Item Detail
-
32757
-
2
-
4
-
English
-
Not in My Neighborhood: The 1939 Controversy over Segregated Housing in Salt Lake City
-
Utah Historical Quarterly
-
2022
-
90
-
1
-
Salt Lake City, UT
-
Utah State Historical Society
-
6-21
-
"In the fall of 1939, a large group of residents living in one of Salt Lake City’s central areas, a part of the larger Sumner neighborhood, reacted to a rumored petition that requested a zoning change to create a 'negro residential zone' in their part of town and encourage more Black families from outside Utah to relocate there. These residents did not name the plan’s proponents, nor is it possible to be certain, even now, who might have suggested Salt Lake City segregate housing. At the time, the protesters insisted that an unnamed group of Black people were responsible for the petition asking for the zoning change. It is possible the Sumner residents and property owners may have learned about a new federal housing program under investigation in Ogden, Utah where members of that Black community had proposed that it be sponsored by the city. They could have been aware that if sponsored by Salt Lake City, a federal program would change their neighborhood and bring more low-income residents into their area. These predominantly white residents of the Sumner neighborhood, under the leadership of Sheldon Brewster, reacted to the rumored petition by drafting their own petition to the Salt Lake City commission asking city officials to comply with three demands; the most controversial of which was that their neighborhood be spared and some other part of town be zoned as a Black district. The NAACP responded to the petition’s call for a racial housing zone by voicing its members’ opposition to segregation. In addition, an ad hoc group of Black Salt Lake Valley residents, including Mary Lucile Perkins Bankhead, gathered at the City and County Building to assert their constitutional right to own property and live in any part of town. Lucile Bankhead’s retelling of the story of the proposed segregated district and the response of the wider Black community was central to keeping the memory of this event alive.
This episode in the story of Utah’s race relations has been recounted many times, but not fully, and often with misremembered and inaccurate details. The most recent version published and many older retellings set the Black protest at the Utah State Capitol. However, this was an issue proposed and debated at the city level, despite the leader of the Sumner neighborhood group, Sheldon Brewster, being a member of the Utah State House of Representatives.
From newspaper articles, city commission records, transcriptions of the 1939 petition, and later oral histories, it is possible to draw a more complete picture of what took place, correct the historical record, and illustrate how city officials responded to the competing demands of their constituents. Rumor, fear, and misunderstanding each played a part as citizens on both sides of the color line tested the limits of the power of local officials to control city housing based on racial identity." [Author]