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

Rosa Parks speaking at a commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr. five years after his death. After her role in the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, Parks continued the struggle for civil rights, receiving national and international recognition for her work and service. Library of Congress, LOT 15045, no. 612.

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

By Matthew L. Harris and Madison S. Harris

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. 1 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.” 2

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. Even so, the Utah legislature eventually recognized the King holiday because of the persistent efforts of NAACP president Jeanetta Williams, LDS church president Gordon B. Hinckley, Utah congressman Robert Sykes, and others. They convinced lawmakers to honor King, which marked the end of a long and tumultuous debate in Utah over his life and legacy.

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 Dwight D. 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. 3 From 1852–1978 persons of African ancestry were barred from sacred priesthood and temple rituals because of their “cursed” status. 4 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. 5 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. 6

The NAACP had good reason to pressure the LDS church. The Utah legislature, composed predominantly of Mormons, had opposed civil rights bills in Utah in the 1940s and 1950s and the LDS church also rejected civil rights bills or at least preferred to remain silent when lawmakers discussed them. 7 Neither church leaders nor lawmakers believed that bills preventing discrimination in jobs and housing were moral issues and therefore they refused to act. They also feared that civil rights legislation would erode racial barriers and lead to interracial marriage, which violated both church teachings and state law prohibiting miscegenation. 8

Frustrated with the state’s inaction on civil rights, NAACP leaders threatened to protest at the 1963 LDS general conference. After meeting with Hugh B. Brown and N. Eldon Tanner of the First Presidency, the highest governing body in the LDS church, both sides reached a compromise. Brown would read a statement in general conference professing church support for civil rights and the NAACP would not march at the conference. It was a tepid statement, offering neither support for specific civil rights bills at the federal level nor at the local level. Not surprisingly, the NAACP did not accept the church’s lukewarm endorsement. Some two years after meeting with Brown and Tanner, NAACP leaders protested at Temple Square, prompting the church hierarchy to reassess its strategy remaining silent on civil rights bills. 9 In 1965, with LDS church support, the Utah state legislature passed an “Anti-Discrimination Act,” prohibiting discrimination in public housing and jobs. 10

The bill was a long time in coming. Nevertheless, Ezra Taft Benson, then an apostle and wellknown government official, was not among its supporters. In fact, he opposed any civil rights legislation, placing him at odds with the First Presidency, as well as moderate-to-liberal Mormons like Michigan governor George Romney, who championed racial equality. Benson 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. 11

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 the spread of communism around the world, derived from two fringe 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. 12 In his sermons, Benson frequently quoted from Hoover’s book Masters of Deceit and became alarmed by the director’s bold assertion that subversives lurked within the United States. This included, in Hoover’s words, “high-ranking statesmen, public officials, educators, ministers of the Gospel, professional men” and others who “have been duped into helping Communism.” 13 Just as troubling, Hoover claimed that King was among the subversives because he maintained close ties with communists and agitated for racial and economic equality. 14

Ezra Taft Benson speaking at the October 1967 LDS general conference. Benson sermonized often to the LDS faithful about the evils of communism, of which he considered Martin Luther King, Jr. to be a part. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints © By Intellectual Reserve, Inc.

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. It was a remarkable claim given the president’s longstanding service fighting communism and socialism, both as Supreme Allied Commander in World War II and as Commander in Chief during the Korean War. Nonetheless, Welch made these fantastical claims within the pages of The Politician, a book that Benson found both riveting and alarming. 15

Hoover and Welch’s writings motivated the brash apostle to denounce the civil rights movement before countless civic groups in the United States. In 1963 Benson delivered a number of stinging addresses to Latter-day Saints in which he vilified civil rights legislation, then pending in Congress, as part of a “pattern for the Communist takeover of America.” He 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.” 16

Hugh B. Brown at the October 1963 LDS general conference. Brown was part of the LDS First Presidency, which issued a statement in favor of civil rights at the conference. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints © By Intellectual Reserve, Inc.

Benson’s outspoken assertions and his eagerness to state them publicly compelled the First Presidency to reprimand him, after which Idaho congressman Ralph Harding, a practicing Latter-day Saint, complained about the apostle’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.” 17 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. 18

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. 19 Not long after his return he informed his fellow apostles that the civil rights movement “is being directed and supported 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?” 20

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.” 21 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. 22 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. 23

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. 24 Even 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.” 25 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 socalled civil rights movement.” 26 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. 27 The university’s refusal to recruit black students, moreover, gave negative publicity to the LDS church. 28 Church leaders discouraged blacks from attending BYU, 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. 29

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 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.” 30

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.” 31 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. 32

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. 33 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. 34

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 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. 35 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.” 36

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.” 37

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 City, dourly noted that “We have identified twenty-three to twenty-five graduates of the Freemen Institute in the House and another ten to fifteen Republicans who are sympathetic.” 38 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. 39

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. 40 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”? 41

Cleon Skousen holding a copy of The Naked Communist, March 15, 1958. A prolific author, Skousen was a prominent anti-communist crusader who staunchly opposed a holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr., whom he believed was a communist. Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake Tribune Negative Collection, no. 46521.

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. 42 In addition, Benson recommended Skousen’s books in general conference and touted his work in private communications with Latter-day Saints. Both men believed that King was “a top Kremlin agent.” 43

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.” 44

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.” 45

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. 46 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 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.” 47

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.” 48

Publicly, Williams’s 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. 49 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. 50

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 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. 51 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.” 52 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?” 53

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. 54 Dejected, Williams left the state Senate later that year after having lost in the Democratic primaries in a bid for the U.S. 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, 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. 55

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. 56

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.” 57

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 had 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 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.” 58

For Reverend 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.” 59

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. 60 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.” 61

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. 62 But neither did Benson direct 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.” 63

Coretta Scott King, 1988. At the invitation of Jeanette Williams, King spoke to the Utah legislature in 1986 urging passage of a holiday in her late husband’s name. Library of Congress, LC-HS503–4703.

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. 64 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. 65

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.” 66

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, a devoted member of the Freemen Institute and a close friend of Benson and Skousen—rescinded the King holiday in Arizona. 67 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. 68

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. 69 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.” 70

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 Prize– winning cartoonist at the Arizona Republic, Steve enthusiastically embraced the King holiday in Arizona and marched in support of it. 71 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. 72 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. 73

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. 74 Dozens of Mecham loyalists declared his innocence and lashed out at Steve Benson for stoking discord in his cartoons by depicting the governor as 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.” 75

Although President Benson remained silent throughout the Mecham imbroglio, the LDS public relations department responded to the publication of Sanders’s letter by affirming Benson’s love for all people regardless of “color, creed or political persuasion.” 76 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. 77 In addition, church officials dispatched Richard Lindsay, managing 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.” 78

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.” 79 Others, such as the Martin Luther King, Jr. Commission, were public advocates 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?” 80

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. 81 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. 82 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 racist views. 83 And fourth, the NAACP increased pressure on the LDS church hierarchy to support the holiday. 84

All of these factors had 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 knew 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. 85

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. 86 “When I found out [President Hinckley] accepted our invitation, I told his secretary to tell the president that he’d made my day,” Williams jubilantly noted. 87

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. 88 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 peoples, regardless of status, are my friends and neighbors.” 89 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.” 90

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.” 91

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. 92

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 efforts of Jeanetta Williams. 93 Pressure had been mounting for over a decade to change the name. Williams’s 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.” 94

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 Reagan had signed into law in 1983. 95 Not least, support poured in from all over the country and across the state, from organizations ranging from the Utah Jazz and 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. 96 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.” 97 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 of 5–4. When Stephens learned of the bill’s demise, he demanded a revote: this time it passed 6–4. 98 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. 99

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.” 100

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, 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.” 101 But Williams knew that Hinckley’s 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 herself, 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, as well as Jed Rogers and Holly George, co-editors of the Utah Historical Quarterly. Their insights and constructive suggestions have made this a better work.

1 See Houston Style Magazine January 8–14, 2015, issuu .com/houstonstylemagazine/docs/hsm_1815; 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.

2 Phil W. Petrie, “The MLK Holiday: Branches Work to Make It Work,” The Crisis 107 (May–June 2000): 55.

3 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, 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1999), 142.

4 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. Mc- Conkie, 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); Harris and Bringhurst, Mormon Church and Blacks.

5 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. 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, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah (JWML). Harris and Bringhurst, Mormon Church and Blacks, 106, discusses the LDS church’s response to the lawsuit.

6 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. James Dooley interview by Leslie G. Kelen, December 6, 1983, interview 8, tape 104, transcript p. 30, Everett L. Cooley Oral History Project, JWML.

7 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); Wallace R. Bennett, “The Negro in Utah,” Utah Law Review 3 (Spring 1953): 340–48; and F. Ross Peterson, “Blindside: Utah on the Eve of Brown v. Board of Education,” Utah Historical Quarterly 73 (Winter 2005): 4–20.

8 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; and 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 laws barring miscegenation in Utah, see Patrick Q. Mason, “The Prohibition of Interracial Marriage in Utah, 1888–1963,” Utah Historical Quarterly 76 (Spring 2008): 108–31; and Peggy Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 85, 93, 118, 240–41.

9 Hugh B. Brown general conference address, October 4–6, 1963, Conference Report (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1963), 91; see also 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; and Harris and Bringhurst, Mormon Church and Blacks, 74–76.

10 “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 (US- ARC).

11 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 from the Right: Ezra Taft Benson in Mormonism and Politics, ed. Matthew L. Harris (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2019). For Romney, see J.B. Haws, The Mormon Image in the American Mind: Fifty Years of Public Perception (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), chap. 2.

12 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.

13 Ezra Taft Benson, An Enemy Hath Done This, comp. 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.

14 The best study of King’s alleged connection to communism is David J. Garrow, The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Penguin Books, 1981); and “The FBI and Martin Luther King,” Atlantic Monthly July–August 2002, 80–88. Taylor Branch, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963–65 (New York: Simon Schuster, 1998). For Hoover’s assertion 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.

15 The Politician (privately published, 1956), 267–68, 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, rev. ed. (New York: Vintage, 1995), 318–19. Benson sent copies of The 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.

16 “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 (CHL).

17 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).

18 Prince and Wright, David O. McKay, 295–98; Frank Hewlett, “Harding Assails Benson on Birch Issue,” Salt Lake Tribune, September 26, 1963; “Idaho Congressman Hits Benson Speech,” Deseret News, September 26, 1963; “Legislator, a Mormon, Scores Benson for Birch Activities,” New York Times, September 26, 1963.

19 Harris, “Martin Luther King,” 133–36.

20 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 no. 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, June 1965, 537–39.

21 Benson, An Enemy Hath Done This, 310; Peter B. Levy, The Great Uprising: Race Riots in Urban American during the 1960s (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Peniel E. Joseph, Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (New York: Henry Holt, 2006).

22 Ezra Taft Benson, “Trust Not the Arm of Flesh,” Improvement Era, December 1967, 55–58; James T. Patterson, The Eve of Destruction: How 1965 Transformed America (New York: Basic Books, 2012), chap. 11.

23 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.

24 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, Ezra Taft Benson, Title of Liberty; Benson, An Enemy Hath Done This; Benson, So Shall Ye Reap: Selected Addresses of Ezra Taft Benson, comp. 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).

25 “U.S. Journal: Provo, Utah,” New Yorker, March 21, 1970, 122.

26 Benson, “To the Humble Followers of Christ,” Improvement Era, June 1969, 43.

27 Gary James Bergera, “‘This Time of Crisis’: The Race- Based Anti-BYU Athletic Protests of 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); 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 Sport 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.

28 Harris, “Martin Luther King.”

29 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. For strictures against interracial dating at BYU, 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 Americans, BYU, and the Church,” HBL; and 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): 67–68.

30 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).

31 Hugh B. Brown general conference address, October 4–6, 1963.

32 “A Clear Civil Rights Stand,” Deseret News, March 9, 1965; “Letter of First Presidency Clarifies Church’s Position on the Negro,” December 15, 1969, Improvement Era, February 1970, 70–71.

33 Larry McDonald, “Americans, Stop Thinking Like Communists,” June 18, 1980, in 126 Cong. Rec. (1980); 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; Sokol, Heavens Might Crack, 245–53.

34 Chappell, Waking from the Dream, 95–98.

35 Skousen, The Naked Communist (Salt Lake City: Ensign Publishing, 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 America Invented Christian America (New 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.

36 Linda Sillitoe and David Merrill, “Freemen America” (part 1), Utah Holiday Magazine February 1981, 40, 52– 54.

37 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.

38 Linda Sillitoe and David Merrill, “Freeman America” (part 2), Utah Holiday Magazine, March 1981, 40, 52.

39 Orrin Hatch, “Tribute to W. Cleon Skousen,” in 152 Cong. Rec. S114-S115 (January 25, 2006). 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.

40 W. Cleon Skousen and R. Stephen Pratt, “Reverend King’s Ministry: Thirteen Years of Crisis,” Freemen Digest (January 1984): 15–20 (quote on 18).

41 Willard Woods, “Martin Luther King Day,” Freemen Digest (January 1984): 21–24 (quotes on 21, 23).

42 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, 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.

43 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, 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.

44 Chester Lee Hawkins interview with Alan Cherry, March 1, 1985, 22–23, African American Oral History Project, HBLL.

45 Terry Lee Williams interview with Leslie Kelen, April 4, 1986, 58, box 7, fd. 5, Interviews with Blacks in Utah, 1982–1988, JWML.

46 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 Working Bills, USARA. This bill omitted the phrase “Personal Preference Day” from the 1985 version. No reason is provided.

47 Williams interview, 60.

48 Williams interview, 69.

49 Williams interview, 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.

50 Williams interview, 63.

51 John Daley, “Coretta Scott King Remembered Fondly in Utah,” KSL News, January 31, 2006, accessed December 20, 2019, www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=157299.

52 Greg Burton, “Living in the Beehive State Still a Challenge for Blacks,” Salt Lake Tribune, January 19, 2004; Williams interview, 67.

53 Williams interview, 71.

54 Williams interview, 65.

55 For Sykes’s bill, see H.B. 186, box 63, fd. 18, Utah House of Representatives Working Bills, USARC. Reverend France A. Davis and Nayra Atiya, France Davis: An American Story Told (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2007), 272; 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.

56 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.

57 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.

58 Browning quoted in DeVilbiss, “Utah, Region Balks at King Holiday”; Schmutz quoted in Daley, “Coretta Scott King Fondly Remembered in Utah.”

59 Davis quoted in DeVilbiss, “Utah, Region Balks at King Holiday”; Doug Robinson, “Rev. France Davis: A Force for Good,” Deseret News, December 1, 2002; France Davis interview with Leslie Kelen, August 4, 1983, box 1, fd. 25, Interviews with Blacks in Utah, 1982–1988, JWML.

60 Benson email to Matthew Harris, November 6, 2014.

61 W. Julius Johnson to President Ezra Taft Benson, January 30, 1990, Harris files (courtesy of Steve Benson).

62 Harris, Thunder from the Right, 9.

63 Crawford, as quoted in Julie Howard, “Legislator Proposes Renaming the Holiday,” Daily Universe (Brigham Young University), January 13, 2000.

64 “The Rev. King Deserves to Be Recognized,” “Students Rallying for Awareness of King’s Mission,” and “A Great Man,” 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. See Bryan Waterman and Brian Kagel, The Lord’s University: Freedom and Authority at BYU (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998).

65 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.

66 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.

67 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 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, 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.

68 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.

69 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.

70 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.

71 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 Matthew Harris, November 6, 2014. See also Benson quoted in Ed Foster and Steve Yozwiak, “Anti-King Petitions Get Support, Thousands Sign, Drive Leaders Say,” Arizona Republic, October 10, 1989.

72 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.

73 Eduardo Pagán, “Razing Arizona: The Clash in the Church Over Evan Mecham,” Sunstone (March 1988): 15–21; Watkins, High Crimes and Misdemeanors, 88.

74 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.

75 “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.

76 “Sanders’ Letter Angers His Allies, King Slur Draws Rebuke,” Phoenix Gazette, October 6, 1989. Benson read this statement when he was first inaugurated as the church president. Don L. Searle, “President Ezra Taft Benson Ordained Thirteenth President of the Church,” Ensign, December 1985, accessed on December 20, 2019, lds.org/ensign/1985/12/president-ezra-taft-benson -ordained-thirteenth-president-of-the-church?lang=eng.

77 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.”

78 Lindsay address at the Utah State Capitol, January 18, 1988, Richard P. Lindsay addresses, 1976–1994, CHL.

79 “Give King Holiday Its Due,” Salt Lake Tribune, February 5, 1997.

80 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.

81 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.

82 In 1999, New Hampshire recognized the King holiday, stipulating it as a paid holiday for state employees. In 2000, South Carolina made it 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, accessed December 20, 2019, upi.com/Some-states-boycotted -MLK-Day-at-first/57461358775502/; Michael Brindley, “N.H.’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Didn’t Happen Without a Fight,” New Hampshire Public Radio, August 27, 2013, accessed December 20, 2019, nhpr.org/post/nhs-martin -luther-king-jr-day-didnt-happen-without-fight #stream/0; Sokol, Heavens Might Crack, 251.

83 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.

84 Harris, “Watchman on the Tower,” chap. 5.

85 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).

86 Jason Swenson and Carrie A. Moore, “LDS Leader to Keynote Conference—of NAACP,” Deseret News, April 4, 1998; Albert Fritz interview with Leslie G. Kelen, February 24, 1983, box 2, fd. 6, Interviews with Blacks in Utah, 1982–1988, JWML; James E. Dooley interview with Leslie G. Kelen, December 6, 1983, interview 8, tape 104, Everett C. Cooley Oral History Project, JWML. Fritz and Dooley were past presidents of the NAACP.

87 Swenson and Moore, “LDS Leader to Keynote Conference.”

88 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. Danielle Christensen, “LDS Church and NAACP Announce Plans for Education and Employment Initiatives,” Church News, July 17, 2018, accessed December 20, 2019, 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.

89 Gordon Bitner Hinckley, Discourses of President Gordon B. Hinckley—Volume 1: 1995–1999 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2005), 532–38 (quote on 533).

90 John L. Hart, “Fathers Needed as ‘Pillars of Strength,’” Church News, May 2, 1998, accessed December 20, 2019, lds churchnews.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, accessed December 20, 2019, apnews .com/71112137fd737f6e1cef4cabeee26abe; and “News of the Church—NAACP Leadership Meeting,” Ensign, July 1998, 74.

91 Matthew Harris telephone conversation with Jeanetta Williams, June 11, 2019; Williams email to Harris, June 12, 2019.

92 Matthew Harris telephone conversation with Darius Gray, January 20, 2016.

93 For Bordeaux’s bill (H.B. 302), see le.utah.gov/~2000/bills /hbillint/HB0302.pdf; for Suazo’s bill (S.B. 121), see le.utah.gov/~2000/bills/sbillint/SB0121.pdf, both accessed December 20, 2019. For Williams’s collaboration with Suazo and Bourdeaux, see Petrie, “The MLK holiday,” 55; and especially 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).

94 “Will Utah Rename Holiday for King?” Deseret News, January 17, 2000; see also Lindsay Palmer, “Legislature Opens Holiday,” Daily Universe, January 13, 2000.

95 Susan Whitney, “Remember King: Songs, Prayers, Talks and Tears on Rights Day,” Deseret News, January 18, 2000.

96 NAACP Salt Lake Branch, accessed December 20, 2019, naacp-saltlakebranch.org/branch-activities.html; Williams, “History of the Name Change”; Petrie, “The MLK Holiday,” 55.

97 Lee Davidson, “Former Utah House Speaker Named Chief Lobbyist for Mormon Church,” Salt Lake Tribune, September 22, 2017; Dillon, “Will Utah Rename Holiday for King?”

98 For passage of the bill after the revised vote, see Jordan Tanner, Committee Chair, to Marty Stephens, House Speaker, February 7, 2000, le.utah.gov/~2000/comreport /HB306H10.pdf; 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, 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, 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.”

99 For Leavitt signing the bill into law, March 16, 2000, see le.utah.gov/~2000/htmdoc/sbillhtm/SB0121.htm, accessed December 20, 2019; see also Lucinda Dillon, “Leavitt Praised as He Signs Law Designating King Day,” Deseret News, April 6, 2000; Petrie, “The MLK Holiday,” 55.

100 Dillon, “Leavitt Praised as He Signs Law Designating King Day.”

101 “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.