This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
On June 8, 1978, the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced Official Declaration 2, lifting a restriction the church had held since 1852 that barred Black members from ordination to the priesthood and from full temple participation.
The announcement followed directly from a practical problem the church's own expansion had created. Plans for a new temple in Sao Paulo, Brazil, ran into a membership shaped by extensive racial mixing, conditions that made the old restriction, built around drawing clear lines of African descent, nearly impossible to administer fairly or consistently.
The declaration's effect reached far beyond Brazil. It opened priesthood ordination and full temple ordinances to members of African descent worldwide for the first time in the church's history, ending a policy that had stood, unaltered, for one hundred and twenty six years.
What Official Declaration 2 changed for the Latter-day Saints was the difference between a church with a racial barrier built into its priesthood and one without it. A restriction that Brazil's own mixed membership had made unworkable to enforce ended everywhere the church operated, in a single 1978 announcement.