Mormonism and racial issues/Blacks and the priesthood/Social pressure

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Did social pressure play a role in lifting the priesthood ban?

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Mormonism and racial issues
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Blacks and the priesthood: Summary Origins of the ban Pre-1978 statements LDS scripture and the ban Lifting the ban Neutral in pre-existence? Social pressure and the ban? Repudiated ideas Other racial issues: Racist statements? Death for race mixers? Prophetic fallibility Slaves in heaven?
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No Johnny-Come-Lately: The 182-Year-Long BLACK Mormon Moment Blacks in the Bible Empathetic Imagination: Reading Between the Lines in Standing on the Promises International Perspectives of a Black Member in a “White” Church Dispelling the Black Myth A Black Man in Zion: Reflections on Race in the Restored Gospel
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Question: Was the priesthood ban lifted as the result of social or government pressure?

Social pressure was actually on the decline after the Civil Rights movement and coordinated protests at BYU athletic events ceased in 1971

Jan Shipps, a Methodist scholar and celebrated scholar of Mormon history and culture, considers it factual that "this revelation came in the context of worldwide evangelism rather than domestic politics or American social and cultural circumstances." She wrote:

A revelation in Mormondom rarely comes as a bolt from the blue; the process involves asking questions and getting answers. The occasion of questioning has to be considered, and it must be recalled that while questions about priesthood and the black man may have been asked, an answer was not forthcoming in the ‘60s when the church was under pressure about the matter from without, nor in the early ‘70s when liberal Latter-day Saints agitated the issue from within. The inspiration which led President Kimball and his counselors to spend many hours in the Upper Room of the Temple pleading long and earnestly for divine guidance did not stem from a messy situation with blacks picketing the church’s annual conference in Salt Lake City, but was "the expansion of the work of the Lord over the earth."

Gospel Topics: "Church authorities encountered faithful black and mixed-ancestry Mormons who had contributed financially and in other ways to the building of the São Paulo temple, a sanctuary they realized they would not be allowed to enter"

"Race and the Priesthood," Gospel Topics (2013):

Brazil in particular presented many challenges. Unlike the United States and South Africa where legal and de facto racism led to deeply segregated societies, Brazil prided itself on its open, integrated, and mixed racial heritage. In 1975, the Church announced that a temple would be built in São Paulo, Brazil. As the temple construction proceeded, Church authorities encountered faithful black and mixed-ancestry Mormons who had contributed financially and in other ways to the building of the São Paulo temple, a sanctuary they realized they would not be allowed to enter once it was completed. Their sacrifices, as well as the conversions of thousands of Nigerians and Ghanaians in the 1960s and early 1970s, moved Church leaders.—(Click here to continue)

To see citations to the critical sources for these claims, click here

Notes