Pioneer Remembrance Day circa 1886, Willow’s Creek, Idaho Green Flake describes slavery: Bishop Simmons introduced him, and Green took the pulpit. He started slow but then got going and told his tale—what it was like to dig and hack out the trail the later pioneers would follow; what it was like to drive Brigham Young’s wagon and to know Brother Brigham on a personal basis; what it was like to see a grizzly bear lying dead at his feet and... Read more

Enslaved people Elizbeth and Green Flake (ages 5 and 10) were given as wedding gifts to James and Agnes Love Flake. In this segment, Darius Gray and I depicted the moment when Liz was taken from her mother and prepared to become the property of Agnes Love Flake. We know that Green was told that his mother had died. This was not true, but he was told this so that he wouldn’t run off and seek her. This excerpt is... Read more

A short excerpt from The Last Mile of the Way. (more…) Read more

Excerpt from The Last Mile of the Way. Everything in this excerpt is true as well as Darius Aidan Gray could remember it. I include a photo of the book with its original cover, because this is Darius’s family. He is the baby. The setting is Provo, Utah, 1965. I was in fourth grade at Wasatch Elementary School. Darius had no idea what was awaiting him in Provo as he came to study at Brigham Young University. (more…) Read more

This is the roster for The Race Horse, a ship which sailed from South Africa to the USA. On it were Susan Talbot, one of my ancestors on my Blair line, her many family members, and a Xhosa slave, Gobo Fango. (Xhosa refers to a particular area/dialect in South Africa.) I knew the history of Gobo Fango before I realized that I had a family connection.  In fact, I wrote an article about him for BlackPast . Gobo Fango’s history... Read more

  Darius Gray’s grandfather, Louis Gray, was born a slave in Marshall, Missouri in 1858. We put the Louis’s family–his grandparents, Gracie and Louis–into our second book of the Standing on the Promises Series. We researched the history and even visited the segregated cemetery in Marshall. Finally, we wrote the scene where Darius’s great grandmother was auctioned to the Gaines family. We wept as we wrote the last sentence. Read it as though you were sitting next to a descendant... Read more

In 1968, conspiracy theories flourished that blacks from California were coming en masse to Utah, where they would start riots which would result in blood “flowing down the street.” I heard these scary reports from a Home Teacher, who read an alleged prophecy from John Taylor, which was subsequently revealed as a fake. But we all-white Provonians were a ready audience and utterly scarable. I definitely was scared. It was quite a different experience for Darius, of course. He found... Read more

In 2012, I was teaching LDS Institute in Spanish. Most of my students were from Mexico, but I had some from Chile, El Salvador, and Puerto Rico. I had attended summer training for Seminary and Institute teachers at BYU and had received the manual given to all instructors. It was November and I still had not opened it. I was more than halfway through the Doctrine and Covenants when I decided to see what was in the supplement. It was still shrink-wrapped.... Read more

Today, June 19th, 2020, I give you the excerpt from The Last Mile of the Way, which I wrote with Darius Gray fifteen years ago. We used vocabulary (“Negro” “Colored”) consistent with our narrator’s time. This excerpt addresses the Greenwood massacre. The cover of this book in its original publication shows Darius’s family–his parents, Elsie and Darius (Derrus) and his sister Sandra. Darius is the baby. End of Chapter 22 Thousands of former slaves had migrated to Oklahoma to find... Read more