While Salt Lake City officials gathered Tuesday for a celebration to raise the city’s new Juneteenth flag over City Hall, Utah’s governor had a blunt response to the ongoing feud over the display of such banners:
“The whole thing’s just dumb,” Gov. Spencer Cox said.
That assessment came after about 100 people joined Mayor Erin Mendenhall, City Council members, business and academic leaders in raising the red, blue and white bursting star banner heralding the end of U.S. slavery — this one customized with a sego lily (found on the official city flag) in the corner — as the spiritual pulse of an African drum resounded in reverence.
The noon ritual was a tacit show of resistance after the city adopted three new flags in May alongside its official banner as a way of bypassing a state ban on such displays on public schools and government buildings.
“I’m sure [city leaders] feel great that they got around this dumb law,” Cox said at a monthly news conference not long after Tuesday’s flag raising, “and they did it with dumb flags. The whole thing’s just dumb.”
Members of Utah’s African American community, however, offered deep gratitude as they gathered under shade trees on downtown Salt Lake City’s Washington Square to commemorate Thursday’s approaching Juneteenth holiday. They then lifted the city’s own specially enshrined version of the Juneteenth flag over City Hall.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Salt Lake City's Juneteenth flag is raised at City Hall in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, June 10, 2025.
Along with honoring Utah’s heritage, Tuesday’s event saw descendants of some of the state’s pioneering Black families voicing their thanks to the city for preserving the ability to fly a version of the historic symbol.
“Juneteenth for us is more than just a date in history,” said Betty Sawyer, an organizer for Juneteenth commemorations in Utah and executive director of Project Success Coalition. “This is a pivotal moment in time that not only impacts where we’ve been but where we are today and, most importantly, where we are on our way.”
On an initiative from Mendenhall, the city adopted the lily-marked Juneteenth banner as one of its own in early May, along with similarly embellished versions of pride and transgender visibility flags.
The move was an attempt at an eleventh-hour legal workaround to the Utah Legislature’s HB77, which barred such banners at schools and government buildings.
The city’s version of the pride flag flew at City Hall over last weekend’s Utah Pride Festival.
HB77 passed into law without the signature of Cox, who said Tuesday he did not support the city’s approach and derided its alternative flags.
In fact, the state’s top Republican said the city’s flags and the bill that prompted them were both “dumb.”
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Gov. Spencer Cox speaks during his monthly news conference in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, June 10, 2025.
Asked about the city’s move to adopt versions of the three flags as official banners in hopes of keeping them flying, Cox called the approach “ridiculous.”
“I feel bad for the Japanese American. I feel bad for the Polynesian Americans. I mean, who are we leaving out here?” he asked at a monthly news conference.
The governor added that instead “we should raise the American flag, and let’s unify around that. It’s a great flag, represents everyone, and the Legislature doesn’t need to be in everybody’s business all the time.”
Under HB77, the lone flags approved for display at public schools and on government buildings were to be limited to the U.S. flag, Utah’s state flag (along with historic versions of those flags), city flags as well as banners for Native American tribes, the Olympics, the military, other countries and universities.
The altered Juneteenth, pride and transgender flags were adopted unanimously as official city flags by the LGBTQ-majority City Council in early May, just as HB77 was about to take effect.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Mayor Erin Mendenhall and members of the Salt Lake City Council join Betty Sawyer in raising the Juneteenth flag at City Hall in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, June 10, 2025.
The mayor said in an interview Tuesday the adoption had not been the subject of any direct legal challenges.
“This is what determination and partnership and creativity look like,” she told attendees as the Juneteenth flag went up. “Our values aren’t changing. Diversity, equity, inclusion are our values. Yes, that will never change. And the City Council, my team, but, most of all, the community, we’ve got to stand up for our values with joy and love and openness for each other.”
At Tuesday’s flag-raising, participants invoked their ancestors as well as mentions of the forced journeys of African slaves across the Atlantic, the Emancipation Proclamation and the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.
Celebrants also heard a ritual reading of portions of General Order No. 3, issued June 19, 1865, in Galveston, Texas, in a proclamation freeing all enslaved people in that state.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Emma Houston speaks at a celebration of Juneteenth National Independence Day at City Hall in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, June 10, 2025.
Though the holiday originated in the Lone Star State — one of the symbols featured on the Juneteenth flag — the event “stands for the freedom of every Black American,” said Emma Houston, assistant vice president for community engagement at the University of Utah.
“Juneteenth is all about celebrating,” Houston said, “and we want you to continue to celebrate the importance of what this flag represents and what it symbolizes in the state of Utah and in Salt Lake City.”
