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Race and Marriage in Utah, 1880-1920 Utah State University DigitalCommons@USU All Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies 8-2015 To Belong as Citizens: Race and Marriage in Utah, 1880-1920 Scott D. Marianno Utah State University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Marianno, Scott D., "To Belong as Citizens: Race and Marriage in Utah, 1880-1920" (2015). All Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 4446. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/4446 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at DigitalCommons@USU. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@USU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TO BELONG AS CITIZENS: RACE AND MARRIAGE IN UTAH, 1880–1920 by Scott D. Marianno A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in History Approved: ______________________ ______________________ Philip L. Barlow Kyle Bulthuis Major Professor Committee Member ______________________ ______________________ Robert Parson Mark R. McLellan Committee Member Vice President for Research and Dean of the School of Graduate Studies UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY Logan, Utah 2015 ii Copyright © Scott D. Marianno 2015 All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT To Belong as Citizens: Race and Marriage in Utah, 1880–1920 by Scott D. Marianno, Master of Arts Utah State University, 2015 Major Professor: Philip L. Barlow Department: History In the decades leading up to the twentieth century, social reformers and politicians, alarmed by Mormon political control (and polygamy) in Utah Territory, challenged Mormon whiteness and their competency for American citizenship. In re-examining Mormonism’s transition period, this study reveals how Mormon conformity to an encroaching American culture increased the movement’s exposure to discursive arguments on race-mixing, marriage, and eugenics that helped legitimize Mormon citizenship claims. Focusing on the themes of race, marriage, and citizenship, this thesis examines Mormonism’s racial transformation from not white to white as they assimilated and reified the racial ideology promoted by their Progressive- era contemporaries and asserted their own racial policies against peoples of African descent. Beyond revealing the ways in which race influenced Mormon acceptance into American society, this thesis also features Mormons more prominently in the history of the American West by contextualizing the development of a racial bureaucracy in Utah tasked with enforcing the state’s 1888 miscegenation law. Utah’s miscegenation law, while creating enduring and often devastating consequences for couples whose individual desires took them across the color line, also helped transform Utah into a western place in the twentieth century. (129 pages) iv PUBLIC ABSTRACT To Belong as Citizens: Race and Marriage in Utah, 1880–1920 by Scott D. Marianno In the decades leading up to the twentieth century, social reformers and politicians, alarmed by Mormon political control (and polygamy) in Utah Territory, challenged Mormon whiteness and their competency for American citizenship. In re-examining Mormonism’s transition period, this study reveals how Mormon conformity to an encroaching American culture increased the movement’s exposure to discursive arguments on race-mixing, marriage, and eugenics that helped legitimize Mormon citizenship claims. Focusing on the themes of race, marriage, and citizenship, this thesis examines Mormonism’s racial transformation from not white to white as they assimilated and reified the racial ideology promoted by their Progressive- era contemporaries and asserted their own racial policies against peoples of African descent. Beyond revealing the ways in which race influenced Mormon acceptance into American society, this thesis also features Mormons more prominently in the history of the American West by contextualizing the development of a racial bureaucracy in Utah tasked with enforcing the state’s 1888 miscegenation law. Utah’s miscegenation law, while creating enduring and often devastating consequences for couples whose choices and desires took them across the color line, also helped transform Utah into a western place in the twentieth century. v To Kelli and Otto vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am indebted to a number of scholars and friends for fostering my love of Mormon studies and shaping the content and analysis of this particular work. Spencer Fluhman is predominantly responsible for mentoring my early forays into Mormon history when I knew very little, but thought a great deal. Philip Barlow taught me how to think critically, ethically, and compassionately and encouraged me to probe my own faith in life-altering ways. Special thanks to Thomas Alexander and Paul Reeve for adding invaluable input on portions of this work. Paul Reeve deserves special mention for sending an advanced electronic copy of his book so that I could refine some of my conclusions. While the content and argument of this thesis developed independent of Paul’s work, this thesis no doubt benefited from Paul’s excellent scholarship. This work also benefited from the expert advisement of Kyle Bulthuis and Robert Parson. I also thank the professionals at the Church History Library, L. Tom Perry Special Collections (BYU), University of Utah Special Collections, Utah State University Special Collections and Archives, and the Utah State Archives in Salt Lake City, for their kind assistance as I combed their respective collections. Colleagues Cory Nani, David Bolingbroke, Bradley Kime, and Joseph Stuart also provided invaluable editorial assistance, encouragement, suggestions, and scholarly engagement, without which this work would not exist. Lastly, I am especially grateful to my patient wife, who tolerated many late nights of writing and research. Special thanks also to my family—my brother Matt (responsible for my curiosity of Mormonism), my triplet brothers, Eric and Brad, for raising me to new heights through their intelligence, and my parents for their constant, unconditional support of all I do. Scott D. Marianno vii CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………………iii PUBLIC ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………….iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………………...vi CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………...…………..…………….1 2. “A FESTERING SORE ON THE BODY POLITIC”: CITIZENSHIP, MARRIAGE AND CHALLENGING MORMON WHITENESS……………………………………………21 3. PASSING AS WHITE: MORMONISM’S TWENTIETH-CENTURY RACIAL TRANSFORMATION…………………………………………………….......................51 4. SEEING LIKE A RACIAL STATE: UTAH’S 1888 MISCEGENATION LAW AND THE CATEGORIZATION OF RACE…………………………………………………..76 5. CONCLUSION: THE WHITE MORMON’S GAZE IN AN INTERNATIONAL CHURCH..………………………………………………………………………………….104 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………….115 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In 1885, a Mormon elder, while touring the southern United States, wrote an editorial to the church-owned Deseret News, describing what he saw as rampant “moral degradation” and the “personification of depravity” plaguing southern society. “Such laxity of morals began undoubtedly while the negroes were slaves,” he lamented as he described the creation of “variously-mixed families” spawned by illicit sexual relations between whites and blacks. The elder, however, also noticed a contradiction during his foray into “Babylon.” For the latter half of the nineteenth century, the attention of national legislators centered on “meddling with the ‘Mormon’ question” even while the “real vice” of interracial mixture allegedly eroded the moral character of southern society.1 Indeed, on a national scale, attempts to preserve Victorian morality by regulating marriage focused more on Mormon polygamy than interracial marriage.2 Polygamy, with slavery, became a leading moral and political concern in the United States starting in the mid-nineteenth century. The Mormon elder’s resentful editorial to the Deseret News also reveals a critical factor in the nineteenth-century debate over marriage, morality, and the law. Theology, especially in its racialized form, colored conceptions of marriage. This particular Mormon elder thanked “heaven that a beneficent Providence” allowed him to be born to parents “who realized the true nature of the curse of Cain.” Advocating a law that would “enforce the recording of genealogies” so as to “preserve the purity of even a sprinkling of the white race,” the Mormon elder felt that “religion 1 N.L.N (probably Nels Lars Nelson), “Society in the South,” Deseret News, 18 Nov. 1885, 702. 2 Sarah Barringer Gordon, The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth- Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Peggy Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 42–43, 63. 2 and morality” should shape legislative agendas in order to prevent racial degeneracy.3 Since the 1850s, Mormon leaders advanced a racial theology supported by notions borrowed from Protestantism concerning a “curse of Cain” that, in practice, blocked black church members from holding the Mormon priesthood and participating in temple rituals. Mormons in the nineteenth century generally agreed with the American public on one issue related to marriage: interracial marriages involving whites should be prohibited in order to preserve the purity of the white race. Utah’s territorial legislature
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