turns.
I have a six-month-old granddaughter whose parents are trying a method of feeding that is much different than what I used with my children. Rather than spoon-feeding pureed food, they are letting her explore eating the foods they are having by doing it herself. We laugh at her reactions as she discovers new tastes and textures, and chuckle at the huge mess she makes, dropping food on the floor, squishing it between her fingers, or rubbing it in her hair. Her parents know she is doing it “wrong” but they believe that she will eventually learn good manners and healthy eating habits. They also know that even her biggest messes can be cleaned up.
So much of good parenting involves letting children struggle or explore within the boundaries we set. I always relate best to God as a loving Father. I like to think that he is extremely patient, or perhaps even sometimes slightly amused, at how badly we mess things up or get things wrong because he sees the bigger picture and knows that our problems and challenges are going to eventually work for our good.
I honestly believe that Jane being attached to Joseph and Emma as a servant was just the brethren trying to figure things out before they understood how things would eventually be. Even beyond the race issue, Jane’s particular sealing issue was complicated. In Nauvoo the sealing ordinance had been practiced differently; people had been sealed as sons and daughters to nonrelatives. There seemed to be a belief that you just wanted to attach yourself to the most righteous priesthood holder you could find. (This may in part explain some of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young’s unusual sealings.) After temples were built in Utah the sealing practices became more standardized, and much more likely to involve sealing people only to their actual ancestors and descendants. Jane was single in Nauvoo, where the idea of Joseph and Emma adopting her would have been more in line with the current practices. By the time she began petitioning church leaders for her temple blessings in Utah, she had been married and divorced. Her first husband, Isaac, had left her to take care of the family alone, and her second marriage didn’t last very long. Also, because of the priesthood restriction, neither of these men may have been eligible for sealing. It appears that at one time she asked to be sealed to Walker Lewis, a black man who had received the priesthood in Nauvoo. This may also have seemed like a poor choice since Lewis was no longer living and Jane had never had a serious connection to him. I see evidence that leaders were trying to find a solution that made sense in this unusual circumstance. In the end, they decided to seal her to Joseph in the same relationship that she had had to the family during his life and promise her that she could be with the Smiths in the celestial kingdom for eternity. From what I’ve read, I don’t think that either Jane or the brethren found this solution to be particularly satisfying, and I would guess that everyone involved must have been pleased when in 1979 the ordinances could be done by proxy.
It isn’t difficult for me to believe that God allowed everyone involved to wrestle with this issue because he knew that he was going to straighten things out eventually and make sure that Jane received every blessing she deserved. I also believe that the Lord may allow such mistakes to challenge everyone involved because growth happens in the struggles and conflicts of life.
Very little about Jane’s life seems fair. Not being able to go to the temple and receive her ordinances stands out as a glaring injustice, but there was so much more. We read about the great trials she faced getting to Nauvoo and crossing the plains to Utah. She just seems to be getting ahead when the crickets descend and eat the crops. Her husband leaves her to support the family alone. She always worked hard but could barely make ends meet. During her lifetime she lost eight of her ten children along with ten of her 18 grandchildren.
I believe all of these things compelled Jane to seek for personal revelation—to discover her own answers to life’s challenges and injustices, and to build a very personal relationship with and trust in God. There are mentions of this throughout her history. Her experience leading her family while they walked to Nauvoo seems particularly powerful:
We walked until our shoes were worn out, and our feet became sore and cracked open and bled until you could see the whole print of our feet with blood on the ground. We stopped and united in prayer to the Lord; we asked God the Eternal Father to heal our feet. Our prayers were answered and our feet were healed forthwith.
I believe that the personal revelation each of us receives directly from God has a greater impact on our own lives than even the revelation that comes through the prophets.
In Doctrine and Covenants 81:118 the Lord counsels:
And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith.
I think the Lord is telling us that study, learning and logic are all important, but they aren’t enough. We need the faith that leads us to sincere prayer and a humble acceptance of the answers or trials he sends.
I feel that we are currently living in a world where people protest—yell, scream, and break things—when they want things to change. I’ve heard critics ridicule the church, saying that if we really have prophets, then we should have the answers to social problems before everyone else. But I wonder if the Lord’s way is less about doing things quickly and more about deeply changing hearts. This may be less about the external struggle and more about the kind of internal wrestling that causes us to turn to God for guidance and answers.
Jane’s experience and the quiet, steadfast way she changed the world for herself and others shouldn’t be overlooked. Jane’s life wasn’t fair or easy, but still, more than a century since her death, we are learning from her example. She taught powerful lessons on receiving personal answers from God, being true to the truth she had been given regardless of unanswered questions, being grateful for her blessings despite hardship, trusting the Lord and his timing, and showing great love and service to others.
I want to give Jane the final word by quoting the history she dictated; I think this is how she would want to be remembered.
I am a widow. My husband, Isaac James, died in November, 1891. I have seen my husband and all of my children but two laid away in the silent tomb. But the Lord protects me and takes good care of me in my helpless condition, and I want to say right here that my faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ as taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is as strong today, nay, it is, if possible, stronger than it was the day I was first baptized. I pay my tithes and offerings [and] keep the Word of Wisdom. I go to bed early and rise early. I try in my feeble way to set a good example to all.
