Thanks to a tip from another gentle reader, we're pleased to spotlight an article appearing in this morning's Salt Lake Tribune, published in connection with today's Martin Luther King Holiday. The article provides brief profiles of four "trailblazers who helped pioneer the civil-rights path in the Beehive State," two of whom we can claim as Emerald City's own. Here's the lede:
Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream and Barack Obama, with his historic inauguration, is helping to fulfill it. But so, too, did African-Americans in Utah.Read the full article here:
Today, we feature four of those barrier breakers, brave souls who blurred the color line and advanced civil rights in the Beehive State.
Get to know Utah's first black legislator, who protested by lying down on city streets and inside the Capitol; the state's first black judge, who rose from dishing out assists as a University of Utah basketball star to handing out justice as a 3rd District jurist; an NAACP icon, who became a tireless children's and education advocate; and, finally, the "Queen of 25th Street," an Ogden jazz-club owner who defied the era by allowing black customers.
• Utahns pave way for civil rights, see long road aheadWhile not the most intellectually or historically provocative MLK Day article we've stumbled upon on the web this morning, or any other MLK Day morning, we enjoyed reading the four brief vignettes and thus commend this article to our gentle readers. The article has a certain charm to it, we think... not too light, and not too heavy... neither frivolous nor ponderous. A short reprieve from our usual red meat diet, perhaps? And frankly we can never read enough about Ogden Legends Rev. Harris and Ms. Wheatley.
We invite our readers to chime in with their own impressions, anecdotes and comments, of course.
For lack of a better label, we'll subtitle this article our Martin Luthor King Day Special.
