PROMINENT BLACK MORMONS
Among the black Mormons not in the political arena and largely ignored is Gladys Knight who became a Mormon in 1998 after her son Jimmy and his wife and children did so. Ms. Knight was successful as an R&B singer in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She now writes and performs Mormon Gospel music. Sam Warren of "The Drifters", another famous black R&B group of the 1960s and 1970s, also became a Mormon. A well-known black personality who is also a Mormon is the famous college and NFL football hero Burgess Owens. NBA All-Star player Thurl Bailey became a Mormon, too, and now composes Mormon music.
An intriguing historical personality is deceased LeRoy Eldridge Cleaver who went from being a Black Panther to Black Mormon. Mr. Cleaver was the Minister of Information in the early Black Panther Party, a combination of Black Nationalism and Marxism. In 1968, he wrote "Soul on Ice" which became an international bestseller and was once considered the "Manifesto" of black nationalists and white radicals.
Among the lesser known, but influential black Mormons is Jesse Thomas Jr., a former Baptist preacher, who became a Mormon in 1989 and now serves in local priesthood-leadership positions. In 1995 Lee Radcliff, a black Baptist minister who served as a pastor in Chicago and Mississippi for decades, also became a Mormon.
The left-wing media applauds President Barack Obama's adherence to big government "fair share" Marxist ideology and downplays Obama's 20-year attendance in the church of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his then anti-American pastor and advocate of Black Liberation Theology, which is essentially socialism or Marxism.
Meanwhile the press cynically stirs up religious bigotry against Gov. Mitt Romney because his faith is Mormonism, a religion that embraces our constitutional principles of free enterprise and individual liberty. This effort to get the voting public to hate Mormons is anchored on the false notion that Mormons are racists. The Mormon denigrators focus on how, from 1849 to 1978, the Mormon Church had a policy against ordaining black men to the priesthood. In 1978, church leaders ceased the racial restriction policy for black men, declaring that they had received a revelation instructing them to do so.
In spite of that old rule about the priesthood, the Mormon Church has always had an open membership policy for all races and today's church opposes racial discrimination and racism. In 1997, there were approximately 500,000 black members of the Mormon Church, accounting for about 5% of the total membership. Since 1997, the black membership has grown substantially, especially in West Africa, where two temples have been built.
It goes against our constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion to declare that a person is not fit to be our nation's leader because of that person's religion. No one has called for Democrat Senate Leader Harry Reid to denounce his Mormon religion in order to be the leader of the US Senate.
 Former Michigan Governor George Romney (father of Mitt) marching for civil rights in the 1960s
Frances Rice is a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and Chairman of the National Black Republican Association. She may be contacted at: www.NBRA.info
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