Devery S. Anderson

With the reading of this book, I have now exhausted my comprehensive search to learn as much about the sad, tragic death of 14 year old Emmett Till.

This is quite a comprehensive study of the subject. In particular, the author did a marvelous job of depicting the strong Jim Crow atmosphere of the Mississippi delta.

The fact that black men were depicted as depraved animals longing to violate white women was clearly outlined. While I find this thinking despicable, it was helpful in explaining the reason why two white red neck, vile, white men walked away free. With smiles on their faces, they left the court room smug in their victory.

Knowing that they could lie in the court room and have the backing of their lawyers who used the ugly sentiment at the time, allowed them to walk away freely.

If there is such a thing as pay back, both men had marriages that ended in divorce. And, while not particularly liked before their murder of Emmett Till, they were ostracized and not able to make a decent living.… (más)

This is the second volume of the set to which "Joseph Smith's Quorum of the Anointed" also belongs. In similar fashion but with a much greater wealth of material – sometimes requiring 20 pages for the material from a single day – it covers the development of LDS temple ceremonies as they were actually performed at the Nauvoo LDS Temple, covering the entire period of its use. The records included here give information on every instance of every ceremony performed, down to washings and anointings, as well as birthdates for participants. In short, a gold mine for LDS genealogists, as well as people simply interested in the development of LDS temple ceremonies. Some of the portions are mainly just lists of names (sometimes with other information attached), so those bits can be a bit tedious; but other portions include narratives and discourses, which can be historically and religiously interesting.… (más)

Today, some of the holiest ceremonies in the Latter-day Saint religion take place inside LDS temples. Some of these ceremonies include the 'endowment', in which a person receives what he or she needs in order to become 'exalted' in the highest heaven and meet God the Father again face-to-face; and also 'sealing', which allows an endowed man and endowed woman to be married forever in the afterlife, or allows children to remain the children of their parents, and so forth. Certain aspects of these ceremonies are considered too sacred to be mentioned outside of the temple, but other aspects can be discussed. This book is part of a three-volume set documentary history that uses primary sources – e.g., old diary entries, minute books, etc. – to illuminate the development of these ceremonies. This particular volume covers an organization in early Latter-day Saint history called the 'Quorum of the Anointed', or the 'Holy Order', a sort of elite prayer circle that mainly met in the upper story of Joseph Smith's store in Nauvoo, IL, and performed early versions of these ceremonies. The volume is fairly short, given how much time it covers, because the record isn't that rich. The end of the volume brings us to the point where the LDS temple in Nauvoo was finally complete enough that the ceremonies could begin to be performed there and could finally be opened up to more than just a select inner circle. As a non-LDS reader with an interest in the field of Mormon Studies, I got a lot out of this volume.… (más)