This one hits close to home for me (I’m 63 year old white woman) as I have found out in the last decade that my paternal great-great grandfather, Mormon pioneer and one of the founders of Brigham Young University, AO Smoot, owned three slaves.
“Smoot was a justice of the peace, mayor of Salt Lake City and, later, Provo, and a state legislator. He served nine proselytizing missions, was a bishop four times, and a stake (regional) president for 13 years. The early Mormon leader and businessman also held three slaves — Tom (Church) from Tennessee, Jerry (Lewis) from Kentucky, and Lucy (Crosby) (Lay) from Mississippi.” (From https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2020/09/02/descendants-slaveholder/)
Because AO Smoot was a founder and early benefactor, paying all of BYU’s initial building and administration expenses out of dedication to the Mormon Church, his name is on the administration building. In 2015, the 200th anniversary of AO’s birth, celebrations were held at BYU to commemorate him, and from this event, knowledge of his slave ownership started to publicly circulate.
I have proposed to BYU (as a never-Mormon, only possessing the name of a prominent one) that the building be renamed for the enslaved, to the “Church, Lewis and Crosby Lay Building”, in honor of the “free” labor AO Smoot received, which doubtless helped AO accomplish much in his life, including establishing BYU. To no one’s surprise, I think my suggestion is at the bottom of the barrel of possible re-names for the AO Smoot Building. Four years later, the idea has been largely forgotten. The building remains named the AO Smoot Administration Building.
For context I’ll add I was born in Dallas in 1960, my parents separated in 1963 and divorced shortly afterward, with my never-Mormon mother taking me and my half-sister to be raised (thank GOD!) in New York City - an act of defiance against not just my recently divorced father, but also my maternal Grandfather who thought “Jew” York City was a place of evil. I remember being a teenager and visiting Texas when I first heard that phrase used, and realized just how backward-looking and angry my maternal grandfather was. I’ve never had anything to do with the Mormon Church; it always seemed amazingly backward and to me as a teenager, just plain stupid. Why would any woman or black person join a Church that forbade them equal membership? (Now I wonder why any woman or black person would vote for Trump. Some things never change.)
It is my experience that (white) children are thrust into the world of adults and in my case, mostly due to my mother and her raising me in NYC, I grew up knowing the bigotry and hatred so openly expressed by her father and the tempered racism of my father (who had abandoned the Mormon Church as a young man prior to his marriage) was just plain wrong, and it wasn’t ever going to help women of any color get away from the unending misogyny that accompanies racism, hand-in-glove. To me, moving to NYC in 1967 was my mother’s equivalent of the Great Migration to the north that so many black people experienced: Why stay in the South and being mercilessly hounded by prejudice when you could live in the North and be left alone, accepted for who you were, no matter what you were?
I made the choice decades ago to never have children so that I would never inflict on any progeny any of this hatred and evil that fills so many minds. After living through one Trump administration, and under the threat of possibly a 2nd term, being a “childless cat lady” is not a decision I have a single regret about. Thanks for bringing up this topic William. It’s very important and not an easy one to discuss.
Your post moved me regarding your ancestor, a leader of renown in the Church of Latter-day Saints. My encouragement may sound odd, even silly. Brigham Young University is a member of the Big 12 Athletic Conference. It so happens that West Virginia University belongs to that same athletic organization. I was born and raised in NYC and have lived in West Virginia since 1975 and appreciate interscholastic athletic competition fostered by the Big 12 Conference. In my humble opinion it would be a wonderful gesture on your part to let BYU's Board of Trustees know about your relationship to Mr. AO Smoot and reiterate your suggestion to recognize the contributions made by the 3 slaves you identified in your post. If not for the efforts exerted by the 3, Mr. Smoot might not have been able to contribute as much as he did to establish BYU. Thank you for standing up and doing the right and just thing.
My children and I watched Roots together and I answered their questions as well as I could. I am learning more all the time and I tell them just what I am learning. Thank you for all of your posts.
To those who answered "Everything" I'd point out that what you taught is limited by what you know/believe. Because we're all limited by that constraint the dedication of Mr Spivey and other educators like him are critically important. These people are real educators, backing their words on the page with links and references. And as real educators they subscribe to a philosophy ascribed to Maria Montessori: "Education is not the filling of a bucket but the kindling of a flame".
I talked to both of my sons when they attended middle school. Our older son grasped the idea that European settlers forced out or killed off the indigenous population and purchased kidnapped people from Africa as slaves to build the agricultural and construction industries in the southern states. Both knew it was horrific, involuntary servitude. The younger son eventually concluded, "It all happened in the past and I had nothing to do with what happened." At 38 years of age he continues to deny that American history has anything to do with him and he bears no obligations towards other human beings beyond immediate family.
I am still learning. Still reading. Ibram X Kendi’s books. William Spivey’s excellent posts. As a white mother and former elementary school teacher, I taught my child and my classes what I knew at the time. The school had some written resources. I had MLK posters and tapes of his complete speeches. We listened to his great, deep insights and talked about them. I shared these with teachers in other grades. We learned and sang South African freedom songs. We talked about the buying and selling of human beings. Of people being forced to work without pay. Of families broken up. I had kids from tough, rural, white families who would say “if the police treated my mom or dad or brother that way, I’d kick them in the knees.”
Kids understand injustice. They have a strong sense of fairness that should be supported and cultivated. I didn’t find they felt shame for being white, rather that their moral outrage was personal. They care. This is what the “ Christian right” really fears. Not their shame, their humanity.
Thank you for another thought-provoking post, William.
I'm a White woman, born and raised in Scotland, but my (White) mother was born in Kenya, and my (White) grandparents lived in East Africa where my grandpa was a doctor/surgeon from the mid 30s to thee mid 60s.
We watched Roots on the BBC as a family when it first came out (I'd be about 9 and my brother would be 7 or 8), and I don't remember either my mother nor my grandmother trying to sugar coat anything about how awful slavery was, and the role that White people played in perpetuating it. And we DID talk about it as a family.
Interestingly, I had a number of friends at College with similar Scottish colonial backgrounds, whose parents had all done the same
And some from English colonial backgrounds. Their parents had refused to let them either watch or discuss Roots...
I have often thought about what I would tell my grandchildren about slavery. I taught my daughter about it, doing what I could to educate her on the subject from both sides to the best of my ability. I'm a white woman, so the "both sides" thing is difficult to even say. What I mean by that is this: I taught her that there were incredible civilizations in Africa from whom White Europeans stole, bought, etc. people to take into slavery. That later on in US History, White Colonizers stopped buying slaves from Africa and chose to breed their own for their own benefit. I tried my best to explain the situation using historical records, films, books, etc. It was incredibly important to me that my daughter understand the true and factual history of the country she was born into.
I thought I'd one an admirable job until that fateful day when my grandmother took her to see the Disney film, Pocahontas. A film I boycotted for many reasons. She asked me why I didn't want to go, so I explained - again, to the best of my ability. She was around 6 years old at the time, so I did my best to inform her in a way that she could understand. I knew that more detail could be shared later when her ability to understand was at a different level. Education is (or should be?) a layered, ongoing process. Anyway, she went with my grandmother. When I picked her up, I asked her how she liked the movie and what she thought of it. "I didn't like it," she said. Interesting. "Why not?" I asked. "Because John Smith and Pocahontas kissed. And they're DIFFERENT."
I almost caused a major accident when I stomped on the brakes to stare at her incredulously. MY daughter? MY daughter had a problem with two people kissing who were different? Oh, the humanity!!!! lol I joke, but I had very real, very shocked feelings about her response.
This kicked off a lengthy conversation about humanity, difference, equality, etc. I had friends who were bi-racial couples, gay couples, etc. "Different" people were definitely in our lives then and still are. I used them to show how different is something to celebrate and not feel weird about. She got over it.
However, to this day, I can feel the visceral reaction I had to her comment about the film. Even though I'd tried so hard, this thing happened anyway. I don't know why, and I don't care, because a couple of years later, she had posters of hot young black actors and music artists all over her room. lol
This one hits close to home for me (I’m 63 year old white woman) as I have found out in the last decade that my paternal great-great grandfather, Mormon pioneer and one of the founders of Brigham Young University, AO Smoot, owned three slaves.
“While doing research this week for his groundbreaking database, Century of Black Mormons, (https://exhibits.lib.utah.edu/s/century-of-black-mormons/page/welcome) scholar W. Paul Reeve discovered that an enslaved man known only as “Tom, Brother Churches [sic] black man,” had been baptized into the church,” and was owned by AO Smoot, then a Bishop in the Mormon (LDS) Church. (From https://www.sltrib.com/news/education/2019/08/09/pioneer-benefactors-ties/)
Another article linked explained:
“Smoot was a justice of the peace, mayor of Salt Lake City and, later, Provo, and a state legislator. He served nine proselytizing missions, was a bishop four times, and a stake (regional) president for 13 years. The early Mormon leader and businessman also held three slaves — Tom (Church) from Tennessee, Jerry (Lewis) from Kentucky, and Lucy (Crosby) (Lay) from Mississippi.” (From https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2020/09/02/descendants-slaveholder/)
Because AO Smoot was a founder and early benefactor, paying all of BYU’s initial building and administration expenses out of dedication to the Mormon Church, his name is on the administration building. In 2015, the 200th anniversary of AO’s birth, celebrations were held at BYU to commemorate him, and from this event, knowledge of his slave ownership started to publicly circulate.
I have proposed to BYU (as a never-Mormon, only possessing the name of a prominent one) that the building be renamed for the enslaved, to the “Church, Lewis and Crosby Lay Building”, in honor of the “free” labor AO Smoot received, which doubtless helped AO accomplish much in his life, including establishing BYU. To no one’s surprise, I think my suggestion is at the bottom of the barrel of possible re-names for the AO Smoot Building. Four years later, the idea has been largely forgotten. The building remains named the AO Smoot Administration Building.
For context I’ll add I was born in Dallas in 1960, my parents separated in 1963 and divorced shortly afterward, with my never-Mormon mother taking me and my half-sister to be raised (thank GOD!) in New York City - an act of defiance against not just my recently divorced father, but also my maternal Grandfather who thought “Jew” York City was a place of evil. I remember being a teenager and visiting Texas when I first heard that phrase used, and realized just how backward-looking and angry my maternal grandfather was. I’ve never had anything to do with the Mormon Church; it always seemed amazingly backward and to me as a teenager, just plain stupid. Why would any woman or black person join a Church that forbade them equal membership? (Now I wonder why any woman or black person would vote for Trump. Some things never change.)
It is my experience that (white) children are thrust into the world of adults and in my case, mostly due to my mother and her raising me in NYC, I grew up knowing the bigotry and hatred so openly expressed by her father and the tempered racism of my father (who had abandoned the Mormon Church as a young man prior to his marriage) was just plain wrong, and it wasn’t ever going to help women of any color get away from the unending misogyny that accompanies racism, hand-in-glove. To me, moving to NYC in 1967 was my mother’s equivalent of the Great Migration to the north that so many black people experienced: Why stay in the South and being mercilessly hounded by prejudice when you could live in the North and be left alone, accepted for who you were, no matter what you were?
I made the choice decades ago to never have children so that I would never inflict on any progeny any of this hatred and evil that fills so many minds. After living through one Trump administration, and under the threat of possibly a 2nd term, being a “childless cat lady” is not a decision I have a single regret about. Thanks for bringing up this topic William. It’s very important and not an easy one to discuss.
@Kelley Smoot
Dear Ms. Smoot,
Your post moved me regarding your ancestor, a leader of renown in the Church of Latter-day Saints. My encouragement may sound odd, even silly. Brigham Young University is a member of the Big 12 Athletic Conference. It so happens that West Virginia University belongs to that same athletic organization. I was born and raised in NYC and have lived in West Virginia since 1975 and appreciate interscholastic athletic competition fostered by the Big 12 Conference. In my humble opinion it would be a wonderful gesture on your part to let BYU's Board of Trustees know about your relationship to Mr. AO Smoot and reiterate your suggestion to recognize the contributions made by the 3 slaves you identified in your post. If not for the efforts exerted by the 3, Mr. Smoot might not have been able to contribute as much as he did to establish BYU. Thank you for standing up and doing the right and just thing.
My children and I watched Roots together and I answered their questions as well as I could. I am learning more all the time and I tell them just what I am learning. Thank you for all of your posts.
To those who answered "Everything" I'd point out that what you taught is limited by what you know/believe. Because we're all limited by that constraint the dedication of Mr Spivey and other educators like him are critically important. These people are real educators, backing their words on the page with links and references. And as real educators they subscribe to a philosophy ascribed to Maria Montessori: "Education is not the filling of a bucket but the kindling of a flame".
Thank you William.
I talked to both of my sons when they attended middle school. Our older son grasped the idea that European settlers forced out or killed off the indigenous population and purchased kidnapped people from Africa as slaves to build the agricultural and construction industries in the southern states. Both knew it was horrific, involuntary servitude. The younger son eventually concluded, "It all happened in the past and I had nothing to do with what happened." At 38 years of age he continues to deny that American history has anything to do with him and he bears no obligations towards other human beings beyond immediate family.
I am still learning. Still reading. Ibram X Kendi’s books. William Spivey’s excellent posts. As a white mother and former elementary school teacher, I taught my child and my classes what I knew at the time. The school had some written resources. I had MLK posters and tapes of his complete speeches. We listened to his great, deep insights and talked about them. I shared these with teachers in other grades. We learned and sang South African freedom songs. We talked about the buying and selling of human beings. Of people being forced to work without pay. Of families broken up. I had kids from tough, rural, white families who would say “if the police treated my mom or dad or brother that way, I’d kick them in the knees.”
Kids understand injustice. They have a strong sense of fairness that should be supported and cultivated. I didn’t find they felt shame for being white, rather that their moral outrage was personal. They care. This is what the “ Christian right” really fears. Not their shame, their humanity.
Thank you for another thought-provoking post, William.
I'm a White woman, born and raised in Scotland, but my (White) mother was born in Kenya, and my (White) grandparents lived in East Africa where my grandpa was a doctor/surgeon from the mid 30s to thee mid 60s.
We watched Roots on the BBC as a family when it first came out (I'd be about 9 and my brother would be 7 or 8), and I don't remember either my mother nor my grandmother trying to sugar coat anything about how awful slavery was, and the role that White people played in perpetuating it. And we DID talk about it as a family.
Interestingly, I had a number of friends at College with similar Scottish colonial backgrounds, whose parents had all done the same
And some from English colonial backgrounds. Their parents had refused to let them either watch or discuss Roots...
William, did you see the news that the University of Virginia suspended campus tours when they came under fire from the right wing? https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/university-virginia-suspends-tours-come-fire-mentioning-thomas-jeffers-rcna168960?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Newsletter%20Weekly%20Roundup:%20Higher%20Ed%20Dive:%20Daily%20Dive%2009-07-2024&utm_term=Higher%20Ed%20Dive%20Weekender. This is another example of the massive desire to not confront the issue of slavery because some are uncomfortable with it. Whitewashing continues. The difficulty of explaining enslavement has to become more complicated with this kind of crazy going on.
https://williamspivey.substack.com/p/its-probably-best-i-wasnt-giving
I did see that, thank you!
I just read it! Yes, you would make the perfect "tour guide." I bet that would be a most informative and sought after ticket.
I have often thought about what I would tell my grandchildren about slavery. I taught my daughter about it, doing what I could to educate her on the subject from both sides to the best of my ability. I'm a white woman, so the "both sides" thing is difficult to even say. What I mean by that is this: I taught her that there were incredible civilizations in Africa from whom White Europeans stole, bought, etc. people to take into slavery. That later on in US History, White Colonizers stopped buying slaves from Africa and chose to breed their own for their own benefit. I tried my best to explain the situation using historical records, films, books, etc. It was incredibly important to me that my daughter understand the true and factual history of the country she was born into.
I thought I'd one an admirable job until that fateful day when my grandmother took her to see the Disney film, Pocahontas. A film I boycotted for many reasons. She asked me why I didn't want to go, so I explained - again, to the best of my ability. She was around 6 years old at the time, so I did my best to inform her in a way that she could understand. I knew that more detail could be shared later when her ability to understand was at a different level. Education is (or should be?) a layered, ongoing process. Anyway, she went with my grandmother. When I picked her up, I asked her how she liked the movie and what she thought of it. "I didn't like it," she said. Interesting. "Why not?" I asked. "Because John Smith and Pocahontas kissed. And they're DIFFERENT."
I almost caused a major accident when I stomped on the brakes to stare at her incredulously. MY daughter? MY daughter had a problem with two people kissing who were different? Oh, the humanity!!!! lol I joke, but I had very real, very shocked feelings about her response.
This kicked off a lengthy conversation about humanity, difference, equality, etc. I had friends who were bi-racial couples, gay couples, etc. "Different" people were definitely in our lives then and still are. I used them to show how different is something to celebrate and not feel weird about. She got over it.
However, to this day, I can feel the visceral reaction I had to her comment about the film. Even though I'd tried so hard, this thing happened anyway. I don't know why, and I don't care, because a couple of years later, she had posters of hot young black actors and music artists all over her room. lol
Different being OK had apparently arrived.
There needs to be more of this https://www.facebook.com/share/p/prhE1nmRSz9MCrLV/ Listening, learning, honoring, healing, CHANGING, and reparations.
I read 𝘙𝘰𝘰𝘵𝘴. I learned so much from it.