what was the scriptural basis for Mormons believing that Blacks were demons/devils? and how was that Mormon doctrine reversed?
I'm not sure about Mormonism, Gets. But most people who use the Bible as an excuse to hate dark skinned people usually refer to the "Mark of Cain" in Genesis.
Of course it all stems from a poor Biblical translation. But any excuse will do for some people, right?
Really not even a poor translation since the Bible never says anything about the color of Ham's or Canaan's skin. Somehow because of the similarities of the words in Hebrew, some ancient rabbis connected Ham with "dark." Then Muslims associated the curse with black slavery (Muslims started the African slave trade in Sub-Saharan Africa in the 700s). In more modern times Southern slave owners used the same faulty reasoning to justify slavery and twisting Scripture to back it up.
As for Mormonism and the belief that blacks were demons or devils, I didn't see any of that either. Like Ivy said, that had to do with the so-called Mark of Cain. In the Bible the Mark of Cain has nothing to do with race or color, and his descendants would have been wiped out in the Great Flood. Historically, the same Muslims who justified their black slavery on the Curse of Canaan merged it with the Mark of Cain, so that the two curses merged into one. I don't know if there's been changes in teaching, but from Bruce McConkie's book "Mormon Doctrine," it says that Ham married Egyptus, a descendant of Cain, whose line somehow avoided the flood.
(I used to have an extensive library of Mormon books when I wrote and researched comparative religions a long time ago, but since had to get rid of a lot books due to lack of room; I still have some left though.)
The denial of blacks to the Mormon priesthood was also connected to a belief that they were "less valiant" in the pre-existence (the time before creation).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_HamThe doctrine of pre-existence is interesting in itself. Joseph Smith taught that "God is an exalted man" and that human spirits are eternal -- not created by God, but have always existed, just like God (except for him being a man). There was (is?) a Council of Gods with a Head God, that met before creating human beings. This can be found here at the LDS website:
https://www.lds.org/ensign/1971/04/the-king-follett-sermon?lang=engSome of this can be found in the online version of Bruce McConkie's "Mormon Doctrine" here:
https://archive.org/details/MormonDoctrine (this says it's the 1966 edition, but it's really newer than that since it talks about changes that occurred in 1978, so some of the harsher language was removed from this updated version). Type in the word "negro" or "negroes" in the search box. The 1851 edition of "Pearl of Great Price" is here:
https://archive.org/details/PearlOfGreatPrice1851. You can search the word "black" and find out Joseph Smith's views. I'm sure other original documents are available on Google Books or archive.org. So historical Mormon teachings didn't teach that blacks were demons, but they had plenty of other racist teachings nonetheless.
