BYU Slavery Project

The BYU Slavery Project began as an initiative of assistant professor of history Christopher Jones in 2019. Jones completed a PhD in early American history at the College of William & Mary, where he learned about the school's Lemon Project. The project, named after an enslaved man once owned by the university, studies William & Mary's extensive connections to slavery and history of racial discrimination. After becoming a professor at Brigham Young University, Jones discovered that Haden Wells Church, one of his own LDS pioneer ancestors, was a slaveowner with tangential ties to Brigham Young Academy (later Brigham Young University). Church had brought an enslaved African American man named Tom to Utah. At some point following Tom's baptism in 1854, Church transferred ownership of Tom to his bishop, Abraham Smoot, who would later move to Provo, where he served as mayor and became the chief benefactor of Brigham Young Academy....