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

Bernard Gordon

Bernard Gordon graduated from West High School, Salt Lake City,  where he participated in track and field.  He also competed in track at the University and was the second Black student-athlete to earn a letter in 1931.  

Shirley Kinsey, 1952  

Shirley Kinsey (LaRue) graduated from the University of Utah in 1952 with a degree in education.  She was born in Idaho in 1930 but moved to Ogden, Utah as a child.  She attended Ogden High School and became the first Black student elected to the student council.  She briefly attended Howard University before transferring to the University of Utah.  After graduating, she was hired as the first Black teacher in Ogden Public Schools.  She eventually relocated to Chicago in 1954 before settling in Los Angeles in the 1960s, where she enjoyed a long and distinguished career as an educator. 

Danny Burnett, 1953 

 Danny Burnett graduated from the University of Utah in 1953.  He was born in Garfield, UT in 1928.  During the Great Depression, his father secured a part-time job with Kennecott in McGill, Nevada.  The family relocated there when Danny was in elementary school.  After graduating from White Pine County High School, he attended the University of Nevada for one year before transferring to the University of Utah, where he could live with his grandmother while attending school. He completed a business degree before serving in the Army.  After his service, he returned to Salt Lake City.  He was involved with the local NAACP and worked for Hercules Incorporated for many years.  Danny Burnett's oral history was recorded in 1983.  

Natalie Nathaniel, 1952

Natalie Faye Nathaniel was born in Salt Lake City in 1933.  She attended local schools and was a finalist in a patriotic essay contest while attending Lincoln Junior High in 1946. In 1957, while attending South High School she helped found the Inter-Racial Club, a club dedicated to combatting prejudice.  When she graduated from the University, she relocated to Chicago because racism prohibited her from being hired by Auerbachs department store as a buyer, even after working there for several years as a clerk while in school.  In her recorded oral history, her mother, Ruby Nathaniel,  shared her memory of Natalie as a college student and recounted Natalie's decision to leave Salt Lake.  

. . . graduated from the U. She was just so outgoing, everybody--well, she would call her professors and talk to them on the phone. And the dean of women was very friendly with her and everything. And I told her one day, I said, "Natalie, I wish I could be more like you." I said, "You just seem to meet everybody, and no, you're not afraid of anything or anybody." And she said, "Well, Ma, they're just people. They 're just people just like me." -Ruby Nathaniel, Oral History, 1983

And she worked at Auerbachs in the china department. They had a big store there on State Street and Third South, and she worked there all the time she was going to college. She helped put herself through. And when she graduated, the buyer, the head of the china dept. told her, "Natalie, you know as much about this department as I do." She said, "You could take it . . . and run it as well as I can. But I can't give you a job here because you're black." So Natalie had to go to Chicago.- Ruby Nathaniel, Oral History, 1983

In Chicago, Natalie built a life. She was hired as a buyer for Carson Pirie Scott & Co. She married Archie B. Weston, an attorney and had four children. She passed away in Chicago in 1997.