This semester I have been taking an African-American family history class. This week our assignment is to go to the Century of Black Mormons website and read several of the biographies there.
Today I read about Freda Magee Beaulieu who was baptized as a child into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Mississippi at the age of 9 in 1909. Her parents were very faithful members although they did not live very close to a branch of the church so they couldn't always attend. Freda married a man at age 25 and cared for his 5 children but it was a very unhappy marriage. He wouldn't let her attend church since he "hated Mormons." As soon as the children were old enough to take care of themselves, she divorced him. She later moved to New Orleans and married her true love, Rudolph Beaulieu, in 1938. She said this was a happy marriage and her husband, although Catholic, encouraged her to attend church and pay tithing.
In 1944, she fell sick and her husband sought out a branch of the LDS church so that the elders could come and give her a blessing. Here is the story from her biography on the website:
Freda did not realize that there was a branch of the church meeting at the Benevolent Knights of America Hall in New Orleans, across from Lafayette Square. She subscribed to the LDS missionary magazine, the Liahona, and sent her tithing into the mission office in Atlanta but was unaware of the local branch. Somehow Rudolph found the branch leaders in New Orleans and called to request a blessing for Freda. [12]
President Robert B. Evans of the New Orleans Branch, accompanied by Parker P. Warner, First Counselor in the South Louisiana District Presidency, arrived at the Beaulieu home somewhat unsure that they were in the correct place because they knew of no black Saints in New Orleans. [13] Warner described the scene this way:
“Sister Freda Beaulieu carried on her face an expression of mixed feelings—anxiety was giving way to confidence which was to be succeeded by relief and gratefulness. President Evans talked to her for a few minutes and she told us she had been a Latter-day Saint all her life, her parents having joined the Church in Mississippi before her time. She had been in New Orleans for many years but did not know of the branch, and having fallen ill, she had written to the mission headquarters in Atlanta in an effort to locate the elders.” [14]
While Freda waited for a reply from Atlanta she remained in bed and sometimes “suffered intense pain.” Warner and Evans then gave her a blessing, an experience that made a significant impression on both men. Evans remembered it in detail almost thirty years later and Warner wrote it down and submitted it to the Liahona magazine and LDS Church News for publication. [15] “Never in all my life had I felt such confidence in the healing power of faith as I did in that home,” Warner declared. “The faith which led Sister Beaulieu to write to Atlanta, and wait patiently through her suffering until those bearing the priesthood could reach her and give her a blessing, was such as I had not witnessed in all my experience. I was astonished at my own confidence in the blessing I pronounced on her head, and when we had sealed that blessing in the name of the Lord, I said to her with all the assurance of one who has absolute knowledge, ‘Sister Freda, I know you will soon be well.’ She replied, ‘Yes, I know it, too; thank you.’” [16]
Warner checked back on Freda a few days later: “‘I have been feeling fine,’ she said. ‘The next day after you were here I got out of bed and have been well ever since.’” [17] Freda then started to attend church at the rented hall and after LDS leaders built their own church on Canal Boulevard she joined them more regularly and became involved in Relief Society work.
On July 21, 1978, after the Church of Jesus Christ allowed all worthy members to enter the temple, Freda traveled to the Washington, DC, temple and was sealed to her husband who had died 6 years before. She said it was the happiest day of her life. She died at the age of 91 in 1991.
I loved reading about this faithful woman and wanted to share her story.
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