We have no way of knowing how much of this history George Wilcken Romney heard from his great-grandfather's own mouth. George Romney was eight years old when Wilcken died. There would have been an opportunity for conversation, since the Romney family returned from Mexico and settled in Idaho four years before Wilcken's death. It is hard to imagine that the Romneys wouldn't have visited family en route to their new destination, or that the story would have been forgotten. The event was mentioned in Wilcken's obituary, though Elijah Abel's part in it was not.
This story could well have been foundational for George Wilcken Romney, who took bold, defiant stands in favor of the Civil Rights Movement—at a time when the LDS Church restricted priesthood from men of African descent. Did the Romney children know the history of the man who saved their ancestor's life, or of the shameful lynching that came afterward? Lynchings are etched into the crawl spaces of U.S. history, but this one in particular is directly tied to the experiences of Charles Wilcken—and the hero, for Wilcken's family, was a black man.
Mitt Romney would do well to learn more about his own family's past and the part that black pioneers played in it. He and all those involved in government owe a debt to the past and a promise to the future.
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