Speak Your Piece: a podcast about Utah's history

Date: April 17, 2023 (Season 5, Episode 12: 1 hour, 7 minutes long).  Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here. The episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood, Chelsey Zamir, and Dr. Katherine Kitterman, with sound engineering and post-production editing from Jason T. Powers, from the Utah State Library Recording Studio. In this Speak Your Piece episode, we hear from Dr. Constance Lieber, author and historian, on her book Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon: Suffragist, Senator, Plural Wife (Signature Books 2022), with SYP host Brad Westwood, and co-host Dr. Katherine Kittermann, Utah State Historical Society's women's history coordinator. In this episode, Dr. Lieber discusses the subject of her book, Martha “Mattie” Hughes Cannon, who in 1896, became the first elected female state senator in the United States, an extraordinary accomplishment as she was elected 24 years before most women in the United States could vote. A groundbreaking late 19th-century woman, Cannon vacillated between her goals, her public ambitions, being a devout Mormon, a polygamist wife (she was the fourth of six wives), an attentive mother, and a practicing physician.  Cannon was a standout suffragist locally and nationally, a compelling writer and orator, and a pioneering public health leader for the state.In this episode, hear Drs. Lieber and Kitterman discuss a myriad of insightful details compiled by Lieber after many years of research. A statue of Dr. Hughes Cannon is slated to be installed, sometime in 2024, within the U.S. Capitol National Statuary Hall, to represent Utah,  among likenesses of prominent Americans, from across the United States.For the speakers' bios, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: August 29, 2022 (Season 5, Episode 1: 53 minutes long).  Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here. The episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood, James Toledo, and Chelsey Zamir with sound engineering and post-production work from Stephen Morris (Studio Underground) and Jason Powers (Utah State Library Recording Studio). The opinions shared in this podcast episode reflect the historical research of the guests and not the official views of the state of Utah.Content Advisory: This SYP series is about Utah's Native American boarding school era, which spanned from the mid-1800s to approximately 1980s, when Native American children (ages 5 to 18+) were removed, then later encouraged, to leave their families and communities, in order to receive a 1-7 and later K-12 education. This history can be emotionally challenging for any listeners but even more so for those who experienced it, either first-hand or through multi-generational impact. If you or someone you know needs to talk to someone regarding the traumatic effects related to this history, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline for Native Americans and Alaska Natives at 1-800-985-5990.This Speak Your Piece episode is the introduction to a five-part series. Historian Farina King takes questions from co-producers James Toledo and Brad Westwood, offering a basic national, then an Intermountain West story, about the Indian boarding school era. The interview offers insights, as both King's and Toledo's parents and grandparents were survivors and/or participants in these schools; or the foster-parent and school program known as “the Indian Student Placement Program (ISPP),” which involved tens of thousands of Native American children across the Intermountain West, from 1947 to 2000, in a program offered by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As with most history, this is a complex story that cannot be generalized in one or two paragraphs. The SYP series is not an all-inclusive telling; rather it is an initial public conversation and historical inquiry. Further historical studies across Utah are needed. The Department of the Interior's Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative has preliminarily identified seven Utah Indian boarding or day schools so far (as of 2022); others might be discovered as researchers bring this historical topic into focus.Part 1: Native American Boarding Schools in the Am. West & in Utah (ca. 1870s-1980s) with Dr. Farina King (Diné)  – an IntroductionPart 2: American Boarding School Policies with Native American College Adviser Franci Lynne Taylor (Choctaw) (Season 5: Episode 4) Part 3: Matthew Garrett on “Making Lamanites: Mormons, Native Americans, and the Indian Student Placement Program, 1947-2000” (Season 5: Episode 5)Part 4: Diné Elders Rose Jakub (Diné) and Gayle Dawes (Diné) on Their Boarding School Experiences (Season 5, Episode 6)Part 5: James Toledo on Multi-Generational Impacts from Boarding Schools and on the Need for Healing (Season 5, Episode 11) - Series Conclusion For the speakers' bios, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: September 26, 2022 (Season 5, Episode 4: 54 minutes and 19 seconds long).  Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here. The episode was co-produced by James Toledo, Chelsey Zamir, and Brad Westwood, with sound engineering and post-production editing by Jason T. Powers, from the Utah State Library Recording Studio.The opinions shared in this podcast episode reflect the historical research of the guests and not the official views of the state of Utah.Content Advisory: This SYP series is about Utah's Native American boarding school era, which spanned from the mid-1800s to approximately 1980s, when Native American children (ages 5 to 18+) were forcibly removed, then later encouraged, to leave their families and communities, in order to receive a 1-7 then later a K-12 education. This history can be emotionally challenging for any listeners but even more so for those who experienced it, either first-hand or by its multi-generational effects. If you or someone you know needs to talk to someone regarding the traumatic effects related to this history, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline for Native Americans and Alaska Natives at 1-800-985-5990.This Speak Your Piece episode is part two of a five-part series on Native American boarding schools in the Western United States and in Utah. In this episode, Franci Lynn Taylor (Choctaw), former Executive Director of the University of Utah's American Indian Resource Center, tells a story of Indian educational policies, with series hosts James Toledo and Brad Westwood. Taylor covers the post-Civil War-era boarding school policies inspired by the Carlisle Industrial School of 1879, the Dawes Act (1887), the Indian Relocation Act (1956), the Indian Self Determination Act (1975), and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978). Taylor traces policies to the present day, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs' schools, tribally-run schools, state-run schools, and state-access schools.Throughout these federal policy attempts at Native American assimilation, Taylor describes a history of resiliency, generation after generation. The love for the community is the thread that weaves through this narrative. She concludes by tracing some of the healing initiatives for Native American communities which Taylor hopes will make sure many will never forget what happened, so history won't repeat itself. Part 1: Native American Boarding Schools in the Am. West & in Utah (ca. 1870s-1980s) with Dr. Farina King (Diné)  – an IntroductionPart 2: American Boarding School Policies with Native American College Adviser Franci Lynne Taylor (Choctaw) (Season 5: Episode 4) Part 3: Matthew Garrett on “Making Lamanites: Mormons, Native Americans, and the Indian Student Placement Program, 1947-2000” (Season 5: Episode 5)Part 4: Diné Elders Rose Jakub (Diné) and Gayle Dawes (Diné) on Their Boarding School Experiences (Season 5, Episode 6)Part 5: James Toledo on Multi-Generational Impacts from Boarding Schools and on the Need for Healing (Season 5, Episode 11) - Series ConclusionFor the speakers' bios, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: October 3, 2022 (Season 5, Episode 5: 53 minutes 56 seconds). Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here. This episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood, Chelsey Zamir, and James Toledo, with sound engineering and post-production editing, from Jason T. Powers of the Utah State Library Recording Studio.The opinions shared in this podcast episode represents the historic research of our guests and does not reflect the official views of the state of Utah.Content Advisory: This SYP series is about Utah's Native American boarding school era, which spanned from the mid-1800s to approximately 1980s, when Native American children (ages 5 to 18+) were forcibly removed, then later encouraged, to leave their families and communities, in order to receive a 1-7 and later K-12 education. This history can be emotionally challenging for any listeners but even more so for those who experienced it, either first-hand or through multi-generational effects. If you or someone you know needs to talk to someone regarding the traumatic effects related to this history, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline for Native Americans and Alaska Natives at 1-800-985-5990.This episode is part three of a five-part series about Native American boarding schools in the Intermountain West and in Utah. In this episode, Western Historian Matthew Garrett discusses his 2016 book Making Lamanites: Mormons, Native Americans, and the Indian Student Placement Program, 1947-2000 (University of Utah Press) with SYP co-hosts Brad Westwood and James Toledo. Garrett's book focuses on the education of Native American, mostly Navajo (Diné) children, as offered by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (hereafter LDS Church) from 1947 to 2000. This episode includes a narrative arc from the program's beginnings in Richfield, Utah, in 1947, to its closure amid changing Native American policies and rights. The podcast addresses why it was supported by some Native American leaders and parents; how it was seen as belated fulfillment of a prophetic obligation by the LDS Church to assist Native Americans in reclaiming an ancient Hebrew/Christian identity. And finally, how a court case propelled the LDS Church leadership into phasing out the program.   Part 1: Native American Boarding Schools in the Am. West & in Utah (ca. 1870s-1980s) with Dr. Farina King (Diné) – an IntroductionPart 2: American Boarding School Policies with Native American College Adviser Franci Lynne Taylor (Choctaw) (Season 5: Episode 4) Part 3: Matthew Garrett on “Making Lamanites: Mormons, Native Americans, and the Indian Student Placement Program, 1947-2000” (Season 5: Episode 5)Part 4: Diné Elders Rose Jakub (Diné) and Gayle Dawes (Diné) on Their Boarding School Experiences (Season 5, Episode 6)Part 5: James Toledo on Multi-Generational Impacts from Boarding Schools and on the Need for Healing (Season 5, Episode 11) - Series Conclusion  For the speakers' bios, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: October 24, 2022 (Season 5, Episode 6: 81 minutes long). Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here. The episode was co-produced by James Toledo, Chelsey Zamir, and Brad Westwood, with sound engineering and post-production editing by Jason T. Powers, from the Utah State Library Recording Studio.The opinions shared in this podcast episode represents the historic research of our guests and does not reflect the official views of the state of Utah.Content Advisory: This SYP series is about Utah's Native American boarding school era, which spanned from the mid-1800s to approximately 2000, when Native American children (ages 5 to 18+) were removed, then later encouraged, to leave their families and communities, in order to receive a 1-7 and later K-12 educations. This history can be emotionally challenging for any listeners but even more so for those who experienced it, either first-hand or through multi-generational effects. If you or someone you know needs to talk to someone regarding the traumatic effects related to this history, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline for Native Americans and Alaska Natives at 1-800-985-5990.This episode is part four of a five-part series about Native American boarding schools in the Intermountain West and in Utah. In this episode, Gayle Dawes and Rose Jakub, two Navajo elders, tell their own and their families' experiences, attending reservation day schools, away-from-home federal boarding schools, and participating in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' (hereafter LDS Church) Indian Placement Program with SYP co-hosts James Toledo and Brad Westwood.  In the recounting of these memories (circa 1950s-1980s) and in the retelling of stories from parents and extended family members (circa 1900 to 1960s), Dawes and Jakub, speak as “primary sources.” Their memories reveal aspects of Native thinking and knowing, culture and language, family life and community, trauma and resilience, all woven in conversation between two longtime friends.Both Dawes and Jakub are exemplary elders and leaders inside and outside their communities. This episode aims to give a voice to those experiences and help listeners better understand the history, major themes, and underlying ideas behind the Native American boarding schools and LDS Church's Indian Student Placement Program that thousands of Native American children attended. Part 1: Native American Boarding Schools in the Am. West & in Utah (ca. 1870s-1980s) with Dr. Farina King (Diné) – an IntroductionPart 2: American Boarding School Policies with Native American College Adviser Franci Lynne Taylor (Choctaw) (Season 5: Episode 4) Part 3: Matthew Garrett on “Making Lamanites: Mormons, Native Americans, and the Indian Student Placement Program, 1947-2000” (Season 5: Episode 5)Part 4: Diné Elders Rose Jakub (Diné) and Gayle Dawes (Diné) on Their Boarding School Experiences (Season 5, Episode 6)Part 5: James Toledo on Multi-Generational Impacts from Boarding Schools and on the Need for Healing (Season 5, Episode 11) - Series ConclusionFor the speakers' bios, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: August 29, 2022 (Season 5, Episode 11: 49 minutes and 18 seconds long). Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here. The episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood, Chelsey Zamir, and James Toledo, with help (sound engineering and post-production editing) from Jason Powers (Utah State Library Recording Studio).The opinions shared in this podcast episode reflect the historical research of the guests and not the official views of the state of Utah.Content Advisory: This SYP series is about Utah's Native American boarding school era, which spanned from the mid-1800s to approximately 2000, when Native American children (ages 5 to 18+) were removed, then later encouraged, to leave their families and communities, in order to receive a 1-7 and later K-12 educations. This history can be emotionally challenging for any listeners but even more so for those who experienced it, either first-hand or through multi-generational effects. If you or someone you know needs to talk to someone regarding the traumatic effects related to this history, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline for Native Americans and Alaska Natives at 1-800-985-5990.This Speak Your Piece episode is the conclusion of a five-part series about Native American boarding schools in Utah. In this episode, Brad Westwood, host of Speak Your Piece, speaks with James Toledo, program manager at the Utah Division of Indian Affairs and co-host of the five-episode series, about his thoughts, ideas, and his family's experiences on Native American boarding schools and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' (hereafter LDS Church) Indian Student Placement Program (hereafter ISPP). In this episode, Toledo touches on how his family's multi-generational experiences attending boarding schools and the LDS Church's ISPP directly shaped his childhood growing up in Salt Lake City and impacted his learning and understanding of his Navajo culture. In all, this series has led Toledo to understand his family's experiences better and has brought to light the very complex history and stories of boarding schools and the LDS Church's ISPP; stories that are a crucial part of Utah and American history.Part 1: Native American Boarding Schools in the Am. West & in Utah (ca. 1870s-1980s) with Dr. Farina King (Diné) – an IntroductionPart 2: American Boarding School Policies with Native American College Adviser Franci Lynne Taylor (Choctaw) (Season 5: Episode 4) Part 3: Matthew Garrett on “Making Lamanites: Mormons, Native Americans, and the Indian Student Placement Program, 1947-2000” (Season 5: Episode 5)Part 4: Diné Elders Rose Jakub (Diné) and Gayle Dawes (Diné) on Their Boarding School Experiences (Season 5, Episode 6)Part 5: James Toledo on Multi-Generational Impacts from Boarding Schools and on the Need for Healing (Season 5, Episode 11) - Series Conclusion For the speakers' bios, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: May 30, 2023 (Season 5, Episode 13: 54 minutes and 21 seconds long). Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here.  The episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir with help (sound engineering and post-production editing) from Jason Powers, from the Utah State Library Recording Studio.Speak Your Piece Host Brad Westwood hosts Megan Weiss, a Ph.D. student specializing in the history of the American West, at the University of Utah, about the fascinating history of the DUP (the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers); officially known as the International Society Daughters of Utah Pioneers.  As one of the last states in the country to establish a state history museum — the Museum of Utah is projected to open in 2026 — Utah has made numerous attempts to tell, officially, Utah's fascinating yet complex history. The state's first attempts to conceptualize its history started with the 1897 Pioneer Jubilee, as the state clung to its pioneer narratives and sought to preserve them.  As Weiss tells it, the Jubilee was seen as a “reset” moment for Utah, after pioneers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Saints of Latter-day Saints arrived in the territory in 1847, and finally achieved statehood in 1896. Many of Utah's history-related organizations and celebrations, still held dear today, were derived from that original 1897 Jubilee festival — the Book of Pioneers, Days of ‘47' celebrations, the Utah State Historical Society (1897) and the DUP (1901), were all established in its wake. With this intent to preserve the Pioneer narrative, Utahns also started keeping and preserving objects, which also became a means to re-examine the past. The Deseret Museum, established in 1869, was a private enterprise and a menagerie curio hall to begin with, but later the collection became more professionalized. Weiss adds that during this professionalization stage, Utah women started the Daughters of Utah Pioneers in 1901. This coincides with the establishment of female-led historical agencies across the country. Together, these descendants of Utah's pioneers commemorated their families, focusing primarily on Utah's “pioneer period” from 1847-1869. Among many social and intellectual endeavors, in the mid-twentieth century, the DUP envisioned and built a Mormon pioneer museum (something of a de facto state museum), with funds gathered widely from private sources, along with funds and a building site, furnished by the Utah State Legislature. Opened in 1950, this prominently placed building serves as the visual terminus looking northward on Main Street.This episode offers a heretofore untold story regarding the public history of Utah; also women's history, twentieth century politics, and perhaps equally as important, how Utah has constructed and presented history in the past. As Utah prepares to open in 2026, a new, more inclusive, state-funded history museum, this backstory is essential listening. For the speakers' bios, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: December 2, 2019 (Season 1, Episode 4 - Part 1: 31 min. & 18 sec. long). Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here. This episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir, with help (sound engineering and post-production editing) from Conner Sorenson (Studio Underground) and Jason Powers (Utah State Library Recording Studio).This two-part episode series is an interview with Richard E. Turley Jr., former Assistant Church Historian of The Church of Latter-Day Saints, with SYP host Brad Westwood in 2019. Turley discusses his thirty-five-year long career in Mormon history including the creation of the Joseph Smith Papers Project. In this near decade quest, Turley and the Church History Department (hereafter CHD) tracked down every known and newly discovered historical source (books, manuscripts, letters, government documents, etc.) about the church founder, in every conceivable location, and then digitized them, ensuring instant digital availability to anyone around the world. During Turley's tenure the church also created regional history centers across the globe, and digitized millions of other manuscripts, photographs and historical records. To see the church's vast holdings on-line, without a paywall, click on digital holdings. All this and more is discussed in this two-part episode series.  For the speakers' bios, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: December 2, 2019 (Season 1, Episode 4 - Part 2: 20 minutes long). Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here. This episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir, with help (sound engineering and post-production editing) from Conner Sorenson (Studio Underground) and Jason Powers (Utah State Library Recording Studio).This two-part episode series is an interview with Richard E. Turley Jr., former Assistant Church Historian of The Church of Latter-Day Saints, with SYP host Brad Westwood in 2019. Turley discusses his thirty-five-year long career in Mormon history including the creation of the Joseph Smith Papers Project. In this near decade quest, Turley and the Church History Department (hereafter CHD) tracked down every known and newly discovered historical source (books, manuscripts, letters, government documents, etc.) about the church founder, in every conceivable location, and then digitized them, ensuring instant digital availability to anyone around the world. During Turley's tenure the church also created regional history centers across the globe, and digitized millions of other manuscripts, photographs and historical records. To see the church's vast holdings on-line, without a paywall, click on digital holdings. All this and more is discussed in this two-part episode series.  For the speakers' bios, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: March 10, 2023 (Season 5, Episode 10: 53 minutes long). For the entire show notes and additional resources for this episode, click here. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click here. The episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir, with sound engineering and post-production editing by Jason T. Powers, from the Utah State Library Recording Studio.This episode is a conversation with Speak Your Piece host Brad Westwood and Gary Bergera, Mormon and Western historian, book publisher and editor, and recently retired managing director of Smith-Pettit Foundation, and former managing director of Signature Books (established in 1981). In this episode, Bergera discusses personal stories as an historian and book publisher. Bergera covers the value of reading and writing history, what sparked his interest in the field of history, and the beginning story of the newspaper the Seventh East Press (1981-1983). Bergera also notes some of the works he's most proud of, in both writing history and in shepherding history, through the publication process.Bergera's contributions and nearly fifty years' work in the field of history, reflect the curiosity and passions of one who has always been intellectually curious. Bergera discusses his years as a Mormon and western historian; the beginning story of his work, publishing and editing and serving as managing director of Signature Books and the Smith-Pettit Foundation, including founders George D. Smith and Scott Kenney; his and Ron Priddis's book Brigham Young University: A House of Faith (1985); the edited volume regarding Everett Ruess, a young artist and solo-adventurer who disappeared in Utah's wilderness in 1934, called On Desert Trails with Everett Ruess (Gibbs Smith, 2000); and what Bergera sees as one of his most important contributions, a three-volume edited work Confessions of a Mormon Historian: The Diaries of Leonard J. Arrington, 1971-1997 (Signature Books, 2018). Bergera describes Arrington's history creating processes; how he was a conscientious diarist, knowing his diaries would be appreciated as a primary source; and finally, Arrington's devotion to his faith, alongside his pursuit of evidence-based scholarship and sound historical methods. This candid conversation is a refreshing reflection on the work of another contributor to the history of Utah. For the guest's bio, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: December 16, 2019 (Season 1, Episode 6 – Part 1: 30 min. long). Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here. This episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir, with help (sound engineering and post-production editing) from Conner Sorenson of Studio Underground.This SYP episode is an interview with Rodney Decker, former reporter on KUTV Channel 2, with SYP host Brad Westwood on his 2019 book Utah Politics: The Elephant in the Room. Decker's experiences as an intelligence officer during the Vietnam War, developed in him a healthy measure of skepticism. Add a knack for deep journalistic research, and an equal measure of careful and thoughtful thinking, Decker developed a “tell it like it is” approach in his writing and later in his televised reporting. The same may be said of Decker's book which discusses Utah's political climate from the 1890s to 1970s.Decker's task in writing this book was to describe, plainly, Utah's complicated late 19th and early 20th century political climate, which led, in the mid-20th century, to Utah becoming a bastion of social conservative thinking, along with a near religious alignment with the Republican Party. Although the state and the Republican Party haven't always been inextricably linked, Decker argues that starting after World War II, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (hereafter LDS Church) started to align with the socially conservative and business-friendly Republican Party, mostly in reaction to the changes in civil rights, political and social mores, and sexual attitudes that rippled through mid- to late-20th century America.Why listen to this SYP episode? Because there are rapid changes in social and religious attitudes today in Utah, and a near imperceptible change demographically in Utah's population. Utah appears to once again be poised for social-political change. Understanding the political story that frames up the last 50 to 75 years, may help Utahns understand future changing conditions.For the guest's bio, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: December 16, 2019 (Season 1, Episode 6 – Part 2: 17 min. & 26 sec. long). Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here. This episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir, with help (sound engineering and post-production editing) from Conner Sorenson of Studio Underground.This SYP episode is an interview with Rodney Decker, former reporter on KUTV Channel 2, with SYP host Brad Westwood on his 2019 book Utah Politics: The Elephant in the Room. Decker's experiences as an intelligence officer during the Vietnam War, developed in him a healthy measure of skepticism. Add a knack for deep journalistic research, and an equal measure of careful and thoughtful thinking, Decker developed a “tell it like it is” approach in his writing and later in his televised reporting. The same may be said of Decker's book which discusses Utah's political climate from the 1890s to 1970s.Decker's task in writing this book was to describe, plainly, Utah's complicated late 19th and early 20th century political climate, which led, in the mid-20th century, to Utah becoming a bastion of social conservative thinking, along with a near religious alignment with the Republican Party. Although the state and the Republican Party haven't always been inextricably linked, Decker argues that starting after World War II, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (hereafter LDS Church) started to align with the socially conservative and business-friendly Republican Party, mostly in reaction to the changes in civil rights, political and social mores, and sexual attitudes that rippled through mid- to late-20th century America.Why listen to this SYP episode? Because there are rapid changes in social and religious attitudes today in Utah, and a near imperceptible change demographically in Utah's population. Utah appears to once again be poised for social-political change. Understanding the political story that frames up the last 50 to 75 years, may help Utahns understand future changing conditions.For the guest's bio, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: December 23, 2019 (Season 1, Episode 7 - Part 2: 26 min. & 1 sec. long). Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here. This episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir, with help (sound engineering and post-production editing) from Conner Sorenson of Studio Underground. This SYP episode is an interview with Amy Barry, the program manager for Utah Division of State History's Utah Cemeteries and Burials Program, with SYP host Brad Westwood. At the time of this recording, Barry has managed the Utah Cemeteries and Burials Program for nearly 5 years. With a background in public administration, Barry enjoys using those skills to make government more accessible to everyone. The public can visit the Cemeteries and Burial Program online where they can search for a specific Utah burial plot by name, find a specific cemetery within the state, find out further information about Barry's gravestone preservation program and efforts, and search for death certificates. The state of Utah is the only state mandated (since 1997) to collect burial information for cemeteries and import it into a searchable database, plus maintain a list of all cemeteries in Utah. As Barry puts it, her job will “never be done.” In this episode, Barry tells four stories of individuals who are buried in Utah, three of which are women with compelling political backgrounds: Sarah Elizabeth Nelson Anderson, Lucy Augusta Rice Clark, and Elise Furer Musser. The fourth and final story is of Leopold Antone Yost a beloved trumpet player who led a 40-year long military career. Barry concludes this episode by stating that although many of these stories told are of immigrants, not originally from Utah, these people had a major impact in their communities. Whether it was fighting for and elevating women's rights or playing in a band that brought a lot of spirit during wartime, these stories detail the otherwise unknown lives of people who contributed to our communities and whose influences live on. Stories which Barry attempts to encapsulate and immortalize within her detailed database. For the guest's bio, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings.   Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: December 23, 2019 (Season 1, Episode 7 - Part 1: 25 min. & 3 sec. long). Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here. This episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir, with help (sound engineering and post-production editing) from Conner Sorenson of Studio Underground.  This SYP episode is an interview with Amy Barry, the program manager for Utah Division of State History's Utah Cemeteries and Burials Program, with SYP host Brad Westwood. At the time of this recording, Barry has managed the Utah Cemeteries and Burials Program for nearly 5 years. With a background in public administration, Barry enjoys using those skills to make government more accessible to everyone. The public can visit the Cemeteries and Burial Program online where they can search for a specific Utah burial plot by name, find a specific cemetery within the state, find out further information about Barry's gravestone preservation program and efforts, and search for death certificates. The state of Utah is the only state mandated (since 1997) to collect burial information for cemeteries and import it into a searchable database, plus maintain a list of all cemeteries in Utah. As Barry puts it, her job will “never be done.” What makes this database a unique and different resource? Most cemetery or burial databases are often user-created while this database is based on independent research with government related resources plus Sexton Records (records kept by the sexton, or “caretaker” of a government, corporate, or church cemetery). Every Monday, Barry posts on Utah State History's Facebook page where she posts a biography of a person buried in Utah who has a compelling story and has contributed to their community. She specifically focuses on people who, very often, are people you may not know about or have heard of. Barry concludes Part 1 of this episode by stating that although Utah's interest in cemeteries is growing, with many undertaking well-meaning efforts of gravestone preservation themselves, this is often doing more harm than good. For this exact reason, Barry put together a gravestone preservation workshop as well as an instructional pamphlet and guide to clean and correctly preserve gravestones. She states her rules for preservation: 1. Do no harm, 2. Don't do anything that can't be undone! For the guest's bio, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings.   Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov. 

Date: February 3, 2023 (Season 5, Episode 8: 62 minutes long). For the entire show notes and additional resources for this episode, click here. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click here. The episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir, with sound engineering and post-production editing by Jason T. Powers, from the Utah State Library Recording Studio.Host Brad Westwood interviews Dr. Todd M. Compton regarding his award-winning book: A Frontier Life: Jacob Hamblin, Explorer and Indian Missionary (University of Utah Press, 2013). In this episode, Compton offers a more fully rendered story of Jacob Hamblin, beyond the long-held popular stories. Hamblin's life was  filled with constant exploration and resettling,  while he survived many harrowing events; however, he was also a religious seeker, something of a mystic, combining his faith with that of the spiritual life he encountered among Native Americans. Hamblin worked and hunted, rested, recreated, and sought to speak fluently among them, developing a mutual respect and trust. Hamblin's story starts in Tooele, then he lived for many years in Southern Utah where he aided in the settlement of Santa Clara (Washington County), then Kanab (Kane County), before he moved on to Arizona and New Mexico. Hamblin worked among the Gosuite, Paiute, Hopi and Navajo, and hoped to convert them despite the cultural chasm between them; but equally so – and in conflict with his missionary work – Hamblin was an ardent colonizer, accepting multiple missions from Salt Lake City to identify viable lands for settlement. Compton wrestles with, then helps us understand, the many paradoxes in Hamblin's life. Hamblin's dogged work as an explorer and early settler would inescapably lead to the loss of traditional lifeways, and eventually to the dispossession of Native American homelands.For the guest's bio, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: February 6, 2023 (Season 5, Episode 9: 40 minutes long). For the entire show notes and additional resources for this episode, click here. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click here. The episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir, with sound engineering and post-production editing by Jason T. Powers, from the Utah State Library Recording Studio.In this episode, we talk about growing up Hispanic in Utah. Maria Garciaz (chief executive officer of NeighborWorks Salt Lake, a nonprofit organization created to revitalize Salt Lake City neighborhoods), speaks about growing up in the late 1960s and 1970s Salt Lake City, mostly west of the Jordan River. Lee Martinez (longtime activist, school counselor, and political advisor) speaks of growing up near Clearfield and Layton; for a time in Anchorage, a temporary housing development (1942-1962) built outside of the U.S. Naval Supply Depot. Both Lee and Maria speak of their parents and families, their childhood memories, and how their horizons were expanded, and their life's work were set in motion, through their pursuit of education, civic engagement, and their involvement in the University of Utah's Chicano Student Association, and other Hispanic and Latino based organizations, which were established in 1960s to 1980s Utah.Their memories shared include early memories of family life as itinerant farm workers; their lives as temporary renters, moving constantly; their memories of moving in to predominantly white neighborhoods and being treated poorly as their new neighbors resisted their presence; their families working hard, caring for their homes, as a means of demonstrating their equal value; feeling hostilities as teenagers, observing the discrimination their parents and families endured; and growing up Roman Catholic in Utah. For the guests' bios, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: January 13, 2020 (Season 1, Episode 9 — Part 1: 26 min. and 39 sec. long). For the entire show notes and additional resources for this episode, click here. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click here. The episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir, with help (sound engineering and post-production editing) from Conner Sorenson of Studio Underground.  This SYP episode is a conversation with Brigham Young University historian Brenden Rensink with SYP host Brad Westwood, regarding his 2018 book “Native but Foreign: Indigenous Immigrants and Refugees in the North American Borderlands” (Texas A&M University), his website and app “Intermountain Histories,” and his podcast “Writing Westward.” Rensink discusses the central arguments for his book, the inspiration behind his public history website, including a few post examples therein, and what his periodic podcast is all about. Of note for listeners: as of 2023 there are 650 posted stories on the “Intermountain Histories” site, some of which are part of the 55 different “tours” with unique themes. For the guest's bio, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: January 13, 2020 (Season 1, Episode 9 — Part 2: 23 minutes long). For the entire show notes and additional resources for this episode, click here. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click here. The episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir, with help (sound engineering and post-production editing) from Conner Sorenson of Studio Underground. This SYP episode is a conversation with Brigham Young University historian Brenden Rensink with SYP host Brad Westwood, regarding his 2018 book “Native but Foreign: Indigenous Immigrants and Refugees in the North American Borderlands” (Texas A&M University), his website and app “Intermountain Histories,” and his podcast “Writing Westward.” Rensink discusses the central arguments for his book, the inspiration behind his public history website, including a few post examples therein, and what his periodic podcast is all about. Of note for listeners: as of 2023 there are 650 posted stories on the “Intermountain Histories” site, some of which are part of the 55 different “tours” with unique themes. For the guest's bio, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: July 7, 2022 (Season 5, Episode 7: 75 minutes long). For the entire show notes and additional resources for this episode, click here. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click here. The episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir, with sound engineering and post-production editing by Jason T. Powers, from the Utah State Library Recording Studio.This episode of Speak Your Piece is an interview with Barbara Jones Brown, director of Signature Books, and Richard E. Turley, Jr., former assistant Church Historian of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, on their book Vengeance is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath (Oxford University Press), to be released May 30, 2023, with SYP host Brad Westwood. This book is a sequel to the 2008 Massacre at Mountain Meadows (Walker, Leonard and Turley). In Vengeance is Mine, the authors exhaustively cover the motives that led to the massacre at Mountain Meadows of the 120-plus victims, followed by the complex aftermath that includes cover-up attempts with the entirety of the blame placed on the neighboring Paiutes, as well as governmental and political intrigue. Also detailed are the delayed, if not coordinated, efforts to obstruct justice in indicting the nine key individuals involved. For the speakers' bios, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: July 7, 2022 (Season 4, Episode 15: 63 min. & 52 sec. long). For the entire show notes and additional resources for this episode, click here. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here. This episode was co-produced by Cassandra Clark, Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir. Post-production editing was completed by Cassandra Clark and Kennedy Oringdulph.This SYP episode is part of an ongoing series about women's history in Utah. It involves a discussion with SYP host Brad Westwood, Dr. Cassandra Clark (at the time of this recording, Utah Division of State History's first named women's historian), Alice Faulkner Burch (director of special events for Sema Hadithi Foundation), and Tiffany Greene (education director for Better Days and team leader of the research group for the Black Women Working Group at Sema Hadithi Foundation) about the mural unveiled in Richmond Park (444 East 600 South, Salt Lake City) in summer 2022 as part of Utah's Juneteenth celebrations. This episode will better acquaint listeners to the historical significance, the personal stories, and the broader context surrounding the lives of these four remarkable Black women featured on this mural: Jane Elizabeth Manning James (1821-1908), Elizabeth “Lizzie” Taylor (1873-1932), Elnora Dudley (1883-1956) , and Mignon Barker Richmond (1897-1984). The partnering organizations for this mural were the Sema Hadithi Foundation, African American Heritage and Culture Foundation, and Better Days 2020 (rebranded to Better Days). Wasatch Community Gardens, the Utah Division of State History, and the Utah Division of Arts and Museums were also part of this important effort.Greene, Burch, and Clark conclude this conversation by summarizing the influence these women have made. Greene notes that these four women bring to the forefront of what it really means to establish Utah history – they each played an important role being here in the state. Burch hopes that this mural means something to Black American women in Utah, that they can look at this mural and see that Black women have been in this state since the 1800s and have had such an immense impact and can say “I, too, belong here.”This mural is open to the public in the community garden at Richmond Park. The women's names and date ranges of their lives are on the mural. We encourage listeners, after finishing this episode, to please visit the mural and enjoy it with some context. For all of the speakers' bios, please click here for the full show notes. Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: November 25, 2019 (S1 E3 - Part 2: 21 min. & 23 seconds). For the entire show notes and additional resources for this episode, click here.  Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here. This episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir, with help (sound engineering and post-production editing) from Jason Powers from the Utah State Library Recording Studio.In Part 2 of this episode, Reeve begins by telling listeners of SYP about some surprises he discovered while working on the  Century of Black Mormons database. The database, Reeve notes, pinpoints locations of baptisms of African Americans. One interesting thing that emerged was a significant amount of baptisms that took place in Utah. Reeve states his surprise in finding in the source materials documentation of 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and even 5th generations of African American LDS Church members, and not just pioneer converts to the faith, but that the faith was passed on for generations.Reeve's other works on race include his 2015 award-winning book Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness (Oxford University Press). Reeve notes that the thesis of this book is to address how Mormons, historically, have been seen through a racial lens. Starting in the nineteenth century, Reeve continues, Mormons were deemed as not “white” enough. This determination was largely based on Mormon policies of isolation and polygamy. At this time, members of the scientific and medical communities argued that the Mormon practice of polygamy contributed to the creation of a “denigrated” and “deformed” race and eventual sterility. In 1879, under the Hayes administration, the U.S. Government even went so far as to attempt to cut off European immigration to Utah, as large populations at the time were immigrating to Utah to convert to Mormonism. These immigrants, combined with the integration and conversion of Native American communities, contributed to “race mixing.” All of these policies and tactics contributed to the Mormon's reputation as a suspect racial group, a real problem.Reeve concludes Part 2 of this episode in stating that one can't really understand the present without understanding the past. While still unforgivable, in understanding the racial history of the Mormons, it helps us to make sense of the attempts by the Mormons to impose racial restrictions within church practices. Understanding this past will hopefully teach us some very valuable lessons. Reeve hopes that his project is an attempt at bringing that history, and the stories of those silenced, back to public knowledge.Bio: W. Paul Reeve was raised in Hurricane (Washington County) Utah. Since 2008, Reeve has been professor of American, Western, Mormon and Utah history at the University of Utah. Reeve is the first-ever Simmons Professor of Mormon Studies at the University of Utah, and has written a number of books, including: Making Space on the Western Frontier: Mormons, Miners, and Southern Paiutes (2007), Between Pulpit and Pew: The Supernatural World in Mormon History and Folklore (with Michael Scott Van Wagenen, 2011), and Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness (2015).Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: November 25, 2019 (S1 E3 - Part 1: 23 min. & 44 seconds). For the entire show notes and additional resources for this episode, click here.  Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here. This episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir, with help (sound engineering and post-production editing) from Jason Powers from the Utah State Library Recording Studio.This SYP episode is an interview with W. Paul Reeve, University of Utah professor of History, with SYP host Brad Westwood about his public history project, Century of Black Mormons database, hosted by the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah, where he serves as the site's general editor. In this database, Reeve highlights the Mormon African American experience in Utah from 1830-1930, which brings to light the stories of people that have been largely erased from public memory. The project aims to recover those stories and to ensure they will not be forgotten. Why is the Century of Black Mormons database so important to Utah history? Reeve states that, at heart, he's a social historian and thus attempts to understand history from the bottom up, as opposed to the top down – a perspective that allows for historians, such as himself, to understand the average person and, too often, those written off the historical narratives. Reeve also adds that he wanted a digital public history project that would engage the public in a different way and allow access to sources, names, numbers, and the identities of people of Black-African descent baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (hereafter LDS Church) between 1830-1930.Reeve and Westwood conclude Part 1 of this episode in discussing why this project is of value today with such a large community of African Americans as current members of the LDS Church. Reeve states that there are approximately one million people in the faith who are of Black-African descent. It matters, Reeve continues, to give people a pioneer past they may not have been aware of. It demonstrates that they didn't show up to this faith only after 1978, even though sometimes that's how it has been portrayed only because it's too uncomfortable to speak about Mormon African Americans prior to 1978, as that would mean recognizing the racism that barred them from certain rituals within the faith. The database seeks to address those issues and allow the lives of those African Americans named in the site to speak their own stories.Bio: W. Paul Reeve was raised in Hurricane (Washington County) Utah. Since 2008, Reeve has been professor of American, Western, Mormon and Utah history at the University of Utah. Reeve is the first-ever Simmons Professor of Mormon Studies at the University of Utah, and has written a number of books, including: Making Space on the Western Frontier: Mormons, Miners, and Southern Paiutes (2007), Between Pulpit and Pew: The Supernatural World in Mormon History and Folklore (with Michael Scott Van Wagenen, 2011), and Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness (2015). Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: June 27, 2022 (Season 4, Episode 14: 59 minutes & 21 seconds long). Click Here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here.  This episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir, with help (sound engineering and post-production editing) from Jason Powers from the Utah State Library Recording Studio.Dr. Gregory E. Smoak, longtime director of the American West Center (Univ. of Utah) and associate professor of history, discusses with SYP host Brad Westwood his 2021 book entitled, “Western Lands, Western Voices: Essays on Public History in the American West,” (The University of Utah Press). Smoak describes the U of U American West Center, and its 50 plus years of public facing history work. Smoak also defines, in this series of essays, what makes up “Public History.” The essays explore the American West and the academic or formal interpretation of it. The book is a wonderful collection of defensible and peer-reviewed writing on public history. The collection aspires to address the questions most perplexing to Smoak's history colleagues: what makes public history “public” and what makes a “public historian?” Sometimes, public history is wrongly conflated with “popular history,” often reducing it to a matter of audience, and associating it with a “lesser” type of history. The essays address questions and ideas via collaboration with many historians' contributions to the collection. This book, Smoak hopes, will educate the public on what public history really is in hopes of inspiring a positive effect on communities. What is the American West Center? Founded in 1964, it's one of the oldest regional studies centers in the country in the pursuit of western history. It was founded by two professors Russ Mortensen and C. Gregory Crampton as a partnership with the Western History Association to produce a second journal/magazine on the American West. That endeavor only lasted for a couple of years, which left the American West Center (hereafter AWC) needing a solid reason for existing which was filled by the tobacco industry heiress, Doris Duke, who in 1967, gave sizable financial grants to several universities including the AWC, to conduct hundreds of oral histories with Native Americans across the Intermountain West. The AWC became the manager of this massive oral history undertaking, available here. Today, the AWC focuses on oral history projects; provides research assistantship positions to students during their masters and doctoral studies; and conducts contracted research projects related to Native American treaties, environmental, architectural and water rights history. Work completed by the AWC is available to the public via the Marriott Library, Special Collections Department.  Bio: Dr. Gregory E. Smoak is an associate professor of history at the University of Utah, the director of the American West Center since 2012, and 2021 president of the National Council on Public History. Dr. Smoak focuses on public history, Native American history, and American West history with special interest on water rights. Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: June 15, 2022 (Season 4, Episode 13: 1 hour, 11 min. & 50 sec. long). Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here.  This episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir, with help (sound engineering and post-production editing) from Jason Powers from the Utah State Library Recording Studio.This episode is with Brent F. Ashworth, someone who knew Mark W. Hofmann, well, or at least among those collectors and dealers that frequently bought and sold with him. Ashworth met, traded and wrangled with Hofmann, every week or every other week in person, meeting either at Hofmann's home or at a bench outside Walden Books in the Crossroads Plaza Mall in Salt Lake City (replaced in 2012 by the City Creek Center) for over four years.“Swinging for the fences,” as the old sports analogy goes, Hofmann was not content to forge and fool collectors of just Mormon, Western Americana and literary materials, he sought to deceive the nation's most distinguished and respected historical institutions, subject specialists, and rare book and antiquity dealers. He may very well have completed his diabolical transactions except for what unfolded in Salt Lake City in fall 1985, including the murders of Steven Christensen and Kathy Sheets. For a basic historical context and timeline see: David J. Whittaker, “The Hofmann Maze, the Book Review Essay With Chronology of the Hofmann Case,” BYU Studies, Vol. 29, Issue 1 (Jan 1, 1989).  Ashworth opens the discussion by explaining his first interaction with Hofmann in May 1981. Ashworth had been in the SLC bookstore and head shop, the Cosmic Aeroplane, the day before he met Hofmann. A friend who worked at the store mentioned that Mark Hofmann had come in the day before and sold what he described as samples of Joseph and Hyrum Smith's hair, which piqued Ashworth's interest. At the time, Ashworth had been a well-known collector for nearly 20 years, and so he called Hofmann the next day and introduced himself as a collector and had been hoping to track down a letter signed by Joseph Smith. As it turned out Hofmann said he just so happened to have a holographic letter, signed by Joseph Smith to his wife, Emma Smith. Ashworth made a deal to obtain the letter, and the following day he received it in the mail. Ashworth now unintentionally sees that he had “ordered up” this, and many other forgeries he acquired from Hofmann.  What was Hofmann's motive for his forgeries? According to a statement given by Dorie Hofmann, Mark Hofmann's wife, "he wanted publicity and money." According to Ashworth, he believes Hofmann was trying to negatively affect Mormon history, and by extension the church he had been born and raised in. Bio: Brent Ashworth is the owner of B. Ashworth's Inc., a Provo, Utah rare book, document, and artifact company, which opened in 2006. Ashworth has been a collector of rare historical materials since childhood. Concurrent to a lifetime of collecting, Ashworth has served as general counsel for a series of personal health and supplement corporations. Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: March 7, 2022 (Season 4, Episode 7: 59 min. & 28 sec. long). Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here.  This episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir. This episode is an interview with Dr. Brandon Plewe, BYU geographer and cartographer, with SYP host Brad Westwood. It involves a discussion about Plewe's 2022 Utah Historical Quarterly article entitled “Placing Immigrants in Salt Lake City, 1900,” Utah Historical Quarterly, (Winter, 2022: Vol. 90, No. 1), which explores the research discovered from mapping out data from the 1900 US Census on the distribution of immigrants in Salt Lake City.Why use geography and cartography to tell this story?  Plewe describes that geography, particularly spatial data or mapping of locations, offer researchers entirely different ways of seeing and thinking about history.  In this case, Plewe and his BYU students mapped the exact addresses of those picked up in 1900 Census data. In mapping these addresses, they discovered a pattern of immigration across downtown SLC. In order to discover the larger picture that this data would tell, they examined the distribution of immigrants, the different countries they emigrated from, and where exactly in SLC they settled. This geographical data renders an otherwise undetected picture that shows Mormons were seen through a racial lens. This research fits into that which was pioneered by Dr. Paul Reeve – Mormons, at this time, were seen as different from other Americans. The Mormon Church was successful in bringing many immigrants from Great Britain, Western Europe and Scandinavia, and assimilating them into Utah's existing dominant culture. Less effective were their attempts to assimilate immigrants from Italy, Spain, Ireland, Poland, etc., into Utah society. The latter group of immigrants were considered “less white,” and Mormons were viewed by many Americans as “less American.” Obsessed with their national image, the members of the Mormon Church aspired to be seen as equally American and concurrently predominantly white. Unknowingly or at times knowingly, SLC society segregated certain “less white” groups to specific areas, so as to differentiate themselves from these communities.  Plewe concludes in this discussion that religion, race, economics, and the way each population of immigrants had different influences on SLC. English, German, and Scandinavian immigrants primarily migrated for religious purposes and were actively assimilated into the culture and, therefore, spatially distributed. Whereas, non-English speaking and Irish immigrants emigrated not for religious purposes, but for economic and labor reasons and for cheaper housing.Bio: Dr. Brandon S. Plewe, an associate professor of geography at BYU (Provo), has been teaching there since 1997. Plewe is a committed trail preservationist and his research focuses on mapmaking and map uses related to Mormonism and the American West. To experience Plewe's most recent mapping ideas go to #30DayMapChallenge on his Twitter feed. Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov

Date: April 11, 2022 (Season 4, Episode 12: 55 min. & 40 sec. long).  Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here.  This episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir. This SYP episode is an interview with Mary Dickson, a Downwinder and thyroid cancer survivor, with SYP host Brad Westwood. The episode details Dickson's personal history and her research regarding the implications of America's nuclear testing. This captivating and devastating story outlines the historical intersections between Utah, the Intermountain West, and the US's nuclear government testing, mostly done at the Nevada Test Site (300 miles from SLC), during and after America's Cold War (1947-1991). Dickson explains the historical context of the western USA during the era of the Cold War. A nation on edge due to the “Red Scare,” the USA rushed to win a nuclear arms race after Russia announced it has the technology necessary to build its own nuclear capabilities. Wanting to build a nuclear arsenal in response, the USA sought out a permanent bomb test site, finally landing on Utah's neighbor, Nevada (the Las Vegas Bombing and Gunnery Range), where the Nevada Test Site would come to be. Starting in 1951-1962, nearly 100 atmospheric nuclear tests were conducted, some of these bombs even more powerful than the bombs that leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Health claims from the surrounding population started to pile up including miscarriages and other largely unexplained ailments. In an attempt to tamper down concerns, the US government released a statement: these blasts aren't harmful and, in fact, so safe that people were encouraged to watch the blasts. Behind the scenes, the actual story was kept a secret for nearly forty years. Overall, throughout the eleven years of testing, as Dickson noted, about 160 million Americans suffered the consequences, knowingly or unknowingly becoming Downwinders, what Dickson defines as one who has been exposed, and/or lived downwind from the nuclear tests and became ill from the radiation.Dickson concludes that many people today still do not fully understand the fallout from America's nuclear testing. The knowledge of how widespread the exposure really was is still not widely known. After her own connection as a Downwinder, Dickson started interviewing and befriending many other Downwinders. She's also worked with many community members to advocate for the passage of the US congress bill that will expand Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (bills S.2798 and H.R.5338). After several years of advocacy work, Dickson compiled a series of monologues that consisted of interviews from fellow Downwinders and meeting minutes from the Atomic Energy Commission into a playwright titled “Exposed” which was picked up by Plan B Theater Company and continues as stage readings to this day.Bio: Mary Dickson is a former KUED TV creative director (now retired) and is the host of Contact with Mary Dickson on PBS Utah. She is an award-winning writer and playwright for “Exposed,” and is an internationally recognized advocate for survivors of nuclear weapon testing.Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov

Date: April 27, 2022 (Season 4, Episode 11: 1 hour, 12 minutes & 49 seconds long). Click Here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here.Utah and Western historian John Sillito, saw many things to admire in his subject B. H. (Brigham Henry) Roberts (1857-1933). His dogged resistance to embracing women's suffrage [women's right to vote] was definitely not one of them. A quote in Sillito's book on Roberts however, underscores how beloved and respected, and tells of his amazing oratory skills, even among those who were staunchly opposed to him. “It took him some time to gather himself but once he did he was an oratorical avalanche. A stream of language, potent and pleasing, flowed from his lips and caught his listeners until even those who were most bitterly opposed to him were compelled to pay compliment to his power with rapture supplies.  …the suffragists themselves could not but admire his courage, and when he had finished they crowded around him and shook his hands enthusiastically.” “Suffrage is the Theme,” Salt Lake Herald, May 29, 1895. There are, to John Sillito's count, three other pre-existing biographies of Roberts. This did not stop Sillito, in writing an entirely new biography; and for this we are grateful. Yes, this is a “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” story; however, it is almost equally a Utah story; and even more so, a personal story about a scrappy, near-illiterate immigrant child, who in an Horatio Alger-like effort, reached the highest levels of religious, political and intellectual accomplishment in late 19th and early 20 c. Utah.   Sillito's biography offers loads of insights into a rapidly changing Utah (circa 1880-1930s), and besides Robert's childhood life in England and then 1860-70s Utah, and his personal life and friends, the larger themes include local and national politics, the abandonment of a central religious tenet (polygamy), Utah gradually joining national markets (intellectually and economically), and Utah and the LDS Church imbracing larger political trends including Jim Crow (a body of statutes that legalized racial descrimination and segregation). This episode is fast paced and full of new insights and facts about B. H. Roberts, and the world around him. Roberts is best known as a church historian and one of Utah's most beloved public intellectuals, some of his published works include:The Life of John Taylor, Third President… (1892); The History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, (7 vol., 1919); The Mormon Battalion; its History and Achievements (1919), and The Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (6 vol., 1930).Bio: John Sillito, Emeritus Professor, Weber State University (1977- 2018), is a native Salt Laker, and besides this book in discussion, he is the co-author of A History of Utah Radicalism: Startling, Socialistic & Decidedly Revolutionary with historian John S. McCormick (Utah State Historical Society's Best Book in 2011). John's edited collection of B. H. Roberts diaries—published as History's Apprentice—received the Mormon History Association's best documentary award in 2005. Sillito is the recipient of a lifetime service award from CIMA (Conference of Intermountain Archivists) in 2013, and was made a Fellow of the Utah State Historical Society in 2021.Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov

Date: March 28, 2022 (Season 4, Episode 10: 52 min. & 8 sec. long). Click Here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here.This SYP episode is part of an ongoing series about women's history in Utah. It involves a discussion with Dr. Cassandra Clark about Miriam B. Murphy's 2015 Utah Historical Quarterly article, entitled: “‘If Only I Shall Have the Right Stuff': Utah Women in World War I,” (Fall, 1990: Vol. 58, No. 4).Miriam Murphy sums up her argument: this article explores the Utah women who participated in a range of war-related activities in “direct participation with the military or with civilian organizations that took them to the battlefront.” (pg. 336) A longtime editor for the UHQ, Murphy states that many of these women's activities and accomplishments to the war effort went unnoticed and received little to no historical scrutiny. Due to gendered ideas in the early 1900s, many women were still limited within the organization of war. Nonetheless, women were involved from the front of the war effort with involvement in nursing and transporting wounded soldiers, all the way to the back with clerical and canteen workers. For the most part, middle class white women were the main participants as neither government nor US military branches offered any funding for women's participation. Two women by the names of Maud Fitch and Elizabeth McCune were ambulance drivers but were responsible for purchasing their own vehicles, providing their own living expenses, and McCune even went so far as to become a certified mechanic to repair the ambulance herself. Many Utah women were nurses serving at the forefront of the war. Murphy states that about 80 Utah registered nurses served in the war (pg. 343).Dr. Clark describes that the best way to understand what is going on in the US at this time is a country in shift. Many questions of identity, brought on by the war, were explored. Initially, the US, and by extension Utah, were reluctant to get involved in a war considered a European issue. Once officially involved, many Americans found themselves asking the question of what it looks like to be an American, what does that identity entail? Concerns arise around particular groups of people (immigrants, African Americans, Native Americans) not being “American enough” and the need for an “Americanization” class.Clark concludes in this discussion with SYP host Brad Westwood, that women did, in fact, have the “right stuff” as the title of the article alludes. Women fully embraced participating in the war, often funding their own involvement. Unfortunately, once the war ends, what is highlighted and remembered is men's participation, and what's lost to the annals of history, is the full story of women's involvement, especially that of working-class women and women of color [whose stories are beyond what is described in this article]. Miriam B. Murphy was the Associate Editor of the Utah Historical Quarterly from 1970-1997, and in the same unappreciated way helped shape the UHQ into a respected state history journal. Murphy is now considered a pioneer in bringing to the fore women's history in Utah.  Dr. Cassandra Clark (University of Utah, 2018) was, at the time of this recording, Utah Division of State History's first named Womens' Historian. In early fall of 2022, Dr. Clark became an assistant professor of history at Utah Tech University (St. George, Utah). Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov

Date: Feb. 27, 2022 (Season 4, Episode 6: 50 min. & 56 sec. long). Click Here for the Utah Dept. of Culture & Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here.This SYP episode is part of an ongoing series about women's history in Utah. It involves a discussion about Dr. Christine Cooper-Rompato's fantastic 2015 Utah Historical Quarterly article, entitled: “Women Inventors in Utah Territory” (Summer, 2015: Vol. 83, No. 3), which draws out the stories of five Utah women's scientific and technological contributions, during the late 19th century. Dr. Cooper-Rompato sums up her article this way: “Despite the difficulties faced in patenting inventions, five women from nineteenth-century Utah were granted patents in their own name. This paper explores the inventions of these women, as well as what can be learned of their lives. It places their inventions in the context of similar contemporary intentions and discusses the heightened interest in women's innovations in the 1880s and 1980s, as evinced by the popular press. Moreover, it argues that the Utah women's inventions were not limited to the domestic realm; rather, they demonstrate the wider cultural and economic preoccupations of nineteenth-century Utah.” Dr. Cassandra Clark details in this discussion the many interesting and innovative ways women worked in 19th century Utah. Contrary to traditional beliefs, women weren't only working within domestic environments. In actuality, women were continuously innovative and essential to their societies above and beyond the domestic sphere. The main argument of this article, as per Dr. Clark, is that while inventions were thought to be a masculine endeavor only, these five Utah women were inventing innovative products, some of which were influenced directly by Utah's territory, that helped improve their lives both in and outside of the home.The heart of this UHQ article explores the shift in Utah's 19th c. society to embrace urbanization and industrialization. Due to this shift, there's a demand for inventions that allow for accessibility to new ways of life, whether that be in industry, entertainment, clothing or leisure. These inventions allowed both men and women to spend less time completing time-consuming tasks within the home, and more time participating in leisure and recreation outside the home. For instance, many Utahns during this time traveled to the Great Salt Lake to soak and sunbathe, new innovations by women enabled both the leisure and safety of partaking in such an activity.Clark concludes in this discussion with SYP host Brad Westwood, sharing how the topic of inventions and patents set the groundwork for the professionalization of scienceh and medicine in the 20th c. These inventions changed the way people interacted with one another and they connected people to public health and the environment in new ways not previously seen. By these inventions, these 19th century women were continuously influential and, quite frankly, essential to their societies which had a great impact on both history and our world today.Dr. Christine Cooper-Rompato, who is the author of the article discussed here, is a professor of English and part of the Religious Studies Program at Utah State University (Logan, Utah). Dr. Cassandra Clark (Univ. of Utah, 2018) was, at the time of this recording, Utah Division of State History's first named Womens' Historian. In early fall of 2022, Dr. Clark became an assistant professor of history at Utah Tech University (St. George, Utah).  

Date: September 19, 2022 (Season 5, Episode 3 - 35 minutes long). Click Here for the Utah Dept. of Culture & Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode.  Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here.Here are two audio samples from the October 26, 2022 state history conference "WATER AT THE CONFLUENCE OF PAST & FUTURE'' (Provo Marriott Hotel & Convention Center, 101 West 100 North, Provo, Utah). To join Utah's annual history fest click here. In this episode director of Utah's Indian Affairs Dustin Jansen and ethnohistorian Dr. Sondra Jones, offers sneak peeks into their conference session “Native Utahns: The Struggle to Get and Use Water."  This episode was co-produced by James Toledo (Program Manager, Utah Division of Indian Affairs).Jansen relates the recent history of Westwater, San Juan County, Utah, a rural Navajo community on the edge of Blanding, Utah, which has struggled for fifty years to get water and electricity. Jansen speaks to the combined efforts to overcome long standing obstacles, led by Utah Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson, along with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Utah State Legislature. Jones speaks of the very long road (1861 to the present) for the Ute people gaining access, then losing by forced sales (eminent domain) and finally gaining ownership to water flowing through the Uinta & Ouray Reservation. This includes the backstory to the Strawberry Valley Reservoir–Utah's first public works project drawing water from the Colorado River drainage system–and the beginning of the federally funded Central Utah Project. The Utah Division of State History and Utah Museums Association are combining their conferences this year (back to back -- museum conference October 24-26 and the Utah history conference October 26). Bio: Dustin Jansen has been since 2019 the director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs. Originally from Coyote Canyon, New Mexico, he was born and raised on the Navajo Reservation. Attending school at Utah Valley University (UVU, Orem, Utah), BYU (Provo), and at the University of Utah, Dustin then graduated with a Juris Doctorate from the S.J. Quinney College of Law. From 2006 to 2015 he served as a tribal judge at the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation. In 2015 he was appointed program coordinator for the American Indian Studies program at UVU. Photo courtesy of the S.J. Quinney School of Law, University of Utah. Bio: Dr. Sondra G. Jones has a PhD in history from the University of Utah in American and Native American History. Sondra is an adjunct professor in the History Department at Brigham Young University, and is the author of Being and Becoming Ute: The Story of an American Indian (2019).  She is also the author of numerous other books and articles on the history of the Ute Nation.  Do you have a question or comment, or a proposed guest for “Speak Your Piece?” Write us at “ask a historian” – askahistorian@utah.gov 

Date: September 8, 2022 (Season 5, Episode 2: 58 minutes long). Click here to see the SYP webpage which includes historical photographs and recommended readings. Caption for the above photograph: early explorers peering out from within a cave formation in American Fork Canyon's Timpanogos Cave.  Courtesy of the Timpanogos Cave National Monument (NPS). Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click here.Next month on October 14, 2022 Utah's Timpanogos Cave–which actually includes three linked caves-–will celebrate its 100th anniversary as a protected national monument. It was in 1922 that President Warren G. Harding signed Proclamation No. 15040, under the authority of the American Antiquities Act of 1906, to protect the caves for their "unusual scientific interest and importance." Before the monument closes this season on October 16 (or when it reopens in May 2023), we urge you to visit Timp Cave, and join in monument's centennial celebrations.  Ranger Cami McKinney (program manager over stewardship & interpretation at the Timpanogos Cave National Monument, NPS) is Utah's leading historian concerning the American Fork Canyon monument. She is the author of Heart of the Mountain, a History of Timpanogos Cave.  A digital version may be available soon here, a hard copy version is available at the Timp Cave store. McKinney started to work at the caves in 1997, and has loved digging into its history ever since. This episode includes the caves' natural history, its human history–within and surrounding the caves–and finally its speleology. Ranger McKinney wants all of us to learn this word, which is a composite science, involving a cave's geology, hydrology, biology, cave morphology and its changing microclimate.  Speleology is also all about the stalagmites, helictites, speleothems and anthodites – all the stunning formations created by millions of years of permeating water and minerals. Recently the monument has offered different kinds of tours including lantern tours early each morning. To learn more, look for “Centennial Lantern Tours” on the main page. Topics discussed in this light and engaging SYP episode include: (a) The history of timber harvesting, lumber mills, mining claims, mining towns, even the railroad up American Fork Canyon. (b) The 1887 to 1921 discoveries and rediscoveries of the caves. (c) The history of the NFS, and later in the NPS, and their work in protecting (It was a threatening mining claim which was a catalyst for calls for federal protection). (d) The Native American history surrounding Timpanogos Peak and Cave. (e) The history of the geological, thermal, and other physical forces which created the underground spaces.(f) The early 20th century hiking clubs, including both the men and women, who were instrumental in the cave's discovery and protection. (g) The early local (Timpanogos Outdoor Committee) and federal partnership which built the trails, set up electrical lighting and more, for the cave.(h) The legends and stories about Timpanogos Mountain and the caves.  (i) The multi-generational, Utah families and individuals, who have served to protect, guide and interpret within the caves for one hundred years.  Bio: Ranger Cami McKinney, is the Program Manager for Resource Stewardship and Interpretation at Timp Cave. She had been a ranger for 25 years. During this journey she also received her Masters Degree in Natural Resources at Utah State University. McKinney began working at Timp Cave in 1997, and has loved digging into the history of the cave and its canyon ever since. She is the author of Heart of the Mountain, a history of Timpanogos Cave. 

Date: November 29, 2021 (Season 3, Episode 14: 102 minutes long). Click Here to see the SYP webpage page which includes art from the book, photos of the co-authors, recommended readings and a site plan for Intermountain Indian School, circa 1980s. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click here.Podcast Content: This episode is about literary and creative expressions--works of poetry, essays, art and journalism--produced by Diné or Navajo junior high and high school students, and older students ages 18 to 24, who returned to complete their high school years at IIS. For nine months of each year, most of the school's student body boarded chartered buses that took them to and from Brigham City's Intermountain Indian School (IIS: 1950-1983). Living hundreds of miles from their families and communities, these children, some as young as five years of age, lived in dormitories and attended school on a sprawling and somewhat isolated north Utah campus. Our guests for this episode: Farina King (Diné, historian, Univ. of Oklahoma), Mike Taylor (English and Native American Studies, BYU) and James Swensen (photographic/art historian, BYU). Each read their favorite poems and excerpts, shared personal insights and discoveries, and expressed their awe and wonder, at the youthful creative output covering relationships, youthful love, protest, homelands and family, and above all else, their affirmations of Indiginous knowledge and identity.The IIS campus, which was managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, remains partially standing, located just below the incline to Sardine Canyon on US Route 89. Tens of thousands of Navajo students attended what was for its time, the largest Indian boarding school in the USA. During the school's last ten years the school became Inter-tribal facility, inviting both Navajo and students from other tribal nations.      This richly illustrated book describes, interpretes, and amassing hundreds of Diné student works into one volume. This book expands the known canon of mid 20th century Indigious art, literature and journalism. King, Taylor and Swensen's analysis, and their gathering of youthful Diné creative works, are both nationally and regionally significant, for Indigious Studies, American history, and our nation's interest in seeking out, and making publically available, more inclusive works in the Humanities and in the arts. Bios : Dr. Farina King--a citizen of the Navajo Nation--is the Horizon Chair of Native American Ecology & Culture, and an Associate Professor of Native American Studies at the Univ. of Oklahoma. King specializes in twentieth-century Native American Studies.  Besides this book she is the author of The Earth Memory Compass: Diné Landscapes and Education in the Twentieth Century.  Dr. Michael P. Taylor is Assistant Professor of English and Associate Director of American Indian Studies at BYU. He is a coauthor of Returning Home (the book in discussion). His research engages Indigenous archives to expand Indigenous literary histories and support community-centered initiatives of Indigenous resurgence. Dr. James R. Swensen is an associate professor of art history and the history of photography at BYU. He is the author of Picturing Migrants: The Grapes of Wrath and New Deal Documentary Photography (Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2015), In a Rugged Land: Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and the Three Mormon Towns Collaboration, 1953-1954  (Univ. of Utah Press, 2018) and co-author of Returning Home  (the book in discussion).

Date: Feb. 28, 2022 (Season 4, Episode 5: 73 minutes). Click here for the Utah Dept of Culture & Community Engagement shownotes for this episode.  Click here for more SYP episodes.The episode's focus is on Paul Higgins, a 20th century artist, Utah born and bred (middle class, Presbyterian, his father a mining attorney), who became "Pablo Esteban O'Higgins," a beloved Mexican muralist. His devotees thought of his work as expressing the "Soul of God," through his empathic capturing of everyday life.  At his death he was a recipient of a Mexico state funeral. Pablo was also an ardent Communist. The book, Susan Vogel's riddle-of-a-life story entitled Becoming Pablo O'Higgins: How An Anglo American Artist Became a Mexican Muralist (2010). Vogel is joined In this conversation by co-host Catherine Aviles and Fanny Guadalupe Blauer, Executive Director of Artes de Mexico en Utah.   The conversation begins with post-Mexican Revolution (1910-1920)“Muralism” (large-scale, socially conscious public art, expressing political and cultural identities) which remains today a worldwide art movement, inspired by murals of everyday people, laborers and heroes. The conversation then turns to Salt Lake City's many public murals and to one of the city's most vibrant cultural organizations, Artis de Mexico en Utah (est. 2011).O'Higgin's story includes his early work with Diego Rivera (1886-1957, who redefined Mexican culture after the Mexican Revolution), knowing Frida Kahlo (1907–1954, beloved Mexican artist and femanist), watching the intrigue of Leon Trotsky (1879-1940, Marxist theorist and politician, exiled and murdered in Mexico), mentoring Marion Greewood (1909-1970, American artist working in Mexco) and the artist's unrequited love for Tina Modotti (1896-1942, Italian photographer, model and revolutionary acitivist). The episode also tells of O'Higgins father, Edward Higgins (surnames spelled differently), who in an ironic twist, plays a part in Utah's execution of Joe HIl (1879-1915), possibly the world's most lionized labor union martyr and hero. Pablo's early art training was in SLC's East High School with James Harwood (1860-1940, who studied at l'Ecole de Beaux Arts) and LeConte Stewart (1891-1990, perhaps Utah's most beloved rural landscape painter). O'Higgins was influenced deeply by Stewart, and repelled by what Harwood represented--formal, académie inspired art. Aided by his devoted mother Alice McAfee Higgins, O'Higgins was invited to Mexico City where he begins to work alongside Diego Rivera.BIOS: Susan Vogel co-founded Artes de Mexico en Utah in 2011.  She is the author of the only English language biography of this Utah-born Mexican muralist. Susan's gateway to loving Mexican art and history was by way of Mexico's discotheques and marrying into a family from Guadalajara.  Fanny Guadalupe Blauer graduated from the Instituto Politecnico Nacional as a CPA, and holds a certification of an Anthropology from the Center for Research & Advanced Studies of Social Anthropology (CIESAS: Mexico City). Since 2019 Fanny has served as executive director for Artes de Mexico en Utah.  Catherine Aviles, co-producer of the podcast Speak Your Piece (2021-early 2022), has been an educator in Utah for 12 years. Cat has worked for the SLC Library, SLC School District, the Utah Dept. of Culture & Community Engagement and the Natural History Museum of Utah.  She is also the former director for Artes de Mexico en Utah.  Write us at – askahistorian@utah.gov

January 24, 2022  (Season 4, Episode 3; 75 minutes). Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture & Community Engagement's versions of this episode.  Are you interested in other episodes of SYP? Click here.Just in time for Utah's July 24th Pioneer Day celebrations, this episode of Speak Your Piece (SYP) offers new research and new approaches, regarding the first forty-seven years (1846-1893) of a 175 year relationship between Utah and the Mormons. Before you celebrate Utah's 24th of July, load-up on some new history, offered by historians Matthew J. Grow and Scott Hales, via a discussion with SYP host Brad Westwood. The book discussed in this episode: Saints, Vol. 2: No Unhallowed Hand, 1846-1893, The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Day, produced by the Church History Department, and published by Deseret Book in 2020. The volume covers from 1846, when the largest branch of the Mormon church made it way, in earnest and en masse, to settle outside of the United States in upper Mexico; and ends in 1893, when the Salt Lake Temple was dedicated, some forty years after its groundbreaking ceremony, in a series of ticket-only ceremonies held between April 6 and April 24, 1893.Topics discussed in this candid open interview with two of the LDS Church's top historians includes (among numerous other subjects): the purpose of history within the church, the authors' use of extended links to deeper organizational web sources, the internal process used to produced history by the Church History Department, more national and regional history is described (broader contexts), the use of spiritual experiences in the historical narrative, and the church's phenomenal expansion in the second half of the19th century. The book also offers a concerted effort at telling more women's history--mostly personal stories that have been woven throughout the volume. Next, there is a good helping of “difficult history,” including the church's interactions with issues of race, minorities and non-Mormons, its relationships with Native American communities, the conflicts related to forty-seven years of federal appointees governing Utah as a territory, and the complex and unending story of polygamy (some demographers think conservatively 1% of Utah's current population is engaged, in one way or another, with polygamy). All together this new LDS Church history series is a commendable effort (from the largest and most well funded private history organization in the Intermountain West), as many topics and themes discussed--including historians judiciously describing historical mistakes made--would in previous official histories, not even be considered let alone treated.The new four volume church history series ostensibly updates (maybe replaces) the First Presidency approvedThe Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints authored by B. H. Roberts.Bios: Dr. Matthew J. Grow, is Managing Director of the LDS Church History Department. In that capacity, he leads a team of history professionals who collect documents and artifacts, preserve them, and promote understanding of the LDS Church's past through a publishing program, a research library, a museum, and many historic sites.  Dr. Scott Hales is a writer and historian for the LDS Church History Department since 2015. He serves as a general editor and lead writer for Saints, the aforementioned four-volume history of the Mormon Church.

June 2, 2022 (Season 4, Episode 9, episode length: 61 minutes) Click here to read the larger Speak Your Piece shownotes.Women, Race and Marriage: This Speak Your Piece episode involves: (a) Women's history–this is the 2nd in a series about Utah Women's History, (b) Utah's new Juneteenth holiday, and (c) a seminar-like discussion on Patrick Mason's Utah Historical Quarterly article, entitled: “The Prohibition of Interracial Marriage in Utah, 1888-1963 (V. 76, No. 2). This excellent UHQ article, offers much insights into the law, politics and culture surrounding race in Utah, during the late 19th and 20th c.   If you want to understand what historical headwinds are pushing up against Juneteenth in Utah, here's your episode.Dr. Cassandra Clark, Utah's Women's History Initiative coordinator, draws out in this discussion not only the issues about race in Utah, but also challenges us to seek out women's stories and perspectives. With Mason's help, Clark explains how to identify motive and biases around historical sources; and how bystander male assumptions (in this case male clerks, police officers and newspaper reporters) may no longer be mistaken for women's stories and perspectives. Next, late 19th c. US congressional efforts, and the broader American public's resistance to Mormon polygamy, along with Utah mirroring the nation's anxiety about race, all play in this complex story. “Responding to a nation that portrayed polygamist Mormons as the most deluded and degraded of all people, Latter-day Saints counter attacked by highlighting the moral depravity of their critics. Mormons strong disavowal of miscegenation certainly reflects trends in late 19th century LDS theology and culture, but it also represents a political tactic calculated to deflect attention and criticism at the high point of the national anti-polygamy crusade.”  Patrick MasonThe heart of this UHQ article involves America's and Utah's very wrong and harmful historical assumptions about race, also white legislators' efforts to restrict, in regards to race, who should or should not marry in the eyes of the state. And finally, how Utah and the nation sought to codify into law, anti-miscegenation or interracial marriages (most particulary white & black or white & Asian). The use of the term “miscegenation," is a historical term that has no currency in a society based on respect for all human rights, fundamental freedoms, and racial equality. To read Mason's article, click on "The Prohibition of Interracial Marriage in Utah, 1888-1963" At the present Mason is the Arrington Chair of Mormon History & Culture, and is an associate professor of Religious Studies and History, at Utah State University.Mason begins his article with this description: “On a September day in 1898, Dora Harris and her fiancé Quong Wah, Chinese immigrant and proprietor of a downtown laundry service, enter the county clerk's office in Salt Lake City, seeking a marriage license. The deputy county clerk rejected their request citing a law passed ten years earlier by the territorial legislature which forbade a white person from marrying anyone of black or Asian descent.”On this first nation-wide commemoration of “Juneteenth,” this episode acknowledges and describes this new national holiday; offers the backstory and describes why nationally, and in Utah, this holiday and what it represents is a good thing. The date celebrates the two year delayed announcement in Texas of the end of Slavery. 

February 7, 2022 (Season 4, Episode 4: 67 minutes long), click here for the Utah Department of Culture & Community Engagement's fuller version with complete show notes, for this Speak Your Piece episode.American historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's influential 2017 book A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in Early Mormonism,1835-1870 (Vintage Books, New York), is the focus of this part-conversation, part seminar discussion, between pubic historians Dr. Cassandra Clark and Brad Westwood. The purposes for this discussion: (a) offer an exchange of ideas regarding Ulrich's book; (b) highlight the author's thesis and arguments or at least a selection of Ulrich's arguments; and (c) draw out important through-lines not often understood by the general public concerning 19th century Mormon women's history. All of this to understand better Utah's history. This is the first episode in a series on Utah women's history where the Utah Division of State History's public historian Dr. Cassandra Clark, discusses important books and articles on Women's history in Utah.  Topics discussed in this episode include: Clark's take on Ulrich's thesis and arguments; 19th century Mormon/Utah womens' medical activities–how spiritual, medical and healing knowledge were largely treated together; a more complex story regarding the Mormon priesthood (women's actors included); women laying the foundation for their church's global successes; how women's activities and networks supported proselytizing; how plural households and extended communities of women functioned as incubators for female activism (religious and political); and how the Utah-Mormon woman's story fits into the larger 19th c. American story.  Topics discussed, continued: How and why Mormon women worked differently within separate gender spheres; womens' writing, editing and publishing; how Utah women's large “Indignation Meetings” (1870s to 1890s) offered public support of plural marriage and attempted to defend the practice against broad national anti-polgyamy sentiments; why and how Utah women were prepared to interact in a broader American Suffrage Movement; how the future of Utah's history requires uncovering or discovering women's voices from traditional and non-traditional records; a more accurate story regarding the mid-1860s official return of the Female Relief Society organization; and finally, how Ulrich's book encourages historians to uncover more about the broader Utah women's experience beyond Mormonism.   Pulitzer prize winning Dr. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (Harvard University) specializes in early American history and history of women. In the 1970s Ulrich coined the oft quoted line “Well-behaved women seldom make history.”  To read more see the American Historical Association Laurel Thatcher Ulrich Biography.Dr. Cassandra Clark (University of Utah, 2020) has been since November 2021, a public historian and coordinator for the State of Utah's Women's History Initiative. Her email address is: cassandraclark@utah.gov. To purchase a copy of A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870 search on

Date: November 15, 2021 (Season 3, Episode 13; 32 minutes long). To see the complete show notes (including  "topics discussed in time," and photographs) Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture & Community Engagement version  of this episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click here to see all the episodes.Podcast Content: What is a vexillologist? It's a flag expert, a person who deeply understands both the art and the near-scientific aspects of flag design, the symbolism used, along with the history and the usage of flags (from personal, to national, to international organization flags).  Vexillologist, or flag expert, Ted Kaye, speaks with SYP host Brad Weswood, for the second time, to lay out, as simply as possible, the essential aspects of good flag design. Kaye served on the committee which selected Salt Lake City's new flag in 2020. He also advised some years ago the unsuccessful Salt Lake Tribune's campaign for a new flag for Utah.The Utah Legislature, Governor Spencer Cox and Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson, are all exploring the idea of a new flag for Utah. Earlier this year we produced the episode, “Run It Up the Flagpole…” Utah Considers a New State Flag  in which the two legislators who sponsored the bill(s), Stephen Handy and Daniel McCay, along with local political historian Ron Fox, talked about the origin of this idea, and the history of Utah's current flag. To further explore this proposal, Kaye speaks on the purpose of flags, and the importance of an efficient and "easy to identify" flag design.Kaye speaks on the five basic principles of a good flag design, as mentioned in his pamphlet Good Flag Bad Flag. Kaye discusses why some flags score low on the NAVA (North American Vexillological Association) ranking and the reasoning behind the redesigning of so many city and state flags. Kaye believes that a great flag design takes on a timeless quality and is appreciated and embraced by a prospective citizenry. The process for Utah's new flag has been extended for another year, giving all Utahns the opportunity to get involved and to “speak their peace” about this proposal. As of March 2022, over a thousand individuals have "thrown their hat into the ring," offering their own designs regarding a new flag for Utah. Bio: Ted Kaye has consulted on the adoption of new flags at the city, state, and national level. In the past, Kaye has worked as a chief financial officer for the company Wygant and was employed by the Oregon Historical Society. Kaye has edited and translated many journals, newsletters, books, and over 2,000 articles on flags. Kaye has researched and presented papers at national and international flag-studies conferences. Kaye is currently the secretary of the North American Vexillological Association. Do you have a question or comment, or a proposed guest for “Speak Your Piece?” Write us at “ask a historian” – askahistorian@Utah.gov 

Date: 09.13.2021 (Season 3, Episode 12, 77:00 min.) To read the complete Utah Dept. of Culture & Community Engagement show notes for this episode (including topics in time, photos and recommended readings) click here.  Interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click here for more episodes.Podcast Content:No scripts, no advanced questions, just a conversation; that's what Ken Sanders wanted from this interview. With only the vaguest of expectations regarding his personal life, professional history, the used and rare book trade, Utah's 1960s - 1970s counterculture and a stint as an appraiser on the PBS TV program Antiques Roadshow (2011 to the present); this episode features the venerable, long bearded and sometimes irascible: Ken Sanders. If you were looking for a piece of book heaven with the intention of getting lost or finding like-folk and good company, exploring Ken Sanders Rare Books (200 S & 200 E.) was the place to do such things. After twenty-five years (1997-2022) of providing a safe heaven for book lovers, Ken is now slowly moving and integrating his longtime book events and soirees into The Leonardo: Museum of Creativity and Innovation (corner of 200 E. and 500 S.). The bookstore is to be part of a campus that includes the City Library, the historic Salt Lake City & County Building, a Trax Red Line stop, and the SL County's Public Safety (Police and Fire Depts.) Museum.Ken Sanders is more than a bookseller; his fascination with print culture led him from comic books, to countercultural publications, to the creation of a publishing company (Dream Garden Press, est. 1980), and then into the rare book business. As a young man, he had a front seat to the birth of Utah's counterculture and environmental movements. He started by selling both commercial and underground comics, chapter books, illustrated books, and then progressed onto Western and Utah history, Mormonism, and literature. Ken is a nationally recognized bookseller, and has served for years as the chairperson of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America's Security Committee.Since 1970, Sanders has also been a longtime promoter of the local arts and literature, and has hosted hundreds of book signings and art exhibitions, including the State of Utah's largest ever poetry reading through his business. Sanders was honored by the Salt Lake City Mayor's Award for Contributions to the Arts.Sanders reading two poems by Wendell Berry, one entitled “Pieces of Wild Things” and the other, an untitled poem that is a stinging indictment of the hubris of humanity, the commodification of the earth, unchecked Capitalism and industrialization, and the destruction of the earth. Listeners please beware of one expletive in the reciting of the last Berry poem.Bio: Ken Sanders has been a books dealer since 1970. From 1975-1981 he co-owned The Cosmic Aeroplane. He founded Ken Sanders Rare Books in 1990. He has been engaged in buying, selling, appraising and publishing new and old books, photography, cartography, and documents, for over thirty-five years. Articles by Sanders have appeared in OP and Firsts Magazine. He continues to be a full-time bookseller and owner of Ken Sanders Rare Books, now relocating to The Leonardo.Do you have a question or comment, or a proposed guest for “Speak Your Piece?” Write us at “ask a historian” – askahistorian@utah.gov

Date: 08.02.2021 (Season 3, Episode 9, 01:03:32 min.) To read the complete Utah Dept. of Culture & Community Engagement show notes for this episode (including topics in time, photos and recommended readings) click here.  Interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click here for more episodes.Podcast Content:In this episode of Speak Your Piece, historian Michael W. Homer speaks of the deeply influential published accounts about Utah by European travelers during the 19th and early 20th centuries who largely visited Utah while “on the way to somewhere else.” Many European travelers had personal encounters with the famous 2nd Mormon prophet, and with numerous others, inside and outside the faith. While these accounts have been documented and found in Europe, their influence was and is vast, not just in Europe, but around the world, inspiring other works of opinion and fiction, including movies, plays and television programs, even to the present.With the increased literacy levels, and advances in printing technology, information hungry Europeans “ate up” periodicals, novels, guide books and travel accounts, especially about North America. European travelers sojourned to the USA, and marveled at such popular landscapes as Niagara Falls, the Hudson River, Shenandoah Valley, the Appalachian Mountains and Great Lakes. The appeal of the Western Frontier was equally as strong, first into the Transappalachian West, and thereafter towards the Transpacific world of California at mid-century. Frequently the Mormons were a topic of interest, as they moved from New England to the interior West, eventually locating in, as Brigham Young described in 1854, as the “natural great central depot...” and the “natural diverging point or crossing place” for the West (letter, BY to Thomas Kane, 01.31.1854).Michael Homer's publication, On the Way to Somewhere Else: European Sojourners in the Mormon West, 1834 - 1930 is a collection of first person printed primary sources, some never published before, offering fascinating new evidence of European perspectives on Mormonism and the American West. This engaging conversation between Michael Homer and Brad Westwood, will help modern Utahns understand how deeply entrenched perspectives and biases continue to influence contemporary views of Utah.Bio: Michael W. Homer is a Salt Lake City attorney, longtime past chair of the Utah Board of State History, Honorary Italian Vice Consul and board chair and member for the University of Utah's Willard Marriott Library. Mr. Homer is a well known proponent of Utah history, an avid collector of Mormon historical materials, and among other publications, the author of Joseph's Temples: The Dynamic Relationship between Freemasonry and MormonismDo you have a question or comment, or a proposed guest for “Speak Your Piece?” Write us at “ask a historian” – askahistorian@utah.gov

Date: 08.09.2021 (Season 3, Episode 10, 54:13 min.) To read the complete Utah Dept. of Culture & Community Engagement show notes for this episode (including topics in time, photos and recommended readings) click here.  Interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click here for more episodes.National History Day, along with Utah's affiliate program, Utah History Day, offers a year-long academic extra-curricular program which focuses on historical research, interpretation and creative expression for students between the 4th and 12th-grades. Students may produce websites, exhibits, theatrical pieces, research papers, and short documentaries. Public school students Camellia and Acacia Yuan from Logan, Utah, have participated in National History Day for a number of years; and have been fortunate enough to win at both state competitions and at the national level, the latter in College Park, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C.Along with Dr. Wendy Rex Atzet (Statewide Coordinator and Public History Manager, Utah Division of State History), the Yuan sisters describe the topics and arguments for three of their National History Day submissions, along with their research process (including digital resources and conducting hands on research with one-of-a-kind manuscript source materials housed in local academic libraries), visiting local museums, performing taped interviews, and the travel they pursued during their research quests. This interview is an excellent introduction for teachers, parents and students who are considering getting involved in the National History Day program.Bio: Dr. Wendy Rex-Atzet is the State Coordinator for National History Day in Utah; a Utah Division of State history statewide program. Wendy has more than ten years of experience managing the National History Day program at the state level in Colorado and in Utah. Wendy is passionate about helping young people connect with history through hands-on, relevant learning experiences. She received a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder where she specialized in cultural and environmental history of the American West. She holds an M.A in history from San Diego State University, and a B.A in communications from the University of Utah. Bio: Camellia "Camie" Yuan will be an upcoming senior at Logan High School, Logan Utah. National History Day(NHD) has played a huge role in her life since 7th grade. Besides learning about history, she also does debate, serves as the Service VP in Logan High's Student Government, founded Asian Student Association and S2S (Student to Student) Non-profit and is an Ambassador for 4H National and Utah Center for Legal Inclusion. In her near future, she would like to help speak up for underrepresented individuals.Bio: Acacia Yuan is a 7th grader at Thomas Edison Charter School, Nibley Utah. She loves history, math, zoology, tennis, singing and figure skating because they are fun! She served in the Student Lighthouse and Ambassadors team to organize school events. Being an animal rights fighter, she is motivated to open a shelter for all stray animals as her lifeDo you have a question or comment, or a proposed guest for “Speak Your Piece?” Write us at “ask a historian” – askahistorian@utah.gov

Date: 07.12.2021 (Season 3, Episode 8, 1: 20:00 min.) To read the complete Utah Dept. of Culture & Community Engagement show notes for this episode (including topics in time, photos and recommended readings) click here.  Interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click here for more episodes.Podcast Content:What can be encountered on one of the United State's most austere and vacant landscapes?  A whole lot, including a largely “unknown national treasure,” an eighty-seven mile stretch of raised railroad grade, built across a breathtaking scenic and cultural landscape, winding around the Great Salt Lake, with views of the Promontory, Hansen, Hogup, Grouse Creek, Newfoundland and Lakeside Mountains. On this road you will experience a landscape largely as it would have been seen by travelers on the first transcontinental railroad; nothing like any surviving portions of the 1862-1869 transcontinental railroad. Speaking of their 2021 publication, Rails East to Ogden: Utah's Transcontinental Railroad Story (a BLM Utah, Cultural Series Publication) historical archaeologists Michael Polk (Aspen Ridge Consultants) and Christopher W. Merritt (Utah SHPO) interpreted over ten years of new research and discoveries, and offer fascinating descriptions concerning Chinese immigrant work camps and life (including later more substantial China towns); strewn and buried garage that document goods that traveled from mainland China, Ireland and Europe; ghost town where hundreds of people and families once lived and enjoyed homes, bunk houses, pleasure gardens, hotels, bakeries and even a public library; water lines made of hollowed redwood logs which once quenched thirsty steam locomotives; a half a dozen railroad facilities (now only rubble); and adjoining stagecoach roads that took people and goods to frontier Idaho and Montana; all adjacent to a railroad that was actively used from 1869 to World War II.Guest Bio: Michael Polk is a historical archaeologist for the Western United States. He is the principal and owner of Aspen Ridge Consultants, a heritage resources firm providing consultation in historical archaeology, history and architectural history. Polk has a long career in archaeology, serving in companies such as Sagebrush Consultants and Environment Consultants. He has been investigating Utah's diverse cultural and industrial landscapes for over forty years. Christopher W. Merritt is a historical archaeologist and the Utah State Historic Preservation Officer (SHPO), based out of the Utah Division of State History.  Merritt is a leading advocate for historical archaeology throughout the western United States. He is the author of numerous studies, reports and academic articles, and is the author of the book The Coming Man from Canton: Chinese Experience in Montana, 1862 - 1943 (2017). Do you have a question or comment, or a proposed guest for “Speak Your Piece?” Write us at “ask a historian” – askahistorian@utah.gov

Date: September 20, 2021 (Season 3, Episode 11; 49:26 minutes long). Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture & Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode which includes topics discussed in time, photos of guest speakers and additional resources and readings.Podcast Content:  Former Utah State University (USU) grad student Emma Jones and USU Assistant Professor of Environment and Society Dr. Mariya Shcheglovitova, shares the history and science related to the Home Owners' Loan Corporations' (HOLC) “redlining" of Salt Lake City; and their investigations of spatial distribution of environmental hazards contained in both the city's original west side (Pioneer Park neighborhood) and in expanded west side communities (Poplar Grove, West Pointe, Rose Park, Glendale, South Salt Lake, etc.), where most of Salt Lake City's communities of color reside.This podcast is all about how examining the past (history) along with geographical and public health data (science) can help a community like Salt Lake City see evidence concerning contemporary health and social problems, how such evidence can play a part in solving these problems, and point municipal and community leaders towards better city and development practices. “Scholars have found that race is the most significant predictor of environmental pollution exposure…Crowder and Downey (2010) [and they have] found that Black and Latinx households experience higher levels of proximate industrial pollution compared to White households.” This is an excerpt from Emma Jones' capstone project. Jones and Shcheglovitova anticipate their research to be used in further investigations regarding spatial patterns and terrestrial pollution in SLC. Their research connects the study of spatial distribution of terrestrial pollution to both historic and present-day planning practices which they believe perpetuate housing segregation and disinvestment in communities of color. Bottom line: Jones and Shcheglovitova documents the existence of environmental racism in SLC. Their identification of spatial patterns led them to create an interactive map accessible in Salt Lake West Side Stories -- post 35 (see within a link to Jones' complete paper).Bio: Emma Nathel Jones has a Bachelors of Science in Conservation and Restoration Ecology with an emphasis in GIS and a minor in Landscape Architecture. During their time at Utah State they worked on a variety of research projects concerning sustainable energy development and sustainable agriculture as a part of the Undergraduate Research Fellowship. They are currently pursuing a Masters in City and Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah.  Bio: Dr. Mariya Shcheglovitova is a human geographer with interests that span environmental and social justice, urban political ecology, cultural geography, and environmental history. She completed her PhD at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County where she worked on a project investigating present-day and historic intersections of street tree planting programs, waste management, and housing segregation. Do you have a question or comment, or a proposed guest for “Speak Your Piece?” Write us at “ask a historian” – askahistorian@utah.gov

Date: June 21, 2021 (Season 3, Episode 7; 55:28 minutes). Click here for the complete Speak Your Piece shownotes for this episode. Podcast Content: In this Speak Your Piece episode, three guests: political historian Ronald Fox, State Representative Stephen Handy and State Senator Daniel McCay, discuss the idea of a new flag for Utah. Law SB-48 which was passed during the last legislative session (sponsored by Handy and McCay) and signed by Governor Spencer Cox, does not actually call for a new flag, but creates a task force to look into the possibility of one.  If you are against the idea, or supportive, or you are not sure and want to hear more regarding the matter, here is the place to start. This episode also includes the history of Utah's current flag, and outlines SB-48's intentions, and Governor Spencer Cox June 14th, American Flag Day press release, where the governor announced that he will, at least initially, serve as chair of the task force, joined by Lt. Governor Deidre Henderson, Jill Remington Love, Executive Director of the Utah Department of Culture & Community Engagement, along with three state senators and three state representatives, all to offer a transparent and all encompassing statewide process, for considering the idea. See also "Additional Reading & Sources," and  “Topics Discussed in Time '' listed on the "Speak Your Piece: A Podcast About Utah's History" website, to see these lists click here. Guests: Bio: Senator Daniel McCay represents District 11 (R-Riverton, Draper and Bluffdale), and was formerly a member of the Utah House of Representatives, representing District 41 (R-Riverton and Bluffdale) from 2013 to 2018. Among numerous other committee and subcommittee assignments, McCay serves on the Infrastructure & General Government Asppropriations Subcommittee and the Natural Resources, Agriculture & Environmental Quality Appropriations Subcommittee. McCay earned a JD from Willamette University, and professionally is an attorney, real estate portfolio manager and vice president of the Suburban Land Reserve, Inc. He lives in Riverton with his wife, Tawnee, and their six children.Bio: Representative Stephen G. Handy (R-Layton) represents Utah's 16th Legislative House District. Appointed in 2010 he has been re-elected five times thereafter. Two of his committee assignments include serving as Chair of the Political Subdivisions Committee, and as a member of the Public Utilities, Energy & Technology Committee. Handy also serves as co-chair of the Utah Legislature's Bi-Partisan Clean Air Caucus. Handy owns a public relations and marketing firm which he launched after 17 years as the marketing director for the Ogden Standard-Examiner and the Deseret News. A graduate of the U of U, Steve has a bachelor's degree in English and a masters degree in Human Resources Management. He and his wife Holly, have six children and 16 grandchildren and have lived in Layton for 42 years. Bio: Ronald L. Fox is a long-time rare book, artifact and photograph dealer. He is also an author and political historian, and a former owner of a public affairs firm focusing on government advocacy. Fox has served as an advance coordinator for Executive Branch visits to SLC from Washington, D.C., and he served on the Utah Martha Hughes Cannon Statue Committee. He was recently appointed by Utah Governor Spencer Cox, to be a co-chair of Utah's Semiquincentennial (1776-1926) United States of America Committee.  Do you have a question or comment? Write us at “ask a historian” – askahistorian@uta

Date June 7, 2021 (Season 3, Episode 3: 57:47 minutes).  Click here to go to a complete set of shownotes for this episode. Podcast Content -- Drawing on decades of research and analysis, Dr. Bruce Van Orden offers the “life and times” of Willam Wines Phelps (1792-1872), one of the LDS Church's and early Utah's most influential figures. In this fast paced interview Van Orden weaves a myriad of new details and insights regarding a man who worked “shoulder to shoulder” with LDS Church founder Joseph Smith, and justifiably could be described as a fellow creator of early Mormonism. Phelps was an intellect, chronicler, journalist, master printer (he brought the first printing press to Utah), doctrinal provocateur and a political strategist (he was the ghost writer for Smith's 1844 U.S. Presidential platforms and publications). Besides all of this, he was a lawyer, a poet, a hymnographer--with 15 hymns in the current LDS hymnal--and was Utah's first official weatherman/meteorologist.  Phelps' life story serves as something of a “hinge,” between pre-Utah Mormonism under Joseph Smith, and the more pragmatic and geographically expansive church under Brigham Young. Readers and listeners will gain a deeper understanding of the religious devotions, the bold political worldviews and the millennial “fire in the bones” convictions that permeated early Anglo-American Utah. A state of mind that, in less than a decade, would come in conflict with a much stronger and more determined United States. As a longstanding member of the Council of Fifty, and as first Speaker of the House in the Provisional State of Deseret (two sessions), Phelps contributed much of the written political thought encountered in early Utah, including the 1849-50 statehood application under a banner of “Deseret,” which name Van Orden believes was suggested by Phelps. Van Orden speaks of Phelps' interactions with Brigham Young, his vision for an educational system for Utah (including the creation of the University of Deseret), his ouster from the Deseret News by editor Albert Carrington, his contributions to the creation of the Deseret Alphabet, and his long standing role as the serpent in the church's endowment ceremony. Guest Bio: Dr. Bruce Van Orden is an emeritus professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University. He received his Ph.D., M.A and undergraduate degree from BYU. He has been a member of the LDS Church's Curriculum Committee and has authored many articles and books on LDS History, including Prisoner for Conscience' Sake: The Life of George Reynolds, as well as this biography of Phelps. Shortly after retiring, Van Orden and his wife spent seven years as LDS Church ministers to inmates at the Utah State Penitentiary in Draper.    Additional Resources & Readings:We'll Sing and We'll Shout: The Life and Times of W.W Phelps  -- to buy a copy click here, we also recommend that you contact your local independent book dealer.  The Joseph Smith Papers Project (Church History Department, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), brief biography of Phelps and links to digitized primary sources, about and created by William Wines Phelps, click here.  Do you have a question or comment? Write us at “ask a historian” – askahistorian@utah.gov 

April 12, 2021 (Season 2, Episode 18: 53:46 minutes). Click here for the Utah Department of Culture & Community Engagement show notes for this Speak Your Piece episode. The show notes includes additional links and sources.  Podcast Content:In celebration of the Salt Lake Tribune's 150th anniversary (1870-2020) as continuous newspaper published in Salt Lake City the “Trib” published in 2020, Utah's Story 150 Years of Photography from the Salt Lake Tribune, a collection of historical photographs and stories by Tribune photojournalists, taken from the 1890s to the present (photographs, actually a photomechanical reproduction of photographs, did not appeared in newsprint until the mid-1880s). See “Topics Discussed in Time” listed below.   Salt Lake Tribune's senior reporter and project editor Matt Canham, and then director of photography Jeremy Harmon, who is now director of photography and visuals at The Tennessean and USA TODAY's South Region, discusses both SYP staff picks and their own favorite images, from the hundreds of remarkable images published in Utah's Story. Canham and Harmon also discuss the Tribune's recent transition from profit to a not-for-profit newspaper entity (see “In historic shift…”)The impactful and timeless images found in Utah's Story 150 Years of Photography from the Salt Lake Tribune, cover a range of topics, events and communities, such as Utah's own late 19th and early 20th centuries industrial revolution and urban expansion, to the 2002 Utah Winter Olympics, to the 1983 controlled flood down SLC's State Street, to the 2020 social justice protests and the first half of the COVID-19 Pandemic.. Each photograph presented in this work was created by dedicated photojournalists intent on connecting and telling important current events to the SLC community and beyond.Speaker BiosMatt Canham is a senior reporter and project editor for the Salt Lake Tribune. Matt joined the agency in 2002 and has been with the Trib for 19 years. He has covered topics in politics and investigative projects with PBS Frontline. Matt was also a Washington Correspondent for 6 years, reporting on the federal government and Utah's members of congress.Jeremy Harmon was the director of photography at the Salt Lake Tribune for 13 years. As of spring 2021 Jeremy became director of photography and visuals for The Tennessean (Nashville) and USA TODAY's South Region. Harmon was also a key contributor to the Salt Lake Tribune's website “The Legacy of Joe Hill”. Jeremy has many interests which include the preservation and use of the Tribune's immense photographic archives (both analogue and digital).Additional Resources and Readings:Utah's Story 150 Years of Photography from the Salt Lake Tribune -- to buy a copy click here.

June 28, 2021 (Season 3, Episode 6: 59 minutes). Click here for the Utah Department of Culture & Community Engagement shownotes for this Speak Your Piece episode. The shownotes includes additional links and sources.  On this 24th of July (Utah's Pioneer Day) the Golden Spike National Historical Park is inaugurating an annual event to celebrate and recognize the Mormon contribution to the world's first transcontinental railroad. Listen to the episode of Speak Your Piece, then start a new Utah Pioneer Day tradition by going to Promontory Summit to hike, see the railroad grades, and to experience the story of the “Mormon graders.” Look into your family history, if you have Mormon ancestors living in central or northern Utah in the late 1860s, they may have worked on the world's first transcontinental road.The Union Pacific Railway contracted with Brigham Young, who then established contractor companies, who then hired thousands of laborers from across central and northern Utah, to grade (cut, fill and tunnel) through the Utah Territory; thereafter other UP workers laid down the track. In this episode, park superintendent Brandon Flint and LDS Church History Department historian Brett Dowdle, speak about this little known Mormon pioneer story, regarding Utah graders who worked from Humboldt Wells, Nevada to the Wyoming border, along with the Chinese and Irish immigrants, and Civil War veterans, building the transcontinental railroad.Fearing what Brigham Young described as a coming "swarms of scallywags," and too, the well-publicized accounts of pop-up or "hell on wheel" towns, bringing violence, gambling, dance halls, saloons and brothels, the Mormons proposed their own workforce to perform the first half of the process: cutting, filling and tunneling the Utah railroad's grade. With the territory's agricultural based economy in constant doldrums (this work met a dire need for hard currency), and optimistically hoping to manage all the changes coming with the national railroad, a couple thousand Mormons left their farms, ranches and shops, to live and work in the wilderness, to help build this most famous of American roads. Guest Bios: Brandon Flint is the NPS superintendent of the Golden Spike National Historical Park, located on the northern shore of the Great Salt Lake at Promontory Summit in Box Elder County. Prior to his appointment Superintendent Flint was stationed at the Cape Cod National Seashore. He completed the NPS Bevinetto Fellowship which included a year working as a staff member in the House of Representatives' Natural Resources Committee. Brandon spent ten years for the NPS in Washington, D.C.  Dr. Brett D. Dowdle is a historian for the Church History Department (CHD), of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Brett has a PhD in American History from Texas Christian University, and in part, his doctoral dissertation addressing Brigham Young's interaction with the railroad companies, and the creation of grader contracts with Union Pacific and Central Pacific. Brett is a volume editor for the Joseph Smith Papers Project at the CHD. 

June 14, 2021 (Season 3, Episode 4; 72 minutes long - 1 hour and 12 minutes). Click here for the Utah Department of Culture & Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece page.The main title for this episode is based on historian Susan Rugh's 2008 book, Are We There Yet?: The Golden Age of American Family Vacations (University Press of Kansas). Now that the COVID-19 restrictions are cautiously easing-up, and with many of us vaccinated, and with self-quarantining likely a thing of the past, many of us are making up for all the isolation and lack of travel, by getting out "on the road again." This episode is all about discovering or rediscovering Utah's culturally rich “less traveled" townscapes and highways (US Routes 89, 91, 40 and 50, just to name a few). We especially want listeners to learn how to read and appreciate Utah's road related architecture and landscapes, including highways (that meander through towns and cities), 20th century "mom and pop" motels, Mid 20c. Googie architecture, roadside attractions, neon signs, and more.The era discussed by Rugh and Church--between World War I to the 1970s--was hardly a "golden age" for African and Jewish Americans, and for all other minorities, who endured deep discrimination while driving and vacationing in America. Utah was no different, it too was a segregated place. This is discussed along with ideas, types of vacations (historical pilgrimages, National Parks, camping, Disneyland and other theme parks, etc.) the architecture and material culture, all surrounding the 20th century American vacation.Utah historic towns discussed include Logan, Salt Lake City, Provo, Helper, Price, Vernal, Panguitch, Kanab, Fillmore, Beaver, Cedar City and St. George. Guest Biographies:  Susan Sessions Rugh is Dean of Undergraduate Education at Brigham Young University, where she is also a professor of history. She wrote Are We There Yet? The Golden Age of American Family Vacations (University Press of Kansas, 2008), which received national attention for its nostalgic portrayal of road trips in the decades following World War II. Rugh has also published articles on Utah's state tourism slogans, and historic motels in Salt Lake City. Her current book project, "No Vacancy: The Rise and Decline of American Motels," is a history of roadside lodging, from tourist courts to family-owned franchises. A native of Provo, Utah, she enjoys visiting art museums, road trips, and spending time with her ten grandchildren.Lisa-Michele Church has for more than 30 years offered public and private service as an attorney and community activist. She loves history, legal issues, social justice, and road trips.  Her historical interests focus on the American West and vernacular architecture. She is working on a book featuring Utah's vintage neon signs. She presents to a variety of scholarly and community groups on such topics as hand-made adobe brick homes, early 20th century apartment buildings, vintage roadside motels, and tourism development along the Arrowhead Highway (connecting LA to SLC via Las Vegas). Her published work includes the books Historic Salt Lake City Apartment Buildings (2018) and Sunlight and Shadow – The Page Ranch Story (2017), along with numerous articles such as “Early Roadside Motels and Motor Courts of St. George, Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly, Winter 2012, photographic essays, and brochures. Do you have a question or comment? Write us at “ask a historian” – askahistorian@utah.gov

June 2, 2021 (Season 3, Episode 2,  48 minutes).  Click here to read the Utah Dept. of Culture & Community Engagement show notes for this Speak Your Piece episode. This episode of Speak Your Piece is based on a digital exhibit Topaz Stories: Remembering the Japanese American Incarceration, and includes selected readings of some deeply personal and painful stories written and gathered by both detainees and the children of those incarcerated at the Topaz Internment Camp (Delta, Utah; 1942-1945).The imprisonment of Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War II is one of our nation's worst violations of civil rights against American citizens. Holding to a racially biased and misconceived notion of "military necessity," over 120,000 men, women and children of Japanese descent--two-thirds of them American citizens--where removed from their West Coast homes and imprisoned. In contrast only a very small number of first generation German and Italian immigrants, whose country of origins were also at war with the United States, where subjected to incarceration. The community of Delta, Utah was selected by War Relocation Administration as one of ten internment camp locations. Initially known as the Central Utah Relocation Center, the Topaz camp was built in the Sevier desert some 16 miles northwest of Delta. A total of 11,212 individuals, most from the San Francisco Bay area, were detained at Topaz from September 11, 1942 to October 31, 1945.This digital exhibit Topaz Stories began as a physical exhibit, installed in various places in northern Califorina, including in Emeryville, between Berkeley and Oakland. To read about this exhibition click here.  It is anticpated that Topaz Stories will be installed at the Utah State Capitol in early summer 2022 and remain there until the year's end. The editor for Topaz Stories was Ruth Sasaki, and the exhibit and graphic designer, Jonathan Hirabayashi, today's SYP guests. Both also contributed personal family stories, and both served as readers for the selected stories shared in this episode.Bios of Guests: Ruth Sasaki is a Sansei, born and raised in San Francisco after the World War II. Her short story “The Loom” won the American Japanese National Literary Award, and her collection, The Loom and Other Stories, was published in 1991 by Graywolf Press. Two of her stories were aired on NPR's "Selected Shorts," and a short film was made from her story, "American Fish." Ruth is the editor of the Topaz Stories Project; her mother's family--including her grandparents, mother, aunt, and uncle--were incarcerated at Utah's Topaz War Relocation Center. Born in 1946, Jonathan Hirabayashi grew up in the small farming communities of American Fork and Pleasant Grove, Utah. In 1956, his parents returned to the Santa Clara Valley (California). After college graduation and service in the U.S. Army, he returned to school to receive a B.A. in art. After a 5 years as a graphic designer at the Oakland Museum, Jonathan started his own firm designing and fabricating exhibits.OTHER SOURCES TO CONSULT: Topaz Museum -- Japanese American WWII Interment Camp (Delta, Utah). Utah State University's Topaz Digital CollectionUS National Archives --Japanese American Internment

April 19, 2021 (Season 3, Ep. 1: 1 hr & 32 min.) Utah Dept. of Culture & Community Engagement version of this SYP episode. This link will get you to some Speak Your Piece EXTRA materials not included here.  Utah Humanities' Megan van Frank and The American West Center's Gregory E. Smoak speak about a remarkable public history effort, built in partnership with the Smithonian Institution, under the banner of Think Water Utah. The offering includes two traveling exhibits (Water Ways and H2o Today), an essay (written by Smoak), much digital/recorded content and numerous special events, which have been ongoing since 2020 and will end in 2022.  See the list of exhibit locations, events and digital content, related to this topic below at Think Water Utah Exhibitions & Resources.Brad Westwood caught-up with Megan and Greg, for a discussion on the water history of Utah. A topic that is, historically (and in a contemporary sense) underappreciated and at times made obsure to the general public. Key players in water resource decision making are Utah's local water conservency districts. This SYP episode tells a history that all Utahns should better understand, so to make the most inclusive and sustainable decisions regarding Utah's future.Much of this podcast is based on Smoak's historical essay. This essay is the center piece of the Think Water Utah.  After you have listen to this SYP episode read Utah Water Ways.Megan van Frank: Megan's background is in anthropology, history and and museum studies. She has managed professional education programs at the MIT and has curated and managed cultural collections at the Australian Museum, Sydney Univ.  Museums, Natural History Museum of Utah, and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. Megan directs Utah Humanities' "Museum on Main Street" and "Museum Interpretation Initiative" programs which both provide resources and on-site assistance to both small and large museums spread across the Utah. Gregory E. Smoak: Greg is an Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Utah and the Director of the American West Center (U of U). He is also the author of Ghost Dances and Identity: Prophetic Religion and American Indian Ethnogenesis in the Nineteenth Century (2006) and Western Lands, Western Voices: Essays on Public History in the American West (2021).Exhibitions: (1) Water I Ways  — April 3 – June 6, 2021 | John Wesley Powell River History Museum (2) H20 Today  — April 26 – July 31, 2021 | Uintah County Heritage Museum & August 7, 2021 – February 5, 2022 | Bear River Heritage Area at the Hyrum City Museum (3) Decisions Downstream — Natural History Museum of Utah, January 15, 2021 to July 31, 2021 (4) Confluence — Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Feburary 18 to December 4, 2021

3.15.2021 (Season 2: Episode 15; 76 minutes) Click here for the Utah Dept. of Heritage & Arts Show Notes for this  Speak Your Piece episode. Introduction: In this episode of Speak Your Piece, historian Ron Watt describes his latest book, which is part memoir, part county history and part geography tour of 1950s Carbon County. First envisioned as a childhood history to be read only by his family, the project took on a life of its own (an occupational hazard for historians). Supplemented by numerous fieldtrips, interviews with family members and longtime residents, and the consultation of dozens of 1950s primary sources, Ron instead made a book for his grandchildren and for us, available via Amazon. We sampled Ron's personal but public geographical journey in this episode.Combined, the 1950s spatial, geographical and built environments of Carbon County serve as framework which Watt then adds family history; mining, ranch and farm life descriptions; and the stories of dozens of specific community members, most of whom are second and third generation children of agricultural and labor immigrants, from around the world, who settled and worked in Carbon County in the first half of the 20th century. Moving geographically, west to east, Ron describes the places, people, streets, mines, ranches, farms and the open lands generally following U.S. Highway 50 and 6 and State Road 10. Watt describes 1950s coal mining industry, the sheep and cattle industry and the farms that followed the irrigation canals built during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Much detail is also offered for the flourishing mid-20th century regional hubs of Price and Helper. Finally, Watt describes the ancient and early 20th century pioneer wagon road winding through Nine Mile Canyon to access to Ashley Valley or the Uinta Basin.It never stops being a personal account, amid the physical and geographical descriptions, you will also read about Ron's many part-time summer jobs, the day to day work life of his farmer/miner/manual labor father, the farm life of his grandparents, and ranch life of his aunt and uncle. We even learn about the dating life of this shy, hardworking and bookish Mormon boy.  Nearly all of it beneficial in our understanding of mid-20th century Utah.Ron Watt's Bio: Born in a mining camp in Spring Canyon, in a rock house built by Italian masons, Dr. Ronald G. Watt, was educated first in Carbon County, then at USU (BA and MA) and at University of Minnesota (PhD, in History). He was employed by the LDS Church in Salt Lake City for 35 years, as a historian, manager of the archives and reference archivist, His passion--besides his family--is writings about Carbon County. Ron also served on the Utah Historical Quarterly Board of Editors as a reader over twenty years.  Additional Readings and Sources: Ronald G. Watt, My Life in Carbon County: A Personal Tour Through Time and Space, Scrivner Books, Provo, Utah, 2018.Watt, A History of Carbon County, Utah Centennial County History Series (1896-1996), Utah State Historical Society and Carbon County, Utah, 1997.  Online Digital Copy  / Out of Print Purchase -- check local rare/used book dealers.Watt, City of Diversity: A History of Price, Utah (2001).Question or comment? Write us at “ask a historian” – askahistorian@utah.gov

3.22.2021 (Season 2: Episode 16; 62 minutes) To read the show notes includng a listed of related materials and the guest's bio, click here -- Utah Department of Heritage and Arts' Speak Your Piece Podcast. Podcast Introduction: The Netflix documentary Murder Among the Mormons (released March 3, 2021, IMDb) has created much national interest, or should I say renewed national interest, in the story of murderer and master counterfeiter Mark W. Hofmann (professionally active 1978 to 1986).  In this episode of Speak Your Piece, historian Allen D. Roberts -- who wrote the book Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders (1988) with former Deseret News reporter and historian Linda Buhler Sillitoe -- describes essential aspects of the Hofmann story that were not included (or maybe landed on the cutting room floor) in Murder Among the Mormons.  Sillitoe's and Roberts' book Salamander was the first full length treatment on the subject, and endures today as the most complete, balanced and accurate, among the half dozen books written to explain, or defend, or to serve as exposé regarding this most complex 20th century Utah story. John Sillito -- Linda Sillitoe's husband (the different spelling is intentional) -- recounts in the podcast how Linda, who is now deceased, saw her purpose as writing for "her tribe, her people," who she believed needed to understand the whole complex, messy and uncomfortable story.  She also felt that she and Robert's could "act as a translators" for those outside of their community, so they too could understand all the subtle aspects that someone outside might not understand or describe correctly.  To purchase a copy of Linda Sillitoe's and Allen Roberts' book click her: Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders  (Signature Books, 1988, 2nd edition)  **** On KindleHofmann's apparently manipulated, deceived and defrauded his wife, parents, employees, investors, manuscript and rare book dealers, collectors, historians, curators, conservators and even America's most respected forgery specialists. Revered and respected institutions -- including the Library of Congress, National Archives, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- fared no better.  I asked Roberts at the end of this episode, now some thirty-five years later, what he thought were Hofmann's motives, which were not entirely made clear in the documentary Murder Among the Mormons.