In This Issue

Conflict is surely one of the overriding themes of history, but with conflict also comes the opportunity for reconciliation. In the waning days of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln urged Americans to behave “with malice toward none, with charity for all,” doing “all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” This was a tall order: people clash with one another for complex reasons that cannot be easily dismissed. Even so, the reality of conflict and the hope of reconciliation unite this issue’s articles.

Athletics are, at least in part, about contest; in the midst of the civil rights movement, Brigham Young University’s athletic program became truly contested as activists used college sports to challenge racial inequality in the LDS church and in American society as a whole. From 1968 to 1971, the Cougars faced a tide of race-based demonstrations at their games. Some of these events escalated into memorable protests, such as the 1969 “black fourteen” incident in Laramie, Wyoming. Meanwhile, the momentum of social change became increasingly evident on the BYU campus itself, as our first article shows.

A century earlier, a young Catholic priest named Edward Kelly moved to Utah and soon thereafter crossed paths with Brigham Young. Their encounter came about because of a property dispute—a situation filled with the potential for disagreement. And yet, according to legend, Young acted in Kelly’s favor, and the two laid the foundation for a peaceful relationship between Catholics and Mormons in Utah. Our second article concludes that, in spite of real differences, leaders from both religions have fostered a climate of ecumenism. Author Gary Topping deals with a variety of sources in this article, encouraging us to consider questions about the quality of historical documents. Can we trust a document’s creator? What difference does that person’s perspective and motives make?

Our third article also examines the significance of perspective; it concerns clashes between Navajos and Anglos in the late nineteenth century. During that era, two white prospectors were murdered in an area of the Four Corners region that government agents called the “land of death.” Determining culpability for the crime was difficult, to say the least: a number of individuals presented conflicting reports, while an inadequate knowledge of the terrain hampered the effectiveness of investigations by white authorities. A history of strife between local whites and Indians only compounded these problems. It was a situation rife with trouble and misunderstanding.

The summer issue of Utah Historical Quarterly concludes with the story of Union and Confederate veterans who, in 1913, met under friendly circumstances to commemorate their battles of fifty years earlier. Utah sent a party of its own Civil War veterans to that 1913 Gettysburg reunion, though not without a little contemporary bickering among politicians. Still, the Gettysburg reunion was a satisfying event, where what might have seemed unthinkable before—the development of friendships among former enemies—occurred.

COVER: Hashkéneinii Biye’, son of the noted Navajo headman Hashkéneinii, circa 1935–40.UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

ABOVE: Union and Confederate veterans reminiscing together at a 1913 reunion held in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.