Abstract

Justin L. Vipperman

Idaho State University

Undergraduate

Colored Servants: The Meaning of Cyrus Dallin’s Brigham Young Monument

Fifty years after an initial party of Mormon pioneers made it to the Great Basin Cyrus E. Dallin constructed a monument honoring the man who led the group and the pioneers who had made the
trek. Included on this plaque were the names of three African Americans distinguished by the phrase “colored servants.” Scholars have looked at this memorial as well as other evidence of slaves in the Salt Lake Valley as proof of racism and discrimination by a religion itself fleeing from discrimination. My paper, however, argues that the Brigham Young monument should be reinterpreted as a sign of surprisingly progressive Mormon attitudes towards African Americans. This research draws primarily on primary sources such as correspondence, journals, meeting documentation, and the Brigham Young Monument. This research looks specifically at the Pioneer Jubilee in 1897, when the Brigham Young Monument was created, to find out why and who added the phrase to the plaque. The research focuses on correspondence between Green Flake (one of the African American Slaves) and the Brigham Young Memorial Association as well as records from meetings held by the association. Finding answers to whom and why the phrase was added to the plaque could yield information about the pro-slavery past of America and the struggle for civil rights.