Anti-Black prejudice appeared in most neighborhoods as regularly as the paperboy. At the height of Germany's Nazi power in 1939, Sheldon Brewster (a Salt Lake City realtor and later Democratic speaker of the Utah house of representatives) gathered a thousand signatures asking the Salt Lake City commission to designate a section of the city as an African American ghetto. After the commission refused to pass such blatantly racist legislation, Brewster tried to induce Blacks to voluntarily agree to sell their homes and buy into his ghetto plan. African Americans and their supporters marched on the state capitol in protest, but many real estate companies tried to achieve Brewster's goal informally by inserting "whites only" covenants in contracts until such restrictions became illegal in 1948. Nevertheless, municipal and private swimming pools, including Ogden's Lorin Farr Park and Farmington's Lagoon, remained segregated and off-limits to African Americans until after World War II.

African American entertainers and celebrities who visited Utah had difficulty finding hotel rooms, and Blacks who bought tickets to hear them perform or who went to watch motion pictures found themselves listening and watching from the balconies of concert halls, theaters, and resorts. The French African singer Lillian Yavanti stayed with acquaintances in Salt Lake City because she could find no hotel to take her in. Salt Lake City hotels refused accommodations to Metropolitan Opera contralto Marian Anderson in 1937. In 1938, the Hotel Utah rented her a room only after she agreed to ride up in the freight elevator. In 1948 and 1951, conditions had changed so much that when Anderson returned, the Hotel Utah accommodated her without question. Moreover, she sang to a standing-room-only audience at the LDS Salt Lake Tabernacle in 1948.

Similar discrimination and special accommodation greeted other visitors, though celebrities often managed to circumvent the restrictions. The Hotel Newhouse made an exception to its anti-Black policy for Harry Belafonte because of his fame. Vibraharpist Lionel Hampton and jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald suffered from similar prejudice. . . .

… [W]hen LDS Church President Spencer W. Kimball announced a revelation in 1978 that gave the priesthood to all worthy men and opened the temple to all worthy members, even the theological rationale [for anti-Black prejudice] disappeared. Nevertheless, even with the new revelation, discrimination in Utah remained at about the same level as in surrounding states. . . .

At about the same rate as nearby western states, and at a rate faster than most southern states, conservative Utah legislators passed laws prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations and employment more slowly than the national Congress. As part of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit discrimination in schools, colleges, employment, and public accommodations, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to extend the franchise to all people. The national legislation applied to those Utahns receiving federal grants or engaging in interstate commerce. In 1956, Utah repealed the restriction on Native American voting; in 1963, the legislature took the antimiscegnation law off the books; and during Calvin Rampton's administration in 1965, the state began to pass civil rights legislation mandating the equal treatment of all people.