Here is a more than a top 10 list of things I didn't have time to ask Dr Matt Harris about and his amazing book, "2nd Class Saints." I'll also announce the contest winner! Check out our conversation...

https://youtube.com/live/ehbp13IT_sQ

Don’t miss our other conversations with Matt: https://gospeltangents.com/people/matt-harris/

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GT  00:00  It says we are live, so I know I'm 15 minutes late. I apologize for that. Of course, my computer doesn't want to connect to the internet, and then it has to do updates, and so I apologize. But welcome to everybody who's here, and if you're watching this later, welcome to you too as well. So go ahead and tell me. We're live streaming currently on YouTube, Facebook and hopefully LinkedIn. So go ahead and add a comment who you are and where you live. Do you see this nice little gold thing I have here? It turns and you can see that those have contest entries. Maybe I should turn it so you guys can see. I got a new cool thing here. I don't know what you call this, but I can spin it around. Anyway, it's in my way right now, so we will be adding that shortly. So, go ahead and tell me who you are and where you're from, and that would be awesome.

GT  01:07  I also want to just say, for the live viewers here, if you have any questions about Matt's amazing book, which is behind me right there, is that the one I'm giving away. Actually, I think this is the one I'm going to give away. I've got mine over here, and I have some notes. Anyway, we'll be giving away this shortly. I'm going to show you my notes here really quickly. I've got two pages of notes. I decided to put together a PowerPoint this time because--oh, and by the way, please let me know if I have good audio or bad audio, because my meter says it's good. But last time, it was my camera, and it was crappy audio. So, if the audio sounds good, let me know. I don't have my monitor, and I was already late, so I didn’t want to hook that up.

GT  02:06  Anyway, this is the stuff I didn't get to talk to Matt about in the interview. Some of that stuff, I do want to mention that we have talked about previously. So finally, I decided I should be a little bit organized and put together a PowerPoint to talk about a few things. I want you guys to know as I pull up my PowerPoint here, I'll share it in just a minute. Hopefully it's not going to be too hard to find. I just set it up on a different computer. But feel free to ask me any questions you might have about the book, any questions you'd like to ask. I will do my best to answer them, because I've talked to Matt a lot about this on camera, off camera.

GT  02:59   I do want to share some of my older episodes with you guys, especially if you're newer listeners, and you weren't here, I think it was six years ago. I can't remember when we first talked. I like to joke. I think it's kind of true, though, that I discovered Matt. At least I was the first podcaster to discover Matt. So, we've been talking about some of this stuff--at the end of the interview, we talked about Monroe Fleming, I remember--and you probably heard me say that when he talked about Monroe Fleming being almost ordained in 1969, my jaw about hit the floor. I think I've got my slide show. It's very short, but it'll kind of keep us on task here. I'm going to share that in just a moment. Please post your comments, questions. I'd love to hear them. I can't see the comments when I'm on the slideshow, but I will try to answer them. So, it ended up, it's kind of a top 10 list, because I had 10 items before I ran out of time. Actually, I had more than 10. But I wanted to share some things from the book that I just thought were amazing. Let me share my screen now.

GT  04:43  Here we go. So, it says that I'm sharing my screen. This is Matt's amazing book. I really think--in fact, I was just talking to a seminary teacher today and told him I was doing a live stream. I don't know if he's going to be watching, but he said this book is going to be talked about for decades. It is. It is a game changer in black history. I think the first book, probably, that was the game changer was Saints, Slaves and Blacks, by Newell Bringhurst, which is somewhere, I think behind me on my shelf. This book is just amazing. So, I have a link here. I've actually created a new playlist called Second Class Saints. The first six or seven episodes are the newest stuff, but then we go to the older stuff. Just to give you an idea of some of the things, these are screenshots.  Some of them are chopped off, as you can see, but I didn't have time to fix them. I was just glad I had this. [One of them is,] Before 1978, LDS policies for biracial families in Brazil and South Africa. I just thought that was amazing. We talk a lot about both countries. When, Where and Why Did the One Drop Rule Originate? I thought that was an amazing episode. I think all of these are amazing. Did President McKay Try to Rescind the Ban in 1955? Kind of, yes. Hugh B. Brown's Attempts to End the Ban in 1962, we go into way more detail than we did in our latest interview. So, that was amazing. How Kimball Persuaded the Apostles to Agree on Lifting the Ban.

GT  06:36  I think these are mostly in chronological order. I might be not giving them to you [chronologically.] Almost Famous: 1969 Black Ordination Nixed by Lee. That was the one where--well, I will say this. I only had one camera back then, and now that I go back and listen to my audio, I was like, wow. My audio is really crappy back then. So, just know that I've upgraded my equipment since these. I've gotten a second camera. I've gotten better audio. So, the audio is not great on these, but the episodes are amazing, absolutely amazing. Some of the other stuff: Did Nixon and Carter Pressure BYU Over Race? The answer is absolutely yes. Did the IRS-- was the threat--they did not threaten them with the IRS, basically. But Carter and Nixon did talk to BYU about race. So, that was a really cool episode. The coolest thing about that episode was Matt-- of course, President Carter is still alive. He's nearing 100 years old, I think. But Matt, in the interview, said, and this was six years ago [that] he had written President Carter a letter and gotten a response back. I just thought that was a super fun interview, living history. This is what Matt does. He's amazing.

GT  08:00  Race and Religious Minorities at BYU. That was a fun episode. Civil Rights Investigations at BYU in 1968. You can see you've got two Democratic presidents and a Republican president all pressuring BYU on civil rights and that. How Brazil Influenced Official Declaration 2, I thought that was amazing. The Sports Protests Against BYU Matt alluded to. We didn't have time to talk about that, but we did some six years ago. Bruce R. McConkie Helped Write the Official Declaration 2. That was pretty, pretty amazing. So, all of these are episodes that--we've been talking about this book for over six years. Other things, Pros and Cons of the Race Essay. Matt and Newell Bringhurst edited a book on the Gospel Topics Essays. A lot of the stuff that they talked about in that book ended up in Second Class Saints, as well. We talked about the Randy Bott episode in the Washington Post. That's, of course, in the book, as well. Matt goes into greater detail about the Accreditation Problems at the BYU Law School. Dallin Oaks was called to be the BYU President, specifically to start a law school. The American Bar Association had big problems with the race policies at BYU. They're starting a new law school, and they might not get accredited.  ow, obviously they're accredited, and they have been for a long time. But that was a big concern when Elder Oaks was President Oaks at BYU. And so that was a really, really interesting episode.

GT  09:51  By the way, that picture was taken by me outside the J. Reuben Clark Law School. That was a super fun episode. We talked about the impact of protests on the apostles. These are the apostles when David O McKay was prophet: Hugh B. Brown, . Eldon Tanner and Alvin Dyer were in the First Presidency. Of course, you can see-- and I've got the--I'm pretty sure this is in ranked order of seniority. You can see Marion G Romney, he was later in the First Presidency, as well. But these were the apostles that were around in 1969 when David O McKay was still living. He died, of course, in January of 1970. But that was a very, very interesting episode. We also talked in more depth about Racism in Mormon scriptures, in the Book of Abraham and the Book of Mormon. If you haven't, if you didn't get enough of Matt Harris, watch my old episodes. They're amazing, if you ask me.

GT  10:58  I thought we could share. I almost put top 10 things and then I erased it, because I was going to have more than 10. But I ran out of time and only got 10. So these are in page order of the book, and I might even give you a few that I didn't have time to write down. I was shocked as early as page 32, George Albert Smith, the prophet--I can't remember if he was prophet at the time, but he called the ban a custom and not revelation. I believe he was Prophet when he called it a custom, not a revelation. Of course, he was, if I remember, if my memory is right, I think he was president from 1945 to 1951. David on McKay replaced him, if I have those years right. I hope I have them right. Let me know if I didn't. I'd like to correct the record, if I didn't have that right. But Joseph Fielding Smith on page 36 cleared a black man who was one sixth, well, he was 1/64 black, so he's really white. But you know that mattered back then. He told, he counseled the young man to keep this a secret, so that he could marry in the temple. I was just shocked that Joseph Fielding Smith, of all people, would do that.