Five years in the making, “Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons” is the culmination of efforts from many faithful Latter-Day Saints of all races (including Darius Gray and Bloggernacle contributor Margaret Blair Young) who have worked to educate member and non-member alike about the untold and forgotten stories of black Saints throughout history.  “Nobody Knows” can be seen through a handful of select screenings around the country, and the DVD is available for purchase through the official site.

[Note: “Nobody Knows” isn’t a film that lends itself to a “grade” as I normally do for articles about LDS films.  The documentary is recommended for all discerning viewers.]

Ask the average white Church member off the street about the history of blacks in the Church and the answer is often very simple:  Blacks were not eligible for ordination to the priesthood until 1978, and then they were.  Nothing personal, just God’s will--no different in principle than only the Levite tribe of Israel having the priesthood in Old Testament times, or the early apostles in the New Testament being forbidden for a time from sharing the gospel to the Gentiles.

Naturally, the truth is more complicated.  As “Nobody Knows” shows, there *were* black priesthood holders in the early years of the Church before the Civil War, and their existence raises a number of key questions:  if the ban wasn’t in place from the very beginning, how did it start and why?  Was it really God’s will after all, and if not, why did it take so long to change?

In practice, the “nothing personal” part is hard to support as well, with the ban itself spawning a variety of folklore and speculative doctrine to explain its existence, which basically said blacks were under a curse for a variety of reasons, and were generally spiritually inferior.   How did such folklore start, why was it widely accepted, and why has it also taken so long to overcome, even thirty years after the 1978 revelation? 

Half of “Nobody Knows” takes the viewer through the key historical events in black LDS history starting from the first known black priesthood holder (Elijah Abel, ordained in 1836) through modern times.   At 73 minutes, though, “Nobody Knows” doesn’t really have the time to do a complete and comprehensive history of black Saints, and ends up just hitting a few of the high points before moving on to the next segment.  (The DVD contains 100 minutes of additional material which flesh out some of the other details)

The other half of the documentary consists of interviews with present-day African-Americans (LDS and non-) about how the ban and its related folklore affected them and their families.   These personal testimonies and experiences of black members, old and young, serve as the best part of the film.  Many testify of their personal struggles in holding on to a testimony and staying active, while trying to change the minds and hearts of others.   (“I didn’t mind having to defend my church to blacks,” says one, “but I did mind having to defend my blackness to Church members”)

“Nobody Knows” isn’t an ‘agenda’ film, though.  It wants to be a positive experience and a positive influence to viewers, even as it discusses some negative issues.  The black members interviewed in the film are universally full of optimism and happiness about having the gospel in their lives, even when you can still sense an (understandable) undercurrent of bitterness beneath the surface.   It’s hard to hold a negative impression of anything when the documentary finally ends, after hearing such positive statements of faith and perseverance from many of these patient members as they explain their trials and experiences.

“Nobody Knows” also tries hard to be positive towards the Church and past Church leaders (…as much as possible under the circumstances).  While a few quotes from previous Church presidents are shared related to blacks and the priesthood, many of the most offensive quotes from 19th (and 20th) century Church leaders are skipped.   There’s also no discussion at all about interracial marriage, which was also a heated discussion point in previous generations relating to Church policy.  The film sets the stage at the beginning for the fallibility of Church leaders (and from the beginning implicitly assumes that the ban was merely a result of fallible leaders), but isn’t a heated attack on the Church by any means.  The black members featured in the film address the fallibility issue obliquely, seeming mostly to have made peace with the past themselves and moved on.

Segregation is one issue that is not addressed by “Nobody Knows”.  The priesthood ban is referred to as “de facto segregation” throughout the film, although this seems to be an oversimplification.  There is a large difference between ‘de facto’ segregation and actual segregation—not allowing black members to pass the sacrament in church is genuinely not the same thing as not allowing them in the church building at all.  As theorized previously, if without the priesthood ban the Church would likely have become segregated anyway given the culture and the society it existed in (and as many of the other modern Christian churches from the 19th century onward did), one still might have a case that the ban was indeed caused by human failings, yet still defensible as the least worst of the two likely options.  (Note that the ban made true segregation effectively impossible.)

Even if the ban itself could be defensible in some context or another, though, the folklore that followed seems to present the larger problem to deal with in black LDS history.  The LDS Church is not unique, certainly, in having white members (and leaders) who believe blacks were “spiritually inferior” in some way.  (“Nobody Knows” quotes several leaders of other churches showing that the commonly held LDS opinion was not unique.   The film also notes astutely that society at large did not notice or care about the LDS priesthood ban for almost 100 years until the Civil Rights era—as, of course, it was not out of line with secular social policy at the time.)

However, the primary question remains:  if one believes that the Lord is the active leader of the Church, then isn’t it reasonable to expect…you know, some leadership?  (Even a casual observer can see it sure seems like the inmates are running the asylum at times.   Joseph Smith himself was anti-slavery, but Utah voted to become a slave-state when originally organized into a territory.)

One black member quoted in “Nobody Knows” asks a direct and reasonable question about why folklore about ‘the curse of Cain’ or ‘neutrality in the War in Heaven’ persisted without any guidance or correction from leaders.  Indeed, it was many of the prophets and apostles themselves who were teaching and supporting such 'doctrine'.  It’s hard, as this member sister notes in the film, to try to convince people that such speculation is not “Mormon Doctrine” when it appears in a book entitled…“Mormon Doctrine”—which we should note, is still in print.  Fallibility is one thing, but isn’t it reasonable to expect, as this sister does, that the one thing in which Church leaders should be most reliable is “teaching correct doctrine”?

But, again, “Nobody Knows” is not interested in being overly judgmental, which is why it succeeds in being a positive experience for viewers in the end.  One comes away from the film not with a sense of bitterness and doubt, but with a love for those faithful Saints who struggled for years to find the respect and dignity they deserve.  One certainly hopes the stories of black Saints, including those this film, will also find the audience they deserve.