Episode 129: Dr. Matt Harris, Second Class Saints

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:01)
Hey, Sunstone History nerds, it's Lindsay Hansen Park here. Sorry to interrupt our regularly scheduled nerd programming hour for you. You might have noticed we skipped last week. We've been a little busy. We just got through the Sunstone Symposium. It was a hit. We loved meeting so many of you that came out. That was so fun. Thank you for coming out and supporting. Thanks for being part of our trivia, getting your new nerd hats. We have new nerd hat designs that we're going to start selling at sunstone.org. $25 or your best donation. Proceeds all go to pay for the podcast and the research that we do. If you value us, go get a nerd hat and leave a donation, that'd be great. But we've been having some problems with the audio. People often ask who produces and who does our music, who does all that. I do. It's me. I'm the problem. It's me. I'm the one that's doing the sound for us and I've had to learn over the years. What do you think? I'm pretty decent at it. We get a lot of good feedback that our stuff is pretty top-notch. Thank you very much. We had a crazy busy week leading up to Sunstone, so we recorded a bunch of episodes. For a seasoned producer such as myself, hit the wrong button, didn't check our sound, not so seasoned after all, so we had some really bad audio the last two episodes we were able to fix through the magic and beauty of AI. But the last one didn't work, Charles C. Rich. That one's coming. We're going to re-record that. I apologize. We didn't want to leave you hanging. We've got something cool. The Sunstone Mormon History Podcast recently sat down with Dr. Matt Harris to discuss his hotly awaited new book, Second Class Saints, Black Mormons, and the Struggle for Racial Equality, published by Oxford University Press. Bryan sat down with Matt, had a great interview. Harris' book is so cool. It's so full of fresh and fascinating new sources, insights, the rise and fall of temple and priesthood ban. It's really, really important. It's getting a lot of buzz. I'm so glad that Bryan did the interview. And hopefully this will whet your appetite until we have some good stuff coming. We really do have some good content coming. We just wanted to give you the best sound. So thanks again. Thanks for your support. Love y'all. Leave us a donation, five-star rating, maybe a funny joke in your comments. And we'll talk to you all soon.

**Bryan** (2:23)
All right, everyone. Welcome to the Sunstone History Podcast. Got a very unique episode today. We're stepping out of early Utah for a minute due to a very important new book that was just published. We're very happy to have our good friend Matt Harris here with us. Matt, how are you doing today?

**Matt Harris** (2:39)
I'm doing great, Bryan. Thank you.

**Bryan** (2:42)
This is an interview and a book we've been looking forward to for a long time. Matt Harris is a Professor of History and the Coordinator of the Legal Studies Program at CSU Pueblo. Matt is the author of several books. I, of course, am pulling these off the shelves here at Benchmark Books, which is a fine place to click them off. Very much on topic, Mormon Church in Black, it's a documentary history that you did with Newell Bringhurst. And then two books on Ezra Kaft Benson, Got Watchmen on the Tower, Ezra Kaft Benson in the Making of Mormon Right, and Thunder from the Right, Ezra Kaft Benson in Mormonism and Politics. And then another book with Newell Bringhurst, LDS Gospel Topic Series, the Scholarly Engagement. And then all of that leads us to our book for today, just released from Oxford, Second Class Saints, Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality.
And this is so exciting. I mean, I've known you for quite a while now. In fact, I was going to ask you, when would you guess the first time you came into Benchmark, Buzz?

**Matt Harris** (3:47)
Oh, my goodness. Probably during one of my early visits to the U, researching, so maybe 2011, 2012, maybe.

**Bryan** (3:58)
2013

**Matt Harris** (4:00)
Oh, close. Okay. Good, man.

**Bryan** (4:02)
I thought it was so interesting. The first thing that you bought here was the working draft of Ed Kimball's book, The Length and Your Stripe. I thought, that's pretty on-ground.

**Matt Harris** (4:11)
Which is right behind me still.

**Bryan** (4:14)
Over these 10-plus years that I've known Matt now, almost every conversation that we've had has touched on your work for this book and at least some. Such an important book.