Zandra Vranes and Tamu Smith are co-hosts of the blog and radio show, Sistas In Zion. They met at a group called Genesis, became friends and started a blog in 2009 to stay in touch with each other. Their blog is about their faith and the humorous things about being a Mormon. Zandra and Tamu also have an online radio show that airs every Sunday evening. Their book, Diary of Two Mad Black Mormons was published in 2014.
Tamu Smith & Zandra Vranes
I appreciated reading your comments published today, August 18th, in the Deseret News under the headline “Speaking to the pain of a black Mormon woman.” I’m sorry for the pain you and others feel. And I apologize on behalf of LDS members, or those who are not members, to the pain you and others may feel when nasty or insensitive comments are made.
While I don’t think I have ever made any such comments, I nonetheless can be affected when other women and men hear and internalize them. I’m a convert to the LDS faith in New York, and I was born in Jamaica Hospital in Queens NY, an area of heavy concentration of what we have called “minorities” even when such persons of color constitute the majority of the residents of an area. My father unexpectedly died when I was ten and my dear Mom had to go to work to support me and my younger siblings. I would later work under the direction of William T. Coleman, Jr. who was a brilliant civil rights attorney who was the first African-American Secretary of the USDOT.
I was in Springfield, Illinois, in June 1978 when the announcement was made by President Spencer W. Kimball indicating that all African-American men of age could hold the priesthood! My wife and children and I were then still in Northern Virginia ready to join me in Springfield. While there in Springfield for the next year or so, I reported to Governor Thompson, about our agency work to put additional people to work in CETA and other programs during periods of unemployment or underemployment. Many persons affected were African-American or other persons of color.
I returned to D.C. to direct the work of NCSL for eight years, and during that period I employed several talented women and men of color. And when I retired in 1987 from NCSL I asked a black friend to join me in a business I was establishing. He was in our Virginia Ward and married to a white woman and had several children. Subsequently, that business did not work, and my family and I moved to the Denver area.
I retired from BYU in 2010 and my wife, Connie, and I served a mission to the Philippines.
Again, thank you for sharing your story with the readers of the Deseret News, and please keep plugging away. We should all be individually sensitive to the growth and expansion of this worldwide Church. You are precious and please stay faithful.
Bob Goss