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Show UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY minority response to BYU’s and the LDS church’s engagement with the forces of social change. As if in tacit acknowledgement of past inequities, in early December 1970, BYU announced its first black faculty member: Wynetta Willis Martin, employed by the College of Nursing, on a part-time basis, to teach about “Negro culture.” 151 A week later, students at the University of Southern California and at Oregon State University protested at separate BYU basketball games.152 Minor incidents continued throughout the season, though nothing approached the protests of the previous year. Now, however, BYU officials—including Wilkinson and his successor as BYU’s president, Dallin H. Oaks—could point to the recruitment of blacks to assert that protests against BYU were actually protests against BYU’s black students.153 The university invited increasing numbers of black speakers to campus, including Jesse Owens, William P. Foster, Maya Angelou, and Edward W. Brooke.154 Eventually, BYU not only invited Alex Haley to speak on campus but later awarded him an honorary degree.155 Footballer Ron Knight was joined, in 1971, by Bennie Smith, a defensive back from Arizona. Three years later, BYU’s first black basketball player, guard Gary Batiste from Berkeley, enrolled. In 1976, Robert Stevenson became BYU’s first elected black student body officer. The next year, Keith Rice, a forward from Portland, became BYU’s second black basketball player. By June 1978, BYU boasted four black athletes.156 Then, on June 9, 1978, the LDS church stunned members and critics alike by lifting all race-related restrictions to membership.157 A year later, Stanford renewed relations with BYU. BYU began actively recruiting blacks, with a goal of ten to fifteen new black students per year.158 The total number of black students on campus rose to forty in 1981. Thirty years later, the number of blacks campus-wide stood at 176 (0.6 percent of all students)—a more than three-fold increase.159 151 “Wynetta Martin Joins BYU Faculty,” Daily Universe, December 4, 1970; see also Wynetta Willis Martin, Black Mormon Tells Her Story (Salt Lake City: Hawkes Publications, 1972). 152 “Anti-BYU Demonstrations Hit Teams during Weekend Basketball Games,” Daily Universe, December 14, 1970. 153 See, for instance, Wilkinson, Diary, February 27 and May 23, 1971. 154 J. LaVar Bateman, memorandum to Wilkinson, March 8, 1971, Wilkinson Papers; “Music of an Unhappy People,” Daily Universe, August 8, 1972; “Speaker Lists Contributions,” Daily Universe, November 3, 1972; “Senator Edward W. Brooke at BYU,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 11 (Summer 1978): 119–20. 155 “Black is Beautiful,” Daily Universe, March 30, 1972; “Haley Gets Honorary Y Degree,” Daily Universe, September 1, 1977. 156 “Y’s Batiste Suspended,” Daily Universe, December 13, 1974; “ASBYU’s Black V.P.,” Daily Universe Monday Magazine, September 7, 1976; “Varsity Team Will [Have] Fresh Recruits,” Daily Universe, November 21, 1977; “Y Black Athletes React Favorably,” Daily Universe, June 13, 1978. 157 “Blacks Get Priesthood,” Daily Universe Extra, June 9, 1978. 158 David M. Sorenson and the Ad Hoc Committee on Minority Students, Re: Financial Aid for Minority Students, February 19, 1981, copy, Smith-Pettit Foundation. 159 “From Protest to Promise,” BYU Today, November 1981; “Slave Costumes Offend Blacks,” Daily Universe, November 6, 1981; “Black Club at BYU,” Sunstone Review, March 1982, 2; “BYU Demographics,” Brigham Young University, accessed July 13, 2012, http://yfacts.byu.edu/Article?id=135. 228 |
