Murray

Basic Information

Type of Place

Independent City or Town

Metro Area

Politics c. 1860?

Don’t Know

Unions, Organized Labor?

Don’t Know

Sundown Town Status

Sundown Town in the Past?

Probable

Was there an ordinance?

Don't Know

Sign?

Don’t Know

Year of Greatest Interest

Still Sundown?

Don’t Know

Census Information

The available census data from 1860 to the present

	Total	White	Black	Asian	Native	Hispanic	Other	BHshld
1860
1870
1880	1288
1890
1900	3302
1910	4057
1920
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
2020

Method of Exclusion

• Violence Towards Newcomers

Main Ethnic Group(s)

• Unknown

Group(s) Excluded

• Black

Comments

Dr. Loewen, November 29, 2005:
A recent Tribune article (“Murray Racism Claim Is Disputed”) quotes Murray historian Su Richards calling my book, Sundown Towns, “bad history” because it included Murray in a listing of towns in the West that in their history kept out African Americans.

I based this mention of Murray on Larry Gerlach’s Blazing Crosses in Zion: The Ku Klux Klan in Utah. Gerlach tells how, “during the night of March 30, 1922, a group of Murray men” terrorized Murray’s only black resident, Jim Bing, a shoeshiner. They dressed up in Klan sheets, burst in while he slept in the shoe repair shop where he worked, captured him, beat him “severely,” and then took him to the city cemetery. There they forced him to “‘offer up prayers for his ancestors’ while ‘kneeling upon a grave with his hands clasped around a tombstone.'”

Since Bing had only recently come to Murray, he surely received this harassment because he was its “lone black resident,” as Gerlach puts it. When he left town soon after, Murray reverted to its all-white status, and not accidentally. My definition of sundown town is “a town that was for some years all-white on purpose.” If Gerlach can be believed, Murray qualifies.

The article tells that Utah historian Ronald Coleman was surprised I had listed Murray as a sundown town “because descendants of a prominent black family, the Bankheads, still live in the city today.” The manuscript census indeed reveals that the Bankheads lived in Murray in 1900, along with several other black families. By 1910, however, the published census lists only four African Americans in Murray, only two of whom can readily be located in the manuscript census, including Carrie Bankhead, a servant in a white household. The rest of the Bankheads lived elsewhere, most in Salt Lake City.

By 1920, the Census shows zero African Americans in Murray, and none again in 1930. Murray’s demography thus resembles other sundown towns across the North, many of whom had small black populations until some point in the period 1890-1940. It is possible, of course, that the census was wrong and missed African American residents of Murray, including the Bankheads, but so far, I think the preponderance of the evidence is that, formally or informally, Murray did keep out blacks for some years around the 1920s and ’30s.

In this regard, Murray was not unique or even unusual. I suspect a number of other Utah towns did the same thing. I suggest readers get Sundown Towns, read it, check out their own community in this regard, and then send me the results, positive or negative.%u201D

From Larry R. Gerlach, Blazing Crosses in Zion: The Ku Klux Klan in Utah (Logan: Utah State UP, 1982):
“During the night of March 30, 1922, a group of Murray men employed the modus operandi of the Reconstruction Klan to terrorize Jim Bing, a local bootblack. The band ‘rigged themselves up in ghostly attired’ and burst in upon the Negro while he was sleeping in the rear of Joseph Chivell’s Champion Show Repair Shop. Bing … was subsequently captured, ‘severely beaten,’ and taken to the city cemetery where he was further ‘tormented’ by being forced to ‘offer up prayers for his ancestors’ while ‘kneeling upon a grave with his hands clasped around a tombstone.'” He had recently come to Murray and was its “lone black resident” and “left town on April 2.” (Garlach 34-35)

So Murray reverted to sundown status.

But there is nothing regarding blacks or the KKK in The History of Murray City, Utah (Salt Lake City: Stanway, 1976).

From John S. McCormick and John R. Sillito, “Respectable Reformers: Utah Socialists in Power, 1900-1925,” in John S. McCormick and John R. Sillito, A World We Thought We Knew (Salt Lake City: U. of UT P, 1995):

“Murray was incorporated in 1902 in order to have more control over its own affairs than it did as an unincorporated part of Alt Lake County. In particular, local residents wanted to be able to more tightly regulate the lives and activities of the new immigrants. The initial set of city ordinances was designed to do that, and the first city commission frequently complained about the ‘foreign element’ and repeatedly cited ‘Dago houses’ for their unsanitary conditions. In January 1903, Murray businessmen charged ASARCO with employing too many ‘Greeks, Italians, and Hungarians,’ petitioned the company to hire only native-born workers, and asked the city commission for help in seeing that they did. In November, 1904, Mayor Joseph Stratton asserted that, in general, Greeks in Murray ‘live six or more in a 10 foot by 12 foot room that reeks so with filth an ordinary person cannot stay in it for 5 minutes’ and called for the removal of all Greek residents from the community.” (McCormick and Sollito 122)

A Utah Historian writes:

%u201CAs far as I know, Murray did not remove its Greek residents, but “only” segregated them. %u2026. I don’t think the ordinance said anything about blacks, and Murray’s black population would have been small. (In 1900 the black population of the state was under 1000, out of nearly 300,000). At any rate, Murray’s main concern was immigrants, specifically %u2018new immigrants.%u2019%u201D

Historian of Murray City writes:

1. The first African American settlers arrived in South Cottonwood in 1848 as slaves of Mormon settlers from the southeastern United States (the “Mississippi Saints”). These included the Flake, Lay, Crosby and Bankhead families. In fact, three African Americans, later associated with South Cottonwood, were members of the “Pioneer Company” which arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in July 1847. This is generally agreed among authorities on Utah’s pioneer era history.

2. Inferential evidence exists that one of the first three settlers in South Cottonwood was an African American (Green Flake, who was also a member of the 1847 Pioneer Company). This is supported by documentary evidence in the form of testimony given under oath during an important water rights case tried between 1907 and 1914.

3. Several African Americans did leave of their own volition (no record of any attempt to drive anyone out) when their owners moved on to settle San Bernardino in 1850; others relocated (again, of their own volition) to other Utah settlements; and some (e.g., the Bankheads) remained in the South Cottonwood. The Bankheads are, in fact, today one of Utah’s most “senior” of pioneer families. (Slavery was abolished in Utah in 1862.)

4. There is considerable evidence that, by the time Murray was incorporated in 1903, there was a small established African American community in Murray with more living in the immediate area. Although there was discernable discrimination toward African Americas by their white neighbors, those descended from the pioneer generation were deemed to be “old residents” and not regarded as objects of either suspicion or derision.

5. There is positive evidence from the local newspaper (American Eagle) that discrimination against African Americans was viewed with disfavor by many whites and those who practiced blatant prejudice were subject to some measure of public censure. There is also evidence, in both the local newspaper and the minutes of the city council, that some (but probably not all) members of the African American community were accorded a conditional measure of personal respect, held to be responsible citizens, and entitled to the benefit of doubt and due process when accused of improper conduct.

6. In 1903, an African American constable was appointed to “serve among his own people without pay.” Discrimination? Certainly. A move in the right direction? Just as certainly. When the constable was discharged for exceeding his authority (he had disciplined a white child during a public disturbance), he request and was granted a hearing before the city council. Upon on his representation that he had acted under written authority from the town marshal (which the marshal confirmed, at the same time recommending constable be reinstatement), the council reversed itself and reinstated the constable without pay. Significantly, the council apparently let stand marshal’s instructions regarding the constable’s authority to discipline whites.

7. No documentary or antidotal evidence has been discovered which suggests the city council enacted legislation requiring African Americans to be absent from the city at specified times, or imposing restrictions on their movement inside the city other than various curfew ordinances applicable to all juveniles. Neither is there evidence of an “unwritten” Jim Crow Code in Murray. This is not to say that particular African Americans may not, from time to time, have been ordered out of town. There are many news reports of vagrants, drunks, known petty criminals and other “trouble makers” being escorted to the streetcar and sent on their way at city expense. Some of these people may have been African American but, in all cases where the race or ethnic background of the exiled offender is mentioned, none appear to have been African American.

8. In point of fact, there was ethnic discrimination practiced in Murray through the early years of the 20th century, but the target of that discrimination appears overwhelmingly to have been “Greeks” (a category which generally included Italians) and “Austrians” (a generic designation assigned to Slavic peoples but which did not usually include German speaking subjects of the Austro Hungarian Empire). Even so, one city attorney went on record to advise the city council that enacting discriminatory legislation toward the “Greeks” was a “bad policy.” And it is at least arguable, moreover, that the motive for such discrimination was less ethnic that economic. These “new immigrant” groups comprised the bulk of Murray’s itinerant industrial proletariat of that day, a class historically regarded in Utah with suspicion and disdain.

9. Sources documenting the status of African Americans in Murray, South Cottonwood and Salt Lake County include: Third District Court records (in particular The Progress Company, et al. v. Salt Lake City, et al.) County land and mining district records. Murray City records (Minutes of the City Council and Compiled Ordinances of Murray City). Newspaper articles (American Eagle, Salt Lake Tribune, Salt Lake Herald, Deseret Evening News/Deseret News). Anecdotal evidence (personal histories and reminiscences published in various formats).%u201D

%u201CIt is my understanding that members of the Bankhead family resided in (or near) Murray from the late 1840s until the present. If there was a “window of absence” it was brief and not the result of forceful expulsion. Moreover, there is reason to believe the Bankheads were not the only African Americans in Murray, although they are the best remembered. Perhaps Murray’s small established African American community has become historically invisible because in many records they are not specifically identified as “black” or “colored” or “Negro” because their race was know, they were accepted and further identification was superfluous. This, of course, would not be the case with a recent arrival, such as Jim Bing.
As to the treatment of Bing, such atrocities occurred elsewhere in Utah and there is no reason to suppose similar assaults could not have occurred in Murray. This, however, is an open question in my mind and to be settled by reviewing Gerlach’s sources. One issue to be resolved is the identity and residence of the attackers. I am suspicious that locals would choose their own cemetery as the venue for an assault; after all, to them it would be hallowed ground and not to be desecrated. Pending the identification of the perpetrators, Murray and its citizens are entitled to a presumption of innocence and the benefit of doubt. If that can be overcome by even a preponderance of the evidence, then they and it are historically accountable.%u201D

%u201CAs I tried to make clear in my first e mail, Murray was not immune to prejudice and discrimination, and the usual focus of these attitudes were immigrants from southern and central Europe (including Greeks, Italians, and Slavs). Mayor Stratton’s distain for and vitriolic verbal attacks upon these people is well documented by the “Desert Evening News” and the “Salt Lake Tribune” (although each of these journals had its own reasons for reporting these events and did not necessarily reflect the concerns of Murray and its people). There are entries in the City Council minutes that cannot be fully understood without taking these reports into account. The immediate cause of the Mayor’s anti immigrant outburst was an assault upon a “white” woman by a person or persons unknown (but presumed to be a Greek or Austrian). The attack, of course, was only the trigger which detonated an explosion of resentment and fear which had been building up in Murray over several years. My interpretation of the available evidence is that the Stratton episode represented an anomalous “spike” in ethnic tension, which then subsided but did not immediately disappear.
Stratton advocated, among other things, that the American Smelting & Refining Co. be persuaded (or compelled) to hire only “old residents” or immigrants of Anglo Saxon, Scandinavian or Germanic descent. I do not recall that he went so far as to advocate the forcible expulsion of Murray’s Greek, Italian and Slavic peoples, but I have no doubt he saw employment restrictions as furthering that end. Nor was he alone in his views. It is difficult to quantify, but there is evidence of considerable animosity on the part of many local people toward the new industrial immigrants. In my view, however, this was less an instance of ethnic or racial bias than it was an example of “class based” suspicion of an itinerant industrial proletariat a transitory, rather than a persistent, social condition. As the “old Murryites” became familiar with the new arrivals, and as Greeks, Italians and Slavs became vested in the community by assumed the roles of businessmen, property owners, taxpayers, voters, parents, and neighbors, the class based fears faded and the social animosity abated. It didn’t happen quickly, it didn’t happen smoothly, and it may not even happen completely, but it did happen.
As to early Murray City ordinances and their purpose, having read the pro incorporation material published by Martin A. Willumsen in his “American Eagle” newspaper, early City Council minutes, and miscellaneous other contemporary sources, I am not convinced that “regulating the . . . the new immigrants” was a significant concern of Murray’s residents and officials. Better police protection was the number one issue touted by incorporation advocates like Willumsen, but it was protection against conventional criminals and the “rough element,” which included hoodlums, vagrants, drunks, truants, and “tough kids” that most concerned Murrayites. Concern about the industrial immigrants is evident, but so is concern about “cowboys,” “tramps” and other troublesome characters. True, these stereotypical categories could as easily be applied to the industrial immigrants as to anyone else, but this does not seem to have been the case. Newspaper accounts of criminal activity and reports of police court proceedings do not reveal special interest in the activities of the industrial immigrants. Even in the super charged arena of liquor retailing, the names of offenders are as likely to reflect American or Scandinavian heritage as Greek or Slavic. Some ordinances (relating to Sunday closing, disorderly conduct, etc.) were drafted specifically targeting Greek coffeehouses and their proprietors, but the attention given these Mayor Stratton notwithstanding is marginal when compared with the time and effort devoted to developing municipal infrastructure, fire protection, and revenue. More ink was poured into the council minute book recording the machinations the railroad, streetcar and telephone companies than those of the “foreigners.” And, as I mentioned in my first e mail, when the City Council did turn its attention to the Greeks, there were voices to speak out in favor of equity and uniform application of the laws.%u201D

%u201CI can understand the assumption that if Murray prohibited Greeks, Italians and Slavs, it is unlikely to have permitted African Americans. But Murray did not prohibit Greeks, Italians or Slavs per se although there were doubtless many like Mayor Stratton who, at one time or another, would have liked to. Such prohibitions that were imposed rightly or wrongly were prohibitions of behavior, coupled with the unwarranted assumption that certain groups of people are characterized by certain kinds of behavior. It is a prejudice founded on ignorance and so erodes as the ignorance erodes. One thing I have learned from direct observation, Murrayites are not particularly attached to their prejudices, at least for any extended length of time. In point of fact, African Americans acquired pioneer status and in Utah “pioneer” is a word to conjure with at the very inception of Euro American settlement (ethnic irony noted) and, the unfortunate experience of Jim Bing notwithstanding, I have found no compelling evidence that they ever gave it up. Along similar lines, most of the industrial immigrants did not choose to remain in Murray. Were they run out? Some may have thought they were and likely had good reason for thinking so. Many more likely concluded Murray was no worse than any other Anglo town and stayed until better prospects appeared elsewhere. Quite a few, however, remained to became part of the community and, in doing so, acquitted their new home of the odium of being a “sundown town.” Some of these, who have recorded their recollections, recalled with some bitterness the time when they were outsiders, not really part of Murray but, like the pioneer African Americans, they let no one ran them out.%u201D

%u201CAs mentioned in my last e mail, I spent a couple hours at the Murray City Museum going through the “Compiled Ordinances;” I found a few which imposed prohibitions based on age and gender, but not on race. The compilation was published in 1911 and contains all city ordinances enacted since 1903 that remained in force in 1911. Obviously, any ordinance repealed before 1911, or enacted after that date, would not be included which leaves a lot of time unaccounted for.
Replying specifically to your comment regarding the 1900 through 1930 censuses, I have not checked these returns. Such a study would help to settle the residency issue but, in and of itself, would not be conclusive. I have spent too much time chasing people through the census (people I knew from collateral sources to have been living in a particular place) to base a conclusion on census data alone.
As to collateral sources and the Bankhead family. Documents compiled in connection with Murray City’s incorporation record that several Bankheads were living within the proposed corporate limits of Murray City in 1902. These were George A., George E. (“A.” and “E.” may or may not be the same individual), Mary, Nathan and Sine. All lived in Election District 59 and both George A. and Sine voted in the 1902 election, indicating they were property owners. Other sources, including anecdotal statements by residents who associated socially and professional with members of the Bankhead family between the mid 1920s and the present, city directory entries, photographs, and school publications (the Murray school district was and is coextensive with the city, so school attendance is prima face evidence of residency) support the thesis that members of this family resided continuously within the city limits from at least 1902 onward.%u201D

%u201CWhat struck me most about Murray%u2026 was the concern over new immigrants, as evidenced both by official records and newspaper accounts. An example, from the Desert News (which ran a weekly column about Murray), January 19, 1903: “Complaints are being made by the businessmen of Murray against the importation of Greeks, Italians, and Hungarians by the American Smelting and Refining Company to work in the smelters. Merchants declare that their old customers have been supplanted and can no longer patronize them, and that their places have been filled by the foreigners who live cheaply and buy closely. When the old plant closed down the Americans were laid off and when the new works started up they were not re employed, but their places were filled first by Greeks and then the others named followed. No only are the merchants complaining, but the American workmen as well, and it is said the managers of the smelting company will be petitioned for relief. The charge is made that the foreigners are supplied by a labor agency, which contracts to pay them a given sum per year and keep them employed in return for a percentage of their wages. A citizens’ mass meeting has been talked of and the appointment of a committee to petition the smelter people to give work to their old employees instead of foreigners.”
I do have in front of me official census figures for Utah, and Murray, in 1910:
1910:
Utah: total population: 373,351
Black population: 1144
Foreign born: 63,393
Murray: total population: 4057 (1880: 1288; 1900: 3302). Black population: 4 of the 4, all were adults. 3 of them “males of voting age.” 1 of the 4 was illiterate.
“foreign born white”: 1301; of those 1055 were “Males of voting age” 399 of them “naturalized” and 656 not.
For a larger context, here are some official figures for Utah as whole; perhaps you already have them: 1850: total population: 11,380; Black: 50 1860: Total: 40,125; Black: 59 1870: total: 86,044; Black: 108 1880: total: 142,423; Black: 232 1890: total: 205,925; black: 588 1900: total: 272,465; black: 672

“%u2026of course, how one states things makes a difference. For example, it is not just that “three African Americans, later associated with South Cottonwood, were members of the ‘Pioneer Company’ which arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in July 1847.” They were not just “members” of the company they were slaves (and not merely “servants,” as the Brigham Young Monument in downtown Salt Lake City says). And to say, that “Several African American did leave of their own volition (no record of any attempt to drive anyone out) when their owners moved on to settle San Bernardino in 1850,” ignores the fact that they “left town” as slaves, taken by their owners with them to California. %u2026one such case, that of a female slave named Biddy Mason. She came to Utah in 1848, the year after the first group of Mormons arrived, as a slave of a Mormon convert from Mississippi, Robert Smith, and his wife, Rebecca. When they moved to California 3 years later, they took her, and at least one of their other slaves, with them. Mason won her freedom in California in 1856 when she successfully challenged in court her master’s effort to take her and her children to Texas.
A couple of other points: Murray newspapers are on line the American Eagle, 1897 1905, and The Murray Eagle, 1927 1960 (no copies are known to exist for 1906 1926). They can be accessed at digitalnewspapers.org%u201D

Utah Resident:

%u201CI have read of the controversy over the listing of Murray as a probable sundown town. It has seriously ruffled some feathers around here. Murray’s residents have a collective sensitivity about these kinds of issues as it also has dubious distinction of being the locale of the Joe Hill incident early in the 20th Century, one that never really gets successfully buried by local city boosters.%u201D

From The History of Murray City, Utah (p. 422): Remembrances of Kathleen and Orvall Forbush about Nathan Bankhead:

%u201CHenrietta and Nathan Bankhead have lived in Murray as long as we can remember. He was a tall, nice looking man who loved his family and tried to provide a good living for them. He was a proud man, always friendly and always spoke to us wherever we met. “Our two sons went to school with th ree of their children, Stan, Lila, and Nancy. They were the younger ones. We remember they came to our home and visited with Kent and Newt quite often and we always enjoyed having them come. “Everyone walked every place in those days. We didn’t have much transportation, but we had our feet and we used them.” they both agreed. “They always walked to our place. The kids loved to play ball and they put up a basketball hoop and used it. “At Christmas time they drew names for gifts. That’s when our children and the Bankheads went to Arltington school. Lila drew our son Kent’s name when they were both about six years old. He unwrapped the package with excitement! She had chosen a little, white plastic car with rubber wheels. Kent was so pleased with that gift and often played with it. We put a ribbon on it and each Christmas, for about 25 years or more, we have always hung that little car on our Christmas tree.”