Civil Rights: Tool of Communist Deception. An address by The Honorable Ezra Taft Benson.
Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Company, 1968. First Printing. 13 pp. Pamphlet [21.5 cm]; red, white, and blue saddle-stapled wraps. Faint previous owner's ink stamp on front wrap near the top. Near Fine. Item #67725
Ezra Taft Benson (1899-1994) was the thirteenth prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and was the United States Secretary of Agriculture (1953-1961) under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The text of this pamphlet was adapted from an address given in the Salt Lake Mormon Tabernacle on September 29, 1967. It has been noted that some of the words and tones of this printed version of Benson's talk were softened and toned down to some degree for publication (see D. Michael Quinn's article "Ezra Taft Benson and Mormon Political Conflicts" published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol. 26, No. 2, Summer 1993).
Ezra Taft Benson was a supporter of the John Birch Society, a radically conservative political advocacy group devoted to anti-communism, among other things. In this particular work, Benson argues that the American civil rights movement of the era was being controlled by and used in service for a grander revolutionary Communist plot; a long-held theory of Benson's. Throughout the 1950's and 60's, some of Benson's peers within the LDS Church and within the American government would distance themselves from Benson due to these and similar views. Even so, Benson's views on the matter remained popular and influential. Benson would go on to become president and prophet of the Mormon Church in 1985 where he served until his death in 1994. This pamphlet was printed by the Deseret News Press and published by the Deseret Book Company in Salt Lake City, Utah. A second printing of this work was published and distributed in 1969.
Price: $275.00