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Sharing History for the Future: The Nettie Gregory Center Community History Event
Abstract:
A quaint, two-story brick building sits quietly in Salt Lake City’s West Side neighborhood. A tall, newly developed apartment complex to the East and the I-15 to the West shadows this building, almost devouring what’s left of this once popular neighborhood community center. The Nettie Gregory Center, built by and for Utah’s Black community in the 1960s, is currently vacant as it is in dire need of repairs. Without this center, the local community yearns for a safe space for its youth to play and a place for the local Black community and neighborhood to congregate and host events. Through the curiosity of a local journalist, the commitment of the center’s board of directors, and a partnership with the Utah Historical Society (UHS), the Nettie Gregory Center (the Nettie) is slowly but surely coming back to life. This poster will share how the Nettie Gregory Center Community History event came to fruition and how this event provided a place to gather, preserve, and share the history of the past to fulfill a need for the present. The purpose of this community history event was to gather evidence of the Nettie’s historical and community significance so its board of directors can ask for funding to revive the Center and place it on the National Register of Historic Places. For UHS, this was an opportunity to preserve the history of Nettie Gregory and the Center named after her, and Utah’s Black community. Over 30 people came to mingle, learn, share, and reunite with past friends. We conducted 16 oral history interviews and digitized 37 items. With the power of oral history and community building, the history of the Nettie Gregory Center is being preserved and shared to revitalize the community center.