The Civil Rights History Project: Survey of Collections and Repositories

Interviews with Blacks in Utah

Repository: University of Utah J. Willard Marriott Library. Special Collections

Collection Description (CRHP): Edited versions of interviews with these individuals are included in Kelen and Stone's book "Missing Stories" (1996).

Collection Description (Extant): Audio cassette tapes and transcripts of tapes of interviews with forty-eight African American Utahns. Events recalled by the interviewees span the time period from 1889 to 1988. Topics include family life, work, religion, discrimination, civil rights experiences, and relations with the white, and in particular the Mormon, establishment in Utah.

Most interviews were conducted by Leslie G. Kelen of the Oral History Institute. The Oral History Institute, located in Salt Lake City, Utah, began a project in 1982 to document the interaction between the dominant culture and various minority cultures in Utah. Interviews were conducted with members of individual ethnic and cultural groups including members of the dominant white culture. The project was conducted under a grant from the Utah Endowment for the Humanities.

Access Copy Note: All use of audio tapes requires 48 hours advance notice.

Date(s): 1889-1988

Digital Status: No

Existing IDs: MS 453

Extent: 3.5 linear ft.: 224 sound cassettes analog; transcripts

Finding Aid: Register available at archives.

Language: English

Related Archival Items: Ten related photographs are cataloged as "Blacks in Utah Photograph Collection"; see finding aid at
http://content.lib.utah.edu/u?/UU_EAD,2345 for details and digital images.

See also Interviews with Black Utahns Audiovisual Collection A0079, Stephen K. Madsen Collection on Blacks in Utah Accn 689.

See also interviews conducted by Pastor France Davis and published in his book "Light in the Midst of Zion: A History of Black Baptists in Utah, 1892-1996" (Salt Lake City: Empire Publishing, 1997).

Interviewees: Frances Leggroan Fleming, Lucille Bankhead, Dorothy Steward Fry, Howard Brown Sr., Rubie Lugdol Nathaniel, William Price, Nathan Wright, Albert Fritz, John Oscar Williams, Charles Nabors, Jake R. Green, Terry Lee Wiliams

Rights (Extant): See individual release forms for restrictions.

Subjects:

African American churches--Utah
African American Mormons
African Americans--Civil rights--Utah
African Americans--Employment
African Americans--Social conditions
African Americans--Utah
Civil rights--Religious aspects
Discrimination in housing
Mormon Church
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Picketing
Race discrimination--Utah
Utah--Race relations

Genres:

Interviews
Sound recordings
Transcripts