Thomas Coleman

Thomas Coleman, about 34, a formerly enslaved man who worked as an attendant at The Salt Lake House hotel, was murdered on the night of December 10, 1866, on a hill overlooking the city that is now the site of the Utah State Capitol; his body, bludgeoned with a large rock and cut across the throat, was found the next morning near the U.S. Arsenal. A local newspaper reported Coleman had been “found in company of a white woman” and speculated he was killed in revenge by a rival for her affection, framing the murder as retribution for crossing racial lines. A sign left on his body was cited by the Daily Union Vedette, a newspaper run by soldiers at nearby Fort Douglas, as evidence the killing had been planned in advance; the Vedette openly criticized the official investigation as inadequate. A coroner's jury nonetheless concluded that “said murder to the jury are unknown,” and no one was ever held accountable. Despite being a member of the church that had once enslaved him, Coleman was buried in a pauper's field rather than a standard cemetery plot. In 2022, the University of Utah, the Sema Hadithi African American Heritage and Culture Foundation, and the Equal Justice Initiative held a joint soil-collection ceremony at Coleman's murder site and at the site where William “Sam Joe” Harvey was lynched seventeen years later in the same city, memorializing both men together.

Salt Lake City, UT · Salt Lake County

• 1866: Case opens — victim reported missing or found.
• Documented milestones (renewed investigation, media coverage, family advocacy) to be added as sourced.
• Present: case remains unresolved. No named suspect has been convicted.

• Victim identity, background, and the December 10–11, 1866 date and circumstances, per the University of Utah's Marriott Library exhibits “Racial Lynching in Utah” and “Century of Black Mormons.”
• A coroner's jury concluded Coleman's killers were “unknown” despite a contemporary newspaper's own skepticism of the investigation; no one was ever held accountable, per the same sources.

• The identity of the person or people responsible for Coleman's murder was never established.
• Whether the killing was actually motivated by a relationship with a white woman, as one contemporary newspaper speculated, or by some other cause, was never confirmed.

• University of Utah, J. Willard Marriott Library — “Racial Lynching in Utah” exhibit
• University of Utah, J. Willard Marriott Library — “Century of Black Mormons” exhibit
• Project Cold Case
• Murder Accountability Project
• NamUs