Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon

by Quincy D Newell

"Dear Brother," Jane Manning James wrote to Joseph F. Smith in 1903, "I take this opportunity of writing to ask you if I can get my endowments and also finish the work I have begun for my dead.... Your sister in the Gospel, Jane E. James." A faithful Latter-day Saint since her conversion sixty years earlier, James had made this request several times before, to no avail, and this time she would be just as unsuccessful, even though most Latter-day Saints were allowed to participate in the endowment ritual in the temple as a matter of course. James, unlike most Mormons, was black. For that reason, she was barred from performing the temple rituals that Latter-day Saints believe are necessary to reach the highest degrees of glory after death.

A free black woman from Connecticut, James positioned herself at the center of LDS history with uncanny precision. After her conversion, she traveled with her family and other converts from the region to Nauvoo, Illinois, where the LDS church was then based. There, she took a job as a servant in the home of Joseph Smith, the founder and first prophet of the LDS church. When Smith was killed in 1844, Jane found employment as a servant in Brigham Young's home. These positions placed Jane in proximity to Mormonism's most powerful figures, but did not protect her from the church's racially discriminatory policies. Nevertheless, she remained a faithful member until her death in 1908.

Your Sister in the Gospel is the first scholarly biography of Jane Manning James or, for that matter, any black Mormon. Quincy D. Newell chronicles the life of this remarkable yet largely unknown figure and reveals why James's story changes our understanding of American history.

Genres: History, Race, Biography Memoir, Lds, Nonfiction, Mormonism, Religion

220 pages, Hardcover

Published May 7, 2019

Reviews

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

One could accurately give this book the subtitle "Things Jane Manning James Possibly Thought and Probably Witnessed". Unfortunately, as much as I wish the case was different, many of the deeper details of Jane's life are lost to us. Thus, in order to create a full biography (which is only approximately 140 pages) there is a great deal of filler and even more conjecture. However, the facts about Jane that are there are solid, the end notes are detailed, and the various primary sources reprinted in this book are quite useful. One is only left wishing Jane was featured more in a book about herself.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first work I've read from Quincy Newell, and it won't be my last. She writes clearly and engagingly; her primary source research is thorough, and the other historians she consulted as she wrote this are all top-notch; she's fair and still sees her subjects on their own terms; and I love the stories she chooses to tell.

Newell runs into the same problem that many historians of minority groups run into, and that is quite simply that primary source material is limited. There is so much about Jane Manning James that we just don't know, and Newell is very open about that. Some historians choose to stick simply to the facts, while others propose possible motivations for their subjects' actions based on historical context, and Newell falls into that second category. I personally enjoyed this approach, as I feel I understood Manning better by dedicating time to understanding the local and national forces that were impacting the decisions she made, but I can see how many readers would be put off by the speculation. For what it's worth, Newell is always clear about what is solid fact and what isn't.

Jane Manning James was a fascinating woman, one that had a profound impact on my spiritual life while I was sorting out who I was spiritually in my 20s, and I'm so pleased her story is being told by such a capable author.

[Jenny's · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this book. The story of Jane Manning James is so remarkable that any attempt to honor it deserves praise. The problem lies with the fact that though she did leave behind her story, it's very brief. And here lies the problem with this new biography. In trying to flesh out her life an add more to her story there is a lot of what feels like guessing. Yes, you can make some calculated leaps based on history and drawing from other sources. But then you loose within all the guess work and postulating the soul of the woman your writing about.

I don't fault Quincy Newells extraordinary research. And I'm sure many will find it all facinating. I wouldn't want her to make up the story and then call it historical fiction. That's already been done. I suppose I hoped that with our present openness with documents and history, maybe more of her story had been found. When I saw the number of pages in the book, I jumped to that conclusion. Wow, there must be more!

I do applaud her research and I see the value in this type of approach. I did learn many new things. It's just that It wasn't what I was hoping for.

[Jared Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really well-written. Newell approaches her subject with a great deal of fairness, compassion, and thoroughness. It's well-sourced, but highly readable. Very highly recommended if you're interested in Mormon history.

[Tyler · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fairly interesting and short biography that would have been shorter still had the author dispensed with conjecture where the historical record is silent. It is an account of what little we know of the life of Jane Manning James, a free African American woman who joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Connecticut in the early 1840s and gathered with the saints first to Nauvoo, and then Salt Lake City, living to a ripe old age and dying in the early 1900s.

Jane Manning James is an interesting person to learn about because she defies a lot of stereotypes both in her time and ours. She remained a a faithful latter-day throughout her life despite restrictions on blacks receiving the priesthood or temple ordinances (other than baptisms for the dead) in her lifetime. She also knew Joseph Smith personally and lived in his household for about a year toward the end of his life and gives a firsthand account of how he behaved and treated her in private, personal interaction in his own house, which was interesting. Jane remained a staunch believer in and defender of Joseph Smith and his prophetic call throughout her life.

Jane's family story is complicated. She has two divorces. Some of her children leave or are excommunicated from the church. Many of them die long before she does. Furthermore, a lot of the details of Jane's life story are sparse, and the author tries to fill in the blanks with context clues and guesswork. Nevertheless, I enjoyed learning what there was to learn about her and her life in this book.

Note: the author is not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and it shows in some of her writing. She gets some stuff correct about the church and its beliefs, practices, etc but she looks at the church and Jane through a modern, secular academic lens that in some respects distorts the story. She focuses quite a bit on race, gender, and sexuality in her account. Some things she says are oversimplified and therefore not entirely accurate. For example, she depicts Brigham Young as an irascible patriarchal racist, which is a caricature of a much more complicated man in a much more complicated time than this brief book can due justice to explaining.

I'm glad I read this book, I learned some good things from it, but it wasn't amazing.

[David Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jane Manning James is one of the great heroines of the Latter-day Saint movement. I first became aware of her amazing story 30 years ago. Her story was not widely known until fairly recently and Quincey Newell's book is the first scholarly history on her exceptional life. Newell has done an outstanding job. He compassionately tells her story without undue harshness towards those that in some degree added to her plight.

Jane, born a free black, joined the CJCLDS in Connecticut and lead a small band of converts to Nauvoo to unite with the main body of the Saints. They suffered the racist cruelties of the time being denied passage and boarding. Ultimately, they walked to Nauvoo. Jane tells of their hardships including walking to the point that their shoes were worn through and the bloody footprints left in the snow. Upon her arrival in Nauvoo, she takes up residence in the household of Joseph Smith.

Ultimately traveling to Utah she is widely admired among the LDS community and eventually is designated a seat of honor in the Salt Lake Tabernacle. Her husbands and children do not share her commitment to the gospel and most do not retain their association. She is given a special recommend that allows her to perform vicarious baptisms for her deceased ancestors and family members. She petitions every President of the Church during her lifetime for permission to receive her temple blessings but is refused. Despite that refusal and dissappointment, she remains faithful to the Church her entire life. President Joseph F. Smith spoke at her funeral promising the day would come when she would receive all temple blessings for her and her posterity.

Upon the change in policy regarding the restriction on African American members to hold the priesthood and receive temple blessings in 1978, Jane Manning James vicarious temple ordinances were among the first performed.

[Courtney Hatch · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Jane’s life is comparatively well documented . . . Nevertheless, Jane’s story is left out of books on African American history, American women’s history, and the history of the American West. I think that’s because she was Mormon. . . .although [other African American women] left a far smaller paper trail than Jane, scholars include [their] stories in [these] histories . . . because [they] fit the larger tales we want to tell”- pg 1

Jane Manning James is probably the most well-known Black woman in the early Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and while her popularity continues to grow among Latter-day Saints, she continues to be left out of greater American histories. Newell’s work here is such an important step towards adding her story to the conversation.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating historical insight into Jane Manning James. Newell did an impressive job stepping outside and examining the accuracy of the role modern Mormons assign to Jane.
It was an interesting historical analysis of the life of this figure we actually have very little evidence about.
A large part of the book contains speculation on what the lack of evidence tells historians about Jane, which was interesting, but I felt did not balance well and even overpowered the evidence that is present about Jane’s life.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really excellent biography on Jane Manning James, an early Black Mormon convert. I wish there was more info available on Jane (which was not the historian's fault at all) - while we know the facts of many events in Jane's life, we don't often know her feelings or reactions to events. While this book gave me the bare details of her life and some sense of her basic personality, I wish I had a better sense of who Jane was.

I haven't done much reading on Mormon Studies in recent months, but this book got me excited about jumping back in.

[Caitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this and learning more about Jane Manning James. She’s a fascinating woman and I’m glad we remember and talk about her. There was an awful lot of speculation in this book, but I understand that there’s a lack of primary sources which would’ve made it possible to make the whole story clearer.

[Barbara Lovejoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The more I learned about Jane Manning James, the more I wanted to learn. Therefore, I was quite excited for this book to be released. I liked it, but it wasn't as good as I had hoped. Nevertheless, I am glad I read it.

[Nikki Leick · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting to hear ab a new, minority (!!) perspective as Jane was an African American woman in a predominately white, patriarchal religion — especially given her ties to Joseph Smith himself & the way she’s still used as an example of their “long standing diversity” today by the LDS Church

[Ryan Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this engaging and insightful. Others have noted that the book gives too many hypotheticals, but I found those hypotheticals documented in the historical record and giving context for various ways to read Jane's actions or words. As an example there was an extended analysis of how to read Jane's never giving the name of her first child's father with extensive reasoning on the why.

I also found the author's parsing of Jane's actions and words given her limited social capital helpful. For instance in her recording of a conversation with Joseph Smith III.

Ultimately the book succeeded in its aims of neither being devotional literature or mere indictment of Mormonism.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

If it were just based on Newell's writing it would be a 2. However after he finishes his version on this good woman's life, her own version is included and it's charming.

[Exponent II · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned about Jane for the first time when I was 16 and it changed the course of my life. Up until that point I had never seen myself reflected in the history of Mormonism nor heard of a black pioneer. When I was given the opportunity to play her in the 2014 production of “I am Jane,” I was humbled. The words of the play echoed the feelings of my soul because of everything I had experienced as a black Mormon. It captured the exhaustion, heartbreak, and unrelenting faith that leads a black person to continue on their journey in Mormonism. That complexity of emotions, experiences, and spiritual path is the essence of Jane Manning James. It is my hope that one day we will do her and her story justice.

Your Sister in the Gospel is a very well researched biography into the life of an incredible black, Mormon, pioneer, Jane Manning James. Newell’s focus on speaking to only that which could be confirmed by multiple sources is commendable. However, in doing so Newell makes the fatal mistake of many white authors who try to tell the story of people of color. She centers Jane’s story in whiteness.

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