Green Flake was an early African-American member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and was one of the three enslaved African-American Latter-day Saint pioneers who entered the Salt Lake Valley on July 22,1847.
15 Facts About Green Flake
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Green Flake was born into bondage on a plantation in Anson County, North Carolina.
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Green Flake received his freedom sometime in the early 1850s and married Martha Morris.
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Green Flake was born a slave on the Jordan Flake Plantation in Anson County, North Carolina.
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James and Agnes Green Flake took him when they moved from North Carolina to Mississippi a few years later.
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Green was sent by James Flake to take some mules and a carriage, cross the plains with the first company of Saints, and remain out west to build a house for the Flake family in preparation for their arrival.
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On July 13,1847, Brigham Young sent Orson Pratt and others, including Green Flake, to prepare the way into Salt Lake.
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Green Flake was re-baptized on August 8,1847, by Tarleton Lewis and confirmed the same day by Wilford Woodruff; many Latter-day Saints were rebaptized when they reached the Salt Lake Valley to show their commitment to the faith.
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In 1854, Amasa Lyman, a church leader in California, wrote a letter to Brigham Young on behalf of Agnes Green Flake, asking for Young to send "the negro man she left" so Agnes Green Flake could sell him.
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Brigham Young responded that Green Flake was in poor health and was needed in Utah to provide for his own family.
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Green Flake moved to Union, near the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon, in 1856.
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Green Flake was the half-sister of Oscar Crosby and Hark Lay.
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Green Flake was buried in the Union Cemetery in Cottonwood Heights, Utah, next to his wife.
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In 1851, after James Flake's death, William Crosby wrote in a letter to Brigham Young that Green was a "Lying disafected Saucy to Brother Flakes wife [sic]".
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One of Green Flake's descendants was Lucille Bankhead, a civil rights activist in Utah and the first Relief Society president of the Genesis Group.