40 years ago today - Jun 9, 1978-Friday

[Leonard Arrington]
[Regarding blacks receiving the priesthood] ... approximately six months ago Elder Neal Maxwell telephoned me on a confidential basis to ask if I could find for him the quote of Joseph Fielding Smith that "darkies are wonderful people."... Then about a month ago, quite by accident, I learned that it was in an article in Look [magazine] in 196[3].14 I hunted that article up, xeroxed the article and sent it on to Elder Maxwell. ... This suggests that Elder Maxwell, as chief planning officer, was actively working on a memorandum to President [Spencer W. Kimball] about the issue and wanted all the evidence he could find. ...

Chase Peterson, during the flight from Boston to SLC on May 14, showed me a letter he was in the process of writing to President Kimball about the issue. It was a wonderful letter, so well written and so sincere, and approached so well....

... Elder [G. Homer] Durham was in my office yesterday asking if I had evidence to show that Joseph Smith had been responsible for fastening the Priesthood denial to blacks upon the Church. He said that he was very concerned that this not be attributed to Brigham Young exclusively as had been done in Lester Bush's article. I told him that Newell Bringhurst was in my office just a day earlier to tell me that he had found sufficient evidence to suggest that Priesthood denial to blacks was fairly generally understood and accepted in the Church in 1843 in Nauvoo....

I have of course no idea as to whether the First Presidency and General Authorities made use of Elder Adam S. Bennion's report of about 1957 in which he indicated the denial of the Priesthood to blacks had no sound scriptural basis. ...

James called about dinner time to talk about the announcement. Said it was received joyously among students at BYU. He heard not a single adverse comment.

[Source: Confessions of a Mormon historian : the diaries of Leonard J. Arrington, 1971-1997, Gary James Bergera, editor, Signature Books, 2018]