Hugh B Brown risked literally everything to try to overturn the priesthood/temple ban in the LDS Church. For that he was dismissed from First Presidency. Dr Matt Harris discusses Brown's attempts to end the ban just before Pres McKay's death, which led to him being dropped from the First Presidency. Check out our conversation...

https://youtu.be/G9C2No5bfVY

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Fired From First Presidency

GT  00:13  I'm trying to remember where to go next. I've got two or three questions here. I want to do them all. Since we're talking about the apostles, I want to dive back in. I know we talked about that in our previous interview, but when I read your book, it sounded like there was new information that you didn't know five years ago. So, let me frame it this way. In 1969, [Michael Quinn] tells a story that there was a vote to rescind the ban, and it was unanimous for all present, but Harold B. Lee wasn't there. I'm trying to remember. So, basically there was a re-vote, and I remember you said that President Kimball went to President Brown and said, basically, "I'm with you, President Brown, but I fear Elder Lee."

Matt  1:13  Yes.

GT  1:14  And I think that was the genesis for the 1969 statement, and it wasn't signed by President McKay, because he died a month later, I think it was.

Matt  1:26  Correct.

GT  1:27  And basically it said, "We don't know why the ban is, but God knows." So, then fast forward to 1978 and then the ban is lifted. I remember the question that I had at the time, and I think, at the time, you didn't know what was Elder Benson's position in 1969 and 1978? Because when I read that in your book, I was floored to hear, especially President Benson, how he changed. So, can you talk about those two important meetings, as well as the 1969 statement that was a result of that?

Matt  2:18  So there's two events going on here. One would be September of 1969 where Hugh Brown, he's a counselor in the First Presidency. When he was called into the First Presidency in 1961, he gave the brethren fits from the get go. He is a liberal Canadian. Those are not my words. Those are words he used. In fact, a couple of years before he died, he gave an oral history with his [grand]son, Ed Firmage, who was a law professor at the University of Utah for his career. Ed passed away a few years ago, and Ed was very close with his grandfather and recognized that his grandfather was a significant leader. So, gratefully, Ed interviewed hours worth of interviews with his grandfather in 1968 and 1969. A little tiny bit of that interview was published by Signature Books in the late 1980s. It's billed as the memoir of Hugh Brown, and the tiny bit of that, it's not a very big book. It’s definitely worth looking at. But only a fraction of those dozens and dozens of hours made it into that book. I have all the hours in the transcripts.  So, I can tell you what made it in and what didn't. But maybe 5% of the interview made it in that book. So ,there's a whole chunk that's not. Brown was very candid in those interviews. He told his [grand]son, Now, keep in mind he's in his eighties when he's giving these interviews, and his mind is still really sharp. And he said to his grandson. His mind is still really sharp. He said to Ed Firmage that I am more a liberal today than I've ever been, and the longer I've lived, the more I believe in the rightness of my Democratic Party. It's a good thing Ezra Taft Benson wasn't in the room. And so that's what he said. He always identified as a liberal. Those are not my words. [In] reading his politics. That's how he identified.

Matt  4:34  And so he posed fits for the brethren on two fronts. One was the ban. He never thought it was compatible with the gospel. He never thought it was doctrine, kind of like David O McKay, and he thought it was just a policy and a practice that began in Missouri that Joseph Smith created to appease Missourians. When the Saints went in, they [the Missourians] were pro-slavery and the Saints were--the rumor was they were abolitionists. They were not.

GT  5:02  That was Taggart's position, right?

Matt  5:05  Well, but Taggart--no, it was Fawn Brodie's position.

GT  5:09  Okay.

Matt  5:10  And Taggart's just repeating Fawn Brodie because she's the first person to create what we call the Missouri thesis, that the ban began under Joseph Smith's tenure, to show the Missouri government that, "Hey, we don't believe in racial equality. Look, we're keeping them out of our ecclesiastical rights." And nobody accepts this thesis today, I might add. It's been thoroughly demolished. As I said a minute ago, the ban didn't even begin with Joseph Smith. But that's what Fawn Brodie said. And Stephen Taggart and others picked up on it, including Hugh Brown. So Hugh Brown believed in the Missouri thesis. That was \ the prevailing thing of the day. So, Hugh Brown had been pushing the Church to lift the ban, and he pushed for racial equality. He wanted the Church to acknowledge the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Of course, the brethren are pushing back on that. And when he tries to lift the ban in 1969 with the help of David O. McKay's sons, who are also not in approval of the Church's race teachings, they gang up on their father, and there's like three of the boys, and there's Hugh Brown, and they go to the Hotel Utah, this is in September. they convince him to ordain a Black man to the priesthood. He agrees to do it.

GT  6:26  I remember my jaw dropped on the floor when you told me this.

Matt  6:30  Yeah, he agrees to do it.

GT  6:33  And his name was?

Matt  6:34  Monroe Fleming. He had worked at the Hotel Utah for 26 years. I think he worked--he had various jobs. But one of which I think he worked in the restaurant as a waiter, and he often saw General Authorities coming in. He would serve them food. He saw missionaries in those days, I think it was called the LTM.[1]

GT  6:54  Yeah, Language Training Mission.

Matt  6:55  Yeah, before the MTC today, but the LTM in those days, and the LTM was at that space. And so he got to see a lot of missionaries, too, including the late, great Michael Quinn who talks about meeting him there.

GT  7:07  Oh, wow.

Matt  7:08  Yeah. And so the so they targeted Monroe Fleming because they thought he was a loyal Latter-day Saint. What's instructive about this story is, for years, President McKay said, "Yeah, I don't like the ban." This is in private, he would tell people, "I don't like the ban, but it requires a revelation. Even though it's not doctrine, even though it's a policy, it requires a revelation”/consensus. But now what you have...

GT  7:37  So, you're saying revelation equals consensus?

Matt  7:39  Yes, so now what you have is in 1969, September, he's taking a different tact. He's saying, "Okay, I'll ordain him." There's more to the story that I go into great detail that we don't have the time to cover here, but he agrees to ordain him. And when the word gets out from Harold Lee and others that this is what the President's going to do, he's going to ordain him unilaterally, without consensus--that's what I've learned since our last time. There were some people supporting it, and Spencer Kimball knew about it and supported it.

GT  8:16  Yeah, I knew that.

Matt  8:17  But I wish I knew about other people and their voices with this. But I do know that Harold Lee did not support it because he put a stop to it. Absolutely, he put a stop to it. Hugh Brown was crushed. He thought this was holding the Church back. He thought that it wasn't scriptural. He thought that there was no proof that the Prophet Joseph Smith had founded the ban. It wasn't based on revelation. I mean, Brown was a follower of the Bennion report and the conclusions that they drew, and he was also very close friends of Lowell Bennion. So, they put a stop to it. And Brown is depressed. I mean, he's really depressed. And Brown had struggled with depression throughout his life for reasons we can talk about, maybe on a different occasion.

GT  9:05  Because you're writing a new book about it.

Matt  9:07  Because I'm writing a book about Hugh B. Brown. I figured if I wrote about the right wing of the Church in Elder Benson, it's only fair that I write about the left wing of the Church. So this is sort of balancing out the universe. I just hugely admire Hugh B. Brown, as I do Marion Hanks. So Brown is depressed. He's upset. He's an older man. There's a lot of context that we're not really talking about. But the BYU athletic protests are harming the Church. There are athletic teams that are refusing to play BYU because of the Church's racial teachings. There's a federal investigation going on that I'm sure we'll talk about, where the feds are investigating BYU for alleged civil rights violations, and they're threatening to close BYU down. I mean, the stakes are high, so Brown's just sick over all of this. In November, the WAC, the Western Athletic Conference, of which BYU was a part of at the time, they're going to have a vote to kick BYU out because of the racism. They're not recruiting black student athletes or black faculty. And so that's another reason why Brown wants to give black people to priesthood.

Matt  10:28  So the Board of Trustees, which is comprised of the brethren, they decide to allow BYU to recruit a limited number of black student athletes, to get the Feds off their backs and to keep from getting kicked out of the conference. And oh, did I tell you that they were just trying to build a Marriott Center and putting all this money into it, and they were worried they're building this beautiful building that they're not going to have any teams to play in. So, in that context,