Every July, Utahns commemorate the pioneers who traveled West and settled Salt Lake Valley. But some pioneers are only recently becoming a familiar part of that story.
Filmmaker Mauli Bonner said he first learned about the enslaved pioneer featured in his film, "His name is Green Flake," when he attended a presentation on Black Latter-day Saint history.
“I never heard that name," Bonner said. "And then they said ‘the first wagon driver,’ and then now I'm in shock as they go on to talk about him being enslaved as a 19-year-old, driving the first wagon into Emigration Canyon — and it hit me in a way that I can hardly describe… I felt like I had a duty to tell Green's story.”
Green Flake wasn't alone.
Historian Paul Reeve said three enslaved Black men arrived in the Salt Lake Valley with the first company of Latter-day Saint pioneers in July 1847. Other Black families arrived later that year.
“Green Flake, Hark Wales, and Oscar Smith were sent ahead by their enslavers to build shelter and plant crops," Reeve said, "so that when their enslavers arrived the next year in 1848, they would have houses to live in, food to eat.”
Reeve, a Latter-day Saint himself, is the Simmons Chair of Mormon Studies at the University of Utah. Much of his research focuses on Black Latter-day Saints, whose stories have long been part of Utah's history — even if they haven't always been part of the way many Utahns remember it.
“If you exclude Black people from the pioneer experience," Reeve said, "you're not telling the full story.”
So why don’t more people know this part of pioneer history?
"Remembering the fact that Latter-day Saints participated in enslavement, I think, becomes really uncomfortable,” Reeve explained.
And every Pioneer Day, he says he still meets people who are surprised to learn about Black pioneers.
“I think it's indicative of the fact that sharing this means that you have to deal with the racism," Reeve said. "And more often than not, I think the institution is not willing to engage with its own racial past.”
Today, historians and descendants are working to bring those stories to a wider audience through books, documentaries, and public history projects.
In fact, the desire to share that history is what turned Bonner into a first-time filmmaker. He said Green Flake’s story came together on a shoestring budget, and countless volunteers donated their time.
“There was a spirit that lived on set as we were filming," Bonner said. "It felt like the pioneers before us were celebrating as we were doing scenes. Some were fun scenes. Some were very hard scenes to have to get through, but we felt their support of them guiding us through it, and it was just an incredibly spiritual and powerful experience I'll never forget.”
Bonner said he's already working on more films and hopes they encourage people to rethink what it means to be a pioneer.
“A pioneer is much more than a specific race — it's even more than a specific religion," Bonner said. "The Black pioneer legacy is one of strength, endurance, and resilience, and that's something that we all can look to and draw strength from.”
