Obscure history and archaeology of the Salt Lake City area (plus some Utah West Desert) as researched by Rachel Quist. Follow me on Instagram @rachels_slc_history
In 1900 a SLC saloon owner charged his Black customers 5 times the normal price for beer which resulted in a gunfight on the streets of SLC.
Lewis Link owned the saloon at 201 S State (now occupied by the Parkside Tower building). Link grew up in Missouri and served in the Confederate Army with his father during the Civil War.
Link conspicuously placed a sign stating that “Drinks 25 cents to all colored people at this bar.” This was 5 times the normal price ($7.75 vs $1.55 a drink in today’s money).
On May 14 1900, it was payday at Fort Douglas and a group of Soldiers from the 9th Cavalry (Buffalo Soldiers) came to SLC to spend some money. The Soldiers likely had known about the sign for some time as many had previously been patrons of Link’s Saloon.
William Maddick, an English-born White man, was a bartender at Link’s Saloon that night. The Soldiers ordered drinks, paid the normal price, and then left the bar.
Maddick confronted the Soldiers and shot 5 rounds into the streets of SLC. He shot 2 people: 16-year-old Andrew Roy White, a Black teenager who worked at Fort Douglas and who was trying to be a peacemaker and settle the debt, and 40-year-old Willis Pearsall, a Black man who was a civilian bystander who was walking home.
It was reported that Maddick was likely drunk during the incident. Maddick said that the Soldiers shot at him first; however, a doctor’s inspection indicated a rock, not a bullet, grazed his head.
The two people shot eventually recovered from their wounds.
William Maddick was arrested and tried for assault with intent to murder.
Every effort seemed to be made to protect Maddick during the trial. When he first appeared in court the Judge asked how did he plead, Maddick said “Well I was the man who did the shooting, I guess.” The prosecution objected and insisted Maddick be given more time to consult with his attorneys. Witnesses for the prosecution were also intimidated and urged to retract their testimony.
In the end, William Maddick was acquitted by a jury as the shootings were considered justified in self-defense.
R. Bruce Johnson. From The Salt Lake Herald Apr 3 1904
Salt Lake City’s actual first (as far as all my research can
determine) Black police officer was R. Bruce Johnson (1849-1921) rather than
Paul C. Howell (see my previous post).
R. Bruce Johnson (1849-1921) was Salt Lake City’s first
Black police officer, although in reality he was of mixed ethnicity with
African ancestry making up a minority of his heritage.
Johnson self-described himself as one-eighth African heritage that he
inherited from his maternal line. He was light skinned and could certainly pass for White (and maybe he did when he lived in New Orleans). However, while he lived in SLC, he primarily associated with the African American community and was well known as a member of it.
In a
1904 newspaper article he stated that his mother was ¼ African heritage and ¾
Choctaw Native American heritage while his father’s line and his maternal
grandfather’s line were both White. He was
described in the same newspaper article as “Tall and broad, with straight hair of
medium hue, a strong nose and light complexion, he would never be taken as a
colored leader by a person who did not know him… [but] the law of radical
distinction has thrown him with the men of African extraction ever since he
attained manhood.” (SL Herald Republican 1904-04-03 p 1).
Johnson was born in 1849 in Little Rock, Arkansas. It is unclear if he was born into slavery but
his father was a slave dealer in Little Rock while his mother was a person of
color, as described above.
When Johnson
was a boy his father died and soon after a law passed in Arkansas mandating all
free blacks (were he and his mother slaves who were freed upon the death of his
father?) to move out of state, so Johnson’s mother packed up her family and
moved to Indiana.
While in his 20s, Johnson moved to New Orleans where he
became active in local politics, was appointed to the police force, and was a
saloon owner. He also met and married a
White woman, Christine, whose family was from France.
In 1891, Bruce Johnson arrived in SLC with a letter of
recommendation from the recently murdered, and internationally famous, New
Orleans Police Chief David Hennessey.
Johnson immediately got himself involved with local SLC politics being
closely associated with the Black Republicans. This letter and his political connections got
him out of some minor trouble with SLC police for disturbing the peace and got
him placed on the Salt Lake City Police Department in the fall of 1891.
Local newspapers initially praised Bruce Johnson for his qualifications
and his work on the police force and often referred to him as a Detective,
although I could not find any specific evidence that he was ever formally made
that rank. (Hence why it is likely that Paul C. Howell was SLC's first Black Detective).
By June 1892, the newly elected non-Mormon and liberal Mayor
Baskin removed Johnson and others from the police force during a “cleaning
house,” likely for his continued associations with saloon keeping and renting
rooms to ladies of “questionable morals.”
Johnson’s defense of such associations was that he learned valuable
information through his association that lead to several convictions and imprisonments.
Paul C. Howell, another person of color, replaced Johnson on
the SLPD in 1892, beginning a tradition, for a time, of having one Black man on
the Salt Lake Police Force. William H. Chambers
followed Howell.
After leaving the Salt Lake police force, Johnson mostly kept to
saloon keeping and politics. More
information about Bruce Johnson’s political life and his ability to “deliver
the Black vote” for SLC politicians can be found at “The Boss of the White
Slaves” by Jeffrey Nichols Utah Historical Quarterly V74 N4 2006 p349-364.
Another scandal in 1904 caused Bruce Johnson to finally
leave SLC. Johnson shot at a White man
after being called a “nigger” by him while drinking in the Red Onion Saloon on
Commercial Street (now Regent St).
The White
man was lightly wounded on the scalp and Johnson offered to pay all of the
man’s medical bills. To the dismay of
the local conservative newspapers, Johnson got off fairly lightly with no jail
time and only needing to pay a hefty fine.
This latest controversy and the slanderous newspaper
articles about him were finally too much for him and he left SLC and settled in
Los Angeles, where he lived a quiet life and died in 1921 at the age of
71.
Bruce Johnson and the Red Onion Saloon on what is now Regent St. From Salt Lake Herald Jan 2 1904.
Bruce Johnson, officer at the 1895 Constitutional Convention. Image from UDSH.
Update 8 Feb 2021:
Check out this SLC History Minute video about Bruce Johnson:
