Mrs. Howard Brown, 1973

File — Box: 1, Folder: 2

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

Mrs. Brown was born in Lansing, Kansas in 1914. She only encountered school segregation through elementary school. She attended the University of Kansas, which was integrated. Her husband was born in Kansas City, Kansas in 1912. He attended school through high school, which was segregated throughout its entirety. The couple moved to Carbonville, Utah, in 1931, to help Mr. Brown’s mother, whose husband had fallen ill. She owned a farm. Mr. Brown worked in the mines during the winters, which Mrs. Brown explains was the one job open to African American men at the time, and helped his mother on the farm during the summers. The couple eventually relocated to Salt Lake City in 1939 seeking new jobs and opportunities. In Salt Lake, Mr. Brown began to work as a porter for the railroads, but was unable to get full-time work until 1941. Mrs. Brown recounts that it was very difficult to find good jobs in Utah for African Americans, even for those with a college education. This left many African Americans without an incentive to pursue higher education. Mrs. Brown relates that no jobs were available for women outside of domestic or janitorial work. She says that the Depression hit African Americans harder than it hit White people, because they were the last to be hired and the first to be fired.

She recalls that the most ridiculous case of racism she ever encountered in Utah involved a prominent White man trying to get a law passed by the legislature that would have forced all African Americans to move far down Beck Street, close to the dump. She faced similar prejudice from her neighbors, who considered African Americans “undesirables” in the neighborhood. Although it was difficult for African Americans to find housing at this time, she distinctly remembers that you could get a home for as little as fifty dollars down.

Mrs. Brown recounted that her children had problems at Franklin Elementary because the principal was prejudiced, and that many other African American families experienced similar problems. Primarily, she was frustrated because she felt that racism was nearly impossible to fight before civil rights laws were passed, even for bigger organizations such as the NAACP. In terms of racism that continues today, she feels that housing was still extremely difficult to get, and that African Americans are often kept out of jobs because employers overstate necessary qualifications as an excuse not to hire African Americans, although they hire White people who fall short of the same qualifications. For her, many of her job-related frustrations were not because she felt she wasn’t paid enough, but because she felt she wasn’t challenged enough and was stuck doing menial, uninteresting work for the majority of her life. On the occasions that she did have a more interesting position, she was demoted or let go, which she attributes to the prejudice of her employers. She stated that prejudice and difficulty finding good jobs had not improved in Utah at the time of the interview, and cites the LDS church as being one of the main roadblocks.

Mrs. Brown says that the KKK was not active in Salt Lake City, but in smaller towns such as Price there was at least an occasional presence. She says that when they moved to Price, an African American man had recently been hung from one of the bridges, although she could not remember why. Audio CD A0038_B-30_01.

Dates

1973

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