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Utah in the Green Book: Segregation and the Hospitality in the Beehive State
Cover of the 1961 Green Book. Courtesy New York Public Library.
Utah in the Green Book: Segregation and the Hospitality Industry in the Beehive State
BY CHRISTINE COOPER-ROMPATO
In February 2019, Green Book won the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film follows the travels of pianist Don Shirley on a concert tour through the Midwest and South before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made segregation illegal. Its title refers to The Negro Motorist Green Book, a tour guide designed to list safe places for African Americans to eat, spend the night, and find other amenities when traveling across the United States when many establishments throughout the nation were “white only.” 1 Victor Hugo Green, a postal employee from Harlem, published the Green Book under his own imprint from 1936 until his death in 1960, with a short gap during World War II; his wife, Alma Green, continued as editor after Victor’s death. 2 Green collected listings of hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and other businesses that catered to African Americans, and he encouraged readers to submit recommendations for locations to be included in the guide: in early editions, the author suggested, “There are thousands of places that the public doesn’t know about and aren’t listed. Perhaps you might know of some? If so send in their names and addresses and the kind of business, so that we might pass it along to the rest of your fellow Motorists.” 3
The Green Book and a similar guidebook, the Travelguide: Vacation and Recreation without Humiliation, which was published between 1946 and 1957, portrayed African Americans as confident, mobile, American consumers. 4 The guides argued that businesses would see the power of economics and welcome African Americans. 5 Despite such an optimistic outlook, a number of states—including Utah—lagged behind in listing businesses that welcomed African Americans. 6
With this article, my purpose is to explore the hotels that were open to African Americans in Utah and to understand how they fit within the fabric of the state. My argument is threefold. First, hotel proprietors and guests often grappled with questions, searches, and arrests by the local police; the owners and guests could also be the victims of violence, some of it racially motivated. These hotels were often located in economically challenged parts of town, meaning that black tourists were routed to the low rent district. Second, they were often owned or operated by African American women, and hotel ownership could at times be a viable way for these women to advance economically. Last but not least, these businesses frequently became important political and social gathering places for African Americans.
In the early 1900s, Utah’s cities offered a variety of hotels for overnight white guests. Most prominent among these hotels in Salt Lake City were the Hotel Utah, established in 1911 and largely funded by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; the Newhouse Hotel, built in 1912 by mining magnate Samuel Newhouse, a son of Russian Jewish immigrants, and the Peery Hotel, opened in 1911 and built by the Peery brothers. 7 Salt Lake City was a travel destination for so-called Mormon tourism: Latter-day Saints and others visiting the church’s headquarters. This provided the state with much revenue, and it not until the late 1940s did state officials started to advertise aggressively for other kinds of tourists. 8 After World War II, increased spendable income, vacation time, and the affordability of automobiles all contributed to the rise in Americans’ mobility. The segregation of hotel spaces, however, continued to persist in Utah until the mid-1960s with the passing of the Civil Rights Act.
Governmental support of segregated accommodations stretched back to the nineteenth century. As F. Ross Peterson explains, the Supreme Court’s 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision opened the floodgates for legally segregating numerous aspects of daily life, and Utah was among the many states with laws segregating housing, public accommodations, theaters, and restaurants. 9 Bernice Benns, who was born in 1932 and moved to Salt Lake City in 1946, explained that as an African American teenager, “We saw a lot of movies. Of course, we saw them in the balcony. Because you couldn’t go down the stairs in a movie at that time.” 10 When an interviewer asked further about what she had experienced, Benns elaborated:
Accounts abound of famous African American performers—including Marian Anderson, Ella Fitzgerald, and Harry Belafonte—who performed in Salt Lake City’s white-only hotels and were forbidden to eat or stay in those locations. 12 Even though a 1948 Utah law made de jure segregation illegal, “de facto segregation policies persisted for another decade.” Repeated efforts to strengthen the state’s civil rights legislation failed on Capitol Hill throughout the 1940s and 1950s. 13
Prominent African American newspapers also attest to the difficultly black performers had finding hotels in Utah. Although geographically Salt Lake City could be a convenient stopover for national tours, culturally it could be very difficult for African Americas. In 1946, Norman Grantz sponsored a cross-country tour of African American musicians titled “Jazz at the Philharmonic.” Grantz would only book performances where audiences were mixed: “If Negroes and whites are forced to sit by side at his concerts they will lose many of their prejudices,” he asserted. When asked what he thought about hotels, however, he said they were still a problem; Salt Lake City, for example, was described by Grantz as “like . . . South Carolina.” 14 This comparison of Utah and the West in general with the South was frequently invoked during the decades of segregation.
Over a decade after Grantz likened Salt Lake City to South Carolina, Alice Dunnigan laid bare the discrimination faced by African Americans as well as other people of color in Utah. Writing in the Kansas City, Kansas, Plaindealer, Dunnigan noted that
The LDS church was often blamed for Utah’s slowness in adopting civil rights legislation. For example, in 1959, the Utah Senate killed a civil rights measure, leading to the headline “NAACP Scores Mormons for Blocking Bill” and an assertion that the lobbying by the Restaurant Association and Apartment House Owners Association won out, because the legislation did not have the strong support of the church. 16 Several black interviewees who participated in an oral history project addressed the particularly strong racial prejudice they encountered in the state because of the church and the culture it promoted in the state. In 1983, Benns recounted to the interviewee what she told her children: “I explain to them that in a place like Utah, you are not going to get the type of chances that other kids get. . . . It’s nothing against you, it’s just the way people see it in Utah.” 17 Wilfred Bocage, vice president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Salt Lake chapter in 1983, related how, when he first arrived in Utah some years earlier, he came with the knowledge that the LDS church did not allow African Americans to hold the priesthood: “I could not be a Priest. So that said to me that . . . I’m going to be going into an environment that’s going to consider me less than a full fledged citizen.” He then described how he saw that attitude extended “in everyday business, that goes on in this state.” 18 Several other interviewees directly related the refusal of the LDS church to admit African American men to the priesthood until 1978 with the extent and vehemence of the racial prejudice they faced while living in Utah. Accounts like these suggest that African American tourists traveling through Utah must have experienced discrimination in their day-today encounters.
In July 1964, the U.S. enacted the Civil Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination in public accommodations including housing, hotels, restaurants, and entertainment venues. Despite this national law (and earlier city and state laws), business owners continued to turn African Americans away in many states. Alfred Fritz, president of the Salt Lake chapter of the NAACP in 1964, described how under the federal law “a person who registers a complaint of discrimination must wait 120 days to receive redress.” He and others had advocated unsuccessfully for Utah to pass civil rights legislation for fourteen legislative sessions. In 1965, Utah finally passed the Public Accommodations Act, which protected African Americans from discrimination in Utah establishments. 19 This of course did not end racial discrimination in housing, as many accounts of men and women of color describe difficulties in renting apartments and purchasing homes in Utah after the passing of the Public Accommodations Act.
Because of these challenges that African American travelers faced while journeying through Utah, travel guides like the Green Book were desirable and necessary. What follows is a chronological discussion of the Utah hotels included in the Green Book with a brief history, as gleaned from newspaper accounts and tax records. Because I rely heavily newspaper records in this research, the events that are reported are largely shaped by what a white newspaper-reading audience would have been interested in consuming: accounts of violence enacted by people of color. These statistics about black violence (as well as accounts of racialized violence) were then used to shore up and enforce Jim Crow attitudes and laws. 20 In other words, one way that white people justified segregation to themselves and others was by citing statistics and accounts of the criminality of people of color. Salt Lake City newspapers, in emphasizing this violence, were not just passive reflections of events but rather shapers of the attitudes of whites and perpetuators of discrimination against people of color.
The New Hotel J. H.
Between 1936 and 1939, the Green Book contained no listings at all for Utah. Most African Americans driving cross-country at this time could take a more southerly route and bypass Utah altogether: Interstate-80 had yet to be constructed. Those African Americans who traveled to Utah often stayed with friends or family; black newspapers across the country contain social announcements of those traveling and their sojourns with friends and extended family. Of course, just because a venue was not listed in the Green Book did not mean that it did not exist; there might have been hotels and tourist homes open to African Americans in the 1930s. 21
Salt Lake City businesses that appeared in the Green Book from the 1940s to the 1960s, as shown on a present-day map of the city. Map created by Deb Miller. Utah Division of State History.
The 1940 edition of the Green Book introduced one Utah listing: “the New Hotel J. H.” in Salt Lake City, located at 250 West South Temple. 22 The advertisement proclaimed it was “the newest and best hotel West of Chicago and East of Los Angeles.” Rooms were fifty and seventy-five cents a day or four dollars a week. An advertisement from 1941 in the Salt Lake Telegram touted “hot and cold running water in all outside rms. Radios,” with the rates having increased to one dollar for one person and $1.50 for two. 23 According to city directories and newspaper advertising, James H. Hampton, an African American who had previously worked as a chauffeur for a taxicab company, owned and managed the hotel. 24 In 1946, the city directories began to list Ida M. Hampton, his widow, as hotel manager. 25 The New Hotel J. H. continued to be the lone listing for Utah in the Green Book until the late 1940s. 26
The late 1940s proved to be an extraordinarily difficult time for Ida Hampton as she was the victim of a violent racist attack on her home. The Salt Lake Telegram reported that on March 17, 1948, “Two Salt Lake county men, alleged ringleaders of a juvenile gang of 10 boys and two girls . . . demolished the interior of an unoccupied house.” Alfred Smith and Ralph Middleton, two white men from the Chesterfield neighborhood, admitted to taking part in “the almost total destruction of a two story frame house” owned by Hampton at 1237 West 2300 South. Hampton had recently purchased the home and had moved some furniture and household items into it. She discovered the horrific event when she brought friends to visit the house. The Telegram described the extent of the damage: “Every window in the dwelling was smashed, sashes were knocked out, doors were torn from hinges, panels kicked out, electric light fixtures and wiring was torn up, flooring was ripped up, and dishes smashed.” Garage doors, windows, and awnings were also ruined; in addition, Hampton’s rabbit hutches were found in a nearby canal. Investigators found a note penciled on one of the inside walls declaring the racial motivation for the crime: “If colored people live here, we’ll strike again—The Black Bart gang.” 27 Presumably, the vandals had taken the name “Black Bart gang” from a recent Universal Studios about a notorious cowboy robber. Despite the utter destruction of Hampton’s home, Smith and Middleton were only charged with second-degree burglary for stealing a radio from Hampton’s house. 28 Both men eventually pled guilty to theft, and the youths were referred to juvenile court. 29 The only punishment Smith and Middleton received was probation, and the newspapers made no mention of Hampton getting any kind of compensation for the loss of her house and possessions. 30
The year 1950 saw the end of the Hamptons’ ownership of the J. H. Hotel after a raid by the anti-vice police squad. On Tuesday, July 11, Hampton was arrested as a “disorderly person,” which could indicate a range of offenses. The following day, she pled guilty in the city court; Hampton remained in jail as of Thursday, July 13, because she had not yet paid the fine of seventy-five dollars and therefore faced spending fifteen days in jail. (Note that this punishment was far worse than what the two white men, Smith and Middleton, received for destroying her home two years earlier.) With Hampton in jail and away from the hotel, very early Thursday morning, the police responded to a “complaint by a tenant that someone was in his room and wouldn’t let him retire.” The police arrested nine unregistered men at the hotel and charged them with vagrancy and trespassing; several were also charged with drunkenness. The “transients” (as they were called in the newspaper article), who ranged in age from twenty to forty, appeared in court and were given a ten-day suspended sentence if they left the city immediately. Those who were charged with drunkenness were ordered to pay a ten-dollar fine as well. Moreover, the police also arrested a housekeeper, Mrs. Lee Arnett, as a “disorderly person,” as well as one Alfred Clarence Smart, with the same charge. Smart was heavily fined, and Arnett was given a six month jail sentence to be suspended if she left the city. 31
Although the newspaper articles do not make it clear the specific “disorderly” actions of Hampton that led to her arrest, it seems clear that the police were cracking down on the hotel, and the courts wanted to expel many of its visitors (registered or unregistered) from the city. This would be one of several African American hotels in the city that were labeled as dens of “vice” that must be eradicated. Several days after the raid, the Salt Lake Telegram reported that the “Salt Lake City commission Wednesday revoked the rooming house license issued to Ida Hampton for the J and H Hotel, 250 S. West Temple. The license was recalled on recommendation of Salt Lake police officials.” 32 After leaving the hotel business, Hampton lived for two more years in Salt Lake City, dying at age sixty-four on December 20, 1952. She was buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery, as her husband had been. 33 Ida Hampton’s experience as the subject of both a gang attack and an anti-vice raid—as well as the uneven justice administered in those events—shows some of the difficulties a black woman could face in mid-century Salt Lake City.
New to the 1951 edition of the Green Book was the Hotel Sam Sneed (or Sam Sneed Hotel) at 250 West South Temple, the same property, with a new name and now managed by Charles V. Sneed. 34 Sam Sneed, formerly of Wichita, Kansas, might have been the hotel’s namesake and also the headwaiter at the blatantly racist Coon Chicken Inn on Highland Drive in Salt Lake City in the 1940s. This restaurant, which closed in 1957, catered to white customers and relied on many African American stereotypes, including a crude, twelve-foot-high caricature of a black face that customers had to walk through the enter the establishment. 35
By the 1954 edition of the Green Book, the Jenkins Hotel had joined the Utah listings with its location as 250 South West Temple, which means it had replaced the Sam Sneed Hotel (which, in turn, had replaced the New Hotel J. H.). Like the Sneeds, the new owners, Roy and Mary Jenkins, apparently had Kansas roots; they owned several properties in that state, including two apartment buildings and a “recreation center.” 36 In the late 1950s, the Jenkins Hotel changed hands, with Bertha and Wardel L. Sanders as the proprietors of the hotel. 37 The Jenkins Hotel was ready to be turned over to new proprietors in late 1960; advertisements proclaimed that the hotel, with its twenty rentable units, was available for lease. 38 Charles Tamplin was listed in the Polk directory as manager of the Jenkins Hotel in 1961; one year later, it no longer appeared in the directory. 39 Today, a parking lot stands in its place. 40 This establishment, one of the few in Utah available to African Americans, remained open for at least two decades but dealt with much turnover and was targeted by the local police. It seems safe to say, based on the career of the hotel at 250 South West Temple, that African Americans traveling to Salt Lake City or attempting to run a hotel there did not have the easiest of roads ahead of them.
The Hotel Astoria
The other lodgings in the city listed by the Green Book carried with them some of the same difficulties as the New Hotel J. H. and its successors. The 1948 edition of the Green Book had expanded to include three more entries, the first two of which were the Astoria and the Hotel Astoria (very likely the same place), an establishment located at 528 1/2 West 200 South. 41 The Hotel Astoria was advertised in the Salt Lake Telegram as “the West’s Best Colored Hotel,” with rooms at $1.25 a night or six dollars a week and up. 42 The half address probably indicates that the Astoria had a back or side entrance, which suggests that the hotel might have offered accommodations to both African American and white patrons, with whites using the front door and people of color required to use a side or back door. 43 Or it may suggest that there was a café in the front of the hotel, with the half address indicating a side entrance for all patrons.
Newspaper accounts give a glimpse into the early history of this hotel, and many of the events that are reported involve violence. Before the hotel became the Astoria, it had operated for several decades as the Macedonia Hotel (or Hotel Macedonia). The Macedonia might also have functioned as a rooming house of sorts, with a clientele of ethnic minority laborers. 44 Newspaper records further attest to the association of the hotel and its minority guests with criminality. In 1917, for instance, a murder took place at the hotel, allegedly committed by the white manager, Maude Linker; her husband, Thomas Linker; and an African American resident, W. H. Brooks. All three were accused of murdering a wealthy white rancher, Joseph Briggs, a visitor to Salt Lake City who reportedly flashed too much cash when he stopped by the Macedonia. 45 The trial of Thomas Linker was complicated by the death of William Scott, a black porter living at the Macedonia who was a prime witness against Linker. Scott died on the eve of Linker’s trial, but it was later determined he died from an accidental overdose of morphine. Linker was then acquitted and the charges were dropped against his wife and their alleged accomplice, Brooks. 46
In the 1920s, a number of newspaper accounts described violent events at the Macedonia that were either perpetrated or experienced by Latino men, often identified in the reports as Mexicans. The scholar Khalil Gibran Muhammad has argued that in the early twentieth century African Americans were associated with criminality and that whites encouraged this connection to foster segregation. This argument can be expanded in a western context to the association of criminality with other people of color; articles about the knife fights, shootings, and robberies at the Macedonia were quick to mention the ethnicity of the people involved. 47
By March 1928, the Macedonia was up for auction, and the auction advertisement gives a good view of its size: “3-story brick Hotel building. . . . Two storerooms on ground floor and 44 rooms in balance of building, basement, entire building steam heated.” 48 The hotel continued operations and continued to appear in the news with Latino residents until 1937, when a deportation case entered the news, that of a Mrs. Mary Kelly, “alleged to be a Syrian,” accused of running an operation involving vice. 49 That next year, an anti-vice raid by police ended up with charges against two African American residents (Luella Bass and Jess Curry), as well as a Margaret Kennedy (who was presumably white because the newspaper did not identify her race). 50 Sordid accounts of murder and violence at the Macedonia (as well as natural deaths) continued in Salt Lake City newspapers throughout the late 1930s and early 1940s, further connecting its minority patrons to misfortune and criminality. 51
The Macedonia Hotel as it appeared in a tax assessor photo, circa 1936. Courtesy Salt Lake County Archives, file 1-2359.
Then, in the mid-1940s, the Macedonia appears to have been sold, and its name changed to the Astoria. A prominent African American newspaper, the Arkansas State Press, mentioned that John A. (Doc) Jamieson, who had formerly managed the Oasis in Arkansas, was now the manager of the Astoria, “a 45 room modern hotel, with a private bar and cabaret.” 52 Jamieson, a World War I veteran and a member of the NAACP, had enjoyed a remarkable career that included Ivy League degrees and fifteen years as a trainer for the New York Giants. 53 Perhaps in accordance with his experience, the Hotel Astoria’s new business model incorporated entertainment. A 1946 advertisement declared the hotel’s recently opened Palm Room to be “Salt Lake’s Gayest Nite Spot,” with dining, dancing, and “the Superb Music of the 4 Jays and Their Aristocratic Rhythms.” 54 Another advertisement heralded “the Music of the Aristocrats of Rhythm, Direct from the Cafe Zanzibar,” a popular night club in New York City that featured African American performers. 55 And, for at least a time, a boxer going by Tiger Flowers offered free instruction every evening in the public gym of the Astoria, located at “528 W. 2nd South,” for people interested in working with fight promoters. 56 The hotel could also be the scene of violence: in 1946, the Hotel Astoria was the site of “an alleged knifing brawl,” during which one Private First Class Roosevelt Jent was critically wounded in his abdomen and leg. 57
The evidence suggests that black travelers did visit the Astoria. One B. H. Hillard, in a 1952 Arkansas State Press article, described traveling across the country and pausing for a rest at the Hotel Astoria, whose “manager was the late Doc Jamieson of Little Rock.” Hillard wrote that the hotel “is very nice for tourist stop overs.” 58 Although Hillard mentioned the Astoria in 1952, the hotel’s fortunes had already changed by at least 1950. Real estate advertisements from 1948 listed a “high-class colored hotel” available in Salt Lake City, “doing a fine business” with forty-four rooms and “a café, bar, dance floor, billiards parlor and gymnasium,” a description that fits the Astoria. 59 Jamieson himself died in November 1950, and the 1951 Green Book, a special railway edition, reflected a loss of accommodations for African Americans in Salt Lake City, with only two overnight options. Both Astoria entries were dropped from the 1951 issue, and newspaper advertisements for the hotel had ceased.
The building continued to change hands—and then to decline—throughout the next two decades. In 1957, the Green Book added a Salt Lake City listing for the Harlem Hotel at the site of the former Hotel Astoria; according to the 1960 Salt Lake City directory, Eliza Perkins was the proprietor. 60 An undated “Economic or Location Obsolescence” card appears in the Salt Lake County tax assessor files that states “owner is trying to fix it up some. It is in low rent district.” 61 The 1964 tax assessor file lists a hotel, café, and store; the file includes a note dated 1977 claiming, “Bldg Boarded up.” In addition, a handwritten note on the original tax assessment sleeve states, “Bldg has unsafe sign on door—closed up,” with the instruction “salvage for 1976.” 62
The YWCA
Beginning in 1948, one Green Book listing for Salt Lake City appeared that differed from the others in both its underlying structure and its physical location: the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) residence at 306 East 300 South, which offered lodging to girls and women. 63 The YWCA, originally founded in the mid-nineteenth century, was established in Salt Lake City in the early twentieth century. In addition to providing lodging, the organization offered “social services, education, and leadership training for women.” 64 The organization as a whole was originally only interested in the needs of white women and supported segregation. Only in the 1920s did the YWCA turn its attention to women of color.” 65
A dance hosted by the USO and YWCA, June 2, 1943. Ray King, photographer. Utah State Historical Society, photograph no. 9584.
Segregation, however, continued in the YWCA, even as its members took up a call to challenge racism in the 1930s. 66 A national report about the YWCA, published in 1943 or 1944, surveyed over six hundred chapters in the U.S. and looked at the number of African American members, as well as how many of the activities offered by the organization were interracial. Not surprisingly, the results revealed that very few activities were actually integrated. 67 As a response, in 1946, the YWCA “adopted the Interracial Charter, marking a major turning point for the YWCA from a movement tolerant of segregation within its own ranks, to a genuinely interracial movement, seeking to pursue the cause of racial justice both within its organisation and throughout the world.” 68 It may have been at this point that the Salt Lake City YWCA started to offer rooms to African American women, or it might have done so earlier and notice only reached the Green Book in time for the 1948 edition. 69 Despite the call for integration, however, the YWCA struggled both to define and to implement desegregation in the organization. 70
How Salt Lake City’s chapter of the YWCA engaged with African Americans and racial issues can be glimpsed in occasional newspaper articles, advertisements, and an interview with Doris Fry, an African American woman born in Utah in 1906. Fry recalled that when she was
a teenager, she attended several dances at the Salt Lake City YWCA, as well as dances at the African American Masons’ building and hall. 71 During World War II, the organization sponsored integrated events for soldiers, as well as United Service Organizations (USO) dances. 72 The YWCA also supported the opening of a USO for African American soldiers on 201 East 100 South, despite local residents’ protests. 73 In addition, during the 1940s, the YWCA hosted meetings of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, a national organization founded by Carter G. Woodson, a son of former slaves who earned a doctorate from Harvard University. 74 Lastly, a notice from the 1959 Salt Lake City YWCA advertises that the Civic and Society Club was sponsoring “a program to commemorate Negro History Week.” 75
The Salt Lake City YWCA remained in the Green Book until the end of its publication in 1966. It is unclear how many African American tourists actually stayed there, since women would not have been able to stay with husbands or male family members. Of course, African American women did travel on their own; for example, France A. Davis, pastor of the Cavalry Baptist Church, described how his mother traveled by train alone from “Georgia to New York. To Washington D.C. To Florida. . . . Going to Oregon, going to California. Wherever there was some relatives of hers, she went to visit.” 76
Joan Nabors, an African American woman who taught preschool in Salt Lake City, described how she went from Illinois to Salt Lake City via train in 1960, in order to visit her fiancé and look for a job. 77 It is quite possible women such as these took up residence at the YWCA.
St. Louis Hotel
Also appearing in the 1954 edition of the Green Book was the St. Louis Hotel at 242 1/2 West South Temple, which the 1951 Salt Lake City directory listed as “hotel St. Louis café,” with proprietors George R. and Mrs. Mary James. 78 As France Davis has written, for evening entertainment African Americans could go to either the St. Louis Hotel or the Hampton Hotel, as well as other venues, including Redwood Ranch and Dixieland. 79 William Price, an African American resident of Salt Lake City and former employee of the whites-only Hotel Utah, described how after black musicians had played at white clubs in town, they would often perform at the black clubs by the St. Louis Hotel: “So if you wanted to see any black entertainer after they got through performing for the white audience, they usually spent some time after hours at those two clubs and you could go down and see them.” 80 The St. Louis Hotel continued operating into the 1970s; in 1974 the Polk gives its proprietor as Milford Ordway, and the last notice I have found for the hotel dates from 1975. 81
The Pacific Hotel
In the late 1950s, the Green Book listings in Salt Lake City expanded to include the Pacific Hotel on 241 Rio Grande Street. At the start of the decade, the Pacific’s management had advertised it as a “whites only” hotel. 82 That changed in 1957, when an African American couple, La- Verne C. and Scenora Jenkins, became the hotel’s proprietors. At least on paper, their path resembled that of other black hoteliers in Utah. LaVerne was born in Missouri in 1915, had two years of college education, and, by 1940, was a waiter with the Union Pacific, living in Ogden. Scenora was born in Oklahoma and belonged to the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Only six years after the Jenkins took on the Pacific Hotel, Scenora died there of natural causes. 83 Despite the Jenkins’ record of personal striving, the Pacific Hotel was apparently an unremarkable establishment (with its six toilets and six bathtubs) in an economically depressed neighborhood. 84 What is notable is that the Pacific Hotel was one of the few lodgings open to African Americans visiting Salt Lake City, no matter who they were.
A tax assessor photo of the Pacific Hotel, circa 1936. Courtesy Salt Lake County Archives, tax ID 15–01–179–003.
A notice from the Embry Chapel AME Church of its choral music broadcast over radio station KLO. Scenora Jenkins sits in the front row, at the far right. Ogden Standard-Examiner, May 1, 1949, 8.
Salt Lake City Restaurants
For the first time, the 1959 Green Book listed restaurants in Salt Lake City: the Bamboo Restaurant (755 South State Street), the Rotisserie Inn (323 South Main), and “Horman Restaurant” (1270 East 2100 South; correctly, Harman Café). As Jacob Green remembered, “Harmons was the first restaurant here to open the door and allow Blacks in freely.” 85 The Bamboo Restaurant appears in the tax assessor records on an unidentified and undated sheet as “755 South State—occupied by a noodle House Restaurant—It is the result of combining two old pioneer houses and adding a commercial front end some space at the rear for storage.” 86 Despite the Rotisserie Inn’s closure in 1957, the hotel and restaurant listings for Utah’s capital city remained unchanged from the 1959 edition of the Green Book until the end of its publication run in 1966. 87
Ogden
Whereas the hotel offerings in Salt Lake City had diminished in the 1951 Green Book, the Utah listings expanded that year to include a hotel in the railway city of Ogden: the Royal Hotel at 2522 Wall Street, which continued to be listed in the travel guide until its last edition, in 1966. African Americans initially moved to Ogden in the nineteenth century with the growth of the railroad, where they worked in the industries and services associated with the road. World War II then saw an influx of more African Americans working in the armed services and with defense in general, and many men and women decided to remain in Ogden after the war ended. 88 The growing presence of African Americans in Ogden was reflected in a cluster of businesses on the south side of Twenty-Fifth Street, where “military and railroad personnel provided a steady and paying clientele for those businesses.” 89 These included the Davis Hotel, the Royal Hotel, and the Porters’ and Waiters’ Club.
The first accommodation in Ogden open to all African Americans was the Davis Hotel at 2548 Wall, owned by Leager V. Davis, a Louisiana-born African American woman. Davis and her husband—Alonzo H. Davis, a dining car chef for the Union Pacific Railroad—began operating the building as a lodging house in 1938; by 1939, they had opened a club at that address. 90 But in 1939, tragedy also befell the couple. On September 7, 1939, Alonzo Davis and Oscar Foster, a shoe-shiner, were fatally shot over a gambling issue. 91 Testimony at the trial stated that James Floyd, an African American dining car waiter, entered the basement of the hotel to confront Davis. Davis told Floyd to leave the basement, Floyd pulled a gun, and Davis tried to flee, stumbling over Foster. In shooting at Davis, Floyd accidentally shot and killed Foster as well. 92 Floyd was convicted of voluntary manslaughter by a jury who recommended the maximum penalty, ten years in state prison.” 93 The judge imposed a one to ten year sentence. 94
After her husband’s death, Leager Davis filed a suit against the Union Pacific Railroad for $4,194, the back salary due to him between 1937 and 1939 after he had been unfairly dismissed from his position. 95 Davis alleged her husband was dismissed after being arrested and put on trial for a violent altercation; however, he was acquitted of all charges. 96 More specifically, in October 1937, Davis was acquitted of the “intent to commit murder” of another African American man, Jack Wilson, at the Davis hotel the previous March; according to the Ogden Standard-Examiner, “Davis was accused of shooting Wilson in the thigh as he entered the hotel with two city detectives. Davis testified that he had repeatedly requested Wilson to stay away from his place and fired only to frighten him and in self defense.” 97
Then, in 1942, the federal government took over the Davis Hotel and converted it into military housing, prompting Davis to buy the Royal Hotel at 2522 Wall Street. The three-story hotel was originally built in 1914 and, in 1935, became a hotel serving Basques who worked in the local sheep industry. Under Davis’s ownership, the hotel catered to an African American clientele. The hotel basement also provided office space for black servicemen during WWII and, in later decades, a meeting place for the Ogden chapter of the NAACP. The three-story building is still in existence and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The hotel is now a low-incoming housing facility for those dealing with mental health and substance abuse challenges. 98
Something of the business of the Royal can be gleaned from interviews with African Americans conducted during the 1980s. Alberta West, an African American woman who moved to Hill Air Force Base in 1942 from Texas and started a café in Ogden, described how surprised she was to see Leager Davis when she arrived in Ogden in 1942; West had met Davis in Houston, Texas, over twenty years earlier and knew her socially. When asked to describe the Royal Hotel, West stated that the hotel was “lovely, real lovely” and that Davis lived on second first floor in an apartment with “beautiful, beautiful furniture.” In relating the activities that happened at the hotel, West elaborated, “She had a club in the basement, that the American Legion ran it. They had dances down there, and all kinds of parties . . . [the] second and third floors were rooms where the Porters stayed when they came here.” According to West, after Davis’s husband died, her sister came to live with her and help out with the hotel; West described how Davis would take vacations to see her family in Texas and Louisiana and would bring in another woman to assist her sister while she was gone. 99 The interviewer repeatedly asked West if Davis had any kind of trouble running the business as a woman, but West deflected the questions, asserting that Davis was a respectable, savvy businesswoman.
The same oral history project interviewed another important African American woman in Ogden’s history, AnnaBelle Weakley-Mattson, of the Porters’ and Waiters’ Club and Hotel. That business first opened in 1916 as a place for black railroad employees to rest between runs. Over time, William Weakley, Weakley-Mattson’s husband, became the man most associated with the hotel, which was subsidized by the railroads and catered to their employees. (Perhaps because it of this, the hotel never appeared in the Green Book.) Yet it was a popular and longstanding institution, in large part because of the lounge, which Weakley-Mattson ran and which gained a reputation for hosting famous jazz and blues musicians. Operating the club and hotel was not without troubles. Weakley-Mattson recalled how “Mrs. Davis made a bid for the railway business” in the late 1940s and early 1950s, which then split that clientele between the two hotels. 100 “Then there wasn’t that much railroad business as it was because they had two hotels housing railroad crews. Then it made it less likely that you could profit very much and yet we had an investment in the hotels there to house the railroad crews and also had a contract with these people.” 101 Even worse, Weakley-Mattson also described how the police would often come looking to the African American owned businesses if there was trouble in town and often targeted her; for example, in 1952 a police raid left her with $20,000 in fines, attorney fees, and other costs. 102
A mid-century postcard advertising El Rancho Provo. Courtesy of the author.
As evident in these interviews, both Weakley-Mattson and Leager Davis provided strong examples of African American entrepreneurs in the Utah hotel business who were very active in local political and social organizations.
Utah and Beyond
In the mid-1950s, Utah’s listings expanded in the Green Book as well, this time in a southerly direction. By 1957, the Utah locations included accommodations national parks, namely the Bryce Canyon Lodge (erroneously listed in “Brigham”) and Zion Lodge at Zion National Park, as well as a hotel in Provo, El Rancho Provo (1015 South State) and the Cedar Crest Lodge Motel (555 South Main Street) in Cedar City. The Green Book at this point reflected both the travel and presence of African Americans along the Wasatch Front, from northern Utah to the national parks of Zion and Bryce in the south. 103 This raises the complicated question of segregation in America’s national parks,
where practices could differ greatly by each park. In December 1945, the Secretary of the Interior amended the rules of the National Park Service (NPS) to prohibit segregation of any kind within NPS jurisdictions—a rule that was communicated to NPS concessionaires. However, full desegregation of all the national parks would take years. Segregation lingered into the 1950s and 1960s at the Shenandoah and Blue Ridge national parks, for instance. 104
African Americans who drove across the United States in the 1950s could face radically different experiences of segregation. A 1959 article in the Detroit Free Press entitled “A Negro Tourist Reports: We Were the Big Attraction,” described how Ben Holman and two other travelers took a three-week trip from Chicago to South Dakota and Wyoming. Holman noted that in small towns “we were practically a travel hazard at times as motorists risked a collision to do a double-take.” The men endured much ignorance; for example, an “old-timer” in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, asked if they were baseball players. But overall, they said, they found people quite accommodating. Referring no doubt to the Green Book or Travelguide, Holman wrote, “We had been prepared to use a guide which listed places where Negroes could find accommodations without embarrassment. But after a few days, we put the guide in the trunk of the auto and forgot about it.” 105 As this article suggested, the guidebook was not needed, for all hotels and restaurants were open and welcoming to the men. However, because it appeared on the travel page of the newspaper, one might wonder if Holman’s article was a kind of advertisement as well, targeted at African Americans who were wary of traveling to states like Wyoming and South Dakota. 106
Another group of African Americans, traveling through the Southwest in 1955, had a completely different experience, one with tragic consequences. A number of hotels turned the travelers away, leading to excessive fatigue and a fatal car crash: “They could not have found a welcome at any of the courts from the Texas border to Albuquerque,” stated Edward L. Boyd of the NAACP. Boyd cited a recent survey in which “less than six per cent of more than 100 hotels and tourist courts on US-66 in the city were welcoming Negro tourists.” He estimated that about two hundred to four hundred African American tourists traveled through the city every month. Most hotel owners ignored the city’s antidiscrimination ordinance, so tourists were forced either to sleep in their cars or to carry on driving while extremely tired. 107
Discrimination in housing and accommodations for African Americans continued in the 1960s, despite a number of state laws that banned it. A 1964 editorial in the Santa Fe New Mexican pointed out an obvious contradiction: “There is no discrimination in public accommodations, we say, although there may be certain hostelries in the immediate area which suddenly find they have no vacancies when a Negro family shows up and asks for a room.” 108 To that end, the 1963–1964 edition of the Green Book contained an introductory page entitled “Your Rights, Briefly Speaking!” that included a list of states and their specific laws regarding discrimination, as well as the office in those states where travelers could complain to. Utah was absent from this list. 109 Even with the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Green Book authors felt obliged, in 1966, to discuss “Civil Rights: Facts vs. Fiction,” including the public accommodation rule and a list of thirty-one states with even stronger protections. As before, Utah was not part of that list. 110
With the passage of the Civil Rights Act, publications like the Green Book might have seemed unnecessary, but African Americans tourists in the West still experienced discrimination. The memoirist Lauret Savoy described one such experience from the late 1960s, when she was seven years old and visiting western national parks with her parents. Savoy tried to buy postcards from a store but was shunned by a white clerk who refused to even accept the young girl’s money. 111 Although the Green Book ceased publication in the 1960s, not long after the passing of civil rights legislation, Savoy’s account is a reminder that many tourist sites and organizations still did not welcome people of color.
During its decades of publication, the Green Book facilitated African American travel throughout the United States by helping black tourists find safe, welcoming places to eat and rest. As a historical artifact, it provides an opportunity to understand how willing the people of particular locales—in this case, Utah—were to open their businesses to African Americans. Unfortunately, according to the record left by the Green Book, few of Utah’s restaurants and hotels allowed African Americans to patronize them. Equally unfortunate was the reality that those establishments and their owners were often the targets of police raids and racially motivated violence, thereby reinforcing the stereotyped association of crime with people of color. Despite this, the history of Utah’s desegregated hotels is a vibrant one, filled with the appeal that a proprietor like Doc Jamieson could bring to a hotel or the agency of women such as Leager Davis and AnnaBelle Weakley-Mattson, who parlayed hotel ownership into personal success and then into community progress.
Notes
1 Later editions of the Green Book expanded to be international in scope. Twenty-one editions of the Green Book published between 1936 and 1966 are available online in the New York Public Library Digital Collections. The guide was published under the name The Negro Motorist Green Book through 1951; the title then changed to The Negro Travelers’ Green Book (without and then with a possessive apostrophe) through 1959, The Travelers’ Green Book through 1961, the Green Book in 1962, and Travelers’ Green Book through 1966. The New York Public Library Digital Collections, accessed March 5, 2019, digitalcollections.nypl.org.
2 “Navigating the Green Book,” New York Public Library, accessed November 14, 2019, publicdomain.nypl.org/green book-map/.
3 The Negro Motorist Green Book (New York: Victor H. Green, 1938), introduction (hereafter Green Book).
4 Leslie Nash, ed., Travelguide: Vacation and Recreation without Humiliation (New York). The Travelguide was created by William “Billy” Butler, a musician and bandleader, who had traveled extensively for his work. See Cotten Seiler, “‘So That We as a Race Might Have Something Authentic to Travel By’: African American Automobility and Cold-War Liberalism,” American Quarterly 58 (2006): 1091–1117, and Republic of Drivers: A Cultural History of Automobility in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 105–128. A number of scholars have discussed African American “automobility” and travel during segregation. Paul Gilroy, “Driving While Black,” Car Cultures: Materializing Culture, ed. Daniel Miller (Oxford: Berg, 2001), 81–104; Mark Foster, “In the Face of Jim Crow: Prosperous Blacks and Vacations, Travel and Outdoor Leisure, 1890–1945,” Journal of Negro History 84, no. 2 (1999): 130–49; Kathleen Franz, “The Open Road: Automobility and Racial Uplift in the Interwar Years,” Technology and the African American Experience: Needs and Opportunities for Study (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), 131–54; Jennifer Reut, “Travelguide: Vacation and Recreation Without Humiliation,” National Trust for Historic Preservation (blog), February 18, 2019, accessed March 5, 2019, saving places.org/stories/.
5 Seiler, “So That We as a Race,” 1104.
6 Susan Sessions Rugh, “Selling Sleep: The Rise and Fall of Utah’s Historic Motels,” Utah in the Twentieth Century, ed. Brian Q. Cannon and Jessie L. Embry (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2009), 73–75.
7 Ray Boren, “Hotel Utah, 100 Years of History,” Deseret News, June 7, 2011; “Beautiful Hotel Utah Opens Friday,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 3, 1911, 9; Marc Haddock, “Newhouse Hotel—and Landmark to Explosive End,” Deseret News, November 9, 2009; “Returned Missionary Surprised at Growth,” Salt Lake Tribune, August 19, 1910, 2.
8 Stephen Sturgeon, “The Disappearance of Everett Ruess and the Discovery of Utah’s Red Rock Country,” Utah in the Twentieth Century, 30–31.
9 F. Ross Peterson, “‘Blindside’: Utah on the Eve of Brown v. Board of Education,” Utah Historical Quarterly 73, no. 1 (2005): 6. In 1939, the white realtor Sheldon Brewster proposed that a ghetto or “special residential district” be created in Salt Lake City for African Americans. The area, he proposed, would stretch “from Sixth South to Ninth South and Main to Fifth East.” According to Sheldon, although the 1930 census only listed 1,108 African Americans in Utah, “an influx of members of that race is expected soon and that certain interests are attempting to buy and rent a group of houses for them.” “Negro Area Plan Draws Protests,” Salt Lake Telegram, November 2, 1939, 7. For a history of earlier African Americans in Utah, see Ronald G. Coleman’s dissertation, “A History of Blacks in Utah, 1825–1910” (PhD diss., University of Utah, 1980).
10 Bernice Benns, interview with Leslie G. Kelen, June 9, 1983, interview 1, 8, “Interviews with African Americans in Utah, 1982–1988,” Ms0453, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, transcript available online, accessed November 14, 2019, collections.lib.utah.edu/search ?facet_setname_s=uum_iaau.
11 Benns, interview 1, 20–21.
12 Ronald G. Coleman, “Blacks in Utah History: An Unknown Legacy,” The Peoples of Utah, ed. Helen Z. Papanikolas (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1976), 136; Peterson, “‘Blindside,’” 4–5; Rebecca Andersen, “The Great White Palace: African American Segregation in Utah,” Utah Humanities, accessed September 9, 2019, utahhumanities.org/stories/items/show/228.
13 Peterson, “‘Blindside,’” 9. Based on the collection of interviews with African Americans living in Utah, I would amend Peterson’s assertion to say that forms of segregation continued in Utah longer than “another decade” after 1948. J. Herschel Barnhill, “Civil Rights in Utah: The Mormon Way,” Black Americans and the Civil Rights Movement in the West, ed. Bruce A. Glasrud and Cary D. Wintz (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019), 125.
14 Helen Davis, “‘Jazz at Philharmonic’ Deals Blow to Race Bias,” Chicago Bee, May 26, 1946, 13.
15 Alice Dunnigan, “Human Rights Committee Shows Racial Bias on Increase in the West,” Kansas City (KS) Plaindealer, August 30, 1957, 1.
16 “NAACP Scores Mormons for Blocking Bill Salt Lake City,” Los Angeles Tribune, April 3, 1959, 6, 19; see also, “Civil Rights Measure Dies in Utah Senate Committee,” (Little Rock) Arkansas State Press, April 10, 1959.
17 Benns, interview 1, 17.
18 Wilfred Bocage, interview by Leslie Kelen, September 7, 1983, 44, “Interviews with African Americans.”
19 “NAACP Press Utah—More Civil Rights,” Daily Utah Chronicle, November 9, 1964, 1.
20 Khalil Gibran Muhammad, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 1.
21 In addition, the Travelguide listed several options for accommodations not included in the Green Book. See Rugh, “Selling Sleep,” 73–75. Newspapers do offer some evidence of African American tourists to Salt Lake City in the 1930s and 1940s, although they do not record where the visitors spent the night or dined. For example, a 1949 article describes how members of the Washington, D.C. Educational Touring Club visited Salt Lake City, after which they presented Utah’s governor “with a certificate of good will.” As the article explained, “The club is an organization to promote good will for colored people.” “Negro Club Pays Call on Governor,” Ogden Standard-Examiner, August 22, 1949, 7.
22 Green Book, 1940, 45. The New Hotel J. H. was also known as the “J. H. Hotel” or the “J & H Hotel.” The 1940 Salt Lake City directory included the hotel’s address, with no manager or proprietor, and listed Hampton’s personal address as “Hampton, Jas H. (New Hotel J. H.) 250 West South Temple.” U.S. City Directories, 1822–1995, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1940, 381, 651, digital image, accessed November 15, 2019, ancestry.com. For a local advertisement for the hotel, see Salt Lake Tribune, July 22, 1941, 19.
23 Salt Lake Telegram, March 15, 1941, 28.
24 See, for example, Salt Lake Tribune, August 16, 1943, 15. According to the 1930 U.S. census, Ida Hampton was born about 1898 in Kansas and was working as hotel maid in Salt Lake City; her husband, James Hampton, was born about 1885 in Tennessee and worked as chauffeur for a taxicab company. 1930 United States Federal Census, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County, Utah, page 1A, enumeration district 0060, FHL microfilm 2342155, James H. Hampton, digital image, accessed November 14, 2019, ancestry.com.
25 U.S. City Directories, 1822–1995, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1946, 683, digital image, November 15, 2019, ancestry .com. According to his death certificate, James Hampton died in Salt Lake City on May 20, 1945, from coronary thrombosis. He was born in 1871 and is buried in the Mount Olivet Cemetery. Utah, Death and Military Death Certificates, 1904–1961, s.v. “James Hampton,” Certificate of Death, May 20, 1945, digital image, accessed November 14, 2019, ancestry.com.
26 Various Salt Lake City newspaper notices from the 1940s document the J. H. Hotel. See, “Trio Returned to Denver,” Salt Lake Telegram, November 13, 1941, 7; “Storage Room Fire in S.L. Hotel Causes $500 Loss,” Salt Lake Telegram, September 15, 1948, 19; “Transient Booked on Arson Count,” Salt Lake Tribune, September 16, 1948, 22.
27 “Two Alleged Leaders of Juvenile Vandal Gang Held,” Salt Lake Telegram, March 22, 1948, 17.
28 “Court Arraigns Gang Suspects,” Salt Lake Telegram, March 23, 1948, 15; “2 Men Bound over on Burglary Count,” Salt Lake Telegram, April 6, 1948, 17.
29 “Theft Sentencing Set for May,” Salt Lake Telegram, April 19, 1948, 17.
30 “Vandal on Probation,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 23, 1948, 10B.
31 “Police Arrest 12 at Hotel,” Salt Lake Telegram, July 13, 1950, 14.
32 “Revoke Rooms Permit,” Salt Lake Telegram, July 20, 1950, 10.
33 U.S. City Directories, 1822–1995, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1951, 422, and 1952, 407, digital image, accessed November 15, 2019, ancestry.com. According to her death certificate, Ida Kathleen Fitzpatrick Hampton was born in December 1887 in Topeka, Kansas. Her death certificate lists her father as “Ahab J. Fetzpatrick” from Alabama and her mother as “Mary E. Nettles,” birthplace unknown. Utah, Death and Military Death Certificates, 1904–1961, s.v. “Ida Kathleene Hampton,” digital image, accessed November 15, 2019, ancestry. com. According to the 1920 U.S. Census, Ida Hampton’s father, Ahab Fetzpatrick, was living with Ida’s sister, Sheva Abbott, in Ogden on Grant Street and working as a carpenter. They later moved to Los Angeles, California. 1920 United States Federal Census, Ogden, Weber County, Utah, roll T625_1869, page 14B, enumeration district 152, Ahab Fetzpatrick, digital image, accessed November 15, 2019, ancestry.com.
34 Charles Sneed’s wife is listed as Nora F. Sneed. U.S. City Directories, 1822–1995, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1952, 483, digital image, accessed November 15, 2019, ancestry .com.
35 “Timely Topics,” Wichita Post-Observer, July 24, 1953, 4; France A. Davis, “Utah in the 40s: An African American Perspective,” Beehive History 25 (1999): 27, accessed March 5, 2019, collections.lib.utah.edu/details ?id=419944.
36 “Mrs. Roy Jenkins, 1309 Van Buren St, will leave Topeka, Monday, August 17, to rejoin her husband, Roy Jenkins, in Salt Lake City, Utah, where the Jenkins’ now make their home.” “Social and Personal,” Kansas Whip (published as Kansas American), August 14, 1953, 6; see also, “Recreation Center Moves to 118 East 4th,” February 4, 1955, 4, and “Social and Personal,” Kansas Whip, April 1, 1955.
37 U.S. City Directories, 1822–1995, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1959, 568, 992, and 1960, 596, 1039, digital images, accessed November 18, 2019, ancestry.com.
38 See, for example, the advertisement in “Business Opportunities,” Salt Lake Tribune, November 18, 1960, C11.
39 Polk Salt Lake City Directory (Salt Lake City: R. L. Polk), 1960, 596, and 1961, 572.
40 The earlier tax records for this hotel and property are not in the Salt Lake County archives, either in the tax ledgers or the dead tax records.
41 The 1948 Green Book listed the Astoria between 400 and 500 West and a Hotel Astoria at 200 South. The specific street address of the Hotel Astoria is given in 1949 the Green Book as 528 1/2 West 200 South, a location that fits both of the 1948 listings. Since I have been unable to uncover any information about the other Astoria, I assume that this may be a case in which the two listings in the Green Book refer to the same establishment. The specific street address is given in the1949 Green Book; the 1948 edition only lists 2nd South as the address. Green Book, 1948, 76, 1949, 70; see also Sanborn Map Company, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County, Utah, 1950 (New York: Sanborn, 1950), sheet 121, accessed November 1, 2019, collections .lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6000cfw.
42 The Hotel Astoria advertised for six dollars per week “and up” in the paper. Salt Lake Telegram, August 19, 1946, 11, November 30, 1946, 11.
43 My thanks to the Salt Lake County archivists for their help, especially to archivist Daniel Cureton.
44 See Paul Groth, Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
45 “Man and Wife Held in Murder Mystery,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, May 25, 1919, 13; “Former Ogden Man and Wife Held for Murder,” Ogden Daily Standard, May 26, 1919, 5.
46 “Witness for State Dies on Eve of Trial,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 17, 1919, 24; “State Chemist Will Analyze Scott Medicine,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, July 11, 1919, 12; the article states that Scott had an overdose of morphine in his stomach, but formaldehyde from the embalming process interfered with the results.
47 “Knife Is Used in Fight over Woman,” Salt Lake Telegram, September 9, 1922, 7; “Mexican Uses Knife on Intended Victim,” Salt Lake Tribune, November 26, 1919, 24; “S. L. Policeman Shoots down Alleged Thief,” Salt Lake Telegram, September 3, 1925, 1, 9; “Man Charged with Slashing Hotel Guest,” Salt Lake Telegram, November 4, 1927, 2.
48 Auction notice, Salt Lake Telegram, March 2, 1928, 24.
49 “Vice Charges Made in Deportation Case,” Salt Lake Telegram, March 4, 1937, 15 (qtn.); see also, “Laborer Drops Dead in S. L. Hotel Room,” Salt Lake Telegram, January 19, 1929, 2; “Police See No Fun In Breaking Down Doors,” Salt Lake Telegram, November 1, 1930; “Deportation Looms for Young Mexican,” Salt Lake Telegram, March 18, 1932, 21.
50 “Police Jail Three in Antivice Raid,” Salt Lake Telegram, February 9, 1938.
51 “Man Charged with Murder,” Salt Lake Telegram, December 12, 1938; “Jail Sentence Imposed on Liquor Sale Charge,” Salt Lake Telegram, April 28, 1939; “Battery Suspect Ordered to Find New Room,” Salt Lake Telegram, January 31, 1942; “Fall Death in Hotel Declared Accidental,” Salt Lake Telegram, April 4, 1944; “Obituaries: Herbert L. Noble,” Salt Lake Telegram, December 23, 1940.
52 (Little Rock) Arkansas State Press, June 21, 1946, 8.
53 “John A. Jamieson,” Salt Lake Tribune, November 19, 1950, 23; U.S., Headstone Applications for Military Veterans, 1925–1963, s.v. “John A. Jamieson,” digital image, accessed November 1, 2019, ancestry.com.
54 Salt Lake Telegram, January 5, 1946, 5.
55 Salt Lake Tribune, January 26, 1946, 6; John Wriggle, Blue Rhythm Fantasy: Big Band Jazz Arranging in the Swing Era (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016), chap. 3.
56 Salt Lake Telegram, June 24, 1948, 30. This trainer was perhaps “Young Tiger Flowers,” who appeared in World War II–era fights.
57 “Bulletin,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 4, 1946, 9; see also “Suspect Held in S. L. Knifing,” Ogden Standard Examiner, June 5, 1946, 5. The newspaper states that Roosevelt Jent was twenty-three years old; from Fort Lewis, Washington; and being cared for at Fort Douglas.
58 B. H. Hillard, “Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City,” (Little Rock) Arkansas State Press, May 30, 1952, 7.
59 Salt Lake Telegram, July 5, 1948, 18.
60 U.S. City Directories, 1822–1995, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1960, 499, digital image, accessed November 15, 2019, ancestry.com.
61 Economic or location obsolescence card, tax assessor file, 528 West 200 South, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County Archives, West Valley City, Utah (SLCA).
62 Tax assessor file, tax ID 15-01-108-014, ID 1801170701, SLCA.
63 Green Book, 1948, 76. The boarding house was at 306 East 300 South; the YWCA clubhouse address was 322 East 300 South. See, for example, “Daily Calendar of Events,” Salt Lake Tribune, April 11, 1939, 8.
64 Nancy Marie Robertson, Christian Sisterhood, Race Relations, and the YWCA, 1906–46 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 3.
65 “History,” YWCA, accessed November 19, 2019, ywca.org /about/history/.
66 Helen Laville, “‘If the Time Is Not Ripe, Then It Is Your Job to Ripen the Time!’ The Transformation of the YWCA in the USA from Segregated Association to Interracial Organization, 1930–1965,” Women’s History Review 15 (2006): 359–83.
67 Robertson, Christian Sisterhood, 160.
68 Laville, “‘If the Time Is Not Ripe,’” 370; see also Robertson, Christian Sisterhood, 162–69.
69 I have not yet been able to track down when the Salt Lake City YWCA began to offer overnight accommodations to African American guests.
70 Robertson, Christian Sisterhood, 167; Laville, “‘If the Time Is Not Ripe,’” 372. According to the YWCA, “In the 1940s and 1950s, YWCA pushed to integrate racially segregated housing at associations across the U.S.” See the entry for “1955” at ywca.org/about/history/.
71 Doris Fry, interview with Leslie Kelen, March 31, 1984, 6, “Interviews with African Americans.”
72 Susan Whitney, “History of YWCA Comes to Life at Exhibit of 100 Salt Lake Photos,” March 24, 2006, accessed March 5, 2019, deseretnews.com.
73 “Site Picked for Negro USO Center,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 10, 1944, 17; see also Salt Lake Telegram, May 17, 1944, 11.
74 “Meeting Held,” Salt Lake Telegram, February 14, 1940, 19.
75 “Negroes to Note History Week,” Salt Lake Tribune, February 14, 1959, 10.
76 France Davis, interview with Leslie Kelen, March 31, 1984, interview 2, 2, “Interviews with African Americans.”
77 Joan Nabors, interview with Leslie Kelen, December 30, 1987, 16, “Interviews with African Americans.”
78 Green Book, 1954, 66; U.S. City Directories, 1822–1995, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1952, 491, digital image, accessed November 27, 2019, ancestry.com. By the time of its listing in the Green Book, the St. Louis Hotel and café had been in existence for well over a decade; it originally appeared in the 1936 city directory as the St. Louis Hotel, with proprietor George R. James, at 23 South West Temple; by the 1939 directory, the café is listed as 242 West South Temple with a hotel as 242 1/2. U.S. City Directories, 1822–1995, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1936, 693; 1939, 761, digital images, accessed December 16, 2019, ancestry.com. The 1940 city directory lists several hotels clustered on this block of South Temple, including the Columbus Hotel (254 W.), the “New Hotel J H” (250 W.), the St. Louis Hotel (242 1/2 W.), and the New Lindsay Hotel (240 W.). U.S. City Directories, 1822–1995, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1940, 1125, digital image, accessed December 16, 2019, ancestry.com.
79 Davis, “Utah in the 40s,” 27.
80 William Price, interview with Karen Lyman, 1982, interview 1, 11, “Interviews with African Americans.”
81 The 1972 Polk directory lists George R. James as proprietor of the St. Louis Hotel. The 1974 Polk gives Milford Ordway as the proprietor. Note that the St. Louis Hotel is not listed in the 1976 Polk city directory. U.S. City Directories, 1822–1995, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1972, 695; Polk Salt Lake City Directory (Salt Lake City: R. L. Polk), 1974; see also, Salt Lake Tribune, February 10, 1975, 31.
82 Green Book, 1959, 67; Salt Lake Tribune, October 27, 1952, 28; U.S. City Directories, 1822–1995, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1960, 895, digital image, accessed November 27, 2019, ancestry.com. The 1960 Salt Lake City directory lists proprietors LaVern C. and Mrs. Senora Jenkins; note that these Jenkins are not to be confused with the proprietors of the Jenkins Hotel. The Rio Grande Hotel building is listed in the tax accessor records as built in 1911.
83 U.S. City Directories, 1822–1995, Ogden, Utah, 1956, 305, and Salt Lake City, Utah, 1957, 558, digital images; U.S. WWII Draft Cards Young Men, 1940–1947, s.v. “Laverne Charles Jenkins”; and 1940 United States Federal Census, Ogden, Weber County, Utah, Year: 1940; Census Place: Ogden, Weber, Utah, roll m-t0627-04222, page 15A, enumeration district 29–17, Laverne Jenkins, digital image, all accessed November 15, 2019, ancestry.com.
84 Tax assessor file, tax ID 15-01-179-003, 1938, 1958, 1978, SLCA; Polk Salt Lake City Directory (Salt Lake City: R. L. Polk), 1958, p. 797; Provo (UT) Daily Herald, April 12, 1963, 4, and June 21, 1963, 4.
85 Green Book, 1959, 67; Jacob Green, interview with Leslie Kelen, April 23, 1984, interview 1, 17, “Interviews with African Americans.” Green also mentioned the Lunt motel (at 500 East and 400 South) as the only one he remembered allowing African Americans. Note that the 1972 Polk city directory lists Mrs. Louse P. Creger as manager of Harman Café.
86 Tax assessor file, tax ID 16-07-105-003, SLCA.
87 “Death Takes Cesare Rinetti, 88,” Salt Lake Tribune,
88 Eric Stene, “The African-American Community of Ogden, Utah: 1910–1950” (M.A. thesis, Utah State University, 1994), accessed September 17, 2019, digitalcommons .usu.edu/etd/4526/.
89 France Davis, “Utah in the 40s,” 26.
90 Richard C. Roberts and Richard W. Sadler, A History of Weber County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Weber County Commission, 1997), 398; Polk Ogden City Directory (New York: R. L. Polk), 1936–1939; 1940 United States Federal Census, Ogden, Weber County, Utah, roll m-t0627-04222, enumeration district 29–17, page 12B, digital image, Leager V. Davis, accessed December 2, 2019, ancestry.com. The 1950 Sanborn map indicates that this building, in combination with no. 2546, contained twenty apartments. Sanborn Map Company, Ogden, Weber County, Utah, 1950 (New York: Sanborn, 1950), sheet 049, accessed March 5, 2019, collections.lib .utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6fx7ms8. July 20, 1971, 26.
91 “Floyd Facing First Degree Murder Charge,” Ogden Standard-Examiner, September 12, 1939, 7; “Ogden Waiter Held in Double Slaying” Salt Lake Tribune, September 8, 1939, 14; “Nine Persons Held as Police Gather Evidence Regarding Death Cases,” Ogden Standard- Examiner, September 11, 1939, 12.
92 “Court Opens Death Trial,” Ogden Standard-Examiner, September 26, 1939, 2A.
93 “Ogden Slayer Convicted of Manslaughter,” Salt Lake Tribune, January 19, 1940, 8.
94 “Waiter Facing Term in Prison,” Ogden Standard-Examiner, January 22, 1940, 2.
95 “Pay Due Husband, Wife Alleges in U.P. Suit,” Ogden Standard-Examiner, June 9, 1940, 13A.
96 “Widow Starts Damage Suit,” Ogden Standard-Examiner, April 27, 1940, 8.
97 “Jury Acquits Accused Negro,” Ogden Standard-Examiner, October 28, 1937, 3. I have not been able to discover how the suit against the Union Pacific Railroad was settled.
98 Roberts and Sadler, A History of Weber County, 398; Miriam Murphy, “Royal Hotel Served Basques and African Americans,” Beehive History, October 1996, accessed December 2, 2019, issuu.com/utah10/docs; Mitch Shaw, “Evictee of Low-Income Housing for Mentally Ill Says Its Rules Are Unreasonable,” Ogden Standard-Examiner, January 27, 2016.
99 Alberta West, interview with Leslie Kelen, May 15, 1984, 24 (qtn.), 40–41, “Interviews with African Americans.”
100 AnnaBelle Mattson, interview with Leslie Kelen, October 21, 1983, part 1, 14, “Interviews with African Americans”; see also Stene, “African-American Community of Ogden,” 17–20.
101 Mattson, interview, part 1, 14–15.
102 Mattson, interview, part 1, 21.
103 Green Book, 1957, 65, 1959, 67. Other national parks were listed for the first time in the 1957 edition, including Crater Lake in Oregon and Yellowstone in Wyoming. The 1959 edition of the Green Book corrected the location of Bryce Canyon National Park.
104 Title 36—Parks and Forests, Federal Register, December 8, 1945, 10, no. 240, 14866, accessed December 4, 2019, govinfo.gov/app/collection/fr/1945/12/08; Reed Engle, “Laboratory for Change,” Resource Management Newsletter (January 1996), available online at “Segregation and Desegregation at Shenandoah National Park,” National Park Service, accessed March 5, 2019, nps.gov/articles/segregation-and-desegregation-at -shenandoah.htm; Susan Shumaker, “Untold Stories from America’s National Parks: Segregation in the National Parks,” The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, accessed March 5, 2019, pbs.org/nationalparks /about/untold-stories/. I have been unable to discover if there were segregated overnight accommodations and camping sites at Zion or Bryce prior to 1957, and I plan to continue researching this for another project.
105 Ben Holman, “A Negro Tourist Reports: We Were the Big Attraction,” Detroit Free Press, June 28, 1959, B7.
106 Holman, “A Negro Tourist Reports.” Susan Sessions Rugh records how, ten years earlier in Cheyenne, Wyoming, “Reverend Raymond Calhoun, his wife, and their two infant children were denied accommodations at eight different places.” Rugh, “Are We There Yet?” 75.
107 “Motels Not Open to Negro Tourists Says NAACP Man,” Albuquerque (NM) Journal, August 16, 1955, 1–2.
108 “No Segregation?” Santa Fe New Mexican, June 3, 1964, 4. For a similar account of housing discrimination, see Nabors, interview, 23. 109 Green Book, 1964, 2–4. 110 Green Book, 1966, 2. 111 Lauret Savoy, Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2015), 15.
