75 years ago today - May 23, 1946

Six months after the publication of NO MAN KNOWS MY HISTORY, William H. Reeder, Jr., President of the New England Mission, sends a letter to Fawn Brodie which institutes Church proceedings against her to investigate "alleged wrongdoing and to show cause, if any you have, why you should not be excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for apostasy, in this among other matters: That in a book recently published by you, you assert matters as truths which deny the divine origin of the Book of Mormon, the restoration of the Priesthood and of Christ's Church through the instrumentality of the Prophet Joseph Smith, contrary to the beliefs, doctrines and teachings of the Church." Brodie does not attend the bishop's court convened in her behalf "because, after all, I was a heretic." On the same day Historian Dale Morgan writes to Juanita Brooks, "As she [Brodie] has remarked to me, the book has served her as the autobiographical novel serves many other writers; it has been a kind of catharsis for her."

[On This Day in Mormon History, http://onthisdayinmormonhistory.blogspot.com]

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