Rev. France Davis, 20th Century African Americans in Utah (Season 1, Ep. 13 - Part 2)

**Brad Westwood** (0:08)
Welcome to the podcast Speak Your Piece. This is a podcast about Utah's history, produced by the Utah Department of Heritage and Arts. I'm Brad Westwood, Senior Public Historian. If there's one place, one podcast to get your Utah history fix, this is the place.
Our guest today is Reverend France A. Davis, Pastor Emeritus of the Salt Lake City Calvary Baptist Church. Welcome back.

**France Davis** (0:33)
Thank you. Good to be here.

**Brad Westwood** (0:35)
So good to have you here. And in the prior segment, we were talking about Utah's Governor Scott Matheson, John Huntsman, and then of course, early on, Calvin Rampton, all of whom you interacted with.

**France Davis** (0:48)
Not only did I interact with the three of them, but it was Governor Ramson who appointed the first African American to the Utah State Board of Corrections, who hired the first three African Americans to work in the correction system. I was the first board member. Washington was the first chaplain.
There were two others that were hired as counselors, and it was Governor Rampton, Calvin Rampton, who made sure that that happened. It happened one day, I walked into his office and I said to him, listen, African Americans are 2 percent or less of the population, but they make up 16, 17 percent of the prison, and there are no African Americans working there. He picked up the telephone, made a phone call and said by the end of the week, the Human Resource Department was to hire an African.

**Brad Westwood** (1:56)
American.

**France Davis** (1:56)
Later on, Governor Scott Matheson appointed me to serve, as well as many others, on the Martin Luther King Human Rights Commission. That was an exciting time because we were charged with the responsibility to interact with every department in the state of Utah to ensure that there was some diversity in those departments.
And then finally, Governor John Huntsman, when he was governor, appointed me to the Salt Lake City Community College Board of Trustees, and then later appointed me to the highest Board of Education in the state of Utah, the Board of Regents, where I served for 10 years and eventually became the vice chair of the Board of Regents. But they were good friends. They cared. They were concerned about making sure that everybody in this community was included.

**Brad Westwood** (2:58)
So Reverend, Utah's African American history goes beyond before the Utah pioneers.

**France Davis** (3:07)
In fact, 20 years before the Mormon pioneers came to Utah, Mr. Dobson and James Beckworth were African Americans in what was Utah territory during those days. And Dr. Ronald Coleman has done research and written about how those two rugged mountain men were fur trappers in the 1820s. It's the 1840s before the Mormon pioneers come. And when they come, Hark Lake, Green Flake, and Oscar Crosby are with them as African Americans. And their names are listed on many of the statues around town. And they're called colored servants.
But they were part of the initial group of pioneers who came in.

**Brad Westwood** (3:55)
First Vanguard.

**France Davis** (3:57)
First Vanguard who came in. And then by 1850, Elijah Abel and his two sons are active in the LDS Church and hold the priesthood in the LDS Church, which was a fascinating thing in and of itself. And they helped to build the tabernacle in the temple downtown Salt Lake City, Utah.
And then finally, by the 1890s, African Americans start to develop their own institutions. And they start with the Trinity AME Church. And then the Calvary Baptist Church, both of which were started essentially at the same time period.

**Brad Westwood** (4:40)
And all very close to the railroad stations in West Salt Lake.

**France Davis** (4:43)
All very close to the railroad stations, all very near, because they were the sleeping car porters, they were the train maintenance men, they were the train upkeep people who were there in downtown Salt Lake, but also in Ogden, 25th Street was a center of the African American community. And then it helped her price Utah. There were large numbers of African American families who lived there to help do the work of attaching the helper engine to get the train over the mountain into Salt Lake City.
So African Americans have been a part of the building from the day one before the pioneers that we usually refer to came and then since then have continued to be an integral part.

**Brad Westwood** (5:36)
Recently in my research related to West Salt Lake City, the Pioneer Park neighborhood, I have come across a number of terrible acts of lynching. Utah has a history of only a few. It is still of something of some reason for pause and worry and concern to us contemporary people today.