page_title: Interracial marriage and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
section_title: J. Reuben Clark
hierarchical_section_title: Interracial marriage and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints / 1900–1950 teachings / J. Reuben Clark
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of J. Reuben Clark, a prominent attorney in the Department of State, and Under Secretary of State for US president Calvin Coolidge, and an Apostle and Counselor in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).
context_page_description: In the past, leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have consistently opposed marriages between members of different ethnicities. In 1977, apostle Boyd K. Packer publicly stated that "[w]e've always counseled in the Church for our Mexican members to marry Mexicans, our Japanese members to marry Japanese, our Caucasians to marry Caucasians, our Polynesian members to marry Polynesians. ... The counsel has been wise." Nearly every decade for over a century—beginning with the church's formation in the 1830s until the 1970s—has seen some denunciations of miscegenation, with most of them focusing on black-white marriages.
  Though interracial marriage is no longer considered a sin, until at least the 1960s, the church penalized white members who married black individuals by prohibiting both spouses from entering temples. Church president Brigham Young even taught on multiple occasions that black-white marriage merited death for the couple and their children. Until the 2000s, the church also discouraged interracial marriages in its official publications.
context_section_description: First Presidency member J. Reuben Clark told Young Women general leaders in 1946 that, "It is sought today in certain quarters to break down all race prejudice, and at the end of the road ... is intermarriage. ...[D]o not ever let that wicked virus get into your systems that brotherhood either permits or entitles you to mix races which are inconsistent. Biologically, it is wrong; spiritually, it is wrong." The quote was reprinted in the church's official Improvement Era magazine. Three years later as senior vice-president of the church-owned Hotel Utah which then banned black people, Clark stated that the ban was in place to prevent interracial socializing that could hurt church leaders' efforts "to preserve the purity of the race that is entitled to hold the priesthood" and that the church taught white members to avoid social interaction with black people.
caption: The apostle Reuben Clark spoke against mixed-race marriage several times in the 1940s, once calling it a "wicked virus."[2]:66
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