[David O. McKay]
Pres. Nielsen then discussed the race question that is coming before the Arizona State Legislature. I said that no American citizen can say that legally the Legislature or any political organization has any right to have special legislation against any class; that it had been debated up here, and there were threats to punish any Hotel Manager who would discriminate against colored people, etc. I said, the Church, however, cannot come out opposing the question, but the fact is that no matter what the law says, there is going to be discrimination against the colored people, and I advised Pres. [Lucian M., of Mesa Stake] to simply take the stand to let conditions remain as they are for the present without involving the Church is any way. As it is we take the Negroes into the Church by baptism and let them come to meetings, but so far as intermarriage is concerned, legally they have the same right that every citizen has, but in practice we cannot affiliate, and for their own good they should not want to intermarry with the whites, and that I believe they do not want to, and let us not force that union upon them and upon us, but let us use our influence quietly. I said further that the South knows how to handle them and they do not have any trouble, and the colored people are better off down there'in California they are becoming very progressive and insolent in many cases.
[David O. McKay Diary, as quoted in Minutes of the Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1910-1951, Privately Published, Salt Lake City, Utah 2010]
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