SALT LAKE CITY — Tom was born in Tennessee in 1820, and died in Salt Lake City in 1862.
His life in between has since been reduced to a short list of dates, places, and ownership records. Tom was inherited by a man who traveled with him to the Utah territory and was later acquired by Abraham Smoot, the second mayor of Salt Lake City. He was baptized in the Sugarhouse Ward, and died from “inflammation of the chest,” according to records, when he was 42 years old.
Like many slaves who lived in Utah, little remains to remember Tom by. He has no recorded last name, no identified family, and — until this week — no monument in the Salt Lake City Cemetery, where he was buried.
As cities, states, and institutions across the country this month commemorate the 400th anniversary of captured Africans arriving on U.S. soil, Salt Lake City on Thursday honored Tom and other enslaved Utahns by dedicating a headstone for his final resting place.
The dedication marked “a small step toward rectifying the wrongs of our past,” as Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski described it.
“The truth is, like most American cities, the brutal practice of slavery was used to help build Salt Lake City,” Biskupski said. “This legacy requires that we stand together as a community to take ownership of our past, to right what we can, and to learn from history so that we can build a better future.”
City officials first became aware of Tom when former cemetery sexton Mark Smith, who recently died, came across Tom’s burial record.
“Tom was among the earliest pioneers to this valley, individuals to whom we have erected great monuments,” Biskupski said. “Yet in a final dehumanizing act, Tom was left without even the most basic monument: a gravestone to mark his final resting place.”
But the dedication ceremony on Thursday was about something bigger than a single man, speakers emphasized.
Tom’s life “represents the lives of millions in U.S. history and even here in the state of Utah,” said state Rep. Sandra Hollins, D-Salt Lake City. “It is a reflection of many of our African ancestors whose labor built our nation and this state, but never enjoyed the benefits of freedom on which our society was built.”
Even in the Salt Lake City Cemetery, there are likely other slaves buried in unmarked graves, Biskupski noted. Research is currently underway to identify others there.
“We know that in this, Tom is not alone,” Biskupski said. “The field behind us contains the remains of other enslaved people to whom we also have responsibility to learn about and recognize.”
The relationship between the past and the future was a theme woven throughout Thursday’s dedication ceremony, as speakers including Salt Lake NAACP president Jeanetta Williams stressed the importance of remembering enslaved people like Tom and their contributions.
“When folks say, ‘We don’t want to talk about slavery anymore, we want to forget about that part of our history,’ it is up to all of us to say no.”
“When folks say, ‘We don’t want to talk about slavery anymore, we want to forget about that part of our history,’ it is up to all of us to say no,” Williams said. “The discussion about slavery is very important.”
While slavery in the traditional sense has been illegal in the United States since 1865, clauses remain in both the Utah and U.S. Constitutions allowing slavery “as punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.”
A resolution sponsored by Hollins that would completely prohibit slavery in Utah — but would not affect community service through the criminal justice system — passed unanimously through the Legislature this year and will be on the ballot in 2020.
“We cannot change history,” Hollins said. “But we can recognize it, learn it from it, honor it, and continue to teach it to future generations.”