Elijah Abel, one of the early Latter-day Saint pioneers of African descent, a man intimately acquainted with the Prophet Joseph Smith, was honored Sept. 28, with a new marker placed on his grave in the Salt Lake City Cemetery.

Photo by Johanna Workman

Elder M. Russell Ballard, left, and master of ceremonies Hugh J. Barlow admire new monument on grave of Elijah Abel, early African American Latter-day Saint.

Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve dedicated the new, 4-foot-high monument that replaces two crumbling markers that identified the resting place of Brother Abel and his wife, Mary Ann. The memorial service was sponsored by the Missouri Mormon Frontier Foundation, a historical preservation grouped based in Independence Mo.; and by the Genesis Group, a Church-sanctioned support organization for members of African descent.

Brother Abel received the priesthood from Joseph Smith and was a missionary.

Speakers included Darius Gray, president of the Genesis Group; Susan Easton Black, professor of Church history at BYU; and William J. Curtis, co-founder and secretary of the foundation in Missouri. A choir from the Genesis Group performed musical selections. Elder Cecil O. Samuelson of the Presidency of the Seventy gave the opening prayer.

In remarks prior to his dedicatory payer, Elder Ballard recalled being in a meeting of General Authorities soon after the 1978 revelation was announced extending priesthood authority to all worthy male members without regard for race. On that occasion, he recalled, President Spencer W. Kimball "put his hand on my knee (and I was a Seventy at that time responsible for all of the work in the Caribbean). He said, 'I want you to go into the Caribbean. I give you authority to dedicate the lands as you are impressed to do so and to start the work among those people.'

"We had some marvelous experiences."

Elder Ballard said he has been in Africa representing the Church on several occasions. "I've walked among the people. I have met and taught and ordained men to carry on the great work of the Lord in those African countries. And the work is rolling forward there very rapidly."

The apostle mused, "We don't know all of the reasons why the Lord does what He does. We need to be content that someday we'll fully understand it." But he offered his personal insight that the Lord "needed a season to mature the Church, to put the Church on a foundation and in a position where it could then roll forward into the world and carry this message and establish the Church in all of the nations of the earth. We would not have been able to do that in the days of Brigham Young. We did not have the resources. We did not have the capacity. We were not in a position to establish the Church in those lands which really require a lot of help at this time. Not only do they need spiritual help but they need temporal help.

"Unless you've walked the roads of Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Zimbabwe as I have, you don't appreciate the needs that those people have. And those needs are being fulfilled now by full-time missionaries. . . . And in most of those lands, those full-time missionaries are black elders who have joined the Church, been taught the gospel and are now carrying on the work among their own people."

Regarding Brother Abel, Elder Ballard said he is reported to have been at the bedside when Joseph Smith Sr., father of the Prophet, passed away. "That's very close to me. My mother is a Smith. My third-great-grandfather was Joseph Smith Sr. . . . There must have been a tremendous reunion when Elijah and Mary Ann passed through to the other side. I would guess one of the very first to embrace Elijah would have been Joseph Smith Sr. And right by his side would have been the Prophet Joseph and Hyrum and other members of the Smith family."

Brother Gray reflected on his arrival in Utah in 1965 when there were few residents of color in the state. "Brother Abel for me has been key," he said. "As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it was so important for me to know that there were other black members from the earliest point of this faith's history. . . . We are indeed brothers and sisters. We are family, regardless of race, regardless of religion."

Sister Black said, "I feel a great sorrow that not all of the names of the great African American Latter-day Saint pioneers are known. But the preserved names and brief biographical sketches teach us and give us hope for what we may become."

Among those of whome she spoke was Isaac Lewis Manning who worked as a cook in the household of Joseph Smith in Nauvoo, labored in the stone quarry to get rock for the Nauvoo Temple and who dug the graves for the bodies of the Prophet and his brother in the cellar of the Nauvoo House and stood guard over them to protect them from desecration by mobs.

Mr. Curtis, a Caucasian member of the African Methodist Church, said he has spent his adult life and professional career working with youth in the inner city of Kansas City and in civil rights and community action. "Most of my friends are either African-American or Latter-day Saint, and some of my friends are both," he added. He said his Mormon heritage led him to learn more about the Church back in 1955; thus he dispelled negative stereotypes he had heard. He wrote a letter to Church headquarters, and a response came back from then-Elder Gordon B. Hinckley encouraging him to make a lifelong study of the Church's history and doctrine. This he did.

Some of what was being taught in the Church about African people angered him, he said. Later, after the 1978 revelation, he softened as he observed the work of the Church. "They immediately began sending missionaries all through Africa. And, what especially touched my heart, they began sending missionaries into the inner city. . . . [The missionaries] go to uplift the lives of people in ways more than spiritual. . . . The new fund to help people be educated is a good symbol of this."

He said he and his wife observed a year ago in June the crumbling gravestones of Elijah and Mary Ann Abel. "I vowed at that moment I would put a monument on this worthy of Elijah Abel." His friends Hugh and Diane Barlow worked diligently to make the right contacts to make it happen, he said.

Family descendants of Brother and Sister Abel attended and were recognized at the service.

E-mail: rscott@desnews.com