On the eve of the 1963 state legislative session, the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) and Utah Citizens Organization for Civil Rights (UCOCR) hosted a chow mein dinner fundraiser at the Salt Lake YWCA. This family-style gathering brought community members together to support a set of civil rights bills the legislature would consider during the session. “Each bill is designed to prevent discrimination against people, regardless of race, color or creed, and to provide equality of opportunity for everyone,” observed the Utah Nippo (pronounced knee-poh).
Utah’s 1963 civil rights bills addressed discrimination in housing, employment, public places (theaters, restaurants, hotels, etc.), and marriage. By the end of the session, Utah’s legislature had passed one of them, ending the state’s 75-year-old ban on interracial marriage. Notably, Utah did so four years before the United States Supreme Court’s decision legalizing interracial marriage nationwide in Loving v. Virginia, on June 12, 1967.
Why did this change in Utah law come about when it did?
From before 1910 through the early 1960s, Japanese Americans were Utah’s largest non-Indigenous ethnic minority group. While this community worked to rebuild economic and social stability after World War II incarceration, the civil rights movement was also taking shape in Black communities across the country. In the American West, these two processes dovetailed, bringing together Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, African Americans, and white supporters to work for change. Utah’s civil rights movement was multicultural.
For Japanese Americans, the right to marry was an immediate concern. Utah’s interracial marriage law had been on the books for a long time — since 1888. The Utah Nippo reported in 1961 that second-generation Japanese Americans “who have married Caucasians have had to marry outside the state. Questions still arise as to whether they are legally married while living in Utah.” The JACL had already led successful marriage reform efforts in Idaho. One lesson of World War II remained top of mind for Utah’s JACL: The voices of the Protestant churches, YWCA, ACLU, and other minority groups had been crucial in defending the constitutional rights of Japanese American citizens. Protecting the civil rights of all Americans was a shared responsibility.
Early in the 1963 legislative session, JACL leader Henry Kasai and University of Utah professor Robert Goff met with Governor George Clyde on behalf of the UCOCR (a multicultural organization) to discuss the proposed civil rights bills. The governor assured them that he favored repealing Utah’s interracial marriage ban. Legislators Ralph Cannon (R) and M. Phyl Poulson (D) guided that civil rights bill through the session, which included a public hearing where Japanese Americans and UCOCR members presented their reasons for supporting it. Later in the session, the NAACP, an African American organization, held a prayer meeting on the steps of the State Capitol to peacefully show their support for civil rights.
In the end, Utah lawmakers took action to reform the state’s marriage law four years before the U.S. Supreme Court reached its decision in the Loving case, which revolved around the interracial marriage of Richard and Mildred Loving in Virginia. Overturning the prohibition on marital unions across lines of race was the first civil rights law passed in Utah. Utah supporters of civil rights continued their work on behalf of the principle “all men are created equal.”
Sources:
- “Chow Mein Civil Rights Dinner,” The Utah Nippo, January 9, 1963.
- Patrick Q. Mason, “The Prohibition of Interracial Marriage in Utah, 1888-1963,” Utah Historical Quarterly 76, no. 2 (2008): 108-131.
- Pamela Perlich, “Utah Minorities: The Story Told by 150 of Census Data,” Bureau of Economic and Business Research, David S. Eccles School of Business, University of Utah, (October 2022), p. 8.
- “No Discrimination Here!,” The Utah Nippo, December 6, 1961.
- Japanese American Citizens League, “JACL History,” https://jacl.org/history.
- “Chow Mein Civil Rights Dinner,” The Utah Nippo, January 9, 1963.
- Alice Kasai, “Utah Legislators Spark IDC Meet,” The Utah Nippo, January 30, 1963.
- “NAACP Mulls Meeting on Capitol Steps,” The Salt Lake Tribune,” February 25, 1963, p. 28.
- “NAAC Hears Review on Civil Rights,” The Salt Lake Tribune, April 2, 1963, p. 8.