Brigham Young’s definitive stance on the cursed state of the Black man, a condition caused by the crime of one man, Cain, who murdered his brother, Abel, denying him the right to posterity and its reception of Priesthood blessings in mortality:

"Any man having one drop of the seed of [Cain] ... in him cannot hold the priesthood and if NO OTHER PROPHET ever spake it before I will say it now in the name of Jesus Christ I know it is true and others know it” (Address to the territorial legislature, 16 January, 1852, recorded in Wilford Woodruff s journal of that date).

Brigham explains the timing of the end of the curse:

"When all the other children of Adam have had the privilege of receiving the Priesthood.... it will be time enough to remove the curse from Cain and his posterity"(Journal of Discourses, 2:142-43, 3 Dec. 1854).

"Until the last ones of the residue of Adam's children are brought up to that favourable position, the children of Cain cannot receive the first ordinances of the Priesthood" (Ibid., 7:290-91, 9 Oct. 1859)

"When all the rest of the children have received their blessings in the Holy Priesthood, then that curse will be removed from the seed of Cain" (Ibid., 11:272, 19 Aug. 1866).

Brigham gets more specific on the timing:

"When all the other children of Adam have the privilege of receiving the Priesthood, and of coming into the kingdom of God, and of being redeemed from the four quarters of the earth, and have received their resurrection from the dead, then it will be time enough to remove the curse from Cain and his posterity” (Journal of Discourses, 2:142-43, 3 Dec. 1854).

George Q. Cannon, counselor to Brigham, claimed that Joseph Smith had taught that the Priesthood must be safeguarded against interracial marriage:

"…That the seed of Cain could not receive the priesthood nor act in any offices of the priesthood until the seed of Abel should come forward and take precedence over Cain's offspring; and that any white man who mingled his seed with that of Cain should be killed, and thus prevent any of the seed of Cain coming in possession of the priesthood” (Council minutes, 22 Aug. 1895, Bennion [or GAS] papers).

Cannon later admitted:

"he understood that the Prophet had said (the above)...." (Council minutes, 11 Mar. 1900, Bennion [or GAS] papers).

In all likelihood, Cannon heard it from Brigham Young. Brigham is on record as saying (bad spelling is original):

“Where the children of God to mingle there seed with the seed of Cain it would not only bring the curse of being deprived of the power of the preisthood upon themselves but they entail it upon their children after them, and they cannot get rid of it. If a man in an ungaurded moment should commit such a transgression, if he would walk up and say cut off my head, and kill man woman and child it would do a great deal towards atoneing for the sin. Would this be to curse them? no it would be a blessing to them. -- it would do them good that they might be saved with their Bren. A man would shuder should they here us take about killing folk, but it is one of the greatest blessings to some to kill them, allthough the true principles of it are not understood” (Brigham Young Addresses, Ms d 1234, Box 48, folder 3, dated Feb. 5, 1852, located in the LDS Church Historical Department, Salt Lake City, Utah).

The Church under Brigham Young didn’t think too highly of the “seed of Cain,” describing them as:

"… uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable in their habits, wild, and seemingly deprived of nearly all the blessings of the intelligence that is bestowed upon mankind" (Journal of Discourses, 7:290-91 [9 Oct. 1859]).

"… blood-thirsty… pitiless… stranger to mercy when fully aroused… now seemingly tame and almost imbecile." (Millennial Star, editorial, 27 [28 Oct. 1865]: 682-83)

"… the lowest in intelligence and the most barbarous of all the children of men. The race whose intellect is the least developed, whose advancement has been the slowest, who appear to be the least capable of improvement of all people. The hand of the Lord appears to be heavy upon them, dwarfing them by the side of their fellow men in every thing good and great… (The black man) looks as though he had been put in an oven and burnt to a cinder before he was properly finished making." ("From Caucasian to Negro," Juvenile Instructor, 3 [1868]: 142).

President John Taylor, in perhaps the most brazen statement ever offered by one of God’s servants, offered his thoughts on why the black race was created:

"… because it was necessary that the devil should have a representation upon the earth as well as God....” (Journal of Discourses, 22:302, 28 Aug. 1881; 23:336, 29 Oct. 1882).