A 🧵on Indigenous and African American enslavement in Utah Territory:

is a digital primary source collection that includes all of the speeches from the 1852 Utah legislative session.ThisAbominableSlavery.org This includes speeches by Brigham Young in which he first publicly articulated a racial priesthood restriction in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and two fantastic anti-slavery speeches by legislator and Latter-day Saint apostle Orson Pratt.

#utahjuneteenth a 🧵
What does Juneteenth have to do with Utah history? Utah remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War so we might think that Juneteenth does not involve Utah but we'd be wrong. 1/16 In Galveston, Texas news of freedom did not arrive until June 19, 1865, two months after the end of the Civil War. But when did Utah's enslaved people learn that they were free? 2/16

In commemoration of July 24th, a Utah state holiday in which communities across the state fly the U.S. flag in celebration of the Latter-day Saint arrival in northern Mexico in July 1847, here is a #PioneerDay 101 🧵 The Saints did not wander aimlessly westward until Brigham Young declared “This is the Place.” As early as September 1845 Brigham Young had zeroed in on the Salt Lake Valley.

Presentism is NOT a get out of racism free card, a🧵
I keep bumping into people who have learned about presentism--that we should avoid superimposing present day values & understandings on the past--but who use it as a way to defend people in the past against racism. 1/17 Yes, the past is a foreign country and we should try to understand it on its own terms, not ours, but that is an invitation to do the work of understanding the past, not an invitation to excuse its mistakes as if people in the past somehow did not know any better. 2/17

Dear Latter-day Saints, your ancestors were among the immigrant poor who the Republican Party tried to prevent from migrating to the U.S. in the 19th Century. In 1879 U.S. Secretary of State William M. Evarts attempted to cut off LDS immigration from Europe. His rationale? /1 He contended that the Latter-day Saint immigrants were "drawn mainly from the ignorant classes, who are easily influenced by the double appeal to their passions and their poverty." /2

Last week I went into the Family History Library and came out with an unexpected find—the baptismal record of “Tom, Brother Churches black man.” Tom has been on my mind ever since. /1 I was already aware of the basic contours of Tom’s life because of the work of @ancestorfiles and the SLC Cemetery is preparing to install a headstone to mark his grave. Cemetery staff had contacted me to ask if Tom was in our research pool for @c_black_mormons. /2

In anticipation of the upcoming Utah state holiday on July 24th wherein communities across the state fly the U.S. flag in celebration of the Latter-day Saint arrival in northern Mexico in July 1847, here is a Pioneer Day 101 #twitterstream: The Saints did not wander aimlessly westward until Brigham Young declared “This is the Place.” As early as September 1845 Brigham Young had zeroed in on the Salt Lake Valley.