The
Problem
Virtually
all Latter-day Saints are familiar with the inspiring and
at time heroic stories of the great migration that took
place in Mormon society in the 19th century.
We know of the tragic events that forced the Saints to
abandon Nauvoo, the City Beautiful, and seek a new home
in the West. The exodus that led to the arrival of the
pioneers in Salt Lake valley in 1847 was only the beginning.
From then until 1869 and the coming of the railroad, tens
of thousands of the faithful crossed the plains.
We
know of the touching stories of these believers in the restored
gospel, making their way westward, and this heritage still
thrills us today. But this diaspora was a continuing phenomenon:
the incredible effort put forth by families with oxen and
wagons; the handcart companies; the assembling of immigrants
in Liverpool, waiting for a ship to cross the Atlantic to
begin the journey to Utah. These are stories of sacrifice
and courage and the firm belief that Zion was just over
the hill.
By
the beginning of the 20th century, the situation
was changing and moving into a reverse mode. The great
territory of Deseret, after Utah gained statehood in 1896,
was divided into new states including Utah and Idaho. Mormons
were now full fledged members of the Republic once again.
As the first three decades of the 20th century
took place, a new and different social movement slowly began.
This was a reverse migration, a movement of people
away from the “Mormon Corridor”–the traditional LDS
heartlands of Western Canada, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, and
the Mexican colonies. This movement picked up steam and
became one of the driving forces to change the Church during
the course of the new century: it was the outmigration
of LDS people across the land–the coming of the Urban Pioneers.
This
new social movement was different from the earlier migrations.
In the face of decreased job opportunities in Utah and Idaho,
a growing population had fewer options at home--the situation
in the Mormon Corridor was changing. Church leaders now
suggested that Zion could be found elsewhere than Utah–it
could be where the faithful resided. The biggest difference
from the earlier migration was the fact that this was an
individual choice. Persons decided to move to larger
cities outside of the Rocky Mountains for several reasons:
first, to seek higher education; second, to find a job;
third, to gain job training to advance their careers. Although
there were many reasons, these three principal factors
caused young men and women to move to Washington D.C., New
York, Chicago, San Francisco or Los Angeles. These were
the original five great “magnet cities” which attracted
young Mormons in the spirit of Horatio Alger. As the century
progressed, Boston, Detroit, Seattle and a dozen other cities
would also become important destinations for young LDS seeking
their fortunes.
The
Urban Pioneers were small in number before World War II,
but although the quantity was low, the quality was very
high. Time and time again the record shows that these early
outmigrants not only achieved secular success in business,
the professions, or education, but they became the pillars
on which the development of Church rested in these new areas.
In plain words, in almost every instance, the host city
found that it needed the leadership skills of the outmigrants:
the records of the 20 cities investigated in this project
show very clearly the heavy reliance on these persons as
opposed to local converts to provide the leadership to help
the Church grow.
Examples
of successful outmigrants in the first half of the century
abound. Take for instance Harvey Fletcher, the BYU professor
who moved his family to New York before World War I to work
at the Bell Laboratories. He became both a distinguished
scientist and administrator, and was later tapped to be
president of the New York Stake. Or consider Reed Smoot,
who became the first LDS senator. His activity in Washington
was crucial for the growth of the infant LDS community there,
since he helped hundreds of young people to secure jobs.
Or
look at the case of John K. Edmunds, who after graduating
from the University of Utah, went to Northwestern University
in Chicago to study law in the early 1920s. He stayed on
until the 1960s, and was the longtime stake president during
the time of great expansion of the Church. Or consider
Howard Stoddard, who went to Washington in the 1930s to
work at the Federal Reserve. During the depression, he was
assigned to help straighten out banks in Detroit. His success
there led to local businessmen persuading him to stay in
Michigan and set up his own bank, which he did. It grew
into the famous Michigan National Bank.
At
the beginning of this article, we mentioned G. Stanley McAllister.
He was a Salt Lake boy who went to Washington in the 1920s
after a New England (Eastern States) mission, got a federal
job with buildings and grounds in the capital, later used
that experience to work for CBS in New York for almost two
decades, and finally became a senior vice president at Lord
& Taylor and New York Stake president as well.
One
of the most compelling outmigration stories is that of Roy
Oscarson of Pleasant Grove, Utah, who in the midst of the
depression started selling shoes in Salt Lake City, rose
through the ranks of shoe stores in Seattle and the West
Coast, and finally became general manager of one of the
world’s largest shoe companies located in St. Louis. He
too became stake president and helped develop a respected
place for the growing LDS community in that old Midwest
city.
World
War II was a turning point, since it marked the beginning
of a mass migration away from the Mormon heartlands. For
example, factories in Los Angeles beckoned Utahns such as
Le Roy Nisson and his wife, of St. George, as early as
1940-41, to help the defense effort. Nisson stayed on and
by the 1950s became a prominent dentist to many Hollywood
movie stars. Nisson was typical of thousands of LDS who
went to California and Washington state to work in war industries.
After the war, during the course of the second half of the
century, the outmigration became a mass migration
fueled by many factors.
One
major reason was the expansion of Brigham Young University,
growing almost fivefold in two decades, and sending thousands
instead of hundreds of graduates to seek careers and new
homes in the traditional magnet cities. A second reason
was the fact that a number of cities in the West and Midwest
were exploding in growth-- places like Phoenix, Denver,
and Portland in the West, and Omaha, Kansas City, St. Louis,
and Minneapolis in the Midwest. They and cities in the
southwest and south, such as Dallas and Atlanta, became
new magnet cities for the Urban Pioneers. And then came
Las Vegas–at first glance an unlikely target city for Mormons,
but which mushroomed during the last two decades of the
20th century.
This
new post-war mass migration was responsible for the incredible
growth in stakes in these metropolitan areas between 1950
and 2000–for example, from 3 in Phoenix to 39; from 1 in
Seattle to 23; from 1 in Washington, D.C. to 15. Or the
daunting figures for the greater Los Angeles area: from
9 to 54. The Church was on the move, and it was primarily
the outmigrants who were propelling it forward.
Mormon
outmigrants moved into the political arena: George Romney
as governor of Michigan; John Driggs as mayor of Phoenix;
David Haight and Jack Wheatley, both elected mayor of Palo
Alto. By the end of the century, Mormon senators from Utah
were joined by LDS senators from Oregon, Idaho, and Nevada.
And in the new century, another Romney became governor of
Massachusetts.
In
the business arena, many corporations were now headed by
outmigrants, such as Mark Willes of General Mills and the
Los Angeles Times, Kay Whitmore of Kodak, and Nolan Archibald
at Black and Decker. Later, we note the arrival in the
executive suite of Kevin Rollins at Dell Computer. Mormons
now began to appear on the annual listing of the Forbes
400. And for good measure, another Utah boy, Kim Clark,
became dean of the Harvard Business School.
Furthermore,
if one were to examine the records of the LDS General Authorities,
one would find a great number of persons from traditional
Mormon lands who built successful careers abroad, so to
speak, and then were called back to Salt Lake to manage
the Church. One thinks of Dallin Oaks at the University
of Chicago Law School, L. Tom Perry in Boston, Henry Eyring
at Stanford.
The
Research Response
The
Outmigration Leadership Project was started at BYU in the
College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences. It was later
adopted by the Marriott Graduate School of Management,
with the support of Dean Ned Hill. Recently, the L. Tom
Perry Special Collections Library has become another sponsor.
The
Project has identified 20 major metropolitan areas in the
United States to study, but with particular emphasis on
the five original “magnet cities” mentioned above. These
20 cities bring geographical diversity to the enterprise,
and range from Boston to Los Angeles, and from Seattle to
Atlanta, with places such as Dallas and Minneapolis in between.
Interviews are sometimes conducted with relevant persons
who migrated to other cities, or persons who lived in two
or three “target cities.” But most of the data comes
from the study of these 20 urban destinations.
How
does the Project operate? For a given city, after consultation
with Church and community leaders, a list of potential interviewees
is drawn up. This is then discussed informally with knowledgeable
people and then a “short list” is drawn up of persons to
be interviewed. This is not a sociological or social science
project but a history project, and no representation
is made that we are producing a “scientific sample.” Our
philosophy comes from the humanities and emphasizes the
quality and uniqueness rather than quantity and measurement.
In the final analysis, we believe the historian, with his
or her training in looking at the larger society, is able
to provide useful observations and insights into an unusual
social movement.
The
reality is that this new, 20th century diaspora
of Mormon people has rarely been studied to date. Yet by
understanding this movement are we able to perceive how
the Church was transformed from a local and provincial entity
in 1900 into a national institution (and yes, an international
institution) by 2000. The Outmigration Project seeks to
provide answers to a number of questions about how Mormon
society was transformed from a rural, marginal group to
a national, cosmopolitan society. One of the key reasons
is because of the leadership qualities that the outmigrants
possessed, which enabled them to succeed both in the secular
world and in the development of the Church in new areas.
Typically,
the Project investigates what happened in a community by
using two approaches. First, in one scenario, a community
based Roundtable is scheduled, and knowledgeable leaders
are invited to participate in a day long meeting to discuss
how the outmigration made an impact on their own city.
Second, in another scenario, an individual interview is
set up to record the personal experiences of an outmigrant
or his or her family. In both cases, the proceedings are
taped, and the transcripts are placed in the L. Tom Perry
Special Collections section of the Harold B. Lee Library
at BYU.
There
are many benefits that will flow from this project, but
here are two which are quite obvious:
First,
the Project has identified Mormon community leaders who
deserve to have their place established in the larger history
of the Church. Some have achieved regional and national
renown in the secular arena; others have achieved stature
in callings from the Church; many have achieved success
in both areas of activity. For historians who will eventually
write the history of the larger Mormon society in the 20th
century, these materials will be invaluable.
Second,
this project furnishes wonderful inspirational stories of
courage, pluck, sacrifice, and steadfastness which rival
the heroic pioneer tales of the 19th century
and first migration. To be sure, the Urban Pioneers are
different–theirs are stories of people moving to the big
city rather than crossing the plains. But the process
involved was the same, and the motivation to find a
better life, was similar. Both required large amounts
of faith and plain old hard work.
To
date, the Project has conducted about 400 taped interviews.
Many of these have been transcribed; creating a transcript
for every interviewee is a high priority for this project.
The period from 1900 to about 1970 has been fairly well
covered, and at present, to finish up the study, we are
conducting interviews mainly focused on the last third of
the 20th century. But we are always interested
in relevant material from 1900 to 1970 to help fill in any
“gaps.”
Special
Roundtable in Washington, D.C.
An
example of an Outmigration Project seminar is the Washington
D.C. Roundtable, which took place on November 13. About
a dozen Washington area leaders participated in a lively
discussion on the subject: “The Origins and Development
of the LDS Community in Washington, D.C.” The Roundtable
was chaired by G. Wesley Johnson of the Marriott School
faculty, assisted by Dr. Mark W. Cannon, a former administrator
at the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Burger. It
is planned to publish the proceedings at a later date.
An overview report on this Roundtable will be presented
as Part II of this article, to appear later in Meridian..
[Parts
of this article have been excerpted from an article to appear
in a forthcoming number of BYU Studies. ]
