Kimball's "Nightmare": White Supremacy and School Desegregation in Salt Lake City, 1954–1982

• In Event: Race, Antiblackness, and White Supremacy in Education

Abstract

This ethnographic case study analyses a set of oral history interviews conducted by university students in 1983 with Mrs. Bernice Benns, an African American woman, mother, and activist who lived in predominantly white Mormon Utah in the wake of Brown v. Board (1954). As historians and sociologists of education are prone to do, this study attempts to “recover and center” marginalized histories that reveal “everyday forms of protest, self-determination, and community organizing” (Garcia & Yosso, 2020, p. 69) in the context of a racially oppressive schooling environment. Mrs. Benns’ historic encounters with white supremacy urge contemporary white educators, administrators, and policymakers to promote a more racially equitable educational future for African American children and youth.

Author

• Nathan Tanner, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign