A Tribute to Juneteenth: A brief history of Black people in Idaho | Local News

Despite that, Black history in Idaho is not the most well-documented. A legislative timeline of Black history in Idaho begins in 1805, with York, the servant of William Clark. York traveled with Clark and Meriwether Lewis through Idaho.

The next entry isn’t until 1860 — when Black people were among the “many miners, explorers, trappers, soldiers and cowboys” in Idaho.

One such miner, William Rhodes, amassed a fortune of $80,000 and made such an impact that Rhodes Creek was named after him — a clear example of a Black man coming to Idaho for opportunity.

Despite the dearth of information, Black people have been important contributors to Idaho history, from those whose legacy is remembered by many to those who worked to succeed their whole lives, without recognition.

“There’s so many everyday people that I have respect for,” said Cherie Buckner-Webb, Idaho’s first elected Black legislator. “There are so many people and they were great singers and they were great, hardworking everyday people that I never heard complain … they just persevered. That’s the strength and character of the people that I grew up (with), who were African-American.”

There is currently only one Black legislator, Chris Mathias, D-Boise.

Idaho was a free territory and there were fewer exclusionary laws, Board President and Idaho Black History Museum Director Phillip Thompson said. For example, Idaho integrated schools in the 1870s, about 20 years before it became a state in 1890.

“I think that Idaho has nothing to apologize (for) regarding its Black history,” Thompson said. “In comparison to what was going on elsewhere, in that same year, in that same era, that Idaho should be commended.”

However, many Black Idahoans still did face and continue to face discrimination.

“All people are worthy of note and our contributions have been no lesser than others. And in order to honor humanity in its entirety, we must notice not only the sameness but the difference,” Buckner-Webb said. “And we contribute differently and we contribute in a very real way.”

Three friends walked out of a corner coffee store on Ash Street one chilly Wednesday this month. A black cat perked its head up and rolled over on the sidewalk across from a row of townhouses. Construction noises rang out from a building covered in scaffolding. This area, the River Street neighborhood, used to be where many Black people and poor white immigrants lived, according to the parks service report.

Many Black families lived downtown, until they were segregated and pushed more into the River Street area, the parks service report said. However, some Black people who worked as domestic help lived in worker-housing in areas like Warm Springs, the North End and Harrison Boulevard.

“That whole area in the ‘50s became a concentrated spot for Black Idahoans,” Thompson said.

Several people who spoke with the Idaho Press said Black history is American history.

“It’s highlighting the people that for so long have been invisible,” said Vallivue School District Board Chair Toni Belknap-Brinegar, likely the only Black woman chairing a school board in Idaho. “The people who, despite laws in place, they did what their hearts told them to do.”

And Idaho’s history is dotted with important people, making contributions big and small, including Mamie Greene, who lived in a tiny home just off Hill Road. She started her own cooking and catering business, working for rich and powerful families along Harrison Boulevard.

In 1899, Jennie Hughes became the first Black person to graduate from the University of Idaho.

Milton H. Davis, who came to Lewiston in the early 1900s, was the state leader of the Black & Tan Club, an unofficial group of Black voters, according to the Lewiston Tribune.

In 1948, Reginald Reeves became the state’s first Black law student. However, he was isolated at the University of Idaho. After graduating, he joined a law firm in Idaho Falls.

Mamie Oliver was Boise State University’s first Black professor, the Idaho Press previously reported. The first Black elected official in Idaho was Thomas Purce, who was elected in 1973 to the Pocatello City Council. A few years later, he became Pocatello’s mayor and later the director of the Idaho Department of Administration and the Department of Health and Welfare, as previously reported.

Jerome Mapp, in the 1990s, became the first Black man elected to Boise’s city council. And Buckner-Webb in 2010 became the first Black woman elected to the Idaho Legislature.

“I’m making history, Cherie made history. There’s so many of us that are making history right now. That should be celebrated,” Belknap-Brinegar said.

Belknap-Brinegar, who grew up in Homedale, said she wasn’t overtly discriminated against because of the status of her parents and grandparents, who were ranchers and teachers. But she said she still wasn’t completely accepted.

“I just kind of elbowed my way in,” she said. “(I’ve) always been the person that if I wasn’t invited to the table, I just bring my own chair.”

Cars drive on State Street near the tall majestic Capitol building, unaware of the history surrounding the two-story red brick building just behind the statehouse. This structure, with snow-filled flower beds in front, was the Grand Army of the Republic Hall. A black plaque near the front door lists it on the national register of historic places. Now, though, the front door says to ring the bell for a law firm.

In the early 20th century, Black Boiseans performed a play at the hall, and held meetings there for a variety of groups. The Colored Progressive Society met at the hall and the Young People’s Social Club organized a formal Black dance there.

“In 1906, the Colored Progressive Society…convinced black voters to boycott an election after white people refused to honor a promise to appoint a black delegate from the 16th precinct to the county’s convention,” the National Parks Service report said. “Black members refused to vote for candidates the white-dominated caucus endorsed, then later rallied at the GAR to discuss the snub.”

However, activism didn’t really coalesce into a statewide movement until the Aryan Nations arose in the late 20th century, the parks service report said. Earlier in the 20th century there were very few Black people, mostly in Boise and Pocatello, and fewer still had cars with which to make the 235-mile journey between the two cities.

But there were still people in Idaho fighting for their rights. One of the most famous may be John West, whose resistance may be some of the earliest recorded instances in the state.

West, originally from Philadelphia, came to Boise in the 1860s. In 1870, he pulled a gun on white election workers who would not take his vote, the parks service said. Ultimately, he was able to vote.

“He was a Black man who had been locked up two times before, trying to vote. But the courts decided they had to take his vote because the passage of the (15th amendment),” Thompson said. “The fact that Idaho honored that, to me is much more a stronger story about what Idaho has been historically.”

In 1875, West fought a man who called him a slur, according to the parks service.

“As a proud old man, he carried the banner in the pioneer parade processions,” the parks service document said about West.

There were plenty of segregated establishments in the state, according to the parks service report. Some advertised that they had all-white staff. In March 1940, Marian Anderson, a Black opera singer, was refused space at three hotels. Eventually, the Owyhee relented, but she had to use the back service entrance and eat in her room.

Black people were banished from Mountain Home, Sandpoint, Shoshone and twice from Burley, according to the parks service report. Emmett also had a sundown practice, meaning Black people could only be in town during daylight hours, the report said.

In the early 1920s, Ku Klux Klan recruiters showed up. By May 1922, around 1,000 Boiseans were members, the parks service report said.

“By September 1923, it produced its first large parade, with fireworks and an induction ceremony that caused traffic jams downtown due to crowd size,” the report said. “Chapters and marches spread to Nampa, Payette, Pocatello, Shoshone, and Lewiston, among several others.”

Racial discrimination continued throughout the 20th century — the parks service report said Black people were supposed to avoid Main Street. Black people in Boise or Pocatello could not try on or return clothing in department stores.

There is still progress to be made. For example, almost a third of the state’s hate crimes from 2011 to 2020 were committed against Black people. And Black Idahoans in 2017 were imprisoned at five times the rate of white adults, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Mario Pile, Director of the Black and African American Cultural Center at the University of Idaho, said there is a lack of diversity in leadership statewide and in the educational sphere.

“My internal personal experience here living in Idaho has been very difficult…and I try not to project my own struggle onto the whole state,” Pile said. “When I lived in Meridian, my neighbor had Confederate flags out in front of their house. And then after I moved in, they added one more.”

Pile said people walk on the other side of the road near him and people have clutched purses as he walked by.

“Yes, there’s some seemingly lingering white supremacist behavior. … But there’s also a lot of people who value diversity and inclusion,” Pile said.

He said he hopes people in Idaho can do the work, including having conversations and reading books with Black characters to their children.

“I can tell you right now that I’ve lived in a state of uncomfortableness, so much so that I don’t even really know what it would be to be comfortable,” Pile said. “I’ve had to just take that on and it is because most people won’t do the simple work of doing it within their own homes. And if we do do that, I think we would be such a better community for it.”

Right near the Capitol, cars and trucks rumble down the road, stopping at the intersection of Eighth and Jefferson streets. Over a hundred years ago near that intersection, stood the new Pinney Theatre, built by former Boise Mayor James Pinney. A stone’s throw from the GAR building, the intersection now includes the Capitol grounds, the Borah Post Office and two parking lots.

Back in the day, the Pinney Theatre was segregated — only by mid-century were Black people allowed in the balcony. The theatre also showed The Clansman in 1908, a play which inspired the racist movie Birth of a Nation. In April 1916, crowds came from hundreds of miles away to see Birth of a Nation at the Pinney Theatre. The Boise City Council embraced the film, according to the National Parks Service, despite Black opposition.

Throughout Idaho’s history, there have been moments where politicians embraced racism and segregation. At the same time, there have been other politicians who fought for equal rights and attempted, at times, to protect Black people.

For example, the namesake of the post office, Borah, has a complicated legacy.

In 1903, respected Boisean James Quarels had protected a Black boy who was being “abused by a white man after a baseball game in Nampa,” according to the parks service report.

White men started punching Quarels and a white police officer drew his gun. Quarels then drew his own gun and aimed at the white men punching him. However, Quarels shot the police officer and was arrested.

“Lynch mobs formed quickly and stormed the Nampa jail, but Nampa’s mayor turned the crowd back,” the report said. “Governor Frank W. Hunt and attorney William Borah then secured a train to export the two black men to Boise for protection.”

There were no recorded lynchings in Idaho from 1882 to 1968, according to the NAACP.

However, Borah also played a “key role” in defeating several antilynching bills, the parks service report said. In 1926, Borah wrote a letter to W. E. B. Du Bois in which he said “such bills…were and are founded upon a wholly false theory.”

But another senator, Glen Taylor, took “consistently uncompromising positions against racism of any white elected official in the state’s history,” the report said. He interrupted a Dixiecrat filibuster and called out racist arguments from Sen. Ted Bilbo. He ran for vice president on the Progressive Party ticket with Henry Wallace.

On the campaign trail, Taylor walked through a “colored” door instead of the “white” door and was taken to jail.

Another governor, Robert Smylie, created a committee to remove racial discrimination from the state’s constitution.

“This included ridding its ban against Asians and Indians voting, and repealing the state’s anti-miscegenation law,” the report said. “To please conservatives, he framed these efforts as a means of preempting federal interference.”

However, many in Idaho cared and continue to care about equality and equity.

The Young Women’s Christian Association, the female counterpart to the YMCA, was a “path-breaking champion of racial integration in the 1950s and 60s,” the parks service report said. The association hosted integrated dances and sponsored an Interracial Friendship Club. The League of Women Voters in both Boise and Pocatello also championed racial integration, the report said.

Thompson, the director of the Black history museum, said Idaho has been one of the best places in America for Black people.

Angela Taylor, co-founder and partner with The Dignitas Agency and owner of Indulge Boise Food Tours, said she had a great childhood growing up in Mountain Home. Many people in the community were “supportive and instrumental” in her development.

“I think that that’s the nuance that I think oftentimes is missed, is you can always strive to get better,” said Taylor, who had a good experience in Idaho. “And good experience also includes there was challenges and being called the N word and a lot of experiences and exposure to all the isms, right? Sexism, racism, that can be debilitating, and still, the overarching thing was it was a good experience.”