Play within a play

Jane Elizabeth Manning James, a black Mormon pioneer, was known to some Latter-day Saints historians in the later 20th century but was hardly a household name. Linda King Newell and Valerie Tippets Avery wrote the first well-researched article about Jane in LDS Church publication The Ensign. Subsequent Mormon authors focused on the early years of Jane’s life, particularly on founder Joseph Smith accepting her and her family into his home. 

The church-produced film Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration changes an important episode in Jane’s story, as she dictated it to Elizabeth J.D. Roundy around 1890. She describes her family’s trek from Buffalo, New York, to Nauvoo, Illinois (where the Latter-day Saints were gathered): 

We walked until our shoes were worn out, and our feet became sore and cracked open and bled until you could see the whole print of our feet with blood on the ground. We stopped and united in prayer to the Lord; we asked God the Eternal Father to heal our feet. Our prayers were answered and our feet were healed forthwith.