OPEN LETTER TO LDS CHURCH PRESIDENT

Thomas Sterling Monson

Titular Head LDS Church

47 East South Temple

Salt Lake City, Utah

February 10, 2009

A  COURTESEY LETTER:

Sir:

Back in the days of my assault on the racism of the church, my mother Naomi Edith Griffin Wallace was a dedicated LDS member at least to the extent of being head strong on genealogical research.

Well aware of my actions in connection with the ordination of Larry Lester, she reserved judgment on it deciding that she would take the counsel of my father Alexander (Alec) Henry Wallace who had appeared to her* and told her not to worry as I would be okay. Alec had died in August 1975. All his life he had been a racist as I can remember his reciting to me whatever he read or heard that would justify his Mormon notions about Black men.

While I had developed a different attitude by that time, I reserved my thoughts on it until after his passing. As you know I publicly converted those thoughts to action on April 2, 1976 and again on April 6, 1976.  Spencer Kimball acquiesced on June 8-9 1978.

Mother, at age 92, died in 1990 some 14 years after that event. In light of the official reversal of the church position on June 9, 1978, she was extremely disappointed that church leaders including you had failed to personally address to me an apology for the actions that were taken against me between 1970 and 1978. Once she asked me if there were any members of the twelve at that time who was worthy to hold the office of an Apostle to succession, my response to her was that only you had that possibility. That answer came as immediate insight from the cosmos. It was not anything I knew prior to that moment. Nor can I further comment on it.

With that background let me advance some other thoughts to you:

I do not know if you have had occasion to read my autobiography UNDER THE MORMON TREE which outlines all of the contacts which I have had with the Cosmos ** since childhood. If you haven’t let me say that the supposed foreordination I had labored under for thirty eight years prior to April 6, 1976 while valid was not fully understood as I mistook the goal as the target. That is to say blocking the church Kingdom of God on earth concept was not the target of my attention but would be the ultimate product.