Newell G. Bringhurst

Lester Bush’s Pioneering Contribution on Mormonism and Race: Some Personal Reflections

On this the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Lester E. Bush’s landmark Dialogue article “Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview,” I, along with other knowledgeable students of Mormon studies, gratefully acknowledge the crucial role…

Eldridge Cleaver’s Spiritual Odyssey and Embrace of Mormonism

Eldridge Cleaver, one-time Black Panther, author of the critically acclaimed best-selling memoir Soul on Ice, and notorious fugitive from justice, was the most famous African American to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day…

Juanita Brooks and Fawn Brodie — Sisters in Mormon Dissent

Those Apostates Who Would Be Gentiles | A. J. Simmonds, The Gentile Comes to Cache Valley: A Study of the Logan Apostasies of 1874 and the Establishment of Non-Mormon Churches in Cache Valley, 1873–1913

In an attractive volume with numerous illustrations, tables, and charts, A. J. Simmonds has told the story of those Cache Valley Latter-day Saints who for various economic, social or political reasons were excommunicated from or…

Elijah Abel and the Changing Status of Blacks Within Mormonism

Dialogue 12.2 (Summer 1979): 22–36
Elijah Abel, a black man ordained to the priesthood, was restricted in his church participation starting in 1843, even though he was well respected by both members and leaders. Newell G. Bringhurst discusses why the priesthood and temple ban might have occured. One of the reasons was when the pioneers were crossing the plains, a man by the name of William McCary, who had Native American and African American ancestry, caused a lot of grief and trouble for both saints and the leaders of the Church.

Fawn Brodie and Her Quest for Independence

Fawn McKay Brodie is known in Mormon circles primarily for her controversial 1945 biography of Joseph Smith—No Man Knows My History. Because of this work she was excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of…

A Modern Prophet and His Times: Things in Heaven and Earth: The Life and Times of Wilford Woodruff, a Mormon Prophet

The Private versus the Public David O. McKay: Profile of a Complex Personality

My “Affair” with Fawn McKay Brodie: Motive Pain and Pleasure

A Biographer’s Burden: Evaluating Robert Remini’s Joseph Smith and Will Bagley’s Brigham Young

A Scholarly Tribute to Leonard Arrington: The Collected Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lectures, Special Collections and Archives – Utah State University Libraries

Two Perspectives on the Life and Times of Joseph Smith: Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Lyman Bushman with the Assistance of Jed Woodworth