Curses of Cain and Ham and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

[6]: 125  Although the scriptures do not mention Ham's skin color, some doctrines associated the curse with Black people and used it to justify slavery.

"[15]: 235 [17][16] However, the term "black" at that time did not refer solely to skin color; the adjective was also defined by Noah Webster as "sullen; having a cloudy look or countenance […] atrociously wicked; horrible […] dismal; mournful; calamitous," which descriptions go hand-in-hand with the consequences of Cain having murdered Abel.

[17][20] Young once taught that the devil was Black,[21] and his successor as church president, John Taylor, taught on multiple occasions that the reason that Black people (those with the curse of Cain) were allowed to survive the flood was so that the devil could be properly represented on the earth through the children of Ham and his wife Egyptus.

[6]: 158 [22][23] The next president, Wilford Woodruff also affirmed that millions of people have Cain's mark of blackness drawing a parallel to modern Native Americans' "curse of redness".

[24] In a 1908 Liahona article for missionaries, an anonymous but church-sanctioned author reviewed the scriptures about Blackness in the Pearl of Great Price.

: 106 In 1978, when the church ended the ban on the priesthood, apostle Bruce R. McConkie taught that the ancient curse of Cain and Ham was no longer in effect.

[13]: 117  General authorities in the LDS Church favored Smith's explanation until 2013, when a Church-published online essay disavowed the idea that Black skin is the sign of a curse.

[33]: 62, 66  The apostle Abraham H. Cannon also accepted the accounting as fact, and prominent member Eliza R. Snow penned a poem in 1884 about the encounter.

[33]: 66  Then apostle and later church president Spencer W. Kimball retold the account as factual in his popular 1969 book The Miracle of Forgiveness.