During Wednesday’s Summit County Council meeting, the county’s leadership paused to reflect on the death of George Floyd and the past two weeks of protests.
They recalled some of the episodes they’ve lived through in recent history, and said that, sadly, the U.S. doesn’t seem to be making much progress in race relations.
The topic came up during the Council Comments segment of their meeting.
Council Member Glenn Wright recalled that he was a junior in college when Reverend Martin Luther King was shot.
“A year later I was in pilot training in south Georgia. My first roommate was a black officer who lived in Biloxi, Mississippi. And on vacations, he could actually drive back to Biloxi, from south Georgia, and the Florida Panhandle and Alabama and Mississippi. In 1969, he wouldn’t do so unless he was dressed in his pressed-blue Air Force uniform, cause he was afraid that either the Klan or law enforcement in that area would harass him and possibly pull him over to the side of the road and beat him up or kill him. I had hoped that in 50 years, we would have gotten over that particular problem. But apparently, we have not.”
He added that he comes from a racially-mixed family.
“Every time I hear of an incident, I fear for portions of my family. So let’s as, as a society, let’s get our act together.”
Council Chairman Doug Clyde commended the youth who are out peacefully protesting, but warned them that the issue they’re pursuing is the work of a lifetime.
He said that as a young teenager in the 60’s, he was aware of the civil-rights struggle.
“At that time, I was living in Santa Barbara—by the way, which is the most lily-white community in the United States. But even at the age of 12 or whenever it was that this came up, I knew that what was going on in the South was wrong. We as a nation came together and got rid of the segregation policies, the Jim Crow laws that were plaguing the South at the time. I, like probably most other people, thought that while we were not going to change anybody’s mind by changing the law, over time we expected I think, that things would improve. The answer is that, unfortunately, things did not improve dramatically. Instead, the issues seem to have gone underground.”
Clyde said that the social-equity programs being undertaken by the Park City community are not only timely, but urgent.
Summit County Attorney Margaret Olson said that fortunately, the County Sheriff’s Office has some good leadership from Sheriff Justin Martinez, who has fostered a culture of accountability and transparency.
She said in her own office, the recent events have led to a lot of reflection and honest conversation.
“Hopefully, we’ll see some real systemic change. I was in law school during the Rodney King riots when Los Angeles was burning. And looking around after my entire career, and seeing that we’ve not made progress is very discouraging.”
Summit County Attorney Margaret Olson.
