The life of Jane Manning James, with Quincy Newell [MIPodcast #107]

Jane Manning James stood out among early Latter-day Saints as one of few black converts. She was baptized into the Church as a free black woman in Connecticut and migrated to Nauvoo with her family, where she soon found herself working in the prophet Joseph Smith’s home. After his death, she traveled west with the Saints and lived the rest of her life as a faithful member—though she was denied participation in the Church’s most sacred practices.

Through the years, Jane Manning James has been left out of books on African American history, women’s history, histories of the West, and until more recently, she was even left out of histories of her own church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Dr. Quincy Newell recently published the first scholarly biography of this remarkable Latter-day Saint. The book is called Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-century Black Mormon. Dr. Newell joins us to talk about it in this episode.

Images of Jane discussed in the episode are available in the transcript.

About the Guest

Quincy D. Newell is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Hamilton College. She is co-editor of the Mormon Studies Review and author of Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon.

 

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