Peter M. Johnson has been named president of the Bessemer, Ala., LDS Stake, becoming the first black Mormon stake president in the state, according to The Birmingham News.
Johnson served a Mormon mission to Birmingham from 1987 to 1989, the newspaper reported, and had recently moved back to Alabama from Utah.
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He is an Ernst and Young Fellow and assistant professor of accounting at the Culverhouse School of Accountancy at the University of Alabama.
Although Johnson is the first African-American to serve as a Mormon stake president in Alabama, he told the paper "there are many minority leaders in the 14 million-member Latter-day Saints Church ... serving throughout the church locally, nationally and worldwide."
Johnson’s stake — like a diocese — includes, the paper said, "12 congregations, larger ones called wards and smaller ones called branches, that have a combined membership of 3,716."
Currently, the Utah-based church has one black top leader, Elder Joseph W. Sitati of Kenya, who is a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy. The faith banned blacks from its all-male priesthood until 1978.
Peggy Fletcher Stack
