Racism, Fear, and Otherness in America

RACISM, FEAR, AND OTHERNESS IN AMERICA

Madison Harris

Honor’s Portfolio – Spring 2021 Racism, Fear, and Otherness in America

TABLE OF CONTENTS…………….…………………………...……… 1

INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………… 4-6

ABSTRACTS…………………………………………………………… 7-8

A CLOUD OF CONTROVERSY: GEORGE WASHINGTON AND SMALLPOX INOCULATION DURING THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION…………………………………………...…….……… 9-20 *research paper for Prof. Barbara Headle, History 9400, History of Epidemics **presented at Phi Alpha Theta Regional Historical Conference, Colorado State University-Pueblo, Spring 2018 ***published in UCCS Undergraduate Research Journal, no. 11 (Summer 2018): 6-12

“THE OTHER” IN COLONIAL AMERICA: A STUDY OF FEAR……………………………………...………………...….……… 21-30 *seminar paper submitted to Prof. Barbara Headle, History 3700, Colonial History: 1607- 1763

RACISM AND REGRET: EUROPEAN JEWS AND AMERICAN IMMIGRANTS IN WORLD WAR II …………...……………...…… 31-42 *seminar paper submitted to Dr. Robert Sackett, History 4500, Global World War II

THE LAST STATE TO HONOR MLK: UTAH AND THE QUEST FOR RACIAL JUSTICE………………………...………………...... ……… 43-85 *seminar paper submitted to Dr. Matthew Harris, History 491, Civil Rights in US History **presented at the John Whitmer Historical Association Conference, Kansas City, Missouri, Fall 2018 ***published in the Utah Historical Quarterly 33, no. 1 (Winter 2020): 5-21

“THE HANDS OF OUR ENEMIES”: BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IN THE FIGHT FOR CIVIL RIGHTS, 1968-1975………………...……………………………….…86-109 *senior thesis, supervised by Dr. Paul Harvey for History 4990, Studies to Approaching History **will submit to Journal of Church and State, published by Oxford University Press

Harris 1

Student explicitly grants the copyright permission to UCCS Honors Program to post this portfolio report on the UCCS Honors Program Website, and other selected UCCS platform including UCCS Communique, and at the UCCS Honors Program Symposium Proceedings websites, or both.

Signed by Madison Harris on 10 October 2020:

Harris 2

This portfolio for the UCCS Honors Program Designation by

Madison S. Harris has been approved by the UCCS Honors Program

Portfolio Mentor Name: Dr. Paul Harvey

Reader One: Honors Program Faculty: Dr. SK Semwal

Reader Two name: Honors Program Faculty: Dr. R Sackett

Harris, Madison (UCCS Honors Program: Designation: ML/UH)

Honors Program Portfolio mentored by Dr. Paul Harvey

Harris 3 Introduction

When I walked into my honors class, “Grey Matters,” as a freshman, I didn’t know what to expect. It was my first college course, and I was eager to learn as much as possible. I soon came to appreciate the uniqueness of the class, an interdisciplinary approach to complex problems through the lens of philosophy, computer science, and history. That course impressed upon me the nature of collaborative learning, prompting me to see how various disciplines fit together. It even motivated me to start the UCCS Ethics and Bioethics Bowl Team. As I reflect on my time in the Honors program, I am grateful for all of the fond memories I have made and the lessons I have learned. This portfolio is a glimpse into my educational endeavors at UCCS.

My world has been shaped by my academic journey, studying both History and Biomedical

Sciences with a minor in Leadership Communication Studies. It has prepared me, I believe, for my future career in medicine. I plan to attend medical school after graduation, and I anticipate specializing in Emergency Medicine, Oncology, Gynecology, Endocrinology, or Geriatrics.

My portfolio began when I was a freshman, where I took a class studying Historical

Epidemics. Here I completed my first research paper, “A Cloud of Controversy: George

Washington and Smallpox Inoculation During the American Revolution.” Inoculations, similar to today’s vaccinations, were feared by skeptics who masqueraded as faux doctors. In this paper,

I argued that General George Washington defied the skeptics and made the controversial decision to inoculate his troops during the American Revolution, thus allowing them to preserve their health during a smallpox outbreak. I was fortunate to get this research published in the

UCCS Undergraduate Research Journal in the summer 2018 edition and I presented this original research at the Phi Alpha Theta Regional History Conference in spring 2018.

Harris 4 In my sophomore year I focused on Colonial History, where I investigated the United

States’ fear of the “other.” The “other” can be broadly defined as those who are not legitimate

Protestant white men: Catholics, women, Native Americans, bastards, slaves, and others. In my paper I explored this theme, titling it, “‘The Other’ in Colonial America: A Study of Fear.” My junior year broached the same theme but on a global scale, in which I investigated collective regret about racist policies and practices during World War II. My paper, “Racism and Regret:

European Jews and American Immigrants in World War II,” surveyed German and American collective shame, guilt, and subsequent regret for how their nations treated racial minorities during the war. Additionally, my junior year prompted my study of Civil Rights, where I analyzed the turbulent relationship between Black people and the Church of Jesus Christ of

Latter-day Saints, commonly referred to as Mormons. Here I researched in the archives at

Brigham Young University (BYU), the LDS-sponsored school in Provo, Utah. My work culminated in a published co-authored article in the Utah State Historical Quarterly in the Spring

2020 edition titled, “The Last State to Honor MLK: Utah and the Quest for Racial Justice.” In addition, I presented my work at the international John Whitmer Historical Association

Conference in Kansas City, Missouri, in September 2018. Moreover, this work served as the basis of a podcast I was interviewed for called “MLK Who? w/ Madison Harris” under the provocative title Naked Mormonism Podcast (October 17, 2018).

During my senior year, I spent another chunk of my summer in between working and studying for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) researching in the archives at BYU in

Utah. Here I worked on a new project in what would become my senior thesis. The previous summer I found a collection of documents about the university’s investigation by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) in 1968. HEW’s mission was to determine if BYU

Harris 5 was compliant with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits “discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in any program or activity that receives Federal funds or other Federal financial assistance.” I studied the tension between Church and State, and how private institutions, like the LDS church, justified its racial policies through the lens of religion.

Though the HEW investigation cleared BYU of civil rights violations, Mormon church officials still worried that the federal government might intervene in other discriminatory practices of the church in the future. This included forcing LDS leadership to grant Mormon women the priesthood or to accept LBGTQ+ Mormons as full equals in LDS worship services and rituals.

It is with great pleasure that I share my Honor’s Portfolio. This project has been the cumulation of archival research, interviews, conference presentations, and publications throughout my time at UCCS. I hope you enjoy reading my portfolio and that you might learn something along the way. And finally, thanks to all of my wonderful professors for making my

UCCS experience memorable, enjoyable, and stimulating. I have learned so much, and I am very grateful for this opportunity.

Harris 6 A Cloud of Controversy: George Washington and Smallpox Inoculation During the

American Revolution

Smallpox was wreaking havoc on the American Army in the fight for Independence against the British troops. As John Adams said in a letter to his wife, Abigail Adams, “I mean, the Prevalence of small Pox among our Troops… This fatal Pestilence completed our Destruction.” John Adams, as a confidant to General George Washington, understood that this deadly disease was hurting the Army more than the British, Canadians, and Indians combined. Acknowledging this, George Washington made the bold decision: to have the troops undergo mass smallpox inoculations. This article will explore George Washington’s highly controversial order to inoculate his soldiers at a pivotal point during the American Revolution. Drawing from multiple primary sources including soldiers’ accounts of their experience with smallpox, John Adam’s letters, and newspapers around the 1770s, this paper will explore the deadly nature of the smallpox disease, the risk and reward factors in undergoing the smallpox inoculation, and the overall effect on the war.

“The Other” in Colonial America: A Study of Fear

Fear is a compelling force behind decision making. It drives immigration, conspiracy theories, and law throughout early America. In short, fear inspires action. Throughout Colonial America, human diversity sparks anxiety of those in power. It is easier to control a group who all think alike than those who do not. This is where the idea of fear of the “other” stems from. The “other” can be broadly defined those who are not legitimate Protestant white men. This includes Catholics, women, Native Americans, bastards, slaves, and others. Historians can reconcile historical fact through the lens of American exceptionalism by analyzing a theme in Colonial America: fear of those not in power. This includes the stories of oppressed peoples like Anne Hutchinson, Anne Orthwood, Mary Burton, women in the Seven Years’ War, slaves during the New York Conspiracy Trials of 1741, and Native Americans. Fear of the other transcends gender roles, race, and religion creating a dynamic environment whereby poor leadership by white men upholds fear mongering in Colonial America.

Racism and Regret: European Jews and American Immigrants in WWII

Few wars in history have achieved the level of global notoriety as World War II. Though hundreds of millions of civilians and soldiers lost their lives in the global conflict, the war left more than death in its wake. The war, infamous for its wide array of emotions felt by victims and oppressors alike, produced guilt, shame, grief, and regret. However, these emotions did not always register amidst the war for the oppressors and victims. For some, it took decades after the war to comprehend the awesome devastation of lives lost and the abhorrent violations of human rights by the Nazis and Americans. For others, the guilt never truly registered. Nevertheless, Germans and Americans experienced collective shame and guilt and subsequent regret for how they treated racial minorities during the war. Both countries privileged a hierarchy of race, favoring a white, Protestant Aryan race over non-Ayran peoples; this, consequently, led to

Harris 7 catastrophic public policies during the war. The US government placed 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry in brutal internment camps while Germans slaughtered some six million Jews in the Holocaust. After the war, both German and American officials expressed profound regret and remorse for their systematic and callous treatment of these non-Aryan peoples. Both countries ultimately paid reparations for denying Jewish and Japanese people their lives, liberties, and property.

The Last State to Honor MLK: Utah and the Quest for Racial Justice

November 2, 1983, was a historic day at the White House. There President Ronald Reagan signed a bill to create a federal holiday on the third Monday in January named in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dozens of states quickly followed suit. Within three years of the bill’s passage, seventeen states had recognized Martin Luther King Day. By 1999, all states had recognized the King holiday except Utah. In Utah, as in other states, the federal holiday set off a fierce debate about how to honor the late civil rights leader. In 1986, the Utah legislature chose to honor the King federal holiday by calling it Human Rights Day, prompting significant pushback from Utah’s small, but noteworthy African American population. Utah’s refusal to honor Dr. King also placed a glaring spotlight on the Mormon church, whose past teachings about black people made the Mormon-dominated Utah legislature a target of ridicule and scorn in the national news media. In 2000, after intense pressure from critics both within and outside of the state, Utah Governor Michael Leavitt signed a bill renaming Human Rights Day Martin Luther King Day. “With this signing,” the NAACP noted, “Utah became the last state to recognize the [Martin Luther] King holiday by name.” This paper explores why the Utah legislature refused to honor the MLK holiday and, just as important, how the NAACP pressured them to change course.

“The Hands of Our Enemies”: Brigham Young University and the Federal Government in the Fight for Civil Rights, 1968-1975

O On May 15-16, 1968, a five-person civil rights investigation team visited Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah on behalf of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) acting under the direction of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Justice Department. HEW wanted to know if BYU was compliant with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits “discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in any program or activity that receives Federal funds or other Federal financial assistance.” In the mid-1960s only three African Americans attended BYU, which gave the impression to HEW that BYU discriminated against minorities. The truth is, BYU did discriminate against African Americans because its sponsoring church—the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—would not allow BYU officials to recruit black students or faculty. Mormons followed Protestant dogma in teaching that blacks were cursed. This paper explores the tension between the HEW investigators and BYU officials and traces how both sides resolved their differences to satisfy the requirements of federal law.

Harris 8

A Cloud of Controversy: George Washington and Smallpox

Inoculation During the American Revolution

Madison Harris – History of Epidemics – Instructor: Barbara Headle – Spring 2018

Harris 9 One of the biggest enemies facing George Washington’s Continental Army was smallpox. This deadly disease wreaked havoc on the Continental Army in the fight for

Independence against the British. As John Adams said in a letter to his wife, Abigail Adams,

“the Prevalence of small Pox among our Troops … completed our Destruction.”1 John Adams, a confidant to General Washington, understood that this deadly disease was hurting the

Continental Army more than the British, Canadians, and Indians.2 Acknowledging this,

Washington made the bold decision to inoculate his troops against smallpox. Washington’s highly controversial order to inoculate his soldiers came at a pivotal point during the American

Revolution. Drawing from multiple primary sources, including soldier’s accounts of the horrors of smallpox, John Adam’s letters, and George Washington’s diary, this paper will explore the deadly nature of the smallpox disease, the controversy behind the inoculation procedure, and finally General Washington’s decision to inoculate his soldiers. It is General Washington’s decision to inoculate his soldiers that altered the course of the American Revolution.

Also called ‘Variola,’ smallpox was the invisible killer responsible for the agonizing deaths of tens of thousands of people in the British American Colonies.3 Smallpox epidemics had been breaking out (and recorded) since the 1500s in North America among Native

Americans.4 This viral disease was easily spread to young children and isolated populations with little genetic diversity. After experiencing a series of flu-like symptoms like nausea, lack of

1 John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776, Gordon S. Wood, ed., John Adams: Revolutionary Writings 1775-1783 (New York: Library of America, 2011), 92. 2 Diary Entry of John Adams, May 19, 1776, Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris, eds, The Spirit of Seventy-Six: The Story of The American Revolution as Told by Participants (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), 818. 3 Elizabeth Fenn, Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001), 21. 4 Elaine G. Breslaw, Lotions, Potions, Pills and Magic: Health Cures in Early America (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 13.

Harris 10 appetite, and vomiting, pustules emerged on the victim’s body.5 The pustules would concentrate on the areas of the body where they would be the most painful. The face, soles of the feet, groin, armpit, and back were the highest concentrated areas where the highly contagious, smallpox pustules would gather. It hurt to walk, sit, and even lie down. There were even recorded cases of those suffering with the disease waking up and being trapped in bed by the adhesive discharge of the pustules.6 But this was the reality of those suffering with this lethal disease. After a period of approximately 30 days, the contagious scabs would fall off, and the pock-marked survivor would now be immune to the deadly disease for life.

Americans were not strangers to the deadly virus. Though one of many epidemics in early America, the Boston smallpox outbreak of 1721 was one of the most important with respect to medical progress. Cotton Mather, a Harvard-educated minister and man of science, led the medical research fighting smallpox. More specifically, Mather feared that smallpox would break out in Boston, which would affect the lives of his children and church congregation. Though the biological and cellular sciences were up-and-coming fields, Mather, infatuated with preventing the deadly disease, read over countless books about medicine and science in his personal library.

He made progress after speaking to his slave, Onesimus, in 1716. Mather questioned Onesimus about whether or not he had ever contracted smallpox. Onesimus responded with both yes and no. Onesimus’s ambivalent response confused Mather. Onesimus then proceeded to tell his master that he had undergone the inoculation process in Africa. Mather explained, “Onesimus had undergone an operation which had given him something of the smallpox and would forever

5 Fenn, Pox Americana, 63. 6 Fenn, Pox Americana, 61.

Harris 11 preserve him from it.”7 While looking at medical research, Mather stumbled across an article verifying Onesimus’s story. It was from a man named Dr. Emanuel Timonius in Turkey, describing the inoculation process there. In addition, with Mather’s connections to the Royal

Society of Medicine in England, he learned that a decade earlier another doctor, Dr. Clopton

Havers, elucidated a similar inoculation practice in China.8 Mather had presented the inoculation process to various doctors in Boston but to no avail. After an extended period of time and with a significant amount of convincing, Mather got one man, Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, to take an interest in the project and agree to try the procedure.

This was the origins of the inoculation procedure on the North American continent, and it was controversial from the beginning. Citizens and medical personnel of Boston were confused why Dr. Boylston would give a strain of smallpox to previously-unaffected Bostonians. The ignorant doctors, believing Dr. Boylston was spreading the disease needlessly, gossiped to the townsfolk that the inoculation process was deadly to those that experienced it, and that it should be banned as a medical procedure. Though this hindered Dr. Boylston’s progress, it set the stage for the controversy behind the inoculation process on a mass scale during the American

Revolution some four decades later.

Years before the ‘shots heard around the world’ were fired, George Washington visited

Barbados in 1751 as a young boy with his older half-brother Lawrence.9 It was there that he contracted smallpox and also where his diary entries stopped for about a month.10 This was

7 Tony Williams, The Pox and the Covenant: Mather, Franklin, and the Epidemic That Changed America's Destiny (New York: Sourcebooks, 2011), 61. 8 Williams, Pox and the Covenant, 62. 9 Fenn, Pox Americana, 13. 10 For Washington’s diaries, see http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/browse?type=lcsubc&key=Washington%2C% 20George%2C%201732-1799%20--%20Diaries.

Harris 12 Washington’s first recorded encounter with smallpox. He contracted smallpox without undergoing the inoculation procedure. In fact, Washington did not have knowledge of the medical procedure until around 1770 when he was a grown man.11 This was in part due to the controversy that arose when Dr. Boylston was undergoing clinical inoculation procedures in

1721. Inoculation had been practiced largely in other places like China, Turkey, and Africa for decades.12 In the colonies the process was rare because of the skepticism and desire to stop the spread of the disease. Not only was the procedure controversial, only the rich could afford it.

This was due to the bedridden state of the inoculated person for about a month after the procedure took place, which made them unable to work. In a letter to a friend, Washington wrote regarding smallpox inoculation: “I favored the inoculation, thinking that Jacky (Martha

Washington’s son from a previous marriage) should be protected against the smallpox whether he was send abroad or not. Mrs. Washington agreed that the benefits were very desirable but feared exposing her son to the inoculating process, which brought on a fatal case of the disease in

1 of every 50 to 60 inoculations.”13 This quote illustrates that even though the inoculation process was not without risks, the benefits ultimately outweighed the hazards. This is how

Washington viewed it, as his step-son Jacky underwent the inoculation process in 1771 in

11 George Washington to Jonathan Boucher, May 13, 1770, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mgw9.004/?sp=9. 12 Williams, Pox and the Covenant, 62 13 George Washington to Jonathan Boucher, April 20, 1771, Washington Chauncey Ford, ed., Letters of Jonathan Boucher to George Washington (Brooklyn, NY: Historical Printing Club, 1899), 24-25.

Harris 13 Baltimore, Maryland.14 Seeing the success, Martha Washington was inoculated several years later in May of 1776 in Philadelphia.15 Mrs. Washington went on to live until 1802.

Washington’s exposure to smallpox early in his life made him well-equipped to understand its deadly effects when the disease spread among his troops early in the War for

Independence. Smallpox was a viral disease, spreading by contact with affected people and through contact with contaminated items. The Continental Army made perfect hosts for the disease. The soldiers were frequently malnourished, which made it easy for the disease to spread in the immune system. In addition, they were in close contact for variola to spread, whether in the barracks, campfire areas, the battlefield, and even just passing through cities that were contaminated. After all, smallpox just needs bodies to survive and the Continental Army had plenty.16

Dr. Stringer, an Army Surgeon, worked closely with Washington to determine what to do with the ailing troops. Dr. Stringer commented, “Buried two today. No preaching or praying as usual. The smallpox rather abates in the regiments. A number [of troops] are employed the other side almost the whole day to dig graves and bury the dead....”17 The Continental forces were suffering and General Washington had a big decision to make: He had to decide whether or not to inoculate his soldiers. The British soldiers had the advantage over Washington’s troops.

Smallpox had already appeared in the densely packed cities of Europe, and most soldiers were

14 George Washington Diary Entry, December 17, 1770, Dorothy Twohig, ed. George Washington’s Diaries: An Abridgement (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999), 161. 15 George Washington Diary Entry, July 2, 1776, W.B. Allen, ed., George Washington: A Collection (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1988), 70. 16 Kathleen M. Brown, Foul Bodies: Cleanliness in Early America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 128. 17 Journal of Dr. Stringer, July 27, 1775, Commager, and Morris, eds. Spirit of Seventy-Six, 812.

Harris 14 already immune to the deadly disease from having it as children. The few British soldiers that had not encountered it were then inoculated in the American colonies. This is further explained in General Howe’s journal on November 18, 1775, when he asked his officers to poll the ranks to determine how many of the troops had had the disease previously. They were then “to have such of their Men Inoculated as have not had it & that as soon as possible.”18 Now that a large population of the Royal British Army was immune to the disease, they could focus more on the war effort without fear of smallpox. General Washington, who also feared that the disease would spread to his soldiers, gave the order to quarantine his sick troops. This then evolved to

General Washington ordering the army from taking in any refugees altogether, smallpox-ridden or not, for fear of contamination. The Continental Congress shared Washington’s fear of the spread of smallpox and issued a proclamation in 1776 banning the army doctors to perform inoculation procedure on the Continental Army.19

The soldiers’ fear of smallpox was especially exemplified after the battles of Lexington and Concord during the siege of Boston in 1776-1777. The Continental forces had an estimated

15,000 poorly-equipped colonial troops surrounding British-held Boston, Massachusetts when

General George Washington arrived in the summer of 1775.20 It was here that General

Washington battled two enemies: the highly trained British forces of about 6,500 men led by

18 Journal Entry of General Sir William Howe, June 17, 1775, Benjamin Franklin Stevens, ed., General Sir William Howe’s Orderly Book at Charleston, Boston, and Halifax, June 17, 1775 to May 26, 1775 (London, UK: Trafalgar Square, 1890), 144 19 Washington’s General Orders, March 14, 1776, John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources 1745-1799 Volume 27 (United States Government Printing Office, 1938), 365 20 Robert Middlekauff, Washington’s Revolution: The Making of America’s First Leader (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2015), chap. 4; see also Richard Archer, As If An Enemy’s Country: The British Occupation of Boston and the Origins of Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

Harris 15 General Thomas Gage and the lethal smallpox.21 Though exact statistical data is not available about the number of deaths caused by small pox during the American Revolution, disease caused more deaths than wounds inflicted during the war. Historian Joseph Ellis in His Excellency notes that “Historians have long known that more than two-thirds of the American casualties in the war were the result of disease. But only recently… they have recognized that the American

Revolution occurred within a virulent smallpox epidemic of continental scope that claimed about

100,000 lives.”22 This is also reflected by John Adams who noted “that for every soldier killed in battle, disease killed ten.”23 General Washington had a hard choice to make. If he fought in

Boston where there were recorded cases of smallpox in recent weeks, he would go against his own ‘quarantine and avoidance’ plan. Yet, on the other hand, the longer he waited to engage the

British in Boston, the longer the war went on. Washington’s fear was further reiterated when he wrote to Joseph Reed stating, "smallpox is in every part of Boston. The [British] soldiers who have never had it are, we are told, under inoculation, and considered as a surety of any attempt of ours to attack. If we escape the smallpox in this camp, and the country around, it will be miraculous. Every precaution that can be to guard against this evil, both by the General Court and myself.”24 Washington was at a crossroad. If he attacked the city, it increased the chance that the army would undergo a smallpox epidemic and be out of commission to fight against the enemy. But if he did not strike the British, the war would continue. The British acknowledged that they were surrounded in the city and did not want to be stuck without supplies when the

21 Middlekauff, Washington’s Revolution, 147. 22 Joseph J. Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2004), 86. 23 John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776, Gordon S. Wood, ed., John Adams: Revolutionary Writings 1775-1783 (New York: Library of America, 2011), 92. 24 George Washington to John Hancock, December 14, 1775, as quoted in Ann M. Becker, “Smallpox in Washington’s Army: Strategic Implications of the Disease during the American Revolutionary War,” Journal of Military History 68 (April 2004): 399.

Harris 16 Boston Harbor frozen over. Consequently, General Howe, the leading British officer, decided to move his troops North to their Canadian base in Nova Scotia. This was timely for General

Washington, but he was still cautious about moving into the city. It was because of his caution, that the Continental forces led by General Washington sent only 1,000 troops who had already survived the smallpox disease to secure the city. In addition, General Washington forbade his soldiers who had never had the smallpox from entering Boston.25

Though Boston was now under control of the Continental Army, General Washington was torn. He knew that smallpox was spreading among the citizens, which made his army vulnerable. If he decided to inoculate whole army regiments at a time, and the British found out, the fight for independence would be swiftly cut short. This was because the Continental troops while undergoing inoculation, would be bedridden for approximately a month while they recovered from the disease. It was estimated that over one third of the Continental forces had not been exposed to the smallpox disease around the time of the Siege of Boston.26 This meant that

General Washington had 5,000 troops susceptible to the disease. Though Washington had the advantage in numbers, the British troops were highly trained and better equipped, so General

Washington needed his troops at full strength. Every day General Washington waited to give the order to inoculate his men, the army was losing soldiers to the vicious disease. It was a complex problem. If Washington continued to forbid inoculation procedures and abide by the Continental

Congresses’ ban in 1776, then the army’s quarantine could break at any time. In that case, the soldiers would be liable to the live strand of smallpox, which is much deadlier than the inoculated version. This would result in not only more supplies needed to treat the infected men,

25 Middlekauff, Washington’s Revolution, 97-98. 26 Commager, and Morris, eds. Spirit of Seventy-Six, 815.

Harris 17 but more soldiers to take care of them, and hence less men fighting against the British. General

Washington was playing a deadly game. Though General Washington meticulously weighed the pros and cons of undergoing mass inoculations, it was only when the disease appeared to be spreading throughout the entire army that he changed his mind. He decided to inoculate the remaining troops against the deadly smallpox disease. This is described in his letter to John

Hancock, president of the Continental Congress. He explained: “The smallpox has made such

Head in every Quarter that I find it impossible to keep it from spreading thro’ the whole Army in the natural way. I have therefore determined, not only to inoculate all the Troops now here, that have not had I, but shall order Doctor Shippen to inoculate the Recruits as fast as they come in to

Philadelphia.”27 The command had been uttered, and the key now was secrecy. If the British discovered that thousands of Continental troops were bedridden for a month while undergoing inoculation, they would strike and the army would be too weak to hold its ground.

The inoculations took place in 1777 along the east coast in towns such as Alexandria,

Fairfax, Dumfries, Morristown, Newtown, Bethlehem, Philadelphia, Ticonderoga, Boston, and at

Hudson Heights, in what were makeshift hospitals.28 In addition to inoculating the current troops,

Washington ordered that the new recruits undergo the procedure before even meeting the main body of the army. The soldiers were relieved to finally have the inoculation procedure not banned. Though some of the men experienced the procedures before the ban was lifted, it was now an efficient system of inoculating and treating the sick troops. Joseph Plumb Martin, a revolutionary soldier, recalled the system of mass inoculation in his diary. He noted that

Washington “ordered . . . a company with about four hundred others of the Connecticut forces, to

27 Fenn, Pox Americana, 303. 28 Fenn, Pox Americana, 94.

Harris 18 a set of old barracks a mile or two distant in the Highlands to be inoculated with the smallpox.

We arrived at the cleaned-out barracks, and after two or three days received the infection, which was the last day of May. We had a guard of Massachusetts troops to attend us.”29 The inoculations were successful. As Dr. David Ramsay, a surgeon for the Army wrote:

The disorder had previously spread among them in the natural way, and proved mortal to many: but after inoculation was introduced through whole regiments were inoculated, in a day, there was little or no mortality from the small pox, and the disorder was so slight, that from the beginning to the end of it, there was not a single day in which they could not, and if called upon, would not have turned out and fought the British. To induce the inhabitants to accommodate officers and soldiers in their houses, while under the small pox, they and their families were inoculated gratis by the military surgeons. Thus in a short time, the whole army and the inhabitants in and near Morristown were subjected to the small pox, and with very little inconvenience to either.30

Troops were recovering well, and fortuitously the British were not aware of the crippling state of the Continental Army.

Though inoculation procedures were tested in the American colonies as early as 1721, it was not until decades later that the value of the procedure was recognized in 1776 by General

Washington during the American Revolution. It was because of the controversy that overshadowed the inoculation procedure, like consciously “spreading” the disease and making an otherwise a perfectly healthy human sick, in which the procedure became divisive. The early doctors, with the exception of Dr. Boylston, were mainly concerned with quarantining those with the disease rather than stopping it in its early stages. It is this controversy four decades earlier that made this such a complex problem for General George Washington. He originally stuck

29 Joseph Plumb Martin, A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier, ed. by Thomas Fleming (Orig. pub. 1830; reprint ed., New York: Signet Classics, 2001), 56. 30David Ramsay, The History of the American Revolution, ed. by Lester H. Cohen, 2 vols. (Orig. pub. 1789; reprint ed., Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1990), 1: 307.

Harris 19 with the plan to ‘maintain and quarantine’ those sick in hopes of preventing the spread of the disease to the rest of the Continental Army. Despite this, smallpox wreaked havoc on the troops.

John Adams estimated that the disease did more damage than all of the enemy forces combined.

Weighing the pros and cons of having the Continental Army undergo mass inoculation, General

Washington decided to lift the inoculation ban in 1777 in a plea to the Continental Congress.

Though he lifted the ban, the Army was still susceptible to a surprise attack by the British. It did not happen because General Washington and his troops kept the inoculation procedure a secret.

Because General Washington made the bold choice to have the Continental Army inoculated, he saved the colonist’s fight for independence against the powerful British Army.

Harris 20

“The Other” in Colonial America: A Study of Fear

Madison Harris – Colonial History 1607-1763 – Instructor: Barbara Headle – Spring 2019

Harris 21 Fear is a compelling force behind decision making. It drives immigration, conspiracy, and law throughout early America. In short, fear inspires action. Throughout Colonial America, human diversity sparks anxiety of those in power. It is easy to control a group who all think alike than those who do not. This is where the idea of fear of the “other” stems from. The

“other” can be broadly defined as those who are not legitimate Protestant white men: Catholics, women, Native Americans, bastards, slaves, and others. Historians can reconcile historical fact through the lens of American exceptionalism by analyzing a theme in Colonial America: fear of those not in power. This includes the stories of oppressed peoples like Anne Hutchinson, Anne

Orthwood, Mary Burton, women in the Seven Years’ War, slaves during the New York

Conspiracy Trials of 1741, and Native Americans. Fear of the other transcends gender roles, race, and religion creating a dynamic environment whereby poor leadership by white men upholds fear mongering in Colonial America.

Colonial leadership either lay with the population’s majority or whoever had the most firepower, which was predictably white men in power. This unilateral representation in colonial leadership restricted a diverse culture in the colonial era. Men maintaining positions of power is evident as early as the Separatist’s trip to the New World in 1620. For example, in the creation of

Mayflower Compact, only men onboard the Mayflower drafted and signed the document.31 This speaks to man’s power in the new colony, thereby establishing expectations for men and women in the beginnings of British colonization. With men as the sole proprietors of governance in the

New World, animosity towards women in leadership positions emerged soon after. Nowhere was this more evident than with the heresy trial of Anne Hutchinson in 1637. Hutchinson, who

31 William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (New York, Random House Inc., 1981), 84.

Harris 22 claimed she was guided by the voice of God while preaching religious sermons, made men, like the Deputy Governor of the Colony, anxious.32 Hutchinson presented a threat to their power. She challenged the de facto establishment of women’s place in colonial America: at home taking care of the family. This trial is proof of the trepidation felt by men about influential women like

Hutchinson.

The Plymouth Plantation established a de facto hierarchy of patriarchal power as early as

1620. This de facto establishment of gender roles, however, led to codified laws restricting women’s autonomy later in 1664 with the four court cases that sprung from the bastard pregnancy of Anne Orthwood. Orthwood’s life is unique as she represents two distinct oppressed groups: women and indentured servants. Orthwood never enjoyed the freedoms that her son, Jasper, eventually obtained. The underlying theme of Orthwood’s story is strengthening male privilege while oppressing the minority groups. Pagan, author of Anne Orthwood’s

Bastard states, “the Virginia elite gratified white men’s desire to control access to white women’s bodies. This strategy…fortified the post-rebellion alliance that white men of all classes formed around the issues of male privilege and racial solidarity.”33 Societal norms, which exclusively aided the men in control, repeatedly reinforced the oppression and diminishment of personal autonomy of women and indentured servants in Colonial America.

Women’s fight for autonomy progressed little in the decades to come. During the infamous New York Conspiracy Trial of 1741, as in Anne Orthwood’s time, women fell victim

32 Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, from the Charter of King William and Queen Mary in 1609, until the Year 1750 (Boston, 1767), 507-13. In Thomas S. Kidd, ed., American Colonial History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016), 100. 33 John Ruston Pagan, Anne Orthwood’s Bastard, Sex and Law in Early Virginia (Oxford University Press, 2003), 104.

Harris 23 to intimidation tactics that men employed in the courtroom. An example of this is the coerced testimony of 16-year-old servant to the defendant, Mary Burton. Hoffer, author of The Great

New York Conspiracy of 1741 claims, “She was young enough to be intimidated by the bearing and status of the men who wanted her to testify against the slaves.”34 Though Burton’s motives are questionable, it is undeniable that as a young woman she was forced to comply with the men in power, or be punished. Burton’s role in the trial was to tell the men in the courtroom, the magistrates and jurors, what they wanted to hear: evidence to convict the slaves and reinforce their own white male advantages.35

This blatant persecution of women carried on into the 1770s during the Seven Years’

War. Though women could not formally join the provincial troops in combat, they were still an integral part of soldiers’ lives, carrying out valuable tasks like laundry and caring for the sick.36

But despite providing vital services to the provincial troops, men ridiculed and oppressed these women. These oppressions, like not allowing the women to formally join their ranks, were inspired by the men’s fear of empowering women, which could challenge their own power. In order to suppress these fears, the men relied on constant belittlement of women. Anderson, author of A People’s Army, Massachusetts Soldiers & Society in the Seven Year’s War, stated that, “the expulsion of women for carrying an infectious distemper… very common for sex in these parts.”37 By discrediting a woman’s temperament, based solely on a man’s anxiety of

34 Peter Charles Hoffer, The Great New York Conspiracy of 1741, Slavery, Crime, and Colonial Law (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2003), 69. 35 Ibid., 73. 36 Fred Anderson, A People’s Army, Massachusetts Soldiers & Society in the Seven Year’s War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 118. 37 Ibid., 119.

Harris 24 maintaining the power complex, men justified poor treatment of those not like them, hence they reinforced antiquated gender roles supporting a fear-based society.

Diversity of ideas is crucial in maintaining a balanced civilization. However, unilateral representation in leadership frequently led to oppression of minority groups, like the persecution of Native Americans in Colonial America by the white colonizers. White men, employing discriminatory tactics towards indigenous peoples, justified their fear-based culture by exploiting differences in culture. This idea of native “savagery,” though not new to William Bradford’s era, became the de facto standard for treatment of different races for decades to come.38 In fact, broad generalizations, like women as caretakers and slaves as unintelligent laborers, carried on into 1741 during the Great New York Conspiracy trials. Conspiracy was the alleged charge of the accused slaves, but the subliminal motives were reinforcing racial barriers in Colonial New

York. The Conspiracy trials are a prime example of how white men misused their power, which led to the gradual evolution of fear mongering in colonial society. Hoffer asserts in The Great

New York Conspiracy of 1741 that the conspiracy ploys powered racial, class, and religious tensions and accordingly furthered the divide between slaves and whites in colonial New York.39

Fear of the other created an overwhelming barrier to achieving any semblance of racial equality.

Hoffer highlights “their [white people associating with slaves] real crime was to be guilty not only of making Negros their equal, but even their superiors, by waiting upon, keeping with, and entertaining them with meat, drink, and lodging.”40 The conspiracy trials ended with the reestablishment of racial hierarchies through the codified laws restricting slaves’ autonomies.

38 William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (New York, Random House Inc., 1981), 26. 39 Peter Charles Hoffer, The Great New York Conspiracy of 1741, Slavery, Crime, and Colonial Law (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2003), 10. 40 Peter Charles Hoffer, The Great New York Conspiracy of 1741, Slavery, Crime, and Colonial Law (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2003), 113.

Harris 25 Though the majority of white men fought to maintain their own power, there were few that initially used their privilege to challenge colonial norms that promoted fear. For example,

George Keith, a Quaker missionary in New England, drafted an antislavery tract in 1694 that defies his religious practices. 41 Keith, though an outlier in the faith and at odds with Quaker leadership, wrote, An Exhortation and Caution to Friends Concerning Buying or Keeping of

Negroes.42 The antislavery tract is remarkable given that it was produced in a prominent slave era by a white man. However, Keith’s change of heart was short-lived as he later joined the

Anglican Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, an organization that owned hundreds of slaves on a Barbados plantation.43 Though it is difficult to deduce exactly why Keith’s views changed on slavery, social pressure established by white men may have influenced Keith’s decision. By supporting the abolishment of slavery, Keith aligned himself with slaves, which alienated him from other white men in leadership. In a in a culture founded on fear mongering, any deviance from perceived normalcy was quickly ostracized, as in Keith’s case.44

Societal morals are fortified by the people in power when minorities deviate from expected behavior. In fact, Colonial America was founded on this concept when the Separatists fled England in fear of further prosecution by the government. By establishing the Mayflower

Compact and giving themselves political power, white Separatists found themselves to be in the ideological majority in the New World because of their access to advanced technology like guns.

Their ethnocentric tendencies, however, led to the perpetual denigration of native peoples based upon their appearance, language, and religious practices. Though Separatists fled their homeland

41 Thomas S. Kidd, American Colonial History, Clashing Cultures and Faiths (Yale University Press, 2016), 122. 42 Ibid., 123. 43 Ibid., 124. 44 Ibid., 123.

Harris 26 because of religious persecution, they granted little tolerance for Native America religious practices.45 The fear of the other reinforced these established cultural norms. It set the precedence of anxiety of those who did not conform to the deemed “superior” Protestant religion. Though some Native Peoples ultimately converted to Christianity, they were still estranged from the power majority because of their skin color.

Religion, specifically Protestantism, became a device for control in Colonial America.

The bible and the local church leaders’ teachings provided a template for instituting community norms based upon religious practices. Weekly church sermons made it clear who was falling in line with the majority and who was deviating from social customs. The complex case of Anne

Orthwood’s bastard pregnancy set the community values up to the test; did the church value the freedoms of the elite or the minority? As a woman and an indentured servant, Anne chose to break with the Protestant faith, which governed community values. Pagan elucidates, “Women ended up bearing almost all of the criminal responsibility for illicit sex while males shouldered only the relatively light financial burden of bastard maintenance.”46 Orthwood was in the minority as an immigrant, an indentured servant, and a woman. Though she ultimately died in childbirth, these cases prove that protecting Kendall’s reputation as a white Protestant male in the majority, trumps minorities, like Orthwood’s expression of autonomy.

Several components of the fear mongering culture are prevalent in the 1741 New York

Conspiracy trials. The two minority groups that challenged the white man’s perception of authority included slaves and Catholics. Slaves, as evident by the plethora of conspiracy trials in

Colonial New York, are an ever-present threat to the conventional power complex established by

45 Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 290. 46 Ibid., 127.

Harris 27 Protestant white men. Catholics, on the other hand, represented the spread of devilish Papist teachings and French and Spanish hatred. Rampant propaganda by opposing Protestant forces during the Conspiracy trial of 1741 stimulated a fear fueled and allegations of “the millions of lives, that in remote countries, and different ages, have been sacrificed to the Roman idol…ending in the blood of our own martyrs.”47 The convergence of two minority groups,

Slaves and Catholics, sparked anxiety in colonial leaders. They posed a threat to the current power dynamic in New York, which was based in apprehension. Fear of distinctive peoples, cultures, and religions led to executions justified by the those in control. The trial ultimately reinforced supposed community values and proved that threats do not have to be real, just the perception of intimidation does. This is the basis of a fear-based society.

As a melting pot culture, America has progressed in stimulating the diversification of modern society. However, this has not come easily. The events, peoples, and ideologies of the past continue to shape our collective civilization, founded on the basis of fear and discrimination.

Slowly and incrementally, progress has been made in breaking down the walls of ethnocentric and sexist philosophies of our forefathers. For example, women have more opportunities in the workforce thanks to the resiliency and tenacity of those before them. John F. Kennedy was elected President of the United States as a practicing Catholic, dissipating the religious animosity between Protestants and Catholics. Barack Obama, as an African American became the first black man to assume the presidency. These specific examples are proof that fear can be surmounted, but it requires leaders to value respect, courage, and tolerance of others.

As a nation, we still have a long way to go. The America’s past demonstrates that a society constructed by fear mongering will have problems fostering the diversity of peoples and

47 Hoffer, The Great New York Conspiracy of 1741, Slavery, Crime, and Colonial Law, 151.

Harris 28 cultures. This occurs by the unilateral authority of a white patriarchal system. For example,

Hoffer, recollects 1741 is relevant to present time, because we are still suffering the backlash of perpetual fear of the other. Hoffer notes that, “African-American slaves were once viewed by colonial authorities in the same way that some politicians and prosecutors view Middle Eastern

Moslems today: inherently dangerous and constantly conspiring; easily distinguished by dress, skin color, and speech; hiding their crimes and plots in the recesses of culture impenetrable to the uninitiated.”48 The prevalence of Islamophobia in 2019 illustrates that history truly lays the foundation for the future. Through the lens of perceived American exceptionalism established in

Colonial America, fear of the other remains a pertinent theme in modern times. Ultimately, trepidation of the other exceeds gender roles, race, and religion. It created a culture where poor leadership and discriminatory philosophies upheld by white men endorsed fear mongering in

Colonial America.

48 Ibid., viii.

Harris 29 Bibliography

Primary:

Bradford, William. Of Plymouth Plantation, New York, Random House Inc., 1981.

Hutchinson, Thomas, The History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, from the Charter of King William and Queen Mary in 1609, until the Year 1750 (Boston, 1767), 507-13. In Thomas S. Kidd, ed., American Colonial History, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016.

Secondary:

Anderson, Fred. A People’s Army, Massachusetts Soldiers & Society in the Seven Year’s War, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.

Hoffer, Peter Charles. The Great New York Conspiracy of 1741, Slavery, Crime, and Colonial Law, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2003.

Kidd, Thomas S.. American Colonial History, Clashing Cultures and Faiths, Yale University Press, 2016.

Pagan, John Ruston. Anne Orthwood’s Bastard, Sex and Law in Early Virginia, Oxford University Press, 2003.

Harris 30

Racism and Regret: European Jews and American Immigrants in World War II

Madison Harris – Global World War II – Instructors: Robert Sackett, Paul Harvey, and Yang

Wei – Fall 2019

Harris 31 Few wars in history have achieved the level of global notoriety as World War II. Though hundreds of millions of civilians and soldiers lost their lives in the global conflict, the war left more than death in its wake. The war, infamous for its wide array of emotions felt by victims and oppressors alike, produced guilt, shame, grief, and regret. However, these emotions did not always register amidst the war for the oppressors and victims. For some, it took decades after the war to comprehend the awesome devastation of lives lost and the abhorrent violations of human rights by the Nazis and Americans. For others, the guilt never truly registered. Nevertheless, many Germans and Americans experienced collective shame and guilt and subsequent regret for how they treated racial minorities during the war. Both countries privileged a hierarchy of race, favoring a white, Protestant Aryan race over non-Ayran peoples; this, consequently, led to catastrophic public policies during the war.49 The US government placed 120,000 people of

Japanese ancestry in brutal internment camps while Germans slaughtered some six million Jews in the Holocaust. After the war, both West German and American officials expressed profound regret and remorse for this systematic and callous treatment of these non-Aryan peoples. Both countries ultimately paid reparations for denying Jewish and Japanese people their lives, liberties, and property.50

Collective memory often turns to regret once stories are uncovered and shared, especially in postwar Germany. One such example is by Erich Lüth, a German man later turned activist in the years following the war. Lüth stated that in 1933 the German people could have rejected Hitler

49 For an excellent discussion of this theme, especially how the Nazis patterned their race laws from the United States, see James Q. Whitman, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017). 50 Roger Daniels, Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), 3; Ian Hastings, Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945 (New York: Vintage, 2011), 647.

Harris 32 as the Chancellor, claiming this as the Germans’ “moral guilt…letting Hitler come to power.”51

Lüth also commented that blindness did not equal innocence, starkly noting that “we (German people) are to blame as the perpetrators of the global conflict.”52 For Lüth, compliance became the Germans’ weakness.53

Another way Germans shielded themselves from guilt was to blame their leaders, specifically

Hitler and his top lieutenants. Even among the military personnel, troops blamed their supervisors, insinuating that they were just following orders. For some Germans, though, it became difficult to comprehend what kinds of people would blindly follow Hitler—a man who would order the extermination of millions of people. Uwe Timm, author of In My Brother’s

Shadow: A Life and Death in the SS noted that “to the surprise of the American officers that interrogated them [SS Officers], they were not primitive brutes but men with literary, philosophical, and musical education, men who listened to Mozart, [and] read Hölderlin. . . .”

Timm continued: “They had a keen sense of right and wrong, and consequently did everything possible to conceal what they had done.”54 Timm eloquently articulates that German officers understood that what they were doing was wrong. He highlights the guilt of the SS officers observing that “None of them showed any awareness of having done anything wrong.”55 In contrast, Lucien, a French collaborator, in the film Lacombe, Lucien represents the moral depravity of some civilians. Lucien had no sense of right or wrong, displaying all the tendencies

51 German Guilt, Lecture, Dr. Robert Sackett, 21 November 2019 52 German Guilt, Lecture, Dr. Robert Sackett, 21 November 2019 53 Eric A. Johnson, Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews, and Ordinary Germans (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 476. 54 Uwe Timm, In My Brother’s Shadow: A Life and Death in the SS (Witsch, Germany: Verlag Kiepenheuer, 2003), 53. 55 Timm, In My Brother’s Shadow, 53.

Harris 33 of a psychopath.56 While this film is fiction, other Germans clearly felt the same way according to recent scholarship. Historian Eric Johnson, author of Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews, and

Ordinary Germans, states that “a great majority of the German population found ways to accommodate the Nazi regime, despite whatever inner reservations they might have had.”57

It was mostly a younger generation of Germans who had difficulty admitting guilt, for they saw the world through the lens of Nazi propaganda. These young people, especially those in the Hitler Youth movement, were indoctrinated with antisemitic views their entire lives and thus it became difficult for them to blame Hitler for the Holocaust and express regret.58 One such example is Mathilde Wolff-Monckeburg who wrote that “Our beautiful and proud Germany has been crushed, ground into the earth and smashed into ruins, while millions sacrificed their lives and all our lovely towns and art treasures were destroyed.”59 Wolff-Monckeburg demonstrates that not all Germans experienced remorse for slaughtering Jews. Scholar Susan Neiman notes that for “decades after the war ended, Germans [like Wolff-Monckeburg] were obsessed with the suffering they endured and not the suffering they had caused.”60

Antisemitism, in fact, became so engrained in German culture that some scholars, like Dan

McMillan, argued “the most reasonable conclusion is that Germans were coldly indifferent to the fate of the Jewish people . . . deciding to turn a blind eye and never processing the information

56 Malle, Louis, director. Lacombe, Lucien. Kanopy, 1974, uccs.kanopy.com/video/Lacombe lucien. See also Paul Jankowski, “In Defense of Fiction: Resistance, Collaboration, and Lacombe, Lucien,” Journal of Modern History, 63, no. 3 (Sept. 1991): 457-482. 57 Johnson, Nazi Terror, 16. 58 German Guilt, Lecture, Dr. Robert Sackett, 21 November 2019 59 Wolff-Monckeburg, quoted in Hastings, Inferno, 630. 60 Susan Neiman, Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York, 2019), 40, makes this perceptive point.

Harris 34 into actual knowledge.”61 McMillian argues that they feared the Gestapo, the German secret police that enforced the “Final Solution”—the policy that exterminated Jews, as well as gays, gypsies and the “feeble-minded.” McMillan further claims that “postwar memoirs and testimony suggest that fear of the Gestapo was pervasive where in 1990 a quarter of the survey respondents had personally known someone who had been arrested or interrogated for political reasons, which also suggested that nearly everyone else must have at least heard rumors about the silencing abilities of the secret police.”62 This data underscores the notion that average Germans knew the Nazi leadership were committing atrocious acts against Jews and yet they did nothing.

Worse, many of them participated in the gratuitous killing of Jews. As scholar Daniel Jonah

Goldhagen put it, they were “Hitler’s Willing Executioners.”63

Most Germans, then, understood the horrors committed in the name of Lebensraum, but for the rest of the world they were in the dark. Historians Eric A. Johnson and Susan Neiman aver that the rest of the world became aware of the horrors after the Auschwitz and Frankfurt trials in the mid-1960s.64 Only then did public perceptions began to shift, and the gravity of Nazi war crimes began to register with the German public. Still, there were issues with the statute of limitations. Though justice seemed elusive as Nazis could not be prosecuted after 1979,

Germany channeled their guilt instead into monetary compensation. Not surprisingly, Jewish survivors posed difficult questions to Germans asking, “what are my murdered parents worth?”65

61 Dan McMillan, How Could This Happen: Explaining the Holocaust (New York: Basic Books, 2014), 198. See also Ian Kershaw, The Global Age: Europe 1950-2017 (New York and London: Penguin, 2018), 188. 62 McMillan, How Could This Happen, 199. 63 Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1996). 64 Johnson, Nazi Terror, 452; and Neiman, Learning from the Germans, 309 65 McMillan, How Could This Happen, 198.

Harris 35 The German government responded offering reparations to Israel in 1953, paying Holocaust survivors 820 million marks, 70 percent of which would be paid in German goods (the program eventually collapsed in 1963).66 Ruthless ex-Nazis contributed to the demise of the program, however, as not all Germans favored monetary compensation to Jews. Some Germans did not believe that the blame was theirs to shoulder, still faulting Nazi leadership for “the Final

Solution.”67

Even so, West Germany distributed some 80 billion marks to victims of the Holocaust, including payments to individual survivors and hundreds of millions to Israel in endeavors to

Wiedergutmachung, or “make things good again.”68 Not all Germans accepted reparations to

Jews, however. Some, still claiming that the Holocaust was not their fault, only wanted to return property to German Jews that had been stolen from them during the war.69 Susan Neiman cites that “this was a matter of restitution, not reparations.”70 Historian Tony Judt echoed this point, arguing that Germans were divided between those who only wanted to prosecute Nazis who committed war crimes and those who wanted to leave average Germans alone.71

No matter which group Germans sided with, though, awareness became a monumental step in processing the horrors of the war. German journalist Volker Ullrich points out that the refrain

“Wir haben nichts gewusst!” (We didn’t know anything about it!) was heard so often in postwar

Germany that some observers linked it to a new German national anthem.72 On a similar note,

66 Neiman, Learning from the Germans, 313. 67 German Guilt, Lecture, Dr. Robert Sackett, 21 November 2019 68 Neiman, Learning from the Germans, 312. 69 Neiman, Learning from the Germans, 313. 70 Neiman, Learning from the Germans, 315. 71 Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (New York and London: Penguin, 2006), 271. 72 Johnson, Nazi Terror, 450.

Harris 36 historian Eric A. Johnson reports that even today “more than fifty years after the war ended, one can still encounter this refrain, for the shroud of guilt that the Holocaust cast in the early 1940s still hangs over the new German nation and still clouds the German people’s national identify.”73

It was only in the 1970s when efforts turned to shifting national identify from deliberate denial to communal consciousness and action, especially with Americans, who played a pivotal role in educating both themselves and the Germans about the gravity of Nazi atrocities.

Historian Ian Kershaw notes that in 1978 a major breakthrough occurred with a four-part, prime-time television series called Holocaust, which 100 million Americans viewed. The following year in West Germany nearly 20 million Germans watched the Holocaust series.

According to public opinion polls, Germans empathized with the Jewish victims and acknowledged the brutality of Nazi crimes on a scale unprecedented at the time. Direct action followed this surge in public memory when the following year the Federal Parliament, the

Bundestag, abolished the stature of limitations on war criminals, permitting Nazi perpetrators to stand trial for their crimes against humanity. Kershaw argues that the film was a catalyst in getting the Parliament to end the statute of limitations, resulting in aggressive efforts to track down Nazi criminals.74

Most Americans, on the other hand, did not regret their treatment of Jews during the war, including President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who critics claimed did little during his presidency to aid imperiled Jews. Roosevelt believed that his hands were tied by strict immigration quotas established by the US Congress in 1924, which favored white Ayran peoples

73 Johnson, Nazi Terror, 451. 74 Kershaw, The Global Age, 349.

Harris 37 from northern Europe while disfavoring non-Ayran peoples like Jews from eastern Europe.75 The

US Congress mirrored national sentiment where Americans looked upon Jews as being inferior to the predominant white population in the United States. Jews were not passive bystanders to

American racism, however. They challenged US immigration policies and countered racial stereotypes about Jewish people, particularly stereotypes suggesting that Jews were greedy, money-oriented, and materialistic.76

Americans countered by reiterating their support for strict racial quotas limiting the number of Jews entering the United States. Overcome by intense feelings of antisemitism not unlike

Germans during the 1930s, Americans also opined that Jews were trying to force them into war.77 Moreover, they feared that Jews would compete with them for scarce jobs during a Great

Depression when nearly a quarter of US citizens were already out of work. Patrick J. Maney, author of The Roosevelt Presence: The Life and Legacy of FDR, cites that in one poll upward of

80 percent of the public opposed allowing greater number of European Jews to enter America.”78

Maney further notes that “anti-Semitism helped shape prevailing sentiments, but so did fears that new immigrants would intensify competition for already scarce jobs and that Hitler would infiltrate their ranks with spies and saboteurs.”79

75 Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman, FDR and the Jews (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 2. For US immigration laws, see Roger Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants Since 1882 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004), 30, 49-56, 113. 76 German Guilt, Lecture, Dr. Robert Sackett, 21 November 2019, see also Breitman and Lichtman, FDR and the Jews, 108, 146, 179. 77 Whitman, Hitler’s American Model, 108-109; Breitman and Lichtman, FDR and the Jews, 179. 78 Patrick J. Maney, The Roosevelt Presence: The Life and Legacy of FDR (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 118. 79 Maney, Roosevelt Presence, 118.

Harris 38 Competition for jobs, then, as well as restrictive immigration laws that favored Aryan peoples from northern Europe, prompted FDR to dismiss in 1939 Jewish refugees onboard the SS

St. Louis.80 This stark decision had devastating consequences. After FDR turned them away, two thirds of Jews onboard the SS St. Louis would die in German concentration camps because they had to return to German-controlled territories in eastern Europe.81 FDR profoundly regretted this action, but overall, a stubborn American population, hardened by years of antisemitism, clung to their racial hierarchy of only wanting to permit Aryan peoples within their ranks. Restrictive immigration quotas limiting the number of Jews (and other peoples) from non-Ayran nations remained in effect until the mid-1960s.82

Nevertheless, FDR was not indifferent to the suffering of Jewish people. He founded the

War Refuge Board, established in his fourth term as president. In turn, the War Refuge Board helped save as many as 200,000 Jewish lives.83 It stands to reason that FDR did this as a last- ditch effort to appease his own guilt for not acting sooner, or for not challenging a racist

Congress who implemented draconian immigration laws. He was already in his fourth term as president with declining health. The War Refuge Board may have been his way to channel his regret for not acting to save more lives during his first three terms as president.84

The Jews were not the only people to fall victim to FDR’s poor decisions. FDR signed

Executive order 9066 in 1942 after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Consequently, Japanese Americans were targeted on the Pacific coast as the government claimed

80 Breitman and Lichtman, FDR and the Jews, 3. 81 German Guilt, Lecture, Dr. Robert Sackett, 21 November 2019 82 Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 132-135; Breitman and Lichtman, FDR and the Jews, 139. 83 Breitman and Lichtman, FDR and the Jews, 325. 84 Breitman and Lichtman, FDR and the Jews, 309; Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life (New York: Penguin, 2018), 549.

Harris 39 they were a threat to national sovereignty and security. In contrast, few or no Germans or Italians were targeted, though one could argue that they were just as a threat to national security as

Japanese Americans were. Racial profiling played a significant role in the Roosevelt administration’s decision to put thousands of Japanese Americans in internment camps. It is also important to note that all three branches of the US government were complicit in FDR’s racist order targeting persons of Japanese ancestry. The US Congress upheld FDR’s executive order and the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Japanese internment in the historic cases of

Hirabayashi v. United States (1943) and Korematsu v. United States (1944).85

No significant opposition to internment developed among Americans, though some were concerned about the breech of civil liberties.86 Seventy percent of the 120,000 internees were

American citizens even though there is no evidence that any of them were spies for the Japanese government—a claim that some in the FDR administration abrasively peddled.87 Robert Dallek, author of Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life, notes that the “long standing racial antagonism only reinforced impulses to punish Japanese Americans for Japan’s military aggression.”88 As

Dallek persuasively argues, these actions were purely based on racism, evidenced by local government officials like Wyoming Governor Nels Smith who brazenly noted “if you bring

Japanese into my state, I promise you they will be hanging from every tree.”89 Subsequently, the

American Civil Liberties Union labeled the internment camps as the greatest breech of civil liberties in American history.90

85 Daniels, Prisoners Without Trial, 59. 86 Maney, Roosevelt Presence, 161. 87 Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 454. 88 Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 455. 89 Smith, as quoted in Daniels, Prisoners Without Trial, 57. 90 Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 625.

Harris 40 After the war ended in 1945, and well into the 1980s, US government officials in the Reagan administration were hesitant to issue formal apologies and potential reparations to Japanese

Americans who were placed in dozens of internment camps scattered throughout the American

West. Still entrenched in their racist ideologies from the 1940s, some US government officials struggled to acknowledge wrongdoing; some still saw interment as a justified wartime measure.

Because some in the Reagan administration clung to an American Aryan hierarchy, they balked at apologizing to Japanese Americans. Nonetheless, some Japanese Americans wanted a formal apology from Congress, some monetary compensation, while others both.91 Similar to the

German reparations paid to Jews, the first step of acting on regret became awareness—and

Japanese activists like Fred Korematsu, himself a survivor of the internment camps, provided it in spades. Korematsu and other internees offered highly emotional testimonies in US courts in the late 1980s, which raised awareness for the suffering they endured. Acknowledgment, following a similar process the Germans experienced, became the first step for Americans to correct their corrosive policies that disfavored a race of people not in America’s racial hierarchy.

This led to feelings of regret by some American leaders and the first checks were signed on

October 9, 1990, more than forty-eight years after the mass incarceration of Japanese

Americans.92

Guilt, shame, grief, and regret manifested in many forms in the decades that followed the world’s bloodiest war. For some, like Eric Lüth, regret was a gradual emotion that resulted in his devotion to pacifism and protests in postwar Germany. Others, like FDR, gradually came to regret his actions for not doing more to alleviate Jewish suffering, which, in turn, prompted him

91 Daniels, Prisoners Without Trial, 92. 92 Daniels, Prisoners Without Trial, 105.

Harris 41 to establish the War Refugee Board at the end of his presidency. Even more, regret permeated the American conscience for what Americans had done to their fellow citizens, particularly

Japanese Americans, who suffered immeasurably for having lost their property and businesses.

One commonality between the Nazis and Americans was their motives. More specifically, the Americans’ rejection of Jews onboard the SS St. Louis, the internment of the 120,000

Japanese Americans, and the brutal murder of millions of Jews by the Nazis were all fueled by racism. Nevertheless, both German and American activists channeled their repressed guilt through court cases, documentaries, and reparations. The German government, for example, lifted the 1979 statute of limitations so that Nazi war criminals could be prosecuted. Similarly, the American courts allowed the testimony of Fred Korematsu who challenged American internment policies. In that context, many Germans and Americans capitulated and expressed regret and remorse for their nations’. Regrettably, though, Germans and Americans only paid a heavy price for instituting their racist policies after the fact. As Roger Daniels memorably notes in Prisoners Without Trial, it is shameful to not learn from our past failures; worse, perhaps, is not stopping atrocities while they occur in real time.

Harris 42

The Last State to Honor MLK: Utah and the Quest for Racial Justice

By Madison S. Harris & Matthew L. Harris

Harris 43

November 2, 1983, was a historic day at the White House. There President Ronald

Reagan signed a bill to create a federal holiday on the third Monday in January named in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King. Dozens of states quickly followed suit. Within three years of the bill’s passage, seventeen states had recognized Martin Luther King Day. By 1999, all states had recognized the King holiday except Utah.i In Utah, as in other states, the federal holiday set off a fierce debate about how to honor the late civil rights leader. In 1986, the Utah legislature chose to honor the King federal holiday by calling it Human Rights Day, prompting significant pushback from state’s small, but noteworthy African American population. The refusal to honor

King also placed a glaring spotlight on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose past teachings about blacks made the Mormon-dominated Utah legislature a target of ridicule and scorn in the national news media. In 2000, after intense pressure from critics both within and outside of the state, Utah Governor Michael Leavitt signed a bill renaming Human Rights Day

Martin Luther King Day. “With this signing,” the NAACP cheerfully noted, “Utah became the last state to recognize the King holiday by name.”ii

Why did it take nearly fifteen years for Utah to honor the King holiday? We argue that a number of Utah lawmakers were influenced by the authoritative teachings of LDS apostle Ezra

Taft Benson and his close ally, Cleon Skousen, both of whom branded King a communist. Their writings, circulated widely within the LDS church, provide an important cultural context for how some state lawmakers viewed King and, more importantly, why they refused to recognize the holiday that bore his name.

* * *

Harris 44 Ezra Taft Benson served as a member of the LDS church’s elite Quorum of the Twelve

Apostles from 1943 to 1985 and was church president from 1985 to his death in 1994. From

1953 to 1961 he served as the Secretary of Agriculture in the Eisenhower administration, taking a leave of absence from his ecclesiastical responsibilities in the Quorum of the Twelve.

Like most of his fellow apostles, Benson believed that black people were descendants of

Cain, reflecting his deep-rooted support of LDS racial teachings.iii From 1852–1978 persons of

African ancestry were barred from sacred priesthood and temple rituals because of their “cursed” status.iv Church president Spencer W. Kimball lifted the priesthood and temple ban in 1978 through divine revelation in the Salt Lake Temple certifying that all men and women, regardless of race, could now enjoy the full privileges of Mormon liturgical rites. Kimball’s revelation came at a critical time. The NAACP had recently sued the Boy Scouts of America alleging that LDS racial policies prevented an African American boy from advancing in scout leadership in a Salt

Lake City troop sponsored by the church.v Moreover, the NAACP had pressured the church to lift the priesthood and temple ban, proclaiming that Mormon racial doctrine was a barrier to getting civil rights legislation passed in Utah.vi

The church’s inaction on civil rights frustrated members of the NAACP. The Utah legislature, in fact, had opposed various civil rights bills in Utah prior to 1965.vii The LDS church also rejected civil rights bills or at least preferred to remain silent when lawmakers discussed them. Neither church leaders nor lawmakers believed that bills preventing discrimination in jobs and housing were moral issues and therefore they refused to act. This induced vigorous pushback from NAACP president Johnie Driver, who opined that blacks could not get decent housing or adequate employment in Utah “because of the official L.D.S. Church doctrine of exclusion of Negroes from the priesthood.”viii

Harris 45 Driver and his allies pressured the LDS church leadership to produce a statement in 1963 supporting civil rights. It was a tepid endorsement, offering neither support for specific civil rights bills at the federal level nor support at the local level. Clearly frustrated with the LDS church, Driver led a well-organized NAACP protest at Temple Square in 1965, which prompted church officials to reassess their strategy remaining silent on civil rights bills. Church leaders feared that civil rights legislation would break down racial barriers and lead to interracial marriage.ix Nonetheless, in 1965, with LDS church support, the Utah state legislature passed an

“Anti-Discrimination Act,” prohibiting discrimination in public housing and jobs.x Ezra Taft

Benson, then an apostle, was not among the supporters. In fact, he opposed any civil rights legislation, placing him at odds with the First Presidency, the highest governing body in the LDS church. He asserted that the Civil Rights movement was a communist plot secretly masterminded by the Kremlin. He also claimed that Martin Luther King was a communist agent.xi

Benson’s conspiracy views permeated most of his public discourses in the 1960s, not least his views on Dr. King. His worldview, informed by his eight years in the Eisenhower administration when many Americans feared communist expansion around the world, derived from two principle figures whose works he read and admired. The first was J. Edgar Hoover, the longstanding director of the FBI and the second was Robert Welch, the controversial founder of the John Birch Society, the most extreme anticommunist organization in the United States.xii In his sermons, Benson frequently quoted from Hoover’s book Masters of Deceit and became particularly alarmed by the director’s bold assertion that subversives lurked within the United

States. This included “high-ranking statesmen, public officials, educators, ministers of the

Gospel, professional men” and others who “have been duped into helping Communism.”xiii More

Harris 46 specifically, Hoover claimed that King was among the subversives because he maintained close ties with communists within his inner circle and agitated for racial and economic equality.xiv

Welch was no less influential on Benson. He alleged that the Civil Rights movement was a communist plot and that President Eisenhower and members of his cabinet were also communists. Welch made these fantastical claims within the pages of The Politician, a book that

Benson found both riveting and alarming.xv

Thus, influenced by Hoover and Welch, Benson denounced the Civil Rights movement before countless civic groups in the United States. In 1963 he delivered a number of stinging addresses to Latter-day Saint audiences in which he vilified civil rights legislation, then pending in Congress, as part of a “pattern for the Communist takeover of America.” Benson also excoriated the NAACP, informing his fellow apostles that the civil rights organization was

“made up of men who are affiliated with one to a dozen communist-front organizations.”xvi

The First Presidency reprimanded Benson after the Idaho congressman Ralph Harding, a practicing Latter-day Saint, complained about Benson’s extremist views. On the floor of the US

Congress, Harding condemned Benson for “utilizing his high church office to promote an extremist ideology which cast aspersions on our elected officials and other fellow citizens.”xvii

Harding’s strong denunciation of Benson garnered unfavorable publicity in the national news media, prompting the First Presidency to dispatch Benson to Frankfurt, Germany, where he presided over the European states mission from 1964–1965.xviii

Though church leaders hoped that Benson’s new church assignment would “purge” him of his far-right political leanings, Benson returned to the United States in 1965 as determined as ever to expose the Civil Rights movement as a communist front.xix Not long after his return he informed his fellow apostles that the Civil Rights movement “is being directed and supported

Harris 47 and prompted by agents of the communist party.” Earlier that year in the general conference of the LDS church he asked Latter-day Saints what they were doing to fight the Civil Rights movement. “Before I left for Europe I warned how the communists were using the Civil Rights movement to promote revolution and eventual take-over of this country,” he declared. “When are we going to wake up?”xx

In 1966, as dozens of urban revolts erupted across the United States, and as scores of disillusioned African Americans began chanting “Black Power,” Benson intensified his efforts to denounce the Civil Rights movement as a communist plot. In a devotional assembly at Brigham

Young University, he excoriated Martin Luther King for lecturing “at a communist training school,” soliciting “funds through communist sources,” and hiring “a communist as a top-level aide” and he condemned him as someone “who unquestionably parallels the communist line.”xxi

The apostle continued his assault on the Civil Rights movement the following year in his church’s general conference. In a defiant 1967 address, Benson declared that black Marxists were poised to foment a revolution. His address was prompted when riots erupted in south central Los Angeles between police and blacks, leaving scores of people dead and millions of dollars in property damage.xxii Benson also besmirched King after he was assassinated in 1968 by circulating a private memo to all general authorities urging them not to celebrate King’s life. The apostle alleged that King “had been affiliated” with dozens of “officially recognized Communist fronts,” including persons who served as “top level” aids to the Communist Party.xxiii

Benson’s most strident anti-King sermon appeared in the Improvement Era, the official church magazine and was republished by the LDS-owned Deseret Book and again in a book entitled An Enemy Hath Done This. His writings were sold in countless bookstores across the

United States and reprinted in LDS church manuals for youth and adult Sunday School.xxiv Even

Harris 48 the New Yorker magazine commented on the ubiquity of Benson’s work, marveling that BYU sold his pamphlet titled “Civil Rights—Tool of Communist Deception.”xxv It is not a stretch to say that Latter-day Saints were inundated with Benson’s anti-King views, forged over a ten-year period during the midst of the turbulent civil rights years.

Benson’s sermonizing against King ended abruptly in 1969 after he assailed critics in the

LDS general conference for attacking “the church for not being in the forefront of the so-called civil rights movement.”xxvi The timing was not coincidental. Senior apostles reined him in during the midst of an embarrassing public relations debacle when dozens of universities refused to compete against BYU athletic teams in protest of Mormon racial teachings.xxvii The university’s refusal to recruit black students, moreover, gave negative publicity to the LDS church.xxviii Church leaders refused to admit blacks, fearing that their presence on campus would lead to interracial dating. In 1968, the year the protests began, only three black students attended

BYU, which gave the perception to outsiders that black people were persona non grata at the church institution.xxix

If Benson’s general conference sermon in 1969 marked the last time he expressed his anti-civil rights views in public, they did not go away. His writings still circulated in LDS bookstores; more importantly, surrogates promoted his views, contributing to anti-King sentiment. Cleon Skousen, his close friend and ally, echoed the apostle in “The Communist

Attack on the Mormons,” in which he drew heavily from Benson’s 1967 general conference address claiming that communists had organized the athletic protests. Skousen asserted that

“communist-oriented revolutionary groups have been spearheading the wave of protests and violence directed toward Brigham Young University and the Mormon Church. With Marxism

Harris 49 and Maoism as their ideological base and terror tactics as their methods,” he boldly declared,

“they have inflamed some and forced others to join in their revolutionary violent movement.”xxx

While Benson stopped speaking publicly against the Civil Rights movement in 1969, his writings about King had unintended consequences. After President Reagan signed the bill to honor King—a result of intense lobbying by the NAACP and other liberal groups—Benson’s anti-King sermons became a flash point as Mormons in Utah and Arizona debated the King holiday. The federal holiday forced some Mormons to evaluate their biases toward King, which were confused by the mixed messages the top LDS leadership sent about the Civil Rights movement. While Benson adamantly opposed civil rights, the First Presidency had endorsed it in general conference in 1963, citing that that there was “no doctrine, belief or practice” in the church “that is intended to deny the enjoyment of full civil rights by any person regardless of race, color, or creed.”xxxi Likewise, the Deseret News, the church-owned newspaper, supported civil rights in an editorial piece in 1965 as did a First Presidency statement in 1969.xxxii

Nevertheless, despite LDS church support for civil rights, the federal bill to recognize the

King holiday prompted a backlash not only in Utah, but across the nation, especially from

Birchers, who lambasted it for celebrating the life of a communist.xxxiii Some critics cited monetary concerns, claiming the holiday would cost taxpayers millions of dollars with a paid day off for federal employees. Others questioned why King would be one of the select few to get a holiday in their name. For still others, the federal holiday would keep his vision of racial and economic equality alive, which they rejected.xxxiv

In Utah, the opposition was particularly intense, thanks in part to Benson and Skousen, whose criticisms of King in the Freemen’s Digest had an undeniable impact on Utahns predisposed to conspiracy theories. The Freemen’s Digest was the official magazine of the

Harris 50 Freemen Institute, the ultraconservative organization that Skousen started in 1971. Skousen was a beloved figure in Utah and had an immense following nationally. Among the forty-six books he authored a number were national bestsellers, including The Naked Communist, which joined J.

Edgar Hoover’s the Masters of Deceit as the most prominent anticommunist book published in the 1950s. Skousen had also been on the Birch Society national speakers’ circuit in the 1960s, joining Fred Schwarz, Billy Hargis and other prominent anticommunist speakers.xxxv Latter-day

Saints in the Intermountain West attended his “Freemen seminars” and quoted from his writings in church Sunday School and sacrament meetings. A number of Utah lawmakers also attended the seminars and some even proposed legislation that reflected their training at these seminars.

“The Freemen Institute is a good influence in the [Republican] party,” quipped one lawmaker,

“and I hope it will have more influence.”xxxvi

Indeed, by the early 1980s, many Utah lawmakers were steeped in Skousen’s ideas and thoroughly immersed in his writings. The church-owned Deseret News commented that the

“Freemen Institute [was] a burgeoning political force” in state politics. The Ogden-Standard

Examiner marveled that Utah senator Orrin Hatch, Utah congressman Dan Marriott, Idaho congressman George Hansen, Arizona congressman Eldon Rudd, and Ezra Taft Benson, then president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, were all counted as staunch Freemen supporters. The Ogden-Standard Examiner went on to explain that “Several elected officials [in

Utah]—among them Democrats and Republicans, liberal and conservatives—said the Freemen

Institute has emerged in recent years as a strong force at all levels of government.”xxxvii

In fact, so great and so pervasive was the Freemen Institute’s influence on Utah lawmakers that Jim Considine, a Democratic congressman from Salt Lake, dourly noted that

“We have identified twenty-three to twenty-five graduates of the Freemen Institute in the House

Harris 51 and another ten to fifteen Republicans who are sympathetic.”xxxviii When Skousen died in 2006,

Orrin Hatch touted his influence, affirming that “Cleon played a significant role in the political and governmental arena throughout Utah, our Nation, and even the world.” Conservative talk show host Glenn Beck similarly touted Skousen’s influence.xxxix

It comes as no surprise, then, given his ultraconservative views and previous denunciations of King, that Skousen strongly opposed the King holiday. In the January 1984 issue of the Freemen’s Digest, devoted to the civil rights leader, Skousen excoriated King in an attempt to influence Mormons to oppose the holiday. “[King] surrounded himself with many long-time members of the Communist party machinery,” Skousen scoffed, offering no evidence.xl A close ally of Skousen’s, Willard Woods, claimed within the same pages that King

“had close associations over many years with quite a number of communists” further alleging that there was “an enormous amount of F.B.I. material on King [that] is being kept secret for 50 years at the National Archives” that would reveal his communist affiliations. Furthermore,

Woods asserted that King was not a role model for Americans nor worthy of having a national holiday named after him like George Washington. Why would Americans, he asked, want to celebrate the life of man “who courted violence . . . broke the law . . . and whose personal life was so revolting that it cannot be discussed”?xli

Nor is it a surprise that Benson supported the Freemen Institute, given his close friendship with Skousen and their mutual interest in conspiracy theories. Benson, in fact, spoke at many Freemen Institute functions and attended many of their events, despite the First

Presidency cracking down on Skousen for using LDS meetinghouses to promote the Freemen

Institute’s extreme right-wing agenda.xlii In addition, Benson recommended Skousen’s books in

Harris 52 general conference and touted his work in private communications with Latter-day Saints. Both men believed that King was “a top Kremlin agent.”xliii

In 1985, Benson’s strong convictions about King became a matter of controversy following his ordination as the LDS church president. The federal holiday honoring King’s life brought Benson’s anti-black views firmly into the open, even if he remained silent about King during his church presidency years. Members of the church’s small, but outspoken black population found his views about King particularly harmful. In 1985, just months before Benson became the church president, Chester Lee Hawkins, a black Latter-day Saint, blamed Benson for conveying the impression to church members that the Civil Rights movement “was rotten.”

“Ezra Taft Benson kind of messed up the whole ball game,” Hawkins sighed. “The black people knew him, about him, and the John Birch Society. They thought they had enough of that bunch. I am not going to blame the Church for the John Birch Society because of one man. That wouldn’t be right [but] I have to be frank and honest that so many people got the impression that the John Birch Society was running the Church.”xliv

Benson’s strong opinions about King further emerged after Utah lawmakers began debating the King holiday. When in 1985 Terry Lee Williams, the first African American to serve in the Utah State Senate, introduced a bill to recognize the civil rights leader his colleagues refused to even allow a vote on the bill. “It never saw the light of day,” Williams complained. “I mean it didn’t even get out of committee to be discussed.” It was “just totally nonexistent.”xlv

The following year Williams resubmitted the bill after forty states had already voted in favor of the King holiday. His second attempt was no less controversial.xlvi In a speech on the

Senate floor, Williams starkly noted that “this is the kind of bill that brings out the best in us and also the worst in us. And that challenged people. Because when I said the best, they would smile

Harris 53 and when I said the worst, they would frown because they had to look inside of themselves to understand why they individually were not supportive of the bill and that was something that we dragged them kicking and screaming to do.”xlvii

Williams pressed his fellow state senators to explain why they opposed the King holiday.

“They came up with every possible argument . . . to defeat the bill instead of speaking their true inner feelings,” he frankly noted. They were bigoted. Some of them were out and out racists.”

They did not believe that what King “did in the civil rights movement did anything for Utah.”

On the Senate floor, he probed further. “We need to recognize whether we have bigotries inside of ourselves or not.” He asked them to evaluate their “unspoken prejudices.” Williams recalled that his colleagues “were just squirming in their seats” when he addressed them, because they did not have the courage to speak “their true feelings.” They “refused to take the microphone to speak these things and yet they couldn’t bear to hear me speak them.”xlviii

Publicly, Williams’ colleagues claimed to oppose the holiday on financial grounds, yet

Williams knew why they opposed it: they believed that King was a communist. The outspoken senator postulated that his colleagues lacked the courage to express their convictions on the record because they did not want to disparage King after a majority of states had voted to honor him. Off the record, though, they spoke unrestrained, speculating that King had “secret records with the CIA [and] FBI,” which revealed his communist affiliations, although a recently-released book drew on King’s FBI files to counter the claim.xlix Recognizing that Benson, Skousen, and the Birchers, not coincidentally, had made the same claim against King over the years, Williams averred that some of his colleagues were “bigoted” and racist in their views.l

Frustrated but not discouraged, Williams invited Coretta Scott King, the widow of Dr.

King, to speak to the legislature. King implored the Senate to honor her late husband. “It is

Harris 54 important that we teach our young people, because they are the ones that are going to be hopefully picking up the torch and carrying it forward in the future,” she calmly noted.li Her message met resistance in some quarters of the House and Senate. One lawmaker “refused to greet [her].” Others muttered in private that King’s husband “was an infidel” who “associated with the communist party” and “preached treason.”lii Yet her visit to the state capitol energized

Williams and redoubled his efforts to get the bill through the Senate. Like King, Williams appealed to many of his colleagues’ desires to uphold the reputation of the LDS church.

According to Williams, who was not a Latter-day Saint, critics would shun Mormon missionaries when they proselytized: “Oh, yeah, you’re from that state that didn’t pass the Martin Luther King holiday, aren’t you?”liii

Williams’s colleagues vigorously resisted the bill, deploring his tactics and methods. The

King holiday bill was “dead in the water,” he lamented, and posed little chance of getting passed during the 1986 legislative session. Senators tabled the bill, which essentially killed it.liv

Dejected, Williams left the state Senate later that year after having lost in the Democratic primaries in a bid for the US Senate.

The bill experienced a different fate in the House. After Williams proposed the bill in the

Senate, he sought a sponsor in the House. “We looked for sponsors in the House and got beat up pretty badly,” recalled Reverend France Davis, chairman of the “Committee for the Martin

Luther King, Jr. Holiday in Utah” and one of the most respected African American leaders in the

Beehive state. Fierce opposition in the House prompted Davis to challenge Salt Lake City congressman Robert Sykes to a debate on “Take Two,” a prominent news program in Utah.

Sykes initially opposed the King holiday, but by “the end of the debate,” Davis remembered,

Harris 55 Sykes was “convinced by my argument” and agreed to sponsor the bill. After intense debate in the House, the bill passed 48-20, thanks in part to the indefatigable lobbying efforts of Sykes.lv

The King holiday bill was now at a standstill. It passed in the House but failed in the

Senate. Recognizing the impasse, Representative James R. Moss from Orem proposed a bill to honor “Utah Peoples’ Day” in place of the Martin Luther King Holiday. His bill called on

Utahns “to remember and reflect upon their ethnic and cultural heritage” and “to participate with the rest of the nation in celebrating the lessons of tolerance, respect, equality, and opportunity taught so eloquently by Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.” However, much to his astonishment,

Moss’s bill never made it out of the House committee.lvi

To break the gridlock, several representatives then forged a compromise bill naming the proposed Martin Luther King Holiday “Human Rights Day,” which passed unanimously in both branches of the legislature. Utahns had the option, Representative Sykes recalled, of calling it

Martin Luther King Day or Human Rights Day. Without fanfare or extensive media coverage, the bill simply stated that the “third Monday of January [would] be observed as the anniversary of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., also known as Human Rights Day.”lvii

Predictably, the compromise bill neither satisfied advocates for the King holiday nor silenced critics. Utah’s state delegation, in fact, was divided over the federal holiday. Senator

Jake Garn opposed it, “citing enormous expense and national tradition,” while Senator Orrin

Hatch, who initially opposed it, “changed his position in support of honoring King.” Most lawmakers in the Utah State House opposed it for the same reasons that Garn did—the expense of giving state employees a holiday off and King’s perceived lack of contribution to the state.

Representative Kaye Browning, a Republican from Weber and Davis counties, even went so far as to question “whether King deserves the special recognition saying he can think of other blacks

Harris 56 who were more outstanding than King.” Similarly, Representative Ray Schmutz, a Republican from Washington County, remembered: “If we pass it, we're saying in essence that Martin

Luther King is a better man than both Lincoln and Washington put together. Or at least he’s equal to it. I don't believe and I don't think you'll believe it. Second point is that we're giving

Martin Luther King the credit for the work done by many, many people.”lviii

For Rev. Davis, the objections were disingenuous and flat-out embarrassing. They were a

“scapegoat” to obfuscate why lawmakers really opposed the King holiday. The “real reason,” he sneered, was “racial prejudice.” “Most Utahns have decided that Martin Luther King Day is a black holiday and because of the smaller numbers of blacks in the state it should not be celebrated.”lix

In 1986, three years after President Reagan signed the King holiday into law, it was clear that it had little chance in getting passed in Utah, especially after the legislature passed the compromise bill giving Utahns the option of calling it Human Rights Day. What was also clear is that the LDS church hierarchy did not want to weigh in on what was clearly a controversial matter. “Simply put, the Mormon Church was in a bind on the King issue placed there by the racist pronouncements of Ezra Taft Benson,” remarked Steve Benson, the president’s outspoken grandson.lx Prudence dictated that the church remain silent on the King holiday, despite some

Latter-day Saints writing to President Benson asking if the church could “take a strong stand” on the King holiday, which “would remove . . . the world’s perception of the Church as being racially biased due to the Church’s previous policy on priesthood holders.”lxi

There is no evidence that Benson supported the King holiday. In fact, Benson maintained close ties with Birch officials during his church presidency and read Birch literature, making it unlikely that he changed his views about the civil rights leader.lxii But neither did Benson direct

Harris 57 the legislature to oppose the holiday. Indeed, his views about King were well known. Forrest

Crawford, co-founder and former chair of the Utah Martin Luther King, Jr. Human Rights

(MLK) Commission, established in 1991, candidly acknowledged the difficulty in getting the legislature to support the King holiday: “In 1986, some legislators were . . . uncomfortable with

Dr. King as a person, because of King’s alleged communist affiliation and his views on Vietnam.

They felt that King’s name was not worthy to be on the bill.”lxiii

Paradoxically, as Utah lawmakers opposed the King holiday, some BYU students and administrators at the LDS-owned university waged a public relations campaign in 1986 to support it. “The Rev. King deserves to be recognized by Utah,” noted the headline in the Daily

Universe, the campus newspaper. “Students rallying for awareness of King’s mission,” ran another. King was a “great man who dared to dream and worked to fulfill that dream,” declared students in letters to the editor. BYU held a campus-wide rally on the day of the national King holiday to nudge the legislature to rename the holiday after him.lxiv John Fife, academic vice president at BYU, referred to King as “a man dedicated to a principle of equality” in a letter to faculty. He acknowledged campus support for the King holiday and encouraged students and faculty to attend the rally.lxv

To bolster their support, BYU officials invited Coretta Scott King to visit campus in

January 1986, a move vigorously protested by Birch Mormons in Utah County. They wrote letters to President Benson, to the BYU Board of Trustees and to BYU administrators, imploring them not to bring a perceived communist to campus. As one Bircher complained: “I wish to register a strong protest toward the administration of Brigham Young University in allowing that institution to be utilized to further a communist cause.”lxvi

Harris 58 Utah’s refusal to honor the King holiday was further exacerbated in 1987 when Arizona

Governor Evan Mecham—a staunch supporter of the Birch Society, devoted member of the

Freemen Institute and a close friend of Benson and Skousen—rescinded the King holiday in

Arizona.lxvii Benson, in fact, appeared with Mecham on the podium during his inauguration and reportedly “set him apart” in the Arizona Temple as Arizona’s next governor. Such close ties to the Mormon church president bolstered Mecham’s confidence to rescind Martin Luther King

Day, which he did through executive order just weeks after he was sworn into office in 1987.lxviii

Mecham’s executive order caused an uproar within the Mormon community in Arizona because it dredged up old wounds about the church’s past treatment of blacks and because it appeared to undermine church president Spencer W. Kimball’s historic revelation in 1978 permitting black men to hold the priesthood.lxix The matter quickly devolved in 1989 when an embarrassing letter was leaked to the Phoenix Gazette revealing Ezra Taft Benson’s opposition to King. Julian Sanders, an ultraconservative Mormon from Arizona, addressed the letter to Ezra

Taft Benson in his official capacity as church president. Sanders requested that Benson produce a statement supporting Mecham’s executive order. Most troubling, however, the letter quoted from

Benson’s earlier writings when, as an apostle, he besmirched King as “the leader of the so-called civil rights movement.” The letter went on to say that King had “lectured at a Communist training school, . . . solicited funds through Communist sources, . . . hired a Communist as a top- level aide, . . . affiliated with Communist fronts, . . . often praised in the Communist press, and who unquestionably parallels the Communist line.” Saunders, moreover, compared King to

“Lucifer” branding the late civil rights icon “a liar, adulterer and thief.”lxx

Steve Benson, Ezra Taft Benson’s grandson, leaked the letter to the press, clearly revealing divisions within the Latter-day Saint community and with his grandfather. A Pulitzer-

Harris 59 Prize winning cartoonist at the Arizona Republic, Steve enthusiastically embraced the King holiday in Arizona and marched in support of it.lxxi His pro-King views angered his parents who viewed Steve’s support of the King holiday as belligerent to the wishes of his grandfather.

“Stephen, your grandfather would not have approved of that,” his mother candidly noted, lamenting Steve’s participation at pro-King marches and rallies.lxxii Steve also produced a string of some fifty cartoons vilifying Mecham for rescinding the holiday and for exposing his corruption in office, which put him further at odds with his grandfather.lxxiii

A year into Mecham’s governorship critics accused him of misusing state funds and obstructing justice during the investigation, prompting the Arizona legislature to impeach him after only a short period in office.lxxiv Dozens of Mecham loyalists declared his innocence and lashed out at Steve Benson for stoking discord in his cartoons by depicting the governor depraved and profligate. His critics, meanwhile, lambasted Mecham for corruption and branded him a racist for rescinding the King holiday. News outlets reported these stark divisions within the Mormon community casting a shadow over Ezra Taft Benson’s church presidency.

Newsweek Magazine called it “Arizona’s Holy War”; the New York Times declared that

“Mormons [were] Split by Turmoil over Church Member Mecham.”lxxv

Although President Benson remained silent throughout the Mecham imbroglio, the LDS public relations department responded to the publication of Sanders’ letter by affirming Benson’s love for all people regardless of “color, creed or political persuasion.”lxxvi If the Arizona episode was troubling enough, the church also had to deal with the continued fallout from Utah’s refusal to honor Martin Luther King Day. The church public relations team answered critics by explaining that LDS church employees received paid time off for the King holiday as did employees at BYU.lxxvii In addition, church officials dispatched Richard Lindsay, managing

Harris 60 director of Public Communications for the church, to deliver a tribute to King at the Utah State

Capitol Building on the King holiday in January 1988. There Lindsay informed his audience that even though King had moral failings, “his vision was founded on faith.” Lindsay added, “Despite the oppression he saw, the bombings, the beatings, the blatant injustice that masqueraded in the robes of the law, he knew that god is a just and loving Father to all mankind.”lxxviii

The pressure to rename the holiday after King intensified during the 1990s. Some Utahns waged letter-writing campaigns to the state newspapers. One noted, for example, that “It is with a mixture of sadness and anger that I watch the elected officials of the state arrogantly and disrespectfully ignore a national holiday of major importance. I watch as the governor addresses the all-white, essentially all-male, overwhelmingly Mormon Legislature without paying a scintilla of respect to the slain leader.”lxxix Others, such as the Martin Luther King, Jr.

Commission, was a public advocate of naming the state holiday for King and lobbied the House and Senate to make the change. Even the church-owned and operated newspaper the Deseret

News ran favorable stories about King. One headline noted that “King’s Teachings for Social

Justice Still Ring True Today.” Another asked: “Are Legislators Doing Right by [the Civil]

Rights Leader?”lxxx

By the late 1990s, however, the winds in Utah were beginning to change. A younger generation of Mormons did not appear to harbor the negative perceptions about black people that their parents did.lxxxi Other factors contributed too. First, forty-nine states had already accepted the King holiday. Utah was the last holdout, which prompted significant pressure on Utah lawmakers to adopt it.lxxxii Second, Ezra Taft Benson died in 1994 making it easier for top- ranking church leaders to open dialogue with black leaders both nationally and locally. Third, the

LDS church began to crack down on right-wing extremism including persons who expressed

Harris 61 racist views.lxxxiii And fourth, the NAACP increased pressure on the LDS church hierarchy to support the holiday.lxxxiv

All of these factors converged by the mid-1990s when Gordon B. Hinckley, a political moderate, became the LDS church president. A pivotal moment occurred in 1998 when he accepted an invitation to speak to the NAACP, the very group that Benson and Skousen had denounced as communist. Instrumental in this regard was Jeanetta Williams, president of the Salt

Lake branch of the NAACP and one of the most vocal proponents to rename Human Rights Day the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday. Though a Baptist, Williams understood the political climate in Utah well. Having lived in the Beehive state since 1988, she understood the difficulty, if not impossibility, of getting the legislature to adopt the holiday without the support of the LDS church, the most influential lobbying arm in the state.lxxxv

Securing Hinckley’s participation at the NAACP regional conference was a major coup for Williams and an astonishing about-face for the LDS church and the NAACP. While NAACP leaders had met with LDS officials over the years, it was a strained relationship at best, especially during the heady days of the Civil Rights movement when Benson and Skousen inundated Mormon audiences with screeds against King.lxxxvi “When I found out President

Hinkley accepted our invitation, I told his secretary to tell the president that he’d made my day,”

Williams jubilantly noted.lxxxvii

Hinckley’s speech, delivered on April 24, 1998, in Salt Lake City, thrilled Williams because it spoke to the needs of the African American community in Utah and because it signaled a new relationship between the LDS church and the NAACP.lxxxviii Hinckley’s gentle tone and measured words endeared him to his audience. He told the crowd of 250 that he had

“mingled widely with people of all races” and that “the world is my neighborhood, and its

Harris 62 peoples, regardless of status, are my friends and neighbors.”lxxxix The climactic moment occurred when Hinckley urged black fathers to pray with their families and to parent through love and respect. His address was “warmly received” with a standing ovation. NAACP leaders also honored him with the “NAACP Distinguished Service Award.”xc

Fresh off the successful NAACP conference, Williams probed further with Hinckley. In

1999, she hand-delivered a letter to his office asking him to support the Martin Luther King

Holiday. James E. Faust, Hinckley’s second counselor in the First Presidency, responded to the letter by calling Williams to inform her that although the church would not publicly support changing the name from Human Rights Day to the Martin Luther King Holiday church officials would instruct Deseret News and other church-owned affiliates, including the KSL radio and television stations, to run favorable editorials supporting the change. The news gratified

Williams. She recalled years later that “this was positive for me and the efforts for the name change.”xci

Pressure to support the King holiday also came from within the church. During

Hinckley’s address to the NAACP, Darius Gray, an African American Latter-day Saint and a prominent voice within the Mormon black community, gently pressured leaders to adopt the change. As Hinckley spoke to the NAACP, Gray leaned over to the general authority sitting next to him and whispered, “Why don’t we support the King holiday?” The general authority nodded in agreement and said that he would take it up with Hinckley. After a period of several months, and at about the same time that Williams had been working behind-the-scenes with church authorities to recognize the King holiday, Hinckley instructed church lobbyists to move on the name change, ever sensitive to Utah being the last holdout to honor the famed civil rights leader.xcii

Harris 63 The moment of reckoning came in January 2000 when Representative Duane Bordeaux, an African American from Salt Lake City and Senator Pete Suazo, a Hispanic American also from Salt Lake City, co-sponsored a bill to rename the holiday after King—all of this initiated by the persistent effort of Jeanetta Williams.xciii Pressure had been mounting for over a decade to change the name. Williams’ relentless activism along with a groundswell of support across the state forced the issue. But acceptance of the holiday was far from certain. Even Hinckley’s support did not guarantee passage of the bill. Mormon lawmakers, long steeped in anti-King rhetoric, struggled to support a man they deemed subversive. In anticipation of another raucous debate over the King holiday, Bordeaux and Suazo went on a media blitz to generate support for their bill. “Dr. King stood for non-violence and justice and equality for all people,” Boudreaux affirmed during a media interview. “If people truly understood what he stood for, what legacy he leaves, I think they would be more likely to vote for these bills.” Likewise, Suazo noted that

“Human Rights Day does not give due credit to the contributions of this great man. As a leader,

[Dr. King] raised the consciousness and the prejudice and discrimination, corporate advancement, and especially voting rights.”xciv

In 2000, on the federal holiday to honor King, Utahns celebrated his life through

“speeches, prayers, service projects, music, candles, bell-ringing,” the Deseret News reported.

Activists made “repeated requests to rename the holiday in Utah,” giving vigorous support to

Bordeaux and Suazo’s bill. At the same time, the NAACP honored King at a highly-publicized luncheon. Salt Lake branch president Jeanetta Williams thanked the legislators for sponsoring the state bill while her colleague, Edward Lewis, the master of ceremonies at the luncheon, read the federal bill that President Reagan signed into law in 1983.xcv Not least, support poured in from all over the country and across the state, from organizations ranging from the Utah Jazz and

Harris 64 the Japanese American Citizens League to the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce Board of

Governors and League of Women Voters. Most importantly, KSL, the church-owned and operated TV station, expressed support through an editorial, as did the Deseret News and the Salt

Lake Tribune.xcvi Undoubtedly these editorials played a significant role in getting grassroots’

Utahns to support the King holiday.

House Speaker Marty Stephens (R-Far West) was another important ally. Stephens became increasingly agitated with the negative publicity concerning the state’s inaction on the

King holiday and bluntly noted that supporting the proposed change “takes us out of the controversy.”xcvii Still, despite overwhelming bipartisan support for Bordeaux and Suazo’s bill, critics within the House caucus killed it, which they did through a committee vote 5-4. When

Stephens learned of the bill’s demise, he demanded a revote—this time it passed 6-4.xcviii When the bill reached the House floor it passed by a vote of 54-17; in the Senate 28-1. On March 16,

2000, Governor Michael Leavitt signed the bill into law designating the third Monday of January as the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday.xcix

Overwhelmed with joy, Duane Bordeaux and Pete Suazo could scarcely control their emotions. “This brings us in line with the rest of the union,” Bordeaux jubilantly noted. “We will continue to build from this and tackle other issues related to justice and equality for all people.”

Suazo happily noted that that King holiday would help Utahns fulfil the values of “justice, liberty and equality” enshrined in the Constitution. “Those were the promises of our forefathers, and Dr.

King raised the consciousness of the country to say that these principles applied to all people, regardless of race, creed or religion.”c

Meanwhile, eight years after Utah lawmakers changed Human Rights Day to the Martin

Luther King Holiday, LDS church president Gordon Hinckley quietly passed after a brief illness,

Harris 65 prompting Jeanetta Williams to reflect on Hinckley’s life and legacy. She fondly recalled his

“advocacy to rename Utah’s Human Rights Day in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.” “His backing,” she affirmed, “won praise from the NAACP and helped sell the Legislature on the name change.”ci But Williams knew that Hinckley was one voice among many in contributing to the passage of this important bill. Hinckley’s efforts, along with the tireless work of Terry

Williams, France Davis, Robert Sykes, Duane Bordeaux, Pete Suazo, and especially Jeanetta

Williams all played a critical role in getting the Utah legislature to honor a man it had once shunned.

Notes

We are grateful to Jeanetta Williams, president of the Salt Lake branch of the NAACP, and

Robert Sykes, former Utah congressman, for their support in the preparation of this article. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for the journal. Their insights and constructive suggestions have made this a better work.

i “Making of the King Holiday: A Chronology,” Martin Luther King Papers, King Center,

Atlanta, GA, http://www.thekingcenter.org/making-king-holiday; Jason Sokol, The Heavens

Might Crack: The Death and Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. (New York: Basic Books, 2018),

252; Matthew Dennis, “The Invention of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday,” in We Are What We

Celebrate: Understanding Holidays and Rituals, ed. Amitai Etzioni and Jared Bloom (New

York: New York University Press, 2004), 179–83.

Harris 66 ii Phil W. Petrie, “The MLK holiday: Branches work to make it work,” The Crisis 107 (May-

June 2000): 55. iii First Presidency counselor Hugh B. Brown appears to be the only member of the church hierarchy who rejected traditional Mormon racial teachings. See Matthew L. Harris and Newell

G. Bringhurst, eds., The Mormon Church and Blacks: A Documentary History (Urbana:

University of Illinois Press, 2015), 74–76; Edwin B. Firmage, ed., An Abundant Life: The

Memoirs of Hugh B. Brown, sec. ed. (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1999), 142. iv Two LDS apostles offered the most vivid expressions of Mormon racial teachings: Joseph

Fielding Smith, The Way to Perfection: Short Discourses on Gospel Themes, 5th ed. (Salt Lake

City: Genealogical Society of Utah, 1945), chaps. 15 and 16; and Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon

Doctrine (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1958), 102–3, 107–8, 476–77, 553–54. For scholarly appraisals of the priesthood and temple ban, see Lester E. Bush Jr., “Mormonism’s Negro

Doctrine: An Historical Overview,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 8 (Spring 1973):

11–68; W. Paul Reeve, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for

Whiteness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); Matthew L. Harris and Newell G.

Bringhurst, eds., The Mormon Church and Blacks: A Documentary History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015). v In 1974 the NAACP challenged Mormon racial teachings in a lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of

America. A Salt Lake City scout troop sponsored by the LDS church rejected a black scout member for a leadership position, citing that he could not hold the Aaronic Priesthood. For this discussion, see France Davis interview by Leslie G. Kelen, August 4, 1983, box 1, fd. 23,

Interview with Blacks in Utah, 1982-1988, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library,

Harris 67

University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah (hereafter JWML). Harris and Bringhurst, Mormon

Church and Blacks, 106, discusses the LDS church’s response to the lawsuit. vi James Dooley, at the time the branch president of the Salt Lake City chapter of the NAACP, recalled a meeting in the spring of 1978 in which he asked LDS church president Spencer W.

Kimball to lift the ban. See Dooley interview by Leslie G. Kelen, December 6, 1983, interview

8, tape 104, transcript p. 30, Everett L. Cooley Oral History Project, JWML. vii For Utah’s rejection of civil rights in the immediate post-WWII years, see “1961 Report: Utah

Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights,” reel 7, part 27 (Utah):

Selected Branch Files, Papers of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored

People (Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, 1991); and Wallace R. Bennett,

“The Negro in Utah,” Utah Law Review 3 (Spring 1953): 340–48. viii Johnie M. Driver, “L.D.S. Church Leaders Should Speak Out for Moral Justice,” March 9,

1965, box 1, fd. 29, Stephen Holbrook Papers, 1946–2005, Utah State Historical Society, Salt

Lake City, Utah. For the notion that civil rights bills were not moral issues, see First Presidency counselor N. Eldon Tanner, quoted in Glen W. Davidson, “Mormon Missionaries and the Race

Question,” Christian Century 82 (September 29, 1965): 1185. ix Hugh B. Brown general conference address, October 4–6, 1963, in Conference Report (Salt

Lake City: Published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1963), 91. See also

F. Ross Peterson, “Blindside: Utah on the Eve of Brown v. Board of Education,” Utah

Historical Quarterly 73 (Winter 2005): 4–20; Patrick Q. Mason, “The Prohibition of Interracial

Marriage in Utah, 1888-1963,” Utah Historical Quarterly 76 (Spring 2008): 108–31; Gregory A.

Prince and William Robert Wright, David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism (Salt

Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2005), 69–71.

Harris 68 x “1965 Session: Bill 62,” box 32, fd. 61, Legislature House Working Bills, 1896–1989, Series

432, Utah State Archives and Records Service, Salt Lake City, Utah. xi Matthew Harris has explored these points in greater detail in “Martin Luther King, Civil

Rights, and Perceptions of a ‘Communist Conspiracy,’” chap. 5, in Thunder on the Right: Ezra

Taft Benson in Mormonism and Politics, ed. Matthew L. Harris (Urbana: University of Illinois

Press, 2019). xii For more details on Benson’s relationship with Hoover and Welch, go to Matthew L. Harris,

“Watchman on the Tower”: Ezra Taft Benson and the Making of the Mormon Right (Salt Lake

City: University of Utah Press, forthcoming, 2020), chaps. 2-3. xiii Ezra Taft Benson, An Enemy Hath Done This, compiled by Jerreld L. Newquist (Salt Lake

City: Parliament Publishers, 1969), 44; Hoover, Masters of Deceit: The Story of Communism in

America and How to Fight It (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1958), 93. xiv The best study of King’s alleged connection to communism is David J. Garrow’s The FBI and

Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Penguin Books, 1981). Also useful is Taylor Branch, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963–65 (New York: Simon Schuster, 1998). For Hoover’s assertation that the Civil Rights movement was a communist front group, see Hoover, Masters of

Deceit, chap. 18; Hoover, A Study of Communism (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,

1962), chap. 11. xv The Politician (privately published, 1956), 267-68, in Matthew Harris files. D.J. Mulloy, The

World of the John Birch Society: Conspiracy, Conservatism, and the Cold War (Nashville, TN:

Vanderbilt University Press, 2014), 16–22, provides a succinct overview of The Politician, as does David H. Bennett, The Party of Fear: The American Far Right from Nativism to the Militia

Movement, revised and updated (New York: Vintage, 1995), 318–19. Benson sent copies of The

Harris 69

Politician to fellow general authorities and ordered copies for the LDS Church History Library.

For this point, see Benson to Joseph Fielding Smith, July 31, 1963, MSS Sc 1260, L. Tom Perry

Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah (hereafter

HBLL); and the Ezra Taft Benson-Robert Welch correspondence at the John Birch Society

Headquarters, Appleton, Wisconsin, which contains receipts for copies of The Politician that

Benson purchased for family and friends. For Benson’s allegations that Eisenhower and his cabinet affiliated with communism, and Eisenhower’s response, see Harris, “Watchman on the

Tower,” chap. 3. xvi See “A Race Against Time” (December 10, 1963; Provo, Utah); “We Must Become Alerted and Informed” (December 13, 1963; Logan, Utah); “The Internal Threat Today (December 19,

1963; Boise, Idaho), all in Ezra Taft Benson, Title of Liberty: A Warning Voice (Salt Lake City:

Deseret Book, 1964), 22–41, 42–60, 61–85 (quote on 58). For Benson’s critique of the NAACP as a communist front-group, see the Council of the Twelve Minutes, November 4, 1965, box 64, fd. 8, Spencer W. Kimball Papers, LDS Church History Library, Salt Lake City (hereafter CHL). xvii Speech of Hon. Ralph Harding of Idaho in the House of Representatives, September 25,

1963, “Ezra Taft Benson’s Support of John Birch Society is Criticized,” in 109 Cong. Rec.

(1963). xviii Prince and Wright, David O. McKay, 295–98, covers this point in some detail. For press coverage of Harding’s address, see Frank Hewlett, “Harding Assails Benson on Birch Issue,”

Salt Lake Tribune, September 26, 1963; “Idaho Congressman Hits Benson Speech,” Deseret

News, September 26, 1963; and “Legislator, a Mormon, Scores Benson for Birch Activities,”

New York Times, September 26, 1963. xix For a richer context to this point, see Harris, “Martin Luther King,” 133–36.

Harris 70 xx Benson quoted in Council of the Twelve Minutes, November 4, 1965. Ezra Taft Benson general conference address, “Not Commanded in All Things,” April 6, 1965, unaltered version in

David O. McKay Scrapbook #79, David O. McKay Papers, JWML. The reference to civil rights was dropped from the published version of the talk, per the wishes of First Presidency counselor

Hugh B. Brown who believed that Benson’s language was inflammatory. See David O. McKay journal, May 3, 1965, box 59, fd. 5, McKay Papers. Compare with the published version of

Benson’s address: “Not Commanded in All Things,” Improvement Era 68 (June 1965): 537–39. xxi Benson, An Enemy Hath Done This, 310. For urban revolts gripping the country, see Peter B.

Levy, The Great Uprising: Race Riots in Urban American during the 1960s (New York:

Cambridge University Press, 2018), 1. For the rise of “Black Power,” see Peniel E. Joseph,

Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (New York:

Henry Holt, 2006). xxii Benson, “Trust Not the Arm of Flesh,” Improvement Era 70 (December 1967): 55–58. For the Watts Riots in south central Los Angeles, see James T. Patterson, The Eve of Destruction:

How 1965 Transformed America (New York: Basic Books, 2012), chap. 11. xxiii Ezra Taft Benson memo to General Authorities, re: Martin Luther King, April 6, 1968, MS d

4936, CHL (courtesy of LDS church archivist William Slaughter); also in box 63, fd. 1, Kimball

Papers. In addition, Benson sent the memo to his close friend, J. Willard Marriott. See Benson to

Marriott, May 1, 1969, box 12, fd. 23, J. Willard Marriott Papers, JWML. xxiv See Benson, “Trust Not the Arm of Flesh.” This sermon was republished the following year in a pamphlet titled Civil Rights: A Tool of Communist Deception (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book,

1968) and again under the same title in An Enemy Hath Done This, chap. 13. Benson’s other sermons were also republished in a number of venues. See, for example, Benson, Title of Liberty;

Harris 71

Benson, An Enemy Hath Done This; Benson, So Shall Ye Reap: Selected Addresses of Ezra Taft

Benson, compiled by Reed A. Benson (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1960); Benson, God,

Family, Country: Our Three Great Loyalties (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1974); Benson, This

Nation Shall Endure (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1979); Benson, A Witness and a Warning: A

Modern-day Prophet Testifies of the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1988);

Reed A. Benson, ed., The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1988). xxv “U.S. Journal: Provo, Utah,” New Yorker (March 21, 1970): 122. xxvi Benson, “To the Humble Followers of Christ,” Improvement Era 72 (June 1969): 43. xxvii Three seminal accounts of the BYU athletic protests include Gary James Bergera, “‘This

Time in Crisis’: The Race-Based Anti-BYU Athletic Protests, 1968–1971,” Utah Historical

Quarterly 81 (Summer 2013): 204–29; J. B. Haws, “Church Rites versus Civil Rights,” chap. 3 in The Mormon Image in the American Mind: Fifty Years of Public Perception (New York:

Oxford University Press, 2013); and Darron T. Smith, “Black Student Revolts and Political

Uprising in the Late Sixties and Early Seventies: Fanning the Flame of Black Student-Athlete

Revolts,” chap. 4 in When Race, Religion and Sports Collide: Black Athletes at BYU and Beyond

(Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016). For the LDS leadership cracking down on

Benson, see Harris, “Watchman on the Tower,” chap. 4. xxviii Harris, “Martin Luther King.” xxix In 1968 and 1970, according to statistics that BYU filed with the U.S. Office for Civil Rights,

0.03 percent of the student body were “Negroes.” In box 42, fd. 11, Robert K. Thomas Papers,

HBLL. WAC officials criticized BYU officials for not recruiting black students or athletes. See

Ernest L. Wilkinson memo to Board of Trustees, re: “Charges of ‘Racism’ and ‘Bigotry’ Against the LDS Church,” October 29, 1969, 34–35, “Compiled Information Concerning African

Harris 72

Americans, BYU, and the Church,” HBLL. See also Rebecca de Schweinitz,“‘There is No

Equality’: William E. Berrett, BYU, and Healing the Wounds of Racism in the Latter-day Saint

Past and Present,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 52 (Fall 2019): 59–83. xxx Skousen, “The Communist Attack on the Mormons” (American Fork, UT: National Research

Group, March 1970), 1. Skousen’s address drew the attention of the national news media. See

Wallace Turner, “Conservative and Liberal Mormons Advise Church on Negro Exclusion

Policy,” New York Times, June 21, 1970. For others echoing Benson’s civil rights views, see

Jerreld L. Newquist, comp., Prophets, Principles and National Survival (Salt Lake City:

Publisher’s Press, 1964); Jerome Horowitz, The Elders of Israel and the Constitution (Salt Lake

City: Parliament Publishers, 1970). xxxi Hugh B. Brown general conference address, October 4–6, 1963. xxxii “A Clear Civil Rights Stand,” Deseret News, March 9, 1965; “Letter of First Presidency

Clarifies Church’s Position on the Negro,” December 15, 1969, published in the Improvement

Era 73 (February 1970): 70–71. xxxiii See especially Larry McDonald, a congressman from Georgia and a Birch supporter who condemned the King holiday in the House of Representatives. In “Americans, Stop Thinking

Like Communists,” June 18, 1980, in 126 Cong. Rec. (1980). See also David L. Chappell,

Waking from the Dream: The Struggle for Civil Rights in the Shadow of Martin Luther King, Jr.

(New York: Random House, 2014), 96–97, 112, 118; and Sokol, Heavens Might Crack, 245–53. xxxiv Chappell, Waking from the Dream, 95–98. xxxv Skousen, The Naked Communist (Salt Lake City: Ensign Publishing Co., 1958). For

Skousen’s influence in national politics, including his stint on the lecture circuit, see Kevin M.

Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate American Invented Christian America (New

Harris 73

York: Basic Books, 2015), 151, 154–55; Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the

New American Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 84–85, 95, 101; Jonathan

M. Schoenwald, A Time for Choosing: The Rise of Modern American Conservatism (New York:

Oxford University Press, 2001), 45. xxxvi Linda Sillitoe and David Merrill, "Freemen America" (part 1), Utah Holiday Magazine

(February 1981): 40, 52–54. xxxvii Jim Boardman, “Freemen Institute a burgeoning political force,” Deseret News, June 14,

1980; John Harrington and Vaughn Roche, “‘New Right’: and Utah Politics,” Ogden Standard-

Examiner, May 8, 1980. See also Peter Gillins, “Amid patriotic trappings: Freemen Institute preaches born again constitutionalism,” UPI, June 20, 1982. xxxviii Linda Sillitoe and David Merrill, "Freeman America" (part 2), Utah Holiday Magazine

(March 1981): 40, 52. xxxix Orrin Hatch, “Tribute to W. Cleon Skousen,” in 152 Cong. Rec. S114-S115 (January 25,

2006). LDS church president Thomas S. Monson spoke at Skousen’s funeral. See “President

Thomas S. Monson at Cleon Skousen’s funeral—excerpts,” https://www.jacobhouseholder.com/2017/06/10/president-monson-at-cleon-skousens-funeral- excerpts/. Beck frequently promoted Skousen on his shows. See Alexander Zaitchik, Common

Sense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2010), chap. 12; Sean Wilentz, “Confounding Fathers: The Tea Party’s Cold War roots,” The New

Yorker (October 18, 2010): https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/18/confounding- fathers. xl W. Cleon Skousen and R. Stephen Pratt, “Reverend King’s Ministry: Thirteen Years of

Crisis,” Freemen Digest (January 1984): 15-20 (quote on 18).

Harris 74 xli Willard Woods, “Martin Luther King Day,” Freemen Digest (January 1984): 21-24 (quotes on

21, 23). xlii For Benson’s speeches at Freemen Institute functions, see box 1, fd. 3, Freemen Institute

Records, 1963–1980, JWML; John Harrington, “The Freemen Institute,” The Nation 231

(August 16–23, 1980): 152–53; John Harrington and Vaughn Roche, “Freemen Institute:

Religious Roots, Ties?” Ogden Standard-Examiner, May 13, 1980. For the First Presidency cracking down on Skousen and the Freemen Institute, see First Presidency (Spencer W. Kimball,

N. Eldon Tanner, Marion G. Romney) to all Stake Presidents, Bishops, and Branch Presidents in

U.S., February 15, 1979, box 27, fd. 2, John W. Fitzgerald Papers, Special Collections, Merrill-

Cazier Library, Utah State University, Logan, Utah. xliii For references to Skousen in Benson’s talks, see Benson, Title of Liberty, 43, 116, 183;

Benson, An Enemy Hath Done This, 88, 166. For Benson urging Latter-day Saints to read

Skousen, see his letter to Elder Bremer, August 1, 1972, Matthew Harris files. Skousen depicted

King as a “top Kremlin agent” in a memo to BYU president Ernest L. Wilkinson, January 23,

1970, box 177, fd. 16, Ernest L. Wilkinson Papers, HBLL. See also Benson, An Enemy Hath

Done This, chap. 13. xliv Chester Lee Hawkins, interview with Alan Cherry, March 1, 1985, 22–23, African American

Oral History Project, HBLL. xlv Terry Lee Williams interview with Leslie Kelen, April 4, 1986, 58, box 7, fd. 5, Interviews with Blacks in Utah, 1982–1988, JWML. xlvi See An Act Relating to State Affairs in General; Declaring the Anniversary of Dr. Martin

Luther King, Jr., As a Legal Holiday in the State, S.B. 17, box 58, fd. 14, Utah State Senate

Harris 75

Working Bills, USARA. This bill omitted the phrase “Personal Preference Day” from the 1985 version. No reason is provided. xlvii Williams interview with Kelen, 60. xlviii Ibid., 69. xlix Ibid., 62. King’s FBI files are sealed until 2027, but a portion of them have been released through a Freedom of Information Act Request, forming the basis of David Garrow’s The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr. Garrow skillfully argues that J. Edgar Hoover, the longstanding FBI director, abused his power by relentlessly targeting King. Hoover alleged that King was aligned with Communists, but wiretaps, which formed the basis of King’s FBI files, indicate that he denounced communism. The wiretaps also reveal that in the 1950s two men in King’s inner circle had been active in the Communist Party but had renounced their affiliation before meeting

King. See also Richard Gid Powers, Broken: The Troubled Past and Uncertain Future of the FBI

(New York: Free Press, 2004), 245–55. l Williams interview with Kelen, 63. li As recalled in John Daley, “Coretta Scott King Remembered Fondly in Utah, KSL News,

January 31, 2006, https://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=157299. lii Greg Burton, “Living in the Beehive State still a challenge for blacks,” Salt Lake Tribune,

January 19, 2004; Williams interview, 67. liii Williams interview, 71. liv Ibid., 65. lv For Sykes’ bill, see H.B. 186, box 63, fd. 18, Utah House of Representatives Working Bills,

USARC. Rev. France A. Davis and Nayra Atiya, France Davis: An American Story Told (Salt

Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2007), 272. For Davis’s support of the King holiday, see

Harris 76

John DeVilbiss, “Utah, region balks at King holiday,” Ogden Standard-Examiner, January 11,

1986. Sykes also recalled being convinced by Davis’s arguments. Harris telephone interview with Sykes, August 31, 2018. lvi An Act Relating to State Affairs in General; Declaring the Third Monday in January as a Legal

Holiday Known as Utah Peoples’ Day in Place of Personal Preference Day, H.B. 224, box 63, fd.

30, Utah House of Representatives Working Bills, USARC. lvii The Human Rights Day compromise bill passed 69-0 in the Senate and 24-0 in the House. For the bill, including the names of its eleven sponsors, see H.B. 88, January 9, 1987, box 65, fd. 50,

Utah House of Representatives Working Bills, USARC. Harris telephone interview with Sykes,

August 31, 2018. lviii Browning quoted in DeVilbiss, “Utah, region balks at King holiday.” Schmutz quoted in

“Coretta Scott King Fondly Remembered in Utah,” KSL News (January 31, 2006), https://www.ksl.com/?sid=157299. lix Davis quoted in DeVilbiss, “Utah, region balks at King holiday.” Davis had long been active in Utah politics and civil rights causes. See Doug Robinson, “Rev. France Davis: A Force for

Good,” Deseret News, December 1, 2002; and Rev. France Davis oral history interview with

Leslie Kelen, August 4, 1983, box 1, fd. 25, Interviews with Blacks in Utah, 1982–1988, JWML. lx Benson email to Matthew Harris, November 6, 2014. lxi W. Julius Johnson to President Ezra Taft Benson, January 30, 1990, Matthew Harris files

(courtesy of Steve Benson). lxii For this point, see Harris, “Breaching the Wall: Ezra Taft Benson on Church and State,” in

Harris, Thunder from the Right, 9.

Harris 77 lxiii Crawford, as quoted in Julie Howard, “Legislator proposes renaming the holiday,” Daily

Universe (Brigham Young University student newspaper), January 13, 2000. lxiv See “The Rev. King deserves to be recognized,” “Students rallying for awareness of King’s mission,” and “A great man,” in Daily Universe, January 16, 1986; “Students and faculty may rally Monday,” Daily Universe, January 17, 1986. The University of Utah and Weber State

University also honored the King holiday, nudging the state legislature to name the holiday after him. BYU students have had a long history of activism. For this point, see Bryan Waterman and

Brian Kagel, The Lord’s University: Freedom and Authority at BYU (Salt Lake City: Signature

Books, 1998). lxv John Fife to BYU faculty, January 16, 1986, box 15, fd. 6, Paul C. Richards Papers, JWML

(courtesy of Walter Jones). Charlene Winters memo to Paul Richards, January 19, 1989 (box 15, fd. 6, Richards Papers), details other universities honoring the King holiday. BYU had been sponsoring events to honor King for at least a year before the Utah legislature debated a bill to name the holiday after him. See Jessie L. Embry, Black Saints in a White Church: Contemporary

African American Mormons (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994), 186–87. lxvi Joe H. Ferguson to Ezra Taft Benson (with a copy to the BYU Board of Trustees and BYU president Jeffrey R. Holland), January 17, 1986, box 15, fd. 6, Richards Papers. See also Warren

W. Hardy, “Says Utah Shouldn’t Have King Holiday,” Daily Herald (Provo, UT), February 14,

1986. It is not clear how President Benson responded to these protest letters, much less to Coretta

Scott King’s invitation to campus. The Executive Minutes of the BYU Board of Trustees are not available to researchers. lxvii For Mecham’s ties to the Birch Society, see “Gov. Mecham to Address Birch Society

Gathering,” Los Angeles Times, June 6, 1987. For Mecham’s ties to the Freemen Institute, see

Harris 78

John Harrington and Vaughn Roche, “Cleon Skousen: Prominent Author and Political Activist,”

Ogden Standard-Examiner, May 9, 1980. See Ronald J. Watkins, High Crimes and

Misdemeanors: The Term and Trials of Former Governor Evan Mecham (New York: William

Morrow and Co., 1990), 97–98, for Skousen’s influence on Mecham. Sokol, Heavens Might

Crack, 245–50, contains a succinct discussion of the King holiday in Arizona. lxviii For Benson and Skousen’s close ties to Mecham, including attending his inauguration and setting him apart in the temple, see Karen Coates, “The Holy War Surrounding Evan Mecham,”

Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 22 (Fall 1989): 66; and Watkins, High Crimes and

Misdemeanors, 97. For newspaper coverage of Mecham’s executive order, consult “New

Arizona Governor Halts King Holiday,” Los Angeles Times, January 13, 1987; Thomas J.

Knudson, “Arizona Torn by Governor-Elect’s Plan to Drop King Holiday,” New York Times,

December 23, 1986; and Thomas B. Rosenstiel, “The Controversial New Governor of Arizona is

Making His Mark on the State’s Politics,” Salt Lake Tribune, April 26, 1987. lxix Scott McCartney, “Mormons Split by Turmoil Over Church Member Mecham,” Los Angeles

Times, March 12, 1988; “LDS Group in Arizona Urging Approval of a King Holiday,” Deseret

News, October 21, 1990. lxx Julian Sanders to Ezra Taft Benson, October 1, 1989, published in “Sanders’ letter angers his allies: King slur draws rebuke,” Phoenix Gazette, October 6, 1989. lxxi Steve Benson, “Ezra Taft Benson: A Grandson’s Remembrance,” Sunstone (December 1994):

29–37, recounts his relationship with his grandfather. Benson defended leaking the letter to the press: “Sanders had sent me his letter unsolicited. I had not agreed with Sanders’ demand that I not publicize his efforts to secretly elicit the support of the President of the Mormon Church in an effort to sabotage public efforts to ratify a state holiday for Dr. King.” In Benson email to

Harris 79

Matthew Harris, November 6, 2014. See also Benson quoted in Ed Foster and Steve Yozwiak,

“Anti-King Petitions get support, thousands sign, drive leaders says,” Arizona Republic, October

10, 1989. lxxii This story is recounted in Steve Benson, “Ezra Taft Benson: Mormonism’s Prophet, Seer, and Racebaiter,” Blacfax: A Journal of Black History and Opinion 13 (Winter 2008): 23. Steve

Benson became a strident critic of the LDS church. He was especially critical of his grandfather and eventually left the church. See Haws, Mormon Image in the American Mind, 154, 167. lxxii For Benson’s cartoons excoriating Mecham, see Eduardo Pagán, “Razing Arizona: The Clash in the Church Over Evan Mecham,” Sunstone (March 1988): 15–21; and Watkins, High Crimes and Misdemeanors, 88. lxxiii For Benson’s cartoons excoriating Mecham, see Eduardo Pagán, “Razing Arizona: The

Clash in the Church Over Evan Mecham,” Sunstone (March 1988): 15-21; and Watkins, High

Crimes and Misdemeanors, 88. lxxiv For corruption charges against Mecham, including his removal from office for misuse of state funds and obstruction of justice, see Watkins, High Crimes and Misdemeanors, esp. chap.

10; Melissa Rigg and Susan R. Carson, “Mecham Convicted,” Arizona Daily Star, April 5, 1988;

Lindsey Gruson, “House Impeaches Arizona Governor,” New York Times, February 6, 1988. lxxv “Arizona’s Holy War: Mecham’s predicament splits the Mormons,” Newsweek (February 1,

1988): 28; Scott McCartney, “Mormons Split by Turmoil Over Church Member Mecham,” New

York Times, March 12, 1988. See also “LDS Group in Arizona Urging Approval of a King

Holiday,” Deseret News, October 21, 1990. lxxvi PR statement quoted Benson in “Sanders’ letter angers his allies, King slur draws rebuke,”

Phoenix Gazette, October 6, 1989. Benson read this statement when he was first inaugurated as

Harris 80 the church president. In Don Searle, “President Ezra Taft Benson Ordained Thirteenth President of the Church,” Ensign (December 1985), https://www.lds.org/ensign/1985/12/president-ezra- taft-benson-ordained-thirteenth-president-of-the-church?lang=eng. lxxvii Jerry P. Cahill to W. Julius Johnson, February 26, 1990, Matthew Harris files. Cahill was the

Director of International Communications for the church at the time he wrote the letter. See also

“LDS Group in Arizona Urging Approval of a King Holiday.” lxxviii Lindsay address at the Utah State Capitol, January 18, 1988, Richard P. Lindsay addresses,

1976–1994, CHL. lxxix “Give King Holiday its Due,” Salt Lake Tribune, February 5, 1997. lxxx Abigail Van Buren, “King’s Teachings for Social Justice Still Ring True Today,” Deseret

News, January 20, 1992; Amy Donaldson, “Are Legislators Doing Right by Rights Leader?”

Deseret News, January 20, 1997. lxxxi For this point, see David E. Campbell, John C. Green, and J. Quin Monson, Seeking the

Promised Land: Mormons and American Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press,

2014), 61–62; and their article “Survey clarifies Mormons’ beliefs about race,” Deseret News,

March 30, 2012. See also Jana Riess, The Next Mormons: How Millennials are Changing the

LDS Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), chap. 6. lxxxii In 1999, New Hampshire recognized the King holiday, stipulating it as a paid holiday for state employees. In 2000, South Carolina made the King holiday a paid holiday. This new law replaced an earlier law that gave state employees a choice whether to honor the King holiday or one of three designated Confederate holidays. See “Some states boycotted MLK Day at first,”

UPI, January 21, 2013, https://www.upi.com/Some-states-boycotted-MLK-Day-at- first/57461358775502/; Michael Brindley, “N.H.’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Didn’t Happen

Harris 81

Without a Fight,” NHPR, August 27, 2013, http://www.nhpr.org/post/nhs-martin-luther-king-jr- day-didnt-happen-without-fight#stream/0; Sokol, Heavens Might Crack, 251. lxxxiii For Gordon B. Hinckley’s dialogue with the NAACP, see Harris, “Martin Luther King,”

140. For the church cracking down on religious extremism, see Haws, Mormon Image in the

American Mind, 178–80; Harris, “Watchman on the Tower,” chap. 5; Armand L. Mauss, The

Angel and the Beehive: The Mormon Struggle with Assimilation (Urbana: University of Illinois

Press, 1994), 188–89. lxxxiv This point is fleshed out in Harris, “Watchman on the Tower,” chap. 5. lxxxv For background and context to Williams, as well as her perceptive understanding of

Mormon culture, see her interview with Jennifer DeMayo, September 9, 1993, African American

Oral History Project, HBLL. See also Doug Robinson, “Woman of controversy: Williams’ leadership of the NAACP in S.L. earns support and criticism,” Deseret News, June 18, 2006. For the LDS church’s lobbying efforts concerning public policy issues in Utah, see Adam R. Brown,

Utah Politics and Government: American Democracy among a Unique Electorate (Lincoln:

University of Nebraska Press, 2018), 92–96; and Rod Decker, Utah Politics: The Elephant in the

Room (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2019). For the church’s lobbying efforts in national public policy issues, see D. Michael Quinn, “Exporting Utah’s Theocracy Since 1975: Mormon

Organizational Behavior and America’s Culture Wars,” chap. 7, in God and Country: Politics in

Utah, ed. Jeffery E. Sells (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2005). lxxxvi Jason Swenson and Carrie A. Moore, “LDS leader to keynote conference – of NAACP,”

Deseret News, April 4, 1998. For the LDS church’s relationship with the NAACP, see Albert

Fritz interview with Leslie G. Kelen, February 24, 1983, box 2, fd. 6, Interviews with Blacks in

Utah, 1982–1988, JWML; and James E. Dooley interview with Leslie G. Kelen, December 6,

Harris 82

1983, Interview 8, tape 104, Everett C. Cooley Oral History Project, JWML. Fritz and Dooley were past presidents of the NAACP. lxxxvii Swenson and Moore, “LDS leader to keynote conference.” lxxxviii That relationship continues to this day. In 2018, the LDS church began a partnership with the NAACP to work together on education and employment initiatives for black Americans. See

Danielle Christensen, “LDS Church and NAACP Announce Plans for Education and

Employment Initiatives,” Church News, July 17, 2018, https://www.lds.org/church/news/lds- church-and-naacp-announce-plans-for-education-and-employment-initiatives?lang=eng; David

Noyce, “Mormon Leaders again meet with NAACP brass as work on joint education, jobs initiative continues,” Salt Lake Tribune, October 6, 2018. lxxxix Hinckley address to the NAACP, April 24, 1998, in Discourses of President Gordon B.

Hinckley—Volume 1: 1995–1999 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2005), 532–38 (quote on 533). xc John L. Hart, “Fathers needed as ‘pillars of strength,’” LDS Church News, May 2, 1998, https://www.ldschurchnews.com/archive/1998-05-02/fathers-needed-as-pillars-of-strength-

13445. See also Kristen Moulton, “Mormon President Addresses NAACP,” Associated Press,

April 25, 1998, https://www.apnews.com/71112137fd737f6e1cef4cabeee26abe; and “News of the Church—NAACP Leadership Meeting,” Ensign (July 1998): 74. xci Matthew Harris telephone conversation with Jeanetta Williams, June 11, 2019; Williams email to Harris, June 12, 2019. xcii Matthew Harris telephone conversation with Darius Gray, January 20, 2016. xciii For Bordeaux’s bill (H.B. 302), see https://le.utah.gov/~2000/bills/hbillint/HB0302.pdf. For

Suazo’s bill (S.B. 121), see https://le.utah.gov/~2000/bills/sbillint/SB0121.pdf. For Williams’ collaboration with Suazo and Bourdeaux, see Petrie, “The MLK holiday,” 55; and especially

Harris 83

Williams, “History of the Name Change of Human Rights Day to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Utah’s Constitution Amendment,” July 30, 2018, Matthew Harris files (courtesy of Jeanetta

Williams). xciv Bordeaux and Suazo quoted in Lucinda Dillon, “Will Utah rename holiday for King?”

Deseret News, January 17, 2000. See also Lindsay Palmer, “Legislature opens holiday,” Daily

Universe, January 13, 2000. xcv Susan Whitney, “Remember King: Songs, prayers, talks and tears on rights day,” Deseret

News, January 18, 2000. xcvi This discussion is informed by the NAACP Salt Lake Branch webpage: http://www.naacp- saltlakebranch.org/branch-activities.html; and Williams, “History of the Name Change.” See also see Petrie, “The MLK holiday,” 55. xcvii Lee Davidson, “Former Utah House Speaker named chief lobbyist for Mormon Church,”

Salt Lake Tribune, September 22, 2017; Stephens, as quoted in Dillon, “Will Utah rename holiday for King?” xcviii For passage of the bill after the revised vote, see Jordan Tanner, Committee Chair, to Marty

Stephens, House Speaker, February 7, 2000, https://le.utah.gov/~2000/comreport/HB306H10.pdf. See also Max Roth, “Utah was the last state to name MLK Day, and it came close to failing,” Fox 13 Salt Lake City, January 15, 2018, https://fox13now.com/2018/01/15/utah-was-last-state-to-name-mlk-day-and-it-came-close-to- failing/; and “Utah Designates Dr. King’s Birthday a Holiday; Last State to Adopt the Day,” Jet

97 (April 24, 2000): 4, which comments that two representatives missed the initial vote, but the bill “was revived after two absent legislators were called to overturn the vote and get the bill to the floor.”

Harris 84 xcix For Leavitt signing the bill into law, March 16, 2000, see https://le.utah.gov/~2000/htmdoc/sbillhtm/SB0121.htm. See also Lucinda Dillon, “Leavitt praised as he signs law designating King Day,” Deseret News, April 6, 2000; and Petrie, “The

MLK holiday,” 55. c Bordeaux and Suazo, quoted in Dillon, “Leavitt praised as he signs law designating King Day.” ci “The Globe Reacts to Gordon B. Hinckley’s Passing,” Salt Lake Tribune, January 29, 2008.

See also “Tributes to President Hinckley,” Ensign (March 2008): 4.

Harris 85

“The Hands of Our Enemies”: Brigham Young University and the Federal Government in the Fight for Civil Rights, 1968-1975

Madison Harris – Senior Thesis – Instructor: Paul Harvey – Spring 2020

Harris 86

On May 15-16, 1968, a five-person civil rights investigation team visited Brigham Young

University in Provo, Utah on behalf of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare

(HEW) acting under the direction of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Justice Department. ci

HEW’s mission was to determine if BYU was compliant with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of

1964, which prohibits “discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in any program or activity that receives Federal funds or other Federal financial assistance.”ci In the mid-1960s only three African Americans attended BYU, which gave the impression to HEW that

BYU discriminated against minorities. The truth is, BYU did discriminate against African

Americans because its sponsoring church—the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

(commonly called Mormons)—would not allow BYU officials to recruit black students or faculty.ci Mormons followed Protestant dogma in teaching that blacks were cursed. Mormon theology stipulates that blacks derived from the “seed of Cain,” the biblical figure who murdered his brother. Their “cursed” status prompted Mormons to not only oppose interracial dating but also from giving black men the Mormon priesthood or allowing them to bless and baptize their children or marry in Mormon temples. Though Mormon founder Joseph Smith ordained black men to the priesthood during the early days of the church, his successor, church president

Brigham Young, implemented a priesthood and temple ban in 1852. For 126 years the ban remained in place until church president Spencer W. Kimball halted the discriminatory practice in 1978.ci With clear policies discriminating against blacks because of their cursed lineage, BYU did not recruit black students. The church discouraged “social intercourse” between the races strongly opposing interracial dating and marriage.ci

Harris 87

It was in that context that Hollis Bach, the Regional Civil Rights Director of HEW, sent BYU president Ernest Wilkinson a letter notifying him of HEW’s pending investigation of BYU. In the late 1960s, the federal government cracked down on private institutions with racially- discriminatory policies. They did this by various means under the Johnson administration. They threatened to withdraw federal grants and federal student loans to pursuing legal action through the Justice Department. Under the Nixon administration, the Internal Revenue Service threatened to revoke the tax exemption status of private religious universities that harbored discriminatory policies and practices.ci

The federal government’s crackdown on private religious universities like BYU placed

Ernest Wilkinson in a precarious position with the Board of Trustees because he had to satisfy his employers while also making BYU compliant with federal law. The Board, comprised of apostles and other high-ranking officials from the LDS church, reacted to the investigation with disdain and contempt. They stubbornly refused to cooperate with the federal authorities claiming that they had a right to establish their recruitment and hiring policies without government oversight. However, after three intense years and after numerous delicate negotiations between

Wilkinson, the Board, and HEW officials, BYU came into compliance with federal law.

Wilkinson convinced the Board that if BYU did not comply with federal law the university would be forced to close. He took drastic measures to convince the Board to support the civil rights investigations while at the same time calling to their attention the public pressure the university was under to comply with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

* * *

Harris 88

Established on October 16, 1876, Brigham Young University serves as the main campus for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Located in the predominantly Mormon city of

Provo, Utah, BYU served a student body of nearly 20,000 students in 1970.ci As a conservative private institution, BYU adhered to a strict “honor code,” which forbids students to drink alcohol and coffee, abstain from pre-marital sex, and maintain proper dress and grooming standards at the university.ci These rules, strictly enforced through the honor code office, could lead to expulsion if students were non-compliant. Mormon theology mandated similar conformity to the honor code for church members outside of BYU and it became easy to enforce as 97% of students were LDS in 1968 and therefore already familiar with church practices. But the honor code handbook was silent on interracial dating. However, church officials cautioned against it instructing BYU officials to “watch moral standards carefully.” They were to “quietly counsel students against dating a known Negro.” The Board wanted them to “call in any boy or girl seen with a Negro” and counsel them to avoid such appearances.ci

With strict rules preventing interracial dating BYU’s black student population was pitifully low throughout the school’s history never exceeding more than one or two students at any given time. And students seemed to support limiting the number of black students. In a campus survey in the winter of 1968, for example, published in the Daily Universe, the student newspaper, students answered the following question, “Should Brigham Young University actively pursue the recruitment of Negro athletes?” One student emphatically exclaimed “No! If you are going to have Negro athletes you’ve got to have Negro girlfriends. I have been at other schools and have seen the problems of integration – Negroes dating white girls – and this is bound to happen.” This student was not alone. Though a few students reported “yes” when asked

Harris 89 if BYU should recruit black athletes, they also stipulated that “the reason they [university administrators and coaches] don’t want Negroes is because they would socialize with our girls.”ci

BYU’s policies governing interracial dating and recruitment of black students were first articulated in 1961 by William E. Berrett, vice president of both BYU and the Church

Educational System. In an internal document titled “Church Schools and Students of Color”

Berrett argued that the school could not maintain policies excluding blacks from attending BYU, but he wanted to give the perception that black students were not discriminated against at the church-owned school. To that end, he asked his fellow administrators, “How Can the Door of the

University be Left Open and Still Attract Few Negros?”ci A few years later, Berrett again acknowledged that BYU could not explicitly exclude black people at the school while retaining federal funding as stated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But he also knew that the Board of

Trustees did not want black students on campus for fear of interracial relationships. In that context, Berrett tried to dissuade black students from attending BYU. In a blunt letter he wrote in the mid-1960s, used by the admissions department at BYU, black students were discouraged from attending.ci Though church leaders permitted blacks in their worship services, they strongly rejected racial mixing between blacks and whites. As the practices of the church-owned university frequently mirrored that of the LDS church, BYU administrators went one step further in 1968 to dissuade black students from attending BYU.ci When black students applied to the school, they received a letter from an administrator discouraging them from coming. For example, the “non-LDS negro student letter” read that “all of the students are of the white race, save a mere dozen or so… we would be less than observant if we had not recognized the definite social problems existing wherever members of two or more races are thrown together.”ci Though the letter did not describe the “definite social problems” it was effective. The black student

Harris 90 population did not increase at BYU for years and this drew the attention of the civil rights investigators who feared that the low number of minority students at BYU was a result of racist policies and practices that conflicted with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.ci

Facing pressure to maintain the late President John F. Kennedy’s civil rights legislation,

President Lyndon B. Johnson began cracking down on private religious universities that discriminated against black people. Johnson tasked the Department of Health, Education, and

Welfare in Denver, Colorado to conduct a survey sent to universities with low enrollments of black students. Once the survey results came in HEW began notifying schools of their pending investigation. School were flagged for two reasons: they admitted to racially discriminatory policies or they had unusually low minority populations.ci BYU’s investigation began because of their low number of black students.ci

Wilkinson was bewildered by the HEW investigation and was confused as to why BYU was under investigation since they had a significant number of Native American students.ci More than 300 Indian students attended BYU at the time of the investigation “representing 48 tribes and 16 blends.”ci Mormons did not consider Native Americans cursed like blacks and thus BYU recruited them. More importantly, Native Americans had a privileged status in Mormon theology. The Book of Mormon, Mormonism’s signature book of scripture, instructed Mormon missionaries to target Native Americans for proselytizing and conversion, but not African

Americans because of their “cursed” status.ci

Wilkinson knew the peril of favoring one minority group over another and expressed concern to the Board of Trustees. In a memo of October 29, 1969, Wilkinson pointed out to the Board that the church was subject to criticism because it had a number of Native Americans on campus but not blacks, despite the fact that BYU officials frequently recruited in states with a significant

Harris 91 number of black students. “We have nearly 5,000 of our students from California, where there is a large Negro population, and our students come from other areas of the country that have large

Negro populations,” he explained. Wilkinson feared that the civil rights team would notice

BYU’s preferential treatment towards Native Americans and his fears turned out to be correct.ci

When the civil rights team visited Provo in April 1968 BYU administrators were thus on edge as the five-person investigation team scoured the campus interviewing admissions counselors, students, staff, and faculty to gather information on the student body of the Latter- day Saint school. Over three days, the investigation team interviewed dozens of people to gather information on BYU’s recruitment practices. The team, comprised of well-seasoned lawyers and educators Hollis Bach, Soloman Arbeiter, Dr. Merrill Ogle, Pedro Esquivel, and Charles Bety, peppered BYU officials with challenging questions about why BYU did not recruit black students, athletes, or faculty.ci In specific, they asked why BYU aggressively recruited Native

American students but not black students. They also examined the university’s promotional literature, catalogues, and student handbooks, trying to determine whether or not the school welcomed minorities, specifically blacks. Lastly, they inquired about the church’s priesthood ban, preventing black members from full privileges in the church. The investigators’ interrogative style unsettled Wilkinson. He was quick to note that we “practice no discrimination of any kind,” which was his desperate attempt to persuade HEW that BYU welcomed blacks. The only reason that there were not more blacks on campus, he explained, is because so few lived in Utah County where BYU was located. The investigation lasted two long days and at its conclusion Bach told Wilkinson that they would send a report of their findings.ci

The investigation made Wilkinson uneasy and he sought a rapid resolution. As a Harvard- trained attorney, Wilkinson understood the potential legal ramifications of not complying with

Harris 92

Title VI. He feared that faculty would be ineligible for federal grants, military students could not use their GI bills to enroll at BYU, and worse students would not be eligible for federal Pell grants.ci

With the stakes high, Wilkinson recorded in his diary that BYU needed to obtain “a legal opinion on our rights… as to the full extent of the Civil Rights Legislation, so we may examine our position with respect to accreditation, and that we may examine some alternatives with respect to federal research contracts.”ci Within days of receiving Bach’s letter he hired legal counsel from his former law firm Wilkinson, Cragun, & Baker to negotiate a compromise with

HEW. In the coming weeks, the BYU legal team conferred with representatives from HEW on

July 3, 1968, to discuss the legality of the government intervening on a private institution, given that the First Amendment protects freedom of religion.ci Meanwhile, the Board of Trustees did not meet until months later, in late fall 1968, to discuss the HEW letter from May. It was clear that the Board did not yet comprehend the gravity of the pending investigation.ci

Meanwhile, as the civil rights investigation was underway, BYU had attracted national attention for the lack of diversity on their athletic teams. This point was highlighted when athletes at the University of Texas at El Paso refused to compete against BYU’s track and field team in April 1968. They cited the LDS church’s discriminatory teachings towards blacks as a motivating factor. Black players from UTEP refused to engage in athletic competition with

BYU, which soon gained momentum as the UTEP administrators, sports personnel, and student body got involved. Though the protests appeared localized, white players at UTEP wanted their own black player’s scholarships cancelled for upsetting their athletic events.ci This public humiliation caused considerable embarrassment to BYU and the LDS church. Wilkinson was quick to note in a memo to the Board of Trustees that “This is the worst publicity campaign

Harris 93 against BYU we have ever experienced and it is continuing.”ci The surge in media coverage worried him to the point that Wilkinson anticipated that BYU would lose its membership in the

Western Athletic Conference if the school did not change its policies to recruit black students and athletes. Even more, he worried over the building of a new basketball arena for the school.

“With the preferential treatment . . . given [to] Negroes in this country at the present time,” he wrote in his diary, “it could be that we might be out of our Conference and that we might not warrant a basketball field house this large. I have got to think this matter through.”ci

Concurrent with the protests, BYU began to draft a response letter to HEW insisting that they were compliant with the law. To assuage the investigators, Wilkinson noted that the next university catalog would contain a policy suggesting that BYU did not discriminate against any racial minority, including blacks. Furthermore, Wilkinson promised to inform alumni who assisted with BYU recruitment that they should not discriminate against blacks. He also sent letters to landlords in Provo informing them that they should not discriminate against minority students from BYU when they sought housing.ci

The BYU Board of Trustees did not fully comprehend the gravity of the charges against the university. Apostle Harold B. Lee, for example, one of the most conservative members of the

Board, resisted what he called federal overreach and informed Wilkinson that “he would close

BYU if we ever had a colored athlete on our teams.” Speaking for the Board, Lee further noted that “we would run our school as we wanted to without regard for accreditation agencies.”ci

Other apostles felt the same way. Many in fact were deeply suspicious of federal authority and at least one apostle and Board member believed that there was a conspiracy within the federal government to create a communist state.ci

Harris 94

Wilkinson was therefore caught in the middle between a stubborn Board and an aggressive government agency, which insisted on strict compliance with federal law. Board members felt that LDS racial doctrine was on trial and thus they instructed Wilkinson to address the issue through a public document titled “Minorities, Civil Rights, and You,” in which Wilkinson claimed that “there is not one iota of evidence to indicate that the priesthood doctrine of the

Mormon church interferes with the civil rights of any person.”ci This admission, of course, did not discuss the letter BYU sent discouraging blacks from attending BYU. What was particularly bothersome for the BYU Board of Trustees is that they felt that BYU was being “targeted” unfairly for investigation when the university did not have racially discriminatory policies prohibiting black enrollment at the church-owned school.ci

While waiting the results of the investigation, Wilkinson prepared for the worst. He worked with his legal counsel to devise a defense strategy if the HEW investigators found BYU out of compliance with federal law. His legal team drafted a lengthy brief to the Board of Trustees explaining that “in the twenty years preceding the enactment of the 1964 law, Presidents

Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy ordered the elimination of discrimination in a number of federal programs or activities.”ci If the government ruled against them, the memo stated, BYU could seek loopholes in Title VI, but they did not specify what those loopholes would be. They also explored the possibility of rejecting federal assistance, which they construed to mean that they would not have to comply with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.ci

But case law worked against BYU, as both Wilkinson and the legal team knew. In a private memo dated July 12, 1968, the legal team laid out the significant legal cases that they believed applied to BYU’s investigation. In Jones v. Mayer Co. (1968), for example, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress had the authority to forbid “private acts of racial discrimination in the sale

Harris 95 and rental of residential housing.” The legal team seized this case as an example that could affect BYU because it dealt with discrimination and it represented the High Court’s most recent thinking on the issue. In that context they stated that because BYU matched all federal research funds in a “quid pro quo” arrangement, BYU might be beyond the reach of federal investigators.

Because the federal monies that BYU received was not entirely from the government, they reasoned, BYU might be immune from federal laws governing their recruitment practices.ci

All of this is to say that BYU was struggling to mount a strong legal defense. Recent case law did not appear in their favor, nor was national sentiment which favored racial equality for African Americans, both in protections against discrimination in jobs and housing and in interracial marriage preferences.ci Another tactic the legal team explored was a classic religious discrimination case. The memo claimed that that the government was discriminating against

BYU and its sponsoring church because it did not recognize the Mormon church’s right to ban the priesthood from black men—a right they believed was protected by the First Amendment and enshrined in Mormon scripture. According to the memo, the LDS church had the right to discriminate against African Americans because of the church’s longstanding teachings on race.

As Robert Barker, the lead author of the memo, put it: “Religiously-affiliated educational institutions are permitted to discriminate on the basis of religion by hiring employees of a particular religion.”ci

On March 19, 1969, Wilkinson responded to an earlier letter from Bach. Once again taking a defensive stance, Wilkinson candidly noted that their recruitment practices involved schools in

Utah and Wyoming, which “included high schools with a Negro membership and our presentation will be made to all students, Negro and otherwise…”ci It was clear that Wilkinson was attempting to do the minimum to adjust the school recruitment policies to appease the HEW

Harris 96 investigators. In addition to recruiting at schools with black students, Wilkinson also made promises that BYU would send a letter to all students who scored in the upper 50th percentile of the area’s standardized asking them to consider attending the university. More importantly,

Wilkinson noted that the letter would be sent to students regardless of race, color, religion, or national origin in an effort to show BYU’s adaptability in complying with federal law.ci

As the BYU legal counsel and Wilkinson outlined their legal strategy, the results of the investigation arrived by letter in March of 1969.ci Bach outlined a several requirements that

BYU had to follow in order to be compliant with Title VI. Some of these suggestions included revising the university catalog and student handbook with updated non-discriminatory polices, increase recruitment visits to high schools with significant minority populations of 25% or more, and offer more services to Mexican American and black students like specialized counseling and tutoring. In the conclusion of the letter, Bach said that a follow up visit would be slated for

October of 1969 to see if BYU had complied with the recommendations.ci HEW also insisted that BYU remove its restrictive quota on the number of African American speakers on campus, which BYU officials had limited to only three black presenters on campus a year.ci Here again

Wilkinson compiled. He agreed to lift the quota and bring more African American speakers to campus. Wilkinson’s seemingly compliance prompted Bach to praise BYU for having one of the

“finest institutions in the nation.”ci

Meanwhile, as civil rights investigators cleared BYU of civil rights violations, more universities began protesting LDS racial teachings and the low number of blacks at BYU, just as

University of Texas at El Paso had. Following the University of Texas at El Paso’s well- publicized protests against BYU, dozens of universities boycotted BYU’s sports teams.ci It was one of the worst PR disasters for the contemporary Mormon church, as dozens of newspapers

Harris 97 wrote about the boycotts, often in unflattering terms and frequently taking pot-shots at the LDS church for its policies excluding blacks from the priesthood.ci In 1968 amidst public backlash,

Mormon church leaders and coaches became frantic with how to handle universities like

University of Texas at El Paso and now University of California at Los Angles, Stanford

University, Colorado State University, University of Wyoming, Seattle University, San Jose

State University, and others boycotting BYU athletic events due to racist teachings of the

Mormon church.ci

Church officials did not explicitly recognize that the protests were directed towards their racial teachings. In 1969, BYU vice president William Berrett informed Mormon seminary teachers in an address titled “The Negro Situation” that the “race riots have not been aimed at us on these campuses. We haven’t had one aimed at us yet as a Church. There are aimed at white superiority over the Negro.” Though Berrett failed to grasp that the riots were aimed at church teachings, he conceded that the church had racist tendencies. “We can’t get rid of the fact that we are prejudiced,” he candidly noted, “but we can get rid of the fact that we are more prejudiced than anyone else.”ci Only when BYU’s membership in the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) was questioned and national media attention on the athletics protests did Mormon leaders realize the gravity of the situation. For example, BYU assistant football coach Dick Felt wrote to head coach Steve Maiben on October of 1968, months after the protests began, noting that “Things are getting pretty hot for us here right now concerning our having no negroes. We might be playing intramurals instead of intercollegiate games before long.”ci

Even though BYU administrators hoped to keep the athletic protests out of national attention, once it attracted national media limelight, public outrage followed.ci In a statement in 1969 from

San Jose State University in California titled, “B.Y.U. – Athletic Department – Racism &

Harris 98

Oppression of Black People, an Open Letter to Black People,” the writers put BYU in the spotlight on its discriminatory policies regarding black people. Though San Jose students protested the teachings of the LDS church, BYU became a viable option to protest as is provided national attention and a focused enemy rather than picketing church buildings and temples. San

Jose cited that “while Mormons are Mormons, they are racist hunkies also, who fit into the racist system of the U.S.A. so therefore anything they do is socially acceptable to that system.”ci

By the time the athletic protests concluded in 1971, the Board of Trustees grudgingly gave

Wilkinson and the various coaches permission to recruit black athletes in November of 1969.

Wilkinson had to convince them. “We ask that our tongue be loosed,” he implored the Board.

“This is essential for preservation of our position with the Health, Education and Welfare that we conform to the Civil Right Act.” In a 35-page carefully scripted memo delivered to the Board on

October 29, 1969, Wilkinson explained the wisdom of changing the school’s recruitment polices, acknowledging that the school was discriminating against African Americans. “We . . . discriminate against the Negro in two particulars in relation to the athletic program,” he explained. “We don’t affirmatively recruit Negro athletes” nor “do we offer athletic grants-in-aid to Negro students, as we do the whites.” “Our policy,” he candidly admitted, “would be considered highly discriminating by the NCAA and would cause us to lose their support.” But

Wilkinson also assured the Board that if they recruited African Americans they would keep the numbers low. “We do not intend to have many at BYU,” he explained, anticipating the Board’s fears about interracial dating.ci

Thus, in the fall of 1969, some six months after HEW deemed BYU in compliance with

Title VI and during the midst of intense boycotts of BYU athletic teams, the BYU Board of

Trustees consented to allow BYU coaches to recruit African American athletes. They were not

Harris 99 out of the woods, however. The following summer HEW authorities sent BYU another letter informing them that they were under investigation for possible Title VII violations, which prevents public and private universities receiving federal monies from discriminating in faculty hiring practices on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin, and religion.ci

In Bach’s letter of June 1, 1970, informing Wilkinson that BYU was again under investigation he stated that “We have concluded that BYU is not fully satisfying obligations under Executive Order 11246 and we must ask for your written commitment to take corrective action… without such commitment, we are unable to certify that BYU is a responsible contractor and eligible for the award of Government contracts.”ci Bach went on to say that “It is our view therefore, that the policy of showing hiring preference to LDS members is a violation of your obligation not to discriminate on the basis of religion.” Bach’s letter to Wilkinson discussed how the university’s hiring practices were discriminatory based on religion, as BYU had strict policies to only hire practicing Mormons. This meant that they did not recruit black faculty outside of the Mormon faith or other qualified candidates outside of the faith. He further stated that religious institutions, though free to hire on the basis of religion under Title VII of the Civil

Rights Act, were not free to religiously discriminate under the Executive Order.ci Once again,

BYU Administrators and the Board of Trustees were in a bind. In order to continue receiving federal funding, they had to comply with the policies enacted in the civil rights legislation.

Complying with Title VII would be difficult. None of the Board members favored “negro teachers” at BYU. Apostle Mark E. Petersen of the Board of Trustees told Ernest Wilkinson that so far as [he] was concerned that he would not want my daughter to take instruction under a negro teacher.” He did not want to give her the impression that it was okay to learn from a

“negro.” “The Lord did draw a line,” Petersen explained, insisting that God meant for the races

Harris 100 to be kept apart.ci This sentiment was clearly conveyed to Wilkinson, who made strenuous efforts to resist hiring black faculty. When the BYU president learned that Edward Minor was black, for example, he promptly rescinded the teaching contract without an explanation.ci

BYU had anticipated Bach’s letter for quite some time. As early as 1968, Wilkinson and the legal team began discussing ways to ward off an investigation over its hiring practices.ci

When the investigation commenced, they resorted to the same legal reasoning they did in the investigation over Title VI. Wilkinson noted that since the university is church sponsored and funded, the practice of admitting predominantly Mormon students and faculty was justified.

Wilkinson then refuted parts of Bach’s initial letter, stating that it was “factually wrong and that religion is a reasonably necessary qualification of employment for the following reasons.” The president explained that having solely Mormon professors and lecturers was critical to the student’s education and spiritual wellbeing at BYU. He even pointed out that such instruction was necessary to even courses in Physical Education, noting that “to a Mormon the body is but a tabernacle of the spirit which together constitutes the soul of man.”ci Apostles Delbert R. Stapley,

Ezra Taft Benson, Mark E. Petersen, Joseph Fielding Smith, and Harold B. Lee were among the

Board members rejecting the government’s investigation of BYU hiring practices.ci Lee, in particular, “questioned the right of the Government to tell BYU which teachers to employ.”ci

Nevertheless, both Wilkinson and the Board knew that BYU was not in a position to haggle over Title VII. The government wanted black faculty on BYU’s campus; the BYU Board wanted it to remain predominantly white. The two sides reached a compromise when Wilkinson informed Bach that the school would recruit qualified black Mormon faculty but not blacks outside of the faith. By stating it this way, Wilkinson knew that BYU’s faculty would remain white because there were few black Mormons qualified to teach at the university level. In late

Harris 101

1970, BYU administrators hired the school’s first black faculty member in Wynetta Martin, a recent convert to Mormonism in 1966. She was hired to teach a course on “black culture” in the

Nursing department at the university.ci

In 1972, two years after she was hired, Martin published a book titled Black Mormon

Tells Her Story: The Truth Sang Louder than My Position detailing her experiences both as a black Latter-day Saint woman and as the church’s first black instructor at BYU and the Mormon

Tabernacle Choir’s first black member of the famed choir. Martin cites that her race was an issue in the Mormon church: “Naturally I knew that my race would present problems, especially because there was no Negroes in the [Mormon Tabernacle] Choir, nor were there any working with me in the Geological Society.”ci Though Martin was only a part-time lecturer at the university, her hiring appeased HEW—so much so that Bach deemed BYU in compliance with

Title VII, even though BYU had only met the statutory requirement by hiring one part-time black instructor. But Bach was also pleased that BYU agreed to bring more black speakers to campus without any quotas or restrictions like they had had previously. Wilkinson invited Baptist minister Dr. Leon Sullivan, conservative Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke, celebrated author Alex Haley of Roots, and later NAACP president Roy Wilkins.ci

Brigham Young University scarcely escaped the civil rights reforms of the late 1960s and early 1970s by making minor changes to university recruitment policies and practices. The university did the minimum to appease the government agencies while at the same time they opposed interracial marriage and continued to harbor racially-demeaning teachings such as opining that blacks descended from Cain. Even though they had evaded major changes in the peak of the civil rights era, BYU administrators like Wilkinson and his successor Dallin H. Oaks

Harris 102 believed that BYU would remain under government scrutiny until the university substantially boosted its enrollment of black students and faculty.ci

Bob Jones University

The writing on the wall was clear: the federal government was cracking down on institutions that discriminated against African Americans and this crackdown also extended to the Nixon administration. That is why BYU had a vested interest in the outcome of the court case Bob

Jones University v. The United States in late winter 1970, despite its recent clearance from HEW in 1970.

As a private conservative evangelical school in Greenville, South Carolina, Bob Jones

University had a history of racially-discriminatory policies toward black students and interracial relationships, just as BYU did.ci BJU had strict policies to not admit black students, aside from a married black man in 1975. They rejected interracial relationships and, unlike BYU, articulated their racial policies in their catalog and bylaws. Religious scholar Randall Balmer highlighted the strict practices of the fundamentalist Christian school, noting that “the school stipulated that interracial dating would be grounds for expulsion and the school promised that any students who

‘espouse, promote, or encourage others to violate the University’s dating rules and regulations will be expelled.”ci

BJU’s strict policies preventing interracial dating caught the attention of federal authorities, which sent school officials a letter in 1970 notifying them they would investigate the school’s policies and practices towards African Americans.ci BYU, though out of the crossfire from the federal government, was still anxious about the outcome of the case between the

Harris 103 government and BJU. Wilkinson, in fact, followed the case closely and kept the BYU Board of

Trustees informed about the developments.ci Wilkinson’s trepidation increased when in 1976 the

Internal Revenue Service (IRS) revoked the tax exemption status of Bob Jones University for employing racially discriminatory policies against African Americans.ci The Nixon administration instructed the IRS to revoke the tax exemption status of schools that harbored racist policies. There is no evidence that BYU received a letter from the IRS in 1970 threatening to revoke their tax exemption status, though another conservative private school, Goldsboro

Christian Schools in Goldsboro, North Carolina received an identical letter to that of BJU.ci

However, this did not mean that BYU was out of the clear from the federal government.

Wilkinson, still nervous about future governmental intervention, wrote: “I think it is remote that

[a] suit would be brought by the Government against the Church on this ground, but it is possible that some Negro could go into court and possibly raise the question.”ci

The revoking of BJU’s tax exemption status in 1976 cost them countless dollars lost in not only tax exemption, but all donors to the university would not be able to write off donations to the school as tax exempt on their taxes. For these reasons, BJU appealed the IRS ruling in

1981 claiming that Nixon unlawfully authorized the IRS to revoke their tax exception status, as their discriminatory teachings were based on religious doctrine. At the same time, the BJU legal team argued that the IRS did not have the legal authority to carry out the policy since their racial policies were protected under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.ci

In 1983, the case reached the Supreme Court as Bob Jones University v. The United

States and the Mormon Church wrote an amicus curiae or friend of the court brief detailing their support of Bob Jones University’s right to practice racial discrimination against African

Americans.ci The timing of BYU’s friend of the court brief is curious. Mormon church

Harris 104 president Spencer W. Kimball lifted the priesthood and temple ban five years earlier and it would appear that church officials no longer feared the government meddling into their affairs.ci

Nevertheless, the fact that the Mormon church would support BJU in this behalf speaks to the

Mormons’ strong belief that the federal government had no right to intervene in private religious practices.

The church’s legal counsel explained in the brief that “The Church believes in the separation of church and state… we do not believe that human law has the right to interfere in prescribing rules of worship to bind the consciousness of men…” More specifically, church lawyers appealed to dozens of Supreme Court cases in which the justices affirmed the right of

Christian groups to exercise its religious rights when it conflicted with mandates by state, local and federal governments. Church lawyers even appealed to the historic case of Reynolds vs. the

US (1879) in which they noted that the federal government had unjustly curtailed the Mormon church’s right to practice polygamy claiming that it was protected under the First Amendment.ci

On May 25, 1983, seven years after the BJU had its tax exemption status revoked, the

Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 in favor of the IRS. It notably declined arguments by BJU and the

Goldsboro School lawyers from citing religion as a justification for racial discrimination. Chief

Justice Warren E. Burger noted in the majority opinion that ''Given the stress and anguish . . . to escape from the shackles of the 'separate but equal' doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson,’ it cannot be said that educational institutions that, for whatever reasons, practice racial discrimination, are institutions exercising beneficial and stabilizing influences in community life, or should be encouraged by having all taxpayers share in their support by way of special tax status.” Outraged by the ruling, Bob Jones, president of BJU, stated that “we’re in a bad fix when eight evil old men and one vain and foolish woman can speak a verdict on American liberties.''ci Ironically,

Harris 105

BJU only officially lifted its policy regarding interracial relationships after public outcry in

2000.ci

Conclusion

Though a private religious university, BYU got caught in the crossfire of the federal government seeking to crack down on organizations accepting federal monies that have discriminatory policies and practices. Due to their low number of black students and the predominately all-white Mormon faculty, HEW found BYU a prime target for civil rights violations.

The amicus curiae brief that LDS church attorneys wrote for the Bob Jones University vs.

The United States Court case is telling. It speaks to the Mormon church’s continued trepidation of federal intervention into private religious matters and their clear unwillingness to accept the notion that when federal law conflicts with religious practices it is the latter that should prevail.

Though the report was written in 1983, some thirteen years after HEW investigated BYU’s recruitment practices and some five years after church president Spencer W. Kimball lifted the priesthood ban, it shows that though BYU’s investigation was complete, Mormon church officials still worried that the federal government might intervene in other discriminatory practices of the church, whether it be to force the Mormon leadership to grant Mormon women the priesthood or to accept LBGTQ Mormons as full equals in LDS worships services and rituals.ci

Another factor affecting the church and BYU’s governing Board is the lack of diversity still at BYU. In 2019, less than one percent of the student body is black, prompting one student to complain that “minority students are like a drop of soy sauce in a sea of white rice.”ci Other minority students have recently complained about racism they experienced at BYU.ci Just as

Harris 106 troubling, in 2020 BYU only counts two African American faculty, clearly suggesting that not much has changed since the turbulent civil rights years when HEW pestered BYU officials to recruit black students and faculty. If the government’s investigation into BYU recruiting and hiring practices tells us anything, it is that institutions like BYU are slow to change.ci

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