Wilkinson presided over one of the most difficult times ever at BYU.

Found this interesting, from Utah Historical Society:



"Wilkinson informed a few trustees that “a colored boy on the campus [had] been a candidate for the vice presidency of a class and receiv[ed] a very large vote.”

The trustees “were very much concerned.” In fact, Wilkinson recorded in his diary that Harold B. Lee, an influential LDS apostle, had told him that “if a granddaughter of mine should ever go to the BYU and become engaged to a colored boy there I would hold you responsible.” Wilkinson retorted that Lee should “hold himself responsible because he was one of the members of the Board of Trustees that permitted the present policy [regarding the admission of blacks]; that if it was not right he ought to change it.”

All three trustees present for the exchange favored “barring colored students from the BYU.” “This is a very serious problem,” Wilkinson recorded, “on which, of course, there are obviously arguments on both sides but surely we will have to face it squarely and resolve it.” Early the next year, and evidently for the first time ever, trustees went on record as officially “encourag[ing] Negro students to attend other universities.”

"As an Institution we do not look with favor upon marriages of any individuals outside their own race, whatever that race might be, and hence frown upon mixed courtships, which might result in such marriages.

This point of view is not a matter of race prejudice for we believe that all races are important in God’s eyes, but is the out-growth of observations relative to such relationships

...The article is like an hour long but pretty good for info

Glad I was born after all this unfortunate stuff/garbage got figured out. Watching the latest addition of "The Cut", I was thinking about how far the institution has come and how great that is.