We’re going to dive into Utah’s decade of black and Indian slavery, and I’ll ask Mauli Bonner some hard questions. Should Mormons think about renaming buildings at BYU who have ties to slavery? Check out our conversation…
Don’t miss our other conversations with Mauli: https://gospeltangents.com/people/mauli-bonner
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Utah’s Slave History
GT 00:54 I do wonder, it seems like Margaret Young said this, that New Mexico wanted to come into the union as a free state and California did, as well. Brigham Young’s looking at the calculations. Hey, well, if we come in as a slave state, we’ll keep the balance of slavery slave states to free states, and it’ll be easier to get into the Union. Now, clearly, there was a polygamy problem.
Mauli 01:21 Yeah, yeah, there’s that.
GT 01:25 But, is that your understanding as well? Was this really just a political thing so that Utah could become a slave state to keep the balance of slavery?
Mauli 01:35 I think that that’s a part of it. If you ask me, there’s a whole lot more into this. I feel, just like politics today, there’s our politicians who are giving their speeches or running for office. Then there’s the people who have the money, who are pushing them to do whatever they need to do. And so, if you have people who are the money people behind making this successful, they have a huge influence on it. So, if you can imagine, a lot of the saints coming through were poor had hardly nothing. They barely had enough to make it into the valley. Then, you have some of the Southern converts that are doing just fine. They’ve sold everything they owned, which was a lot back in the south. Their money is in their enslaved labor and their wagons and their seed and their furniture. And so they’re coming in–and in their tools and their everything. So, now you get into Utah, and you’re telling me that I’m going to lose half of my wealth? Then I’m going back. And if they go back…
GT 02:37 You’re talking about wealth. You’re talking about slave wealth.
Mauli 02:40 Yes, slave wealth. Well, in my mind, this is what’s happening. So, you have these families, these very prominent rich families who are going to threaten to go back, because why wouldn’t they? Why wouldn’t they? So, they’ll go back, take their slave labor with them, all their wagons, all their seed, all their tools. How in the world are the saints going to survive? So, I think that was also weighing in the balance, in my opinion.
Abraham Smoot Building at BYU
GT 03:06 This brings up another tough subject. And when I say tough, one of the things I’ve found it’s so easy to talk about race issues with a black person. It’s a lot harder to talk about it with a white person.
Mauli 03:22 Yeah. There’s a lot more landmines.
GT 03:27 “We’re not racist.”
Mauli 03:28 Yeah.
GT 03:28 Yeah, we are. But Abraham Smoot was one of these southern slaveholders. There’s an administration building at BYU that’s named after him. He was a great leader in the LDS Church. A few years ago, it seems like there was a question, especially with Black Lives Matter, and the George Floyd murder, and everything like that.
Mauli 03:59 It just woke us all up.
GT 04:01 Yeah. And so should we rename both BYU, because Brigham Young put enough pressure that people passed it. We do want to talk about Orson Pratt, too, but also the Abraham Smoot Building, because he owned a lot of slaves. What’s your position on that?
Mauli 04:24 Gosh, it’s so tough. Unfortunately, for some, this is my position. If it’s hurting people, if it’s causing people harm to have to walk into a building that reminds them of abuse, and all the worst things that come with slavery, because the worst things that happened in the south, also did happen in Utah, just not as prevalent. It’s a reminder of that, with no apology or excuse. Why would we do that to people and have to put them through that? Change the name. Abe’s not here. He’s okay. He’s fine. He doesn’t need his name on a building. But there’s people here today that are really suffering because of it. And so, for that reason alone, change the name. These men are gone. They don’t need some form of building etched in stone. That’s for us, and our egos and whatever that is. We should be protecting the people that are here today.
Mauli 05:40 You have J. Marion Sims. He was the godfather of gynecology, and he worked on enslaved women, gave them no anesthesia. No anesthesia, because back then it was a common [belief that] they don’t feel pain, and they don’t feel remorse. So, you can take their baby from their womb, but he was trying all these different things with the C-sections and having them hold each other down. It was terrible, terrible. We would all agree. There was a monument of him in Central Park in New York. What do we do now that we’ve learned what he did. Because yes, he changed gynecology, but off of the abuse of women. Should there be a monument there? Of course not. Because of the abuse he did to women. Because they’re black women, does that make it okay? What if they were white women? Do we keep it? Does that change it? So, for me, it doesn’t matter all of what he changed when it came to the medical field. The harm and damage that he did is enough to say that is not going to have a monument there to re-traumatize people today, in my opinion.
GT 06:53 Let’s throw it the other way. Martin Luther King, incredible civil rights leader. I remember talking with Larry Foster, and he said that he was crushed to find out that King had affairs, a very un-Christian thing to do. Do we still celebrate King despite his foibles?
Mauli 07:13 For me, in my opinion, it’s so harmful to compare slavery, murder, torture, rape, to someone who was unfaithful, and we’re putting them in the same bracket to make a point. Again, that says a lot about us. If we’re putting that in the same bracket as murder and hanging people and torturing people and enslaving people, then what is wrong with us. There is no comparison. So that would be my answer to that. So, if you’re saying, well, Martin did that. Wow! Is that how you see slavery? Then maybe you should learn more about the history is what I would say to that person and say, and see the gravity of that and see if you want to compare it to adultery, or to cheating at this school or on this test? Is that what you’re really going to compare it to?
GT 08:14 Because some people are going to say, well, if you look at anybody, anybody has sins. Let’s just call it that way. Any great leader is going to have things that they did bad. So, can anybody be celebrated? I mean, there’s going to be people that are going to say that. How would you respond to that?
Mauli 08:33 It’s not about can they be celebrated? I feel like, even though Brigham Young, led the debate in making Utah slave territory, that does not change the fact for me, that he was this incredible prophet that led the largest pioneer migration in American history across the country. Like, he’s unreal. He’s incredible. And so, it’s not either/or. I do think that we can acknowledge someone’s accomplishments and also their sins. I know, I’m saying things that are just going to rock people’s world. I know it’s probably triggering to even have the conversation. But hopefully, it can just be a conversation that we’re having. And this can invite other people to have the conversation. Because I’m not saying that I’m right. I’m still figuring it out. I just know that I don’t feel good knowing that if A.O. Smoot did enslave people, why are we putting his name on it? When there’s people today that are descendants. My great-grandfather was enslaved. And so it’s like, sorry, deal with it. Whoa. That’s tough.
GT 09:47 Yeah.
Mauli 09:49 Since I just spent so much time triggering people in one way, I want to take a moment to speak to the other side of the argument. Because the other side has a strong argument. A.O. Smoot sacrificed just about everything he could sacrifice for this territory, for the people. Look at the fruits of the labor because of it. So many, countless; it is countless those who have benefited from Brigham Young and A.O. Smoot’s relationship and what they said they’re going to do to make this school the BYU. How can we tear that down? How can we take down what we’re all benefiting from, because of that being one part of their decision making. But they didn’t even realize the magnitude of how wrong it was. And had they known, would they have done it? Had they known the gravity that we see, hindsight 100 and something years later? And so, there is a strong argument there. If nothing is taken down and nothing is changed, I would be totally fine with that. Because it’s a strong argument. How can we? So, even though when I speak on something, it feels so absolute, but I can equally feel just as strong on the other side.
GT 11:08 It’s my understanding that Abraham’s grandson, Reed Smoot, who became a Senator here in Utah–and, of course, there were the Reed Smoot hearings. He was picked because he wasn’t a polygamist. But my understanding is he was actually pretty good with regards to civil rights. So, you look at his grandfather who owned slaves, and now his grandson is pro-civil rights. So, I love that these things are messy.
Mauli 11:44 Yeah, they are.
GT 11:46 And it’s a lot easier to tell the simple tales. Oh, he did one thing wrong, let’s cancel him, the cancel culture. So, I liked what you said, that we need to really get in and understand. We have Brigham Young, who is instituting slavery in Utah, but yet, freeing a slave, Green Flake. What’s going on?
Mauli 12:06 Yeah. And that, to me, just leads to the politics of it all. Like, wow, was he really just being, did he believe what he was saying? Or was he just giving great speeches as a politician? Because there’s other letters where he’s said that he would purchase someone and set them at liberty. So, you’re saying there should be slavery, but you want to try to make sure it doesn’t happen, at the same time. That is not unique to Brigham Young.
Indian Slavery
GT 12:34 In addition, Brigham Young had a policy to purchase Indian children, especially slaves. One of the things about the Act in Relation to Service was blacks and Indians were treated differently. Indian children, once they hit about 20, were supposed to be freed, where that wasn’t true for blacks.
Mauli 12:55 Right.
GT 12:56 But this policy of purchasing children I guess, I mean, for Indian slaves, I guess you could argue, yes, this was gradual emancipation. But not as clearly for blacks. And so there is this real contradiction: we’re going to purchase slaves, then we’re going to free them. Is that a good thing? I think is argued by experts in Indian slavery in Utah, that by purchasing the slaves, they were creating a market for more slaves and perpetuating slavery. And so, was it a merciful thing? What do you think?
Mauli 13:44 Yeah, that’s, I mean, it would be my same answer to your initial question with, A.O. Smoot on buildings. There’s two arguments that I could argue equally. On one hand, draw the line. We do not purchase someone, another human being and enslave them. We’re not engaging in it. If that means that you’re going to–we don’t know what’s going to happen to that child, that family, that is on you, and hope that you do not commit sin. But what I’m not going to do is start sinning myself. So, there’s no reason to ever purchase another human being and enslave them. That being said, what if they didn’t? Was it worse for the kids? You’ve heard you’ve heard stories like well, they were pressured into doing it. If they didn’t do it, then what were they going to do to the children that they didn’t purchase? Okay, then we’ll take them have heard that story.
GT 14:46 There’s a story about some Indians bringing some Indian slaves, ‘Hey, we want to sell these to you.’ No, we’re not going to purchase them and they kill one of the kids right there in front of the settlers. And it’s like, that’s your fault. And then they’re like, ‘Okay, we’ll buy the others.’
Mauli 15:03 Yeah, I’ve heard that story. And so it could go either way. There’s an argument on both sides, because you don’t know what was in their minds at that time. I have to say something. If we spent more time, and if this was a roundtable discussion about what to do with naming buildings, and with this troubled history, I would want to walk into a building that says A.O. Smoot, that teaches me the history of A.O. Smoot and what he’s done, what he’s accomplished, what and the turns and choices that he made that were harmful. I want to walk into that building. It may not be the building where I have to go take class. I don’t want to be forced to, in order to get the grade, I have to go in there. But there should be somewhere to learn about him. And that could be the building for that. So, I don’t think…
GT 16:05 So, like a museum.
Mauli 16:06 That type of thing, but one shouldn’t be forced to go in in order to get the degree, if they don’t if they feel traumatized by it. That would be part of my argument.
GT 16:15 Very interesting.
Green Flake
GT 16:17 Is there anything more with Green Flake that we need to talk about?
Mauli 16:21 Yeah, this is the part that I wish was a part of more than a discussion is talking about the actual, enslaved human being? What were they going through? Because we spend time talking about Brigham Young and other leaders and what they thought, what they said and what they did. But these black saints were at their disposal. And what was that like? How did how did he retain his faith. Because he stayed a member of the Church, though, being enslaved by another member, watching his friend Hark, because they were close, Hark Wales, be separated from his family. Hark Wales, was set to go into San Bernardino. But he now had a wife and a child, because they had spent a couple years in the valley before they went on to San Bernardino. And he wanted to go with his family. And the owner of Hark said, “Not unless you can pay,” to Brigham Young, because Brigham Young was suggesting to keep the families together. And the owner said, “Is somebody going to pay me? Otherwise Hark goes. She stays.” That’s what happened. And that family was torn apart. We don’t know that they ever saw each other again after that. And so, I want to highlight the emotional fortitude of these black saints, who did incredible things, the similar hard things that the white saints did, in addition to slavery. For Green Flake to speak at multiple Pioneer Day celebrations, alongside Church leaders, what he must have meant to the community. They respected him and knew what he meant, for him to be speaking with leadership. For him to endure that, and have no signs of bitterness, that is what I am trying to study about African Americans. Because when there’s a history of these hundreds of years of slavery, and then they’re freed, where is the bitterness, the bitterness and the revolt. The people come together and fight back and take–no, they just want their peace.
Mauli 18:47 The civil rights movement, and you think of Martin Luther King, and then you’d think that there was this big fight. No! peace. I think there’s a beauty in the African American struggle here in America. That’s no different for those who are members of the Church and how they endured what they endured. How bad was it? We don’t know. But we do know that there’s no stories of this bitterness. Somehow, they still found forgiveness and love, which I hope that I can attain one day.
Mauli 19:18 Green Flake, as he watched other black members die in unmarked graves, he carved his own gravestone, which is so special to me. He was one of the young ones. He was 19. So, he watched people pass before him, and he chose to not have his family not be able to find him or us not be able to know who he is. So, to carve his gravestone, that that’s a beautiful piece of history. One thing you asked about was hearing new stories and things you hadn’t heard before. As I was doing this research, I came across a family in California. There was a lady in my stake, whose kid was on a basketball team with another kid, and she mentioned Green Flake. And he was like, oh, yeah, that’s my great-great-great so and so.
GT 20:09 Really?
Mauli 20:10 Yeah. And it’s just some kid, not a member the Church or anything. She connected me with the family. And they’re like, yeah. They shared with me stories that I hadn’t heard, like, on one of the trips back Green Flake was coming in for a Pioneer Day celebration, and was bringing Lucinda. They would pull over in the wagon, and he would just let her–he would trick her with animals and scare her. Just hearing the humanity, and even though that’s like a little memory of something, it just lets us realize they were human beings and not just a topic that we’re talking about.
GT 20:44 Oh, wow. Was that part of your movie, though?
Mauli 20:47 It wasn’t.
GT 20:48 You learned that too late.
Mauli 20:49 Well, I learned it. But I was like, where does that fit in? And how do I have the money to shoot it? Yeah. So all those things, yeah.
GT 21:00 Oh wow.
{End of Part 2}
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