Salt Lake NAACP branch president shares history of organization

SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — Feb. 12th is a significant day for the oldest civil rights organization in the U.S.

It’s the day the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded in 1909, 44 years after the end of the American Civil War.

Life during that period (post-slavery) and decades after, was incredibly difficult and dangerous for African Americans.

“There were so many lynchings and things going on across the entire country. And so, what the NAACP did when they saw there was so much going on, they were trying to look at and see ‘What it is that we can do?’ They started recording all of the lynchings that had happened," Jeanetta Williams said.

Historians found recorded lynchings in Salt Lake and Carbon Counties.

One such incident occurred in downtown Salt Lake City in August 1883.

The victim was William Sam Joe Harvey, a young Black man and an army veteran accused of killing the police chief.

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In 2022, Robert Burch, genealogist and founder of the Sema Hadithi Foundation, explained the mindset of that time.

“It’s a part of the American culture, that I think for a large part that Utah simply thought it simply wasn’t involved in. Lynching wasn’t done just for the sake of killing someone. Lynching was done as a demonstration,” Burch said.

Jim Tabery, a philosophy professor at the University of Utah, researched the background surrounding Harvey’s violent death.

“We don’t know much because there was no trial. There was no investigation. Harvey was never given the opportunity to stand trial and tell his defense,” Harvey said.

The lynching site is where the Wallace F. Bennett Federal Building currently stands, near the corner of State Street and 100 South.

Williams explained it was the lynching in Price, Utah, that sparked a movement in this state.

“The lynching happened and there was nobody to contact to see really what do we do? And so, the NAACP started up a branch here. They had like box dinners that they would sell ... so they could get enough money to get it all started and get the charter,” Williams said.

The Salt Lake branch of the NAACP was born in 1918.

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