On June 2, 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. stood slightly to the right of Lyndon B. Johnson watching the president sign into law civil rights legislation that he and many others had tirelessly worked to achieve. The signing ceremony of The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was broadcast live to the entire country. This new legislation prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin in public places, provided for the integration of schools and other public facilities, and made employment discrimination illegal. Two thousand and eighty miles west, Utahns were assessing what impact this would have on their state. Although they had never lived under the strict Jim Crow laws that governed the South, segregation was still practiced within the Beehive state and eradicating it would be a community effort.
Prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Black travelers would often use The Green Book when planning trips across the country. First published in 1936, the book functioned as a continually updated guide of safe places for them to find accommodations, entertainment, or services. It was the guiding beacon of Black tourism in America. Although today we might think of Utah as a prime vacation spot thanks to a variety of outdoor recreation opportunities, for Black travelers the state would not appear in the Green Book until 1940.
Public accommodations and entertainment venues were usually segregated in Utah and, in some cases, unwelcoming entirely to Black Americans. While Black travelers could find less discrimination and more outright desegregation at national parks in Utah, getting a room or finding a place to eat made enjoying them incredibly difficult.
In what would be one of the first notable desegregations in Utah entertainment, Robert Freed opened Lagoon Amusement Park in Farmington to anyone in 1949. Freed, born in Utah, had just completed five years in the infantry during WWII when he left the service in 1946. Lagoon had been closed during the war, but upon Freed’s return to Utah, he leased the amusement park and revamped it to reopen in 1947. An adamant supporter of civil rights, Freed was pained by the lease terms that required he keep the pools and ballrooms segregated. For three years, he abided by those terms until he was able to renegotiate the lease and desegregate Lagoon entirely — one of the first amusement parks in the United States to do so.
By the time the Civil Rights Act was signed, Lagoon had been desegregated for 15 years. Freed became close friends with the Salt Lake chapter of the NAACP, receiving their Human Rights award in 1963. One of the important friendships he made was with Dr. Charles Nabors, Jr.
Nabors, born in Cleveland, Ohio, became the first Black faculty member of the University of Utah in 1958 after being hired on as a research assistant for the Department of Anatomy in 1956. He served on the executive board of the Salt Lake NAACP and the Utah Humanities Council and was a prominent figure in the civil rights movement in Utah.
Nabors focused on desegregating public accommodations and entertainment, organizing the first-ever civil rights protest in Utah at the bowling alley Rancho Lanes in 1962. He would go on to organize several other protests and eventually, with Freed, push for the 1965 Public Accommodations Act in the Utah Legislature.
With the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act just a year before, many people questioned the need for a Utah law essentially guaranteeing the same thing. Freed, Nabors, and others argued that with a state law in place, it would create the ability for Utah to provide funds and code enforcement to address violations more quickly. At the time, if a business chose to ignore federal law and refuse service based on race, the person refused would have to place a complaint that had “120 days to receive redress.” A Utah law would allow for faster and more efficient enforcement of desegregation.
Over the course of the 1965 Utah Legislative Session, the Accommodations Act would receive several amendments before passing 25-0 in the Senate and 62-3 in the House.
In subsequent years, Utah would enshrine into law various other complements to federal law, such as an Equal Housing Mandate in 1967. For Utahns, what was happening across the country unfolded in their backyards and among their community members just as intimately as in other parts of America.
Sources:
- Cecil Stoughton, President Johnson Signing the Civil Rights Act in the East Room, July 2,1964, photograph, Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library and Museum/NARA, Austin, TX, https://www.whitehousehistory.org/photos/fotoware?id=3CB89DF8BD55491E%20B06D36C46803A6AA.
- Thomas G. Alexander, “The Civil Rights Movement in Utah”, History to Go, Utah Historical Society, accessed April 19,205, https://historytogo.utah.gov/civil-rights-movement-utah/.
- Christine Cooper-Rompato, “Researching Segregation in Utah”, Utah Historical Society, accessed April 19,2025, https://history.utah.gov/researching-segregation-in-utah/#:~:text=James%20and%20Ida%20Hampton%20owned,at%20fifty%20cents%20a%20night.
- Aubrey Glazier, “Lagoon’s Desegregation”, Intermountain Histories, accessed April 19,2025, https://www.intermountainhistories.org/items/show/85.
- “Robert Freed Dies, Lagoon Chairman”, Salt Lake Tribune, July 18,1974, https://newspapers.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s62v7m53/26630288.
- Charles Nabors, interview by Leslie Kelen, December 1,1983-January 24,1984, Interview 330-1, transcript, Everett L. Cooley Oral History Project, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:80444/xv48007.
- Utah State Legislature, Senate, Senate Bill 44, 1965 Session, pg. 13 of 19, https://images.archives.utah.gov/digital/collection/428/id/55806/rec/9.
- Utah State Legislature, House of Representatives, H.B. No. 279, 1967 Session, pg. 1-11, https://images.archives.utah.gov/digital/collection/432n/id/44973/rec/10.