Hi, Utah.
Wow, it’s 2019. Amazing how time flies, huh?
Just a few generations ago, when people thought of Utah, religious-fundamentalist-polygamist-weirdos-slash-criminals came to mind.
For a lot of people, they still do.
But now? Well, by now Utah has hosted the Olympics. Utah has helped spawn the Osmonds and Napoleon Dynamite and a gosh-darn good presidential candidate — and now junior U.S. senator — in Mitt Romney.
Heck, Utah has even legalized marijuana. (Kind of.)
The point is, you’re moving toward a better, more progressive place. And that’s heartening, Utah.
Which is why I wanted to have a little talk with you about... well, let’s call it a particular and peculiar portion of your, and my, state.
Southern Utah.
St. George. Cedar City. Home to Southern Utah University and the Utah Shakespeare Festival. Jumping-off-point to Zion, Bryce, the Grand Canyon and more.
You’re getting to a better, more progressive place. And that’s heartening, Utah.
Of course, Southern Utah is also home to the Mountain Meadow Massacre — plus the divisive CHS Redmen mascot that’s been reported on nationally.
Let’s just say that Southern Utah isn’t exactly known for being, um, the most forward-thinking part of the state. Or the region. Despite valiant local attempts to counteract that perception.
Which brings me to my point.
It’s a serious problem I have, and it’s with the last bastion of what I call “acceptable unacceptableness” in Southern Utah.
One word. One name.
“Dixie.”
For as long as I can remember, Dixie was shorthand for Southern Utah — mostly St. George, because it occupies a position in the deepest, southwestern portion of the state. A literal corner of the Lord’s vineyard that Brigham Young thought might be a great place to grow cotton and tobacco.
You know, like the good plantation owners in the South used to do. Using slave labor.
Of course there was no slave labor among Southern Utah settlers — unless you count those settlers themselves, commanded by Brigham Young to somehow grow traditionally Southern crops successfully in the arid desert of the American Southwest.
Spoiler: it didn’t work.
But. “Dixie” definitely stuck. Long after the crops failed.
Still, I have to say, I can’t imagine another state in the Union calling its southern portion Dixie and getting away with it. Especially today.
Why? Because the word Dixie stands for something: something our country went to war over — a cancer that had to be cut out of our republic at an unimaginable cost.
And something that the North ultimately vanquished.
Or not.
Because right now, in 2019 Utah, TV meteorologists still use “Dixie” when reporting on the balmy conditions toward the south.
Right now, in St. George, Utah, thousands of students are attending Dixie State University and Dixie High School.
Right now, hundreds of local businesses in both St. George and Cedar City are operating under a name that includes the word Dixie.
To call this concerning is to state the painfully obvious.
It’s the last bastion of what I call “acceptable unacceptableness” in Southern Utah.
Google “Dixie High School” and see what comes up. The first umpteen results are for… drumroll… a high school in Southern Utah.
Not the Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri or Mississippi.
But in the American Southwest. In Utah.
The stark truth? No one would dare name a school “Dixie” in the deep south.
And yet in Utah, it’s completely fine to name not only a high school but a state university after the Confederacy.
Not to mention a whole National Forest.
The reason is simple: Utah — and Southern Utah in particular — has always identified with the Confederacy.
Yes. The Confederacy. And everything the Confederacy symbolized.
Before you object, let me remind you that slavery was originally legal in Utah. Both of African and Native peoples.
I’ll also point to the fact that Brigham Young encouraged his followers to “buy up” young Lamanite children (the Mormons’ made-up name for Native Americans).
Cut to the 20th century, where a black man (or a black anyone) would have had a very hard time spending a night in Cedar City or St. George or Washington well into the 1970s.
Brigham Young encouraged his followers to “buy up” young Native children.
It was also in the ’70s that the Mormon Church finally lifted its ban on Blacks holding the priesthood and entering temples... a cool 15 years after the Civil Rights Act.
In other words: Utah doesn’t have a great history when it comes to its views and treatment of non-whites.
So it should be hardly surprising when you learn that the Dixie moniker in Utah was created by… a former slave overseer and slave owner. A man named Robert Dockery Covington, who hailed from North Carolina and Mississippi.
And someone who not only used lethal violence on his own slaves, but bragged about raping them.
He was also the first president of the Washington Stake (the Mormon version of a parish). And he wasn’t alone:
The fact that the settlers at Washington were bona fide Southerners who were steeped in the lore of cotton culture—many of them, at least—clinched the title. Dixie it became, and Dixie it remained. ... The name “Dixie” is one of those distinctive things about this part of Utah ... It is a proud title — Andrew Larson, I Was Called to "Dixie" (p. 185) [Emphasis in original]
“Proud.” Interesting choice of words. Only because it’s so wrongheaded in 2019.
So I’ll cut to the chase. It’s time you lost the D-word, Utah.
It’s offensive. And besides, there are a thousand better names to sum up what the St. George area — and its academic institutions — have to offer.
A wild, ridiculous notion?
No more ridiculous than clinging to a racially charged name applied by a former violent slave owner and his fellow Confederates-turned-Mormons 175 years ago.
Hi, Utah. Cedar City recently woke up and ditched the offensive “Redmen” moniker.
Can St. George, and Utah, muster the courage to do the same?