Alberta Henry (1920–2005) was born in a sharecropper’s shack in segregated Louisiana before moving with her family to Kansas where she grew up in a climate of hardship and hostile racial bigotry that forced second-class citizenship on African Americans.

Henry endured intolerance by leaning on her faith and her commitment to a cause that she believed God had called her to follow. When she came to Utah in 1949 she thought it would be a brief stay, but she ended up making it her home for more than fifty years. In Utah, Henry committed herself to helping all races, religions, and ethnic groups coexist in appreciation of each other. While Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, and Malcolm X led the struggle for civil rights at a national level, Alberta Henry campaigned tirelessly for equality at a local level, talking at school board meetings, before city councils, and in the homes of her neighbors.

Henry was a member or officer of more than forty civic organizations and served for twelve years as president of the Salt Lake City branch of the NAACP, where she lobbied for civil rights, education, and justice. The dozens of awards and commendations she received speak to her accomplishments. While much of Henry’s story is told in her own words, Colleen Whitley provides expert and personal context to her speeches, writing, and interviews. The result is an exceptional first-person account of an African American woman leader and her role in the Civil Rights Movement in Utah. 

Utah’s quest for statehood lasted longer, involved more political intrigue, and garnered more national attention than any other US territory. While Utahns—especially the Mormon population—hoped statehood would grant them increased political autonomy, the several decades of refusal by church leadership to denounce polygamy stalled even the most carefully executed political schemes. Even without the albatross of polygamy, the territory presented a unique set of challenges. Lingering distrust toward the federal government blurred the lines separating church and state. LDS leaders considered themselves anointed by God to lead the government. Officials sent from Washington to dilute Mormon control found themselves in hostile, dangerous terrain.

Aware of the complexity of this fifty-year struggle, historian Edward Leo Lyman carefully traces the key figures, events, and cultural shifts leading to Utah’s admission to the Union. Utilizing an abundance of careful research, Finally Statehood! is a unique attempt to understand the state’s history on both a local and national level, with each political roadblock, religious conflict, and earnest attempt at compromise meticulously examined under the vantage of time.

Over thirty scholars examine the development of folklore studies through the lens of over one hundred years of significant activity in a state that has provided grist for the mills of many prominent folklorists. In the past the Folklore Society of Utah has examined the work of such scholars in biographical and other essays published in its newsletters. This book incorporates those essays and goes well beyond them to include many other topices, offering a thorough history of folklore studies and a guide to resources for those pursuing research in Utah now and in the future.

The essays survey the development and contributions of folklore studies in Utah from 1892 to 2004 but also represent developments in both academic and public-sector folklore throughout the United States. Following a thorough historical introduction, part I profiles the first folklorists working in the state, including Hector Lee, Thomas Cheney, Austin and Alta Fife, Wayland Hand, and Lester Hubbard. Part II looks at the careers of prominent Utah folklorists Jan Harold Brunvand, Barre Toelken, and William B. Wilson, as well as the works of the next, current generation of folklorists. Part III covers studies in major folklore genres, with essays on the study of material culture, vernacular architecture, and Mormon, ethnic, Native American, and Latino folklore. Part IV examines public folklore programs including organizations, conferences, and tourism. Back matter describes academic programs at Utah institutions of higher education, summarizes the holdings of the various folklore archives in the state, and provides a complete cross-indexed bibliography of articles, books, and recordings of Utah folklore.

As I was coming up, it was painful to me not to have been given my own nickname. It made me feel different, or rather that I was being treated differently from other family members. I wondered why everybody else was spoken to in terms of their identity, their character, their behavior, and I was simply identified by the 'tag,' my given name. But then, when I read in a book that France meant free, I began to think of it as imbuing me with a sense of flight, of movement. Ultimately, I came to believe my name spoke for itself and that I did not need any other.'—from the book

Imbued with rich detail of family life in a rural community, as well as a system of values at a time of transition in American history, this is the life story of France Davis, the dynamic pastor of the Calvary Baptist Church in Salt Lake City. It is an engaging story of courage and vision that describes coming of age in the segregation-era South, of dreaming, enduring with honor, and living at the forefront of major issues within the United States.

Recorded and skillfully written by Nayra Atiya, France Davis: An American Story Told, is an oral history, ethnography, memoir, perhaps even a life-enhancing sermon delivered with the strong voice of a preacher. The gathered strands of a life lived with conviction and grace will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers from the curious to those seeking inspiration.

Winner of the Utah Book Award in Nonfiction. 

In 1927, the Claflin-Emerson expedition of the Peabody Museum began a rapid and extensive archaeological reconnaissance of eastern Utah. The expedition was funded by William H. Claflin and Raymond Emerson, Bostonian businessmen with a deep devotion to the American Indian and a probing interest in the remote and mysterious regions of the American West.

Early expedition surveys and excavations conducted by Noel Morss would lead to a definition of the Fremont culture; later research would augment existing data on the Fremont by adding entirely new traits, disclosing new variations in architecture and basketry, and providing new information on the distribution of previously known traits.

In The Fremont Culture: A Study in Culture Dynamics on the Northern Anasazi Frontier, archaeologist James H. Gunnerson provides the results of his 1950s survey and excavation in the Utah area. He presents a functional synthesis of the Fremont culture and discusses the dynamics of its growth and decline.

Gunnerson’s report also uses the original field notes, maps, plans, photographs, sketches, and unpublished preliminary reports of the Claflin-Emerson expedition. Together, the reports of Morss and Gunnerson offer the most important and complete overview of the expedition available. They are fitting tributes to the men of that expedition, scientists who recognized the importance of an ancient people who once wrested a meager living from the rugged canyon country of the Green and Colorado Rivers.

Despite mining's multidimensional role in the history of Utah since Euro-american settlement, there has never been a book that surveyed and contextualized its impact. From the Ground Up fill that gap with a collection of essays by leading Utah historians and geologists. Essays here address the geology of the state, the economic history of mining in Utah, and the lore of mines and miners. Additionally, the book reviews a handul of particularly significant mineral industries---saline, coal, uranium, and beryllium---and surveys important hard-rock mining regions of the state.

Winner of the Juanita Brooks Prize in Mormon Studies

Frontiersman, colonizer, missionary to the Indians, and explorer of the American West, Jacob Hamblin has long been one of the most enigmatic figures in Mormon history. In this defining biography, Todd Compton examines and disentangles many of the myths and controversies surrounding Hamblin. His Grand Canyon adventures and explorations as a guide alongside John Wesley Powell are well documented, as are his roles as a missionary, cultural liaison, and negotiator to the Indian tribes of southern Utah and Arizona. Hamblin struggled in this latter role, sometimes unable to bridge the gulf between Mormonism and Indian culture. He disavowed violent conflict and ceaselessly sought peaceful resolutions where others resorted to punitive action. He strove above all for mutual understanding in the absence of conversion.

A Frontier Life provides a rich narrative that fleshes out a picture of a sometimes vilified figure, particularly in regard to his connection to the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre, where Compton provides nuanced discussion clarifying Hamblin’s post-massacre role—he was not present at the massacre, but reported on it to both Brigham Young and military investigators. Compton’s engagement with Mormon historiography and previous Hamblin portrayals will make this work of particular interest to both scholars and students. The casual reader will take pleasure in learning of a true pioneer who lived life at the geographical, cultural, and spiritual boundaries of his era. This dramatic, entertaining biography is a truly significant contribution to Mormon history.


Winner of the Evans Biography Award, the John Whitmer Historical Society Best Biography Award, and the Francis Armstrong Madsen Best Book Award.