Amy Tanner Thiriot

This book is an interesting mix of American history, Mormon history, the history of slavery, family history, and a debunking of various racist and pro-slavery lies told by white families since the mid-1800s. It weaves together bits of stories ranging from North Carolina and Mississippi to Utah and California, providing a lot of different information on how various people (Black, white, or other) actually lived, versus the softly racist fairy tales about how "colored servants" freely chose to follow Mormon colonizers to Utah, rather than them being brought there involuntarily due to being slaves.

Now I'm not going to lie - I'm neither Black, Mormon, nor from Utah, so a lot of the family history (which goes on for pages) was not the most attention-grabbing stuff I've ever seen. I imagine it would be much different for someone who actually does have relevant family history or specific research interests. However, I did grow up in the South and I've heard lots of self-soothing fairy tales told by guilty white people who like lying to themselves - mostly of the "my great-great-great-grandfather was nice to all his slaves and never ever beat them" variety. It's interesting how a number of families who previously owned slaves are listed as trying to do various things to cover up those facts - editing old photographs to whiten Black faces, lying about their family histories (including eugenics/race science nonsense about "blood purity", which is relevant due to the long history of white slavers raping female slaves for the purpose of producing more slaves), and trying to cross the names of slaves out of family Bibles or other histories.

It's also interesting to note that while the Mormon church and Brigham Young in particular do not seem to have been huge fans of propagating and reproducing slavery in Utah, they also didn't do anything to free the slaves brought to Utah by other Mormons, and helped cover up those facts by telling racist lies, calling their slaves "servants" instead. Plus, I didn't realize Brigham Young believed in the Hamitic Hypothesis - which, for those who don't know, is a Bible-based racist fantasy about how God wants Black people to be servants/slaves forever.

It's also important here to note that yes, just about every institution from the mid-1800s was terrible on the issue of civil rights for non-whites and women, and the Mormons were no exception. This does not excuse those people for being terrible racists, it just means that they were terrible racists like almost everyone else. Also, unlike other sects, the Mormon church retained blatant anti-Black racist policies up until the 1970s.

Also, as another reviewer has noted, this kind of book is important because people who don't know what critical race theory are calling for this kind of book to be banned or burned. The real history of racism and slavery are A: not what CRT is, and B: truth, which scares some people.… (meer)

Slavery in Zion is an especially important book in these times when many states in the US are either actively banning books and any discussions on critical race theory or attempting to do so. History and truth are becoming subjective. Amy Tanner Thiriot, with Slavery in Zion, has given us the gift of her meticulous research that has resulted in this very readable historical documentation of slaves in Utah living among the Latter Day Saints in Utah. This is a fascinating history that debunks the narrative that Black people living in Utah in this period had chosen to come there with their masters from the south. If you appreciate history, you'll appreciate this.… (meer)