The Utah team was staying at the Coeur d’Alene Resort after it was selected to play in the NCAA Tournament hosted by Gonzaga University. As team members walked from the hotel to a downtown restaurant, they were followed by a driver in a truck who was shouting racial slurs at them.
When they left dinner to return to their hotel, the driver and others who were recruited to harass the team followed them back to the hotel, revving their trucks’ engines and harassing them further, according to a police report.
Cecil Kelly III, a longtime resident of Coeur d’Alene, was not shocked by what happened, but he is saddened.
Kelly remembers in the 1960s there were agreements between the business community that “you would not rent a room to a Black person.”
“And you would not feed a Black man,” he said.
Any person of color living in East Washington absolutely knows about the level of racism there. Utah is a shit hole. There domestic terrorist Matt Shea, who wanted to start a new state in that area.
They’re also the state that was anti-vax and was punishing medical staff for trying to save people. So you had situations where people were infected and flooded Spokane for care, since doctor & nurses were leaving.