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Show UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY been held up because of his statements. “I saw your name on the list,” Crockett told him, “and I decided that it might be better to wait for a year until it quieted down and was forgotten.”32 Racist rhetoric continued to surface sporadically on campus. In early 1965, a student wrote: “When I first heard a heckler . . . at a BYU football game call a Negro member of an opposing team a derogatory name, I was shocked . . . by the number of students who actually laughed and mocked in unison. . . . It has happened every time I have witnessed an athletic event where Negroes have participated at BYU.”33 At the end of the year, another added that “The spirit of brotherhood is not manifested in cries like ‘Catch that nigger!’”34 In late 1965, Wilkinson and members of BYU’s athletics staff debated whether to recruit as football players two black LDS church members. While stating that if the young men’s “academic training justified it,” they would be “wholeheartedly” accepted, Wilkinson stressed that blacks should not be actively recruited, stating: “we felt that since there is no colored population in Provo. . . they might be better off going to some other institution where there are other colored students.” 35 The next month, the dean of physical education, Milton Hartvigsen, confirmed that “we limited our recruiting to . . . non-negro athletes.”36 About this same time, administrators began sending the following letter to blacks who applied for admission: As an Institution we do not look with favor upon mar r iages of any individuals outside their own race, whatever that race might be, and hence frown upon mixed courtships, which might result in such marriages. This point of view is not a matter of race prejudice for we believe that all races are important in God’s eyes, but is the out-growth of observations relative to such relationships and the difficulties encountered by individuals participating in such courtships and marriages when attempting to adjust differences in family and cultural backgrounds.37 That same spring of 1965, Wilkinson cancelled the campus appearance of the famous black singer Nancy Wilson. As if in response, a BYU student government–sponsored survey subsequently revealed that 95 percent of students had no “feeling concerning [the] race, creed, or color of entertainers.”38 Administrators also rejected a campus lecture on “Mormonism and the Negro.”39 Late the next year, the BYU Speakers Committee rebuffed a request to invite Monroe Fleming, one of few black Latter-day Saints, to 32 Thomas E. Cheney, interviewed by J. Roman Andrus, October 10, 1979, 13–14, Perry Special Collections. Cheney was appointed as full professor early the next year. 33 Allan Weinstock, letter, Daily Universe, February 16, 1965. 34 Rigby, “Responses to Racial Issues,” 10. 35 Wilkinson, Diary, December 22, 1965. 36 Milton Hartvigsen, memorandum to Ernest L. Wilkinson, January 3, 1966, Wilkinson Papers. 37 “Dear Sir,” undated typescr ipt in Lester Bush, comp., “A Compilation on the Negro in Mormonism,” photocopy, privately circulated, copy in possession of the Smith-Pettit Foundation. 38 Wilkinson, Diary, March 23, April 4, April 6, 1966; “Name Attractions, Finance, and Student Talent,” ASBYU Student Body History, 1966–67, n.p., Perry Special Collections. 39 University Speakers Committee, Minutes, December 2, 1966, Perry Special Collections. 210 |
