Utah SOUL: A History of Black Students at the University of Utah

Welcome to "Utah SOUL:  A History of Black Students at the University of Utah," a digital exhibit.  It has been noted in many biographical studies that Wallace Thurman was a student at the University of Utah for one semester, from January to June 1920.  Had he not become famous, would it have ever been revealed that Black students attended the U in the early 20th century?  We set out to discover others whose names have been hidden in the past and forgotten—those whose presence and achievements have gone unacknowledged. The African American Student Project at the University of Michigan inspired this exhibit.

Research for this project started in 2023.  We began searching the Marriott and Eccles Health Sciences Libraries' digital collections.  We searched yearbooks, newspapers, and oral history collections.  As the archivist Dorothy Berry (2022) suggests, we explored digitized University library collections to help uncover hidden stories and illuminate the presence of Black students at the University of Utah.  This exhibit is the result of our research.  This is a living document.  Additional content will be added.

Reference

Berry, D. (2022). Take Me into the Library and Show Me Myself: Toward Authentic Accessibility in Digital Libraries. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 110(3), 111-126.