Annaley Naegle Redd Lecture
Going Over Jordan: Researching the Enslaved Black Utah Pioneers
Historian Amy Tanner Thiriot will talk about the search for the experiences of the enslaved pioneers, and how history can be a comfort and challenge and a corrective and healing force. Enslaved Black Latter-day Saint pioneer John Burton said in a testimony meeting that he was ‘going over Jordan.’ The River Jordan was a symbol of freedom to enslaved Americans, and gained new meaning as enslaved people helped settle Utah and lived and died near Utah’s Jordan River.
Amy Tanner Thiriot
Amy Tanner Thiriot is a family and community historian. She teaches in the BYU-Idaho Family History Research program. She wrote the book Slavery in Zion: A Documentary and Genealogical History of Black Lives and Black Servitude in Utah Territory, 1847–1862 (University of Utah Press). It won awards from the Western History Association and Utah Historical Society and other organizations, as well as the Evans Handcart Award. She also published women’s biographies with Deseret Book. She is currently writing about the women of early Washington County, Utah. Her work relies on an Akan proverb: “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.” Whether her time searching historical records is focused on the Black pioneers or the women who helped settle the harsh deserts of southwestern Utah, it is always focused on bringing the past into the present, so we have better information on how to understand our heritage and keep moving forward.
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