Early African American LDS member subject of next Doig Lecture
From MSU News Service
An African American woman who lived in the 19th century and had a front-row seat to the early days of Mormonism is the subject of a lecture set for 6pm on Wednesday, October 16th, in Inspiration Hall in Montana State University’s Norm Asbjornson Hall.
Historian Quincy D. Newell will lecture on “The Story of Jane: How an Obscure Black Woman Changes American History.” The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by MSU’s Ivan Doig Center for the Study of the Lands and Peoples of the North American West.
Newell, a professor of religious studies at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, is the author of the book Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon.
James was a personal servant to Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints founder Joseph Smith and is one of the earliest known black members of the LDS church. For several decades, however, her story remained relatively absent from the history of Mormonism.
Newell has published several books and essays on the experiences of religious and racial/ethnic minorities in the American West. Among other honors, Newell received the 2018 Jane Dempsey Douglass Prize from the American Society of Church History and the 2017 Best Article in Mormon Women’s History prize from the Mormon History Association for her work on James.
For more information about the event, visit www.montana.edu/doig, call (406) 994-4247 or write to ivandoigcenter@montana.edu. •