Biography

William Graves and his wife Marie Benjamin, were pioneering Black Latter-day Saints in Oakland, California. William accepted baptism into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1911, when he was around 53 years old. He remained committed to his new faith for the rest of his life. William and Marie were racial minorities in a predominately white church and the only Black people in their Oakland congregation. They thus came to represent the promise of integrated worship during a period when segregation dominated American life.[1]

William Graves was likely born enslaved in rural Caswell County, North Carolina in 1858. On his baptismal record, William listed his birthplace as Casville, an unincorporated community in Caswell County, an agricultural region devoted to tobacco production before the Civil War. Enslaved people comprised more than half the county’s population by 1850 and William’s parents were likely among them.[2] William would have been around seven years old when the Civil War ended. He would have thus come of age during federal Reconstruction and its aftermath and likely experienced the reassertion of white supremacy in the region. The Ku Klux Klan became the paramilitary arm of the Democratic Party in the South and its hooded members used racial terror tactics to suppress voting and reestablish a racial hierarchy. It is no wonder that William and Marie consistently registered to vote as Republicans after moving to California.[3]

It is not clear how or when William arrived in California. He likely became a part of what historians refer to as the Great Migration of Black people out of the South to find new opportunities in the industrial centers of the North and West.[4] His migration westward may have taken him through Indiana and Ohio—that is if a 1900 census record from Dayton, Ohio, includes the correct William Graves. If so, William had been married to a woman named Clara for seven years in 1900 and they had a twelve year old daughter together, a girl named Nettie. William was in fact married prior to meeting Marie and he did have a daughter named Nettie from that previous marriage. The only detail for the William Graves who lived in Dayton, Ohio, in 1900 that does not match the William Graves who eventually lived in Oakland, California is the fact that the Ohio Graves listed his birth month and year as August 1856 instead of January 1858. Such discrepancies are not uncommon in census records, making the Ohio William Graves a distinct prospect.[5]

In fact, William may not have known his birthdate, especially if he was born into slavery. On two Latter-day Saint census records, he variously listed 1861 and 1863 as his birth year even though he maintained January 31 as the day.[6] If the Ohio William Graves is the correct William Graves, Nettie was born in Indiana in 1888 and then the family moved to Ohio where William worked as an unspecified “engineer.” The job description may have referred to work on the railroad, a designation which matches the fact that he worked as a railroad porter after arriving in California and could explain his move west as one of economic opportunity connected to the railroad.[7]

The first public document to indicate that William lived in Oakland is his 1909 marriage certificate to Marie. It is not clear if his first wife had died or if the couple had divorced. Marie had also been previously married.[8] Whatever the circumstances of William meeting and marrying Marie, missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were involved. An Elder Leroy M. Morris, from Salt Lake City, Utah, performed the wedding and another missionary, Alvin Keddington, also from Salt Lake City, served as a witness to the event. Certainly William and Marie had a longstanding and trusting relationship with Latter-day Saint missionaries by the time they decided to be baptized over two years later.[9]

While it is impossible to be sure how William and Marie first met the missionaries or what attracted the couple to their message, Latter-day Saint scholar Armand Mauss, who moved to the Oakland congregation as a young boy, offered a possibility. Late in life Mauss recalled hearing William stand at the pulpit on occasion to bear his testimony. Although Mauss was only twelve when William died, he nonetheless remembered one testimony in which William shared “an account of his conversion.” If Mauss’s memory is accurate, William’s encounter “began with a street meeting in Oakland at which he [William] happened to drop by while LDS missionaries were preaching.”[10]

However long William and Marie’s association with the missionaries lasted, the couple eventually decided to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. On November 21, 1911, they demonstrated their commitment through baptism. Ray Peter Lund, a young missionary from Manti, Utah, baptized William that day and a Joseph Phillips Payne from Clearfield, Utah, confirmed him in front of the Oakland congregation the following Sunday.[11]

If surviving Oakland Branch records are any indication, William was a dedicated member of his new faith. He regularly bore witness before the Oakland congregation and offered prayers to close worship services. The first Sunday of each month in the Latter-day Saint tradition is colloquially referred to as “fast Sunday.” On that day congregants fast from two meals and donate the money that they might have otherwise spent on food for the relief of the poor in their community. There are no prepared sermons on “fast Sunday,” but the time is reserved for the sharing of expressions of faith, called “testimonies.” Anyone in a given congregation is welcome to stand and share their feelings of devotion—an opportunity that Marie and William regularly utilized. The first record of William sharing his testimony was on February 4, 1912, just two months following his baptism. William was a regular participant after that. He was also sometimes called on to offer the prayer to close the worship service, such as on March 28, 1915, when the clerk noted that the benediction was offered by “Bro. Graves.”[12]

Despite such evidence of belonging, there were barriers too. There are no surviving sources to indicate what William thought of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ racial restrictions that prevented him from being ordained to the faith’s lay priesthood or from being sealed to Marie for eternity in a Latter-day Saint temple. It is not clear if the Oakland congregation attempted to include him in the male only priesthood meetings despite his lack of ordination or if he was excluded altogether.[13]

The real sense of exclusion no doubt came when William and Marie traveled to Atlanta, Georgia, in 1920 to visit friends there and Marie was asked to leave worship services because she was Black. It is not clear why Marie and her two girlfriends arrived at the Atlanta Latter-day Saint chapel without their husbands, but one leader of the Atlanta congregation invited the women outside the building and made it evident to them that they were not welcome to stay. Marie wrote that the women were so upset by the experience that they decided not to tell their husbands about it because, as she put it, “We did not need any more compa[n]y fealing bad with us.” Marie remained disturbed over the incident, so much so that she wrote a letter to the leader of her faith, Heber J. Grant, explaining what happened in detail.[14] It is not difficult to image that she eventually told William about the event but there is no record of his reaction.

Whatever he thought of the racism in Atlanta, William returned to Oakland with Marie and continued to worship there. When the Oakland Branch held its annual conference in 1921 or 1922 William and Marie were there, in the center of the crowd, as evidenced in the photograph taken that day. The same is true when the Oakland chapel was dedicated in 1923. They were present at the gathering surrounded by fellow Saints.[15]

Even after Marie passed away in 1930, William remained committed. He continued to attend worship services faithfully over the ensuing decade. In fact, when future sociologist Armand Mauss moved into the Oakland Branch as a young boy, he remembered William as an important fixture in the congregation. “He was always in his seat early, before the sacrament meeting started at 10, and he always sat next to an aisle, most of the way toward the back,” Mauss later recalled. “I often greeted him before the meeting began, and he always returned a pleasant response,” Mauss fondly remembered.[16]

William listed his occupation as railroad porter in 1910, a house cleaner in 1920, and a store janitor in 1930.[17] What those occupations do not reveal is the hardworking and frugal person behind them. Marie worked as a dressmaker based out of the couple’s home and so her financial contributions no doubt added to the fact that by the time William passed away in 1940 he owned the home that he and Marie had shared at 2835 Magnolia Street in Oakland. He also owned a 1930 Chevrolet coup and had $50.05 in a bank account.[18]

The year before William died, he prepared a last will and testament, a document that indicates what was on his mind as his health declined and he contemplated his place in the eternities. The first request in his will was a “desire to be buried beside my wife, Marie Graves.” William then specified that his name be “cut upon the stone now erected at that place of burial” so that his name would be included alongside Marie’s on her existing headstone. William also stipulated that “the Bishop of the Oakland Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints shall have full charge and direction of my funeral.” He wanted the bishop to receive $50.00 to cover “services rendered in the arranging of my funeral.” He further indicated, “I desire to be buried in white.”[19]

William left his daughter Nettie, then living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, $150.00 in his will and listed other sums to be distributed to various people. “To the Bishop of the Oakland Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” William bequeathed $200.00. He specified that it was “for the use and benefit of the Oakland Ward”—another indication of the feelings he carried in his heart for his cherished faith community.[20]

In practice, William’s will did not play out as he had hoped, but his list nonetheless offers an indication of his priorities. At the settlement of William’s estate, his 1930 Chevrolet sold for $42.50 and his home on Magnolia for $825.00. When his bills were paid and other obligations met, including his daughter’s $150.00 inheritance, the court distributed $85.46 to William’s esteemed Oakland congregation.[21]

Unfortunately, the executor of William’s estate failed to ensure that William’s name was cut into Marie’s headstone. His body was laid to rest next to Marie as he desired, but his gravesite was left unmarked. In the twenty-first century, when members of the Oakland Latter-day Saint Stake first learned of William and Marie and came to understand their legacy of devotion, they did their own research. One Latter-day Saint, Paris Fox, a court clerk in Oakland, located William’s probate papers in Alameda County court records. Other Latter-day Saints, including Dean and Nancy Criddle and Bishop Greg Call of the Oakland First Ward, located Marie’s headstone at the Evergreen Cemetery and realized that William’s name had never been added. They organized a crowdsourced fundraiser and commissioned a monument to be erected on William’s grave in honor of the now beloved pioneer couple.[22]

On May 25, 2019, Bishop Michael King of the Oakland Ninth Ward said the dedicatory prayer for that monument. It was a stirring ceremony made all the more poignant by Bishop King’s prayer— perhaps an echo of the prayers William gave at the close of worship services over the course of his many years as a Latter-day Saint, a voice rising from Oakland, beseeching God on behalf of his fellow Saints. In 2019, however, a few things had changed: it was a different Black Latter-day Saint, a bishop no less, whose voice rose heavenward from Oakland, this time beseeching God with hope and healing in his heart on behalf of William and Marie.[23]

By Ardis E. Parshall and W. Paul Reeve

[1] Marie Graves, Oakland, California, to Heber J. Grant, Salt Lake City, Utah, 10 November 1920, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah. For the story of finding William and Marie and uncovering their histories see Ardis E. Parshall, “William and Marie Graves: ‘We Found the Right Church, All Right . . .’” Keepapitchinin, 30 September 2015; Ardis E. Parshall, “Marie and William Graves: The Part I Withheld,” Keepapitchinin, 14 September 2018; Ardis E. Parshall, “A Host of Contributions: Remembering William and Marie Graves,” Keepapitchinin, 2 October 2018; Ardis E. Parshall, “Save the Date: Dedication of Monument to William and Marie Graves, May 25 at 11 am,” Keepapitchinin, 17 April 2019.

[2] Lib McPherson, “Historical Perspectives of Caswell County.”

[3] California Voter Registrations, 1900-1968, William Graves and Marie Graves, 1916-1934.

[4] On the Great Migration see Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (New York: Vintage Books, 2011).

[5] Unites States, 1900 Census, Ohio, Montgomery County, Dayton.

[6] “Graves,” Presiding Bishopric stake and mission census, 1914-1935, CR 4 311, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[7] Unites States, 1900 Census, Ohio, Montgomery County, Dayton.

[8] California, Vital Records, Certificate of Marriage, Marie Shropshire to William Graves, 5 August 1909, Office of Clerk-Recorder, County of Alameda, Oakland, California; United States, 1910 Census, California, Alameda County, Oakland; “Graves,” Oakland Tribune, 8 September 1930, 31; Alabama, Calhoun County, Marriage License, John W. Shropshire to Mary A. Benjamin, 21 July 1898, Microfilm 1,035,496, book E, page 297, Family History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah. We express gratitude to Vicki Standing of Lehi, Utah, a professional genealogist with experience in tracing Black lives, for assistance in finding traces of William and Marie’s pre-Latter-day Saint lives, and for locating their home lot in Oakland.

[9] California, Vital Records, Certificate of Marriage, Marie Shropshire to William Graves, 5 August 1909, Office of Clerk-Recorder, County of Alameda, Oakland, California.

[10] Armand Mauss email to Ardis E. Parshall, 9 April 2014, in possession of Parshall.

[11] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Oakland Branch, CR 375 8, box 959, folder 1, images 154 and 279; box 4855, folder 1, image 401, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[12] Oakland Branch, California Mission, General Minutes, LR 6358 11, folder 5, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[13] On the racial restriction see, W. Paul Reeve, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), chapters 4-7. There is no evidence of William being included in priesthood meetings from surviving priesthood minutes. See Oakland Stake Melchizedek Priesthood minutes and records, 1934-1950, LR 6357 13, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

[14] Marie Graves, Oakland, California, to Heber J. Grant, Salt Lake City, Utah, 10 November 1920, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[15] Oakland LDS Branch Conference, 1921 or 1922, courtesy Craig E. Stewart; Oakland LDS Branch in front of Oakland Chapel, dedicated in 1923, courtesy Craig E. Stewart.

[16] Armand Mauss email to Ardis E. Parshall, 9 April 2014, in possession of Parshall.

[17] United States, 1910, 1920, 1930 Censuses, California, Alameda County, Oakland.

[18] County of Alameda, Superior Court of California, Probate Court, Estate of William Graves (1940: No. 75031), courtesy of Paris Fox.

[19] County of Alameda, Superior Court of California, Probate Court, Estate of William Graves (1940: No. 75031), courtesy of Paris Fox.

[20] County of Alameda, Superior Court of California, Probate Court, Estate of William Graves (1940: No. 75031), courtesy of Paris Fox.

[21] County of Alameda, Superior Court of California, Probate Court, Estate of William Graves (1940: No. 75031), courtesy of Paris Fox.

[22] William and Marie Graves, Monument Dedication, 25 May 2019, Evergreen Cemetery, Oakland, California.

[23] William and Marie Graves, Monument Dedication, 25 May 2019, Evergreen Cemetery, Oakland, California.

Documents

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