Confronting Our Racist Past: Westminster College, Minstrelsy, and White Supremacist Narratives

The institution now known as Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah began in 1875. That year, a minister named John Coyner began teaching a handful of students in the basement of the First Presbyterian Church under the auspices of the Salt Lake Collegiate Institute. Coyner, like many other Protestants, was highly critical of Utah’s dominant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (popularly known as Mormons or LDS). Plural marriage (popularly known as polygamy, but properly “polygyny,” or multiple wives) was the most obvious target, but the critics of Mormonism also opposed what they considered undemocratic (even tyrannical) political, economic, and social domination of the territory, personified by the Church’s president, Brigham Young (Bigler; Arrington). Many non-Mormons (or “gentiles”) decried the lack of a good public school system, and some saw denominational schools as a tool to effect eventual social change in Utah. The Collegiate Institute promised students a broad, modern, Christian education. The Institute’s leaders, who seemed to always operate on a shoestring, emphasized the supposed moral horrors of Mormonism in their fundraising among eastern Presbyterians. A typical pitch from 1904 reads: 

"Mormonism has secured its adherents from every state in the Union, as well as from foreign countries, and because of this fact every section of the home-land might reasonably be expected to help a little in the great work of reclaiming for Christ as many as possible of these deceived and victimized people. The hope of Utah is in Christianizing and Americanizing its children" (Westminster Herald 3).

Despite the Collegiate Institute’s fiscal struggles, the school survived and grew. In 1895 the trustees chartered Sheldon Jackson College, named in honor of the peripatetic Presbyterian missionary and benefactor. The trustees renamed the school Westminster College in 1902, and in 1911 the College acquired its present site on 13th East in the Sugarhouse neighborhood. The Collegiate Institute continued to function as a preparatory school until 1945, and the College became a four-year baccalaureate granting institution in 1946. Westminster severed official ties with the Presbyterian Church in the 1970s (Brackenridge).

Like any school, Westminster produced many publications; yearbooks are among the most revealing. The first Etosian yearbook appeared in 1918. Like most yearbooks, sections of the Etosian were compiled and edited by student staff with faculty supervision. These early volumes are full of in-jokes and student cartoons, some of which echo the racial and ethnic humor at the expense of minoritized people that filled the vaudeville and minstrel show stages (see the “Jokes” image in this gallery). Collegiate Life, another student-edited publication, featured similar “humor” (Collegiate Life, vol. 2, no. 6; vol. 3, no. 5; vol. 16, no. 5). Probably the most disturbing image of any found is the violent cartoon that closed the 1923 Etosian (see “The End” in this gallery). For context, a recent scholar has documented six lynchings in the country that year; five of the victims were Black (Seguin).

The 1931 and 1934 yearbooks contain brief references to minstrel shows, without photographs. In 1946 a troupe of Westminster “girl students” put on an “old-fashioned minstrel show” in blackface; two photos appear in the Etosian and one of them in a local newspaper as well (see Westminster Minstrel Show 1946 and Full Westminster Minstrel Show 1946, both in this gallery, and “Westminster Girl Students”). The Rev. M. S. Hostetler, who taught Bible studies for many years, served as interlocutor. It’s likely that the group relied on one of many “how to put on a minstrel show” manuals that included jokes, songs, and stock characters like Mr. Bones, Tambo, and the interlocutor.

One might conclude that white people at Westminster felt comfortable presenting racist entertainment due to an absence of black people on campus. But in 1946 the student body included another minister, the Rev. Jerry Ford, African Methodist Episcopal, who may have been the first African American student in the college’s history. His yearbook photo appears on the same page as two of the minstrel show performers. Rev. Ford, who earned an education degree from Westminster in 1947, went on to serve churches in Arizona and California and engage in civil rights activism (United Civil Rights Committee; “The Rev. Jerry W. Ford”).

Halloween, not surprisingly, was a favorite time for blackface at Westminster (see “Mr Miss Westminster,” Halloween Party 1949, and “People at their Best,” all in this gallery). Another popular venue was freshmen initiation (see “Freshman Week” 1963; “. . . the traditional slave auction”). These are the most recent blatantly racist images found in the Etosian. Presumably, as a few more African American students attended Westminster (Merritt) and people on campus followed or participated in the racial activism occurring across the nation, minstrelsy and similar “entertainments” appeared archaic and offensive.

Campus materials and publications offer hints of the historical attitudes about race shared by too many white people at Westminster. We hope that they serve as incentive to do the necessary anti-racist work that will make Westminster College a just and inclusive institution.    

~Jeff Nichols

WORKS CITED

Arrington, Leonard J. Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter‑day Saints, 1830‑1900. Harvard University Press, 1958.

Bigler, David. Forgotten Kingdom: The Mormon Theocracy in the American West, 1847-1896. Utah State University Press, 1998.

Brackenridge, Douglas.  Westminster College of Salt Lake City: From Presbyterian Mission School to Independent College. Utah State University Press, 1998.

Collegiate Life. Vol. 2, no. 6, 1912.

Collegiate Life. Vol. 3, no. 5, 1925.

Collegiate Life. Vol. 16, no. 5, 1928.

“The Rev. Jerry W. Ford.” San Francisco Examiner, September 23, 1979, p. 31.

Merritt, Anthony. I Would Not Be Denied. Independently published, 2020.

Seguin, Charles. “National Lynching Data.” https://osf.io/tvf53/. Accessed 19 March 2021.

United Civil Rights Committee, Flyer against school segregation, undated (1963 or 1964), https://www.crmvet.org/docs/nor/630000_ucrc_skool-flyer2.pdf

“Westminster Girl Students Give Minstrel Show,” Salt Lake Telegram, January 25, 1946, p. 8.

Westminster Herald, vol. 1, no. 6, January 1904.