The year 2003 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the lifting of the ban excluding black members from the priesthood of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Now available in paperback, the essays collected in Newell G. Bringhurst and Darron T. Smith's Black and Mormon look at the mechanisms used to keep blacks from full participation in the church, the motives behind the ban, and the kinds of changes that have--and have not--taken place within the church since the revelation responsible for its end.

Newell G. Bringhurst teaches history and political science at the College of the Sequoias in Visalia, California. He is the author of Brigham Young and the Expanding American Frontier and other books. Darron T. Smith is an African American convert to the LDS church. He is the author of What Matters Most: A Story of Human Struggle and Potential and is currently a lecturer at Utah Valley State College.