Author(s): Ethan Hatch
Mentor(s): Greg Seppi
Institution BYU
My presentation, Entertainment, Racism, and the Mormon Experience: Salt Lake City’s 1903 “Tom Show” will provide a case study of racism and race relations in early 20th century Salt Lake City, Utah. It will focus on the “Tom Show,” a theatrical parody of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin that was produced by Salt Lake City’s Press Club. The Press Club was a social group of elite Utah business and political figures mixed with leading journalists and newspapermen. It was rare among social groups in presenting itself as a place where Mormons and non-Mormons could freely interact. Every year the Press Club would produce a play for the whole city intended to raise revenue. Their 1903 “Tom Show” showcased its members as amateur actors in blackface and cross-dressing. Much of the play consisted of them imitating Black Americans and satirizing the slave trade. The production was also saturated with jokes about contemporary events in Utah. White Mormons and non-Mormons alike raved about the show in the newspapers, some even looking back to it with nostalgia into the 1960s. For Salt Lake City’s Black community, despite their small size, the play galvanized them to publish their staunch protest against the show. Elizabeth Taylor, a prominent Black American woman, even extended their publicity in protest to later form “The Western Federation of Colored Women.” My presentation will illustrate the “Tom Show” and its legacy through showing newspaper articles and photos cans of its theatrical playbook, as well as quoting newspaper reviews and published protests against it. In the course of the research it was found that many Black Americans who decried the show’s production and championed civil rights in Utah were later largely forgotten, while the “Tom Show” and its racist legacy were venerated for decades afterwards. The photos of blackface actors and explicitly racist language surrounding the production may be upsetting to many viewers. In the course of the presentation, however, Black Utahns and their reactions against the show will be emphasized, showing their resilience in the face of institutionalized degradation.