Utah basketball team’s experience in Coeur d’Alene shows history of racism still ‘very much alive’ in North Idaho

After racial slurs were yelled at University of Utah women’s basketball players on Thursday evening, many North Idahoans acknowledged the region’s decadeslong struggle with hate speech and white supremacist groups.

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.

It’s improved over time, Kelly said, but the history of North Idaho still lies in the back of his thoughts when he hears about racism in his town.

“I believe in human rights. I’m kind of a bleeding heart,” Kelly said. “And this bothers me.”

What unfolded in Coeur d’Alene became a big news story on Tuesday, taking some of the luster off an otherwise great weekend of basketball in Spokane.

Once the news broke, Coeur d’Alene businesses and residents again sought to reassure people that the city doesn’t tolerate hate.

“Let me be unequivocally clear: the behavior exhibited by these individuals does not represent the values or ethos of the people of Coeur d’Alene,” Linda Coppess, the president of the Coeur d’Alene Chamber of Commerce representing about 1,000 businesses, said in a statement. “Our community strives for inclusivity, kindness and respect for all individuals, irrespective of their background or affiliations. The appalling conduct displayed by these individuals contradicts everything we stand for as a community.”

The North Idaho Task Force on Human Relations, formed in 1981 to counter the growing neo-Nazi and skinhead influence from the Aryan Nations compound in Hayden, was quick to recall the region’s past efforts to combat hate.

Tony Stewart, who founded the task force, urged vigilance.

“This year is another example to those individuals who claim incorrectly that racism is no longer a problem,” he said during a Tuesday news conference. “They are wrong.”

Idaho’s politics often run counter to efforts advocating racial diversity and opportunity for people who have been historically discriminated against.

On Monday, GOP Idaho Gov. Brad Little exclaimed on X: “It’s official – Idaho has banned ‘diversity statements’ ACROSS STATE GOVERNMENT! I’m proud to sign this bill and ensure Idahoans are hired or accepted into college based on merit and hard work.”

On Tuesday, Little took to X again to post a statement on what happened to the Utah players: “Idaho leaders and community members at all levels have been consistent and clear about our values – we fully reject racism in all its forms. There is no place for racism, hate or bigotry in the great State of Idaho.”

Ervin Schleufer, a Coeur d’Alene Tribal member, moved to the Spokane area in the 1970s and said he has been called Native American slurs since grade school.

Throughout his years, he’s worked with many people from across the Idaho border and in Washington – except he’s faced “constant verbal abuse,” he said.

When he saw the news of the Utah team, he thought the scheduling of the rooms of the team at the Coeur d’Alene resort was “poor judgment.”

“How can you not know the history?” Schleufer said. “They should’ve never put those players there.”

In 1973, white supremacist Richard Butler moved to North Idaho and built the Aryan Nations compound just north of Hayden Lake. His group recruited and grew to more than 100 people. The group held parades in downtown Coeur d’Alene and annual summits at the compound.

Brent Reuer, the manager of BierHaus in Coeur d’Alene, has lived in the area since he was 6. He moved to Portland for a couple of years and said he felt better walking down the street there rather than in North Idaho because he isn’t white. He’s experienced some racism but doesn’t fear for his life.

“I remember the Aryan Nations parade … Little kids were doing the heil Hitler as they were dressed in uniform,” he said. “You should never have to have that fear to walk down the street.”

The Aryan Nations were bankrupted from a lawsuit in 2001 and lost ownership of the compound, which included a building with a swastika painted on the roof. It was torn down. The property was eventually sold, and the funds from the sale went to North Idaho College to support human rights education.

“There is clear evidence that such a toxic environment often leads to violence, as we witnessed during the Aryan Nations periods in northern Idaho,” Stewart said of today’s vitriolic political speech. The country is divided, angry and paranoid, Stewart said, and, “It’s showing itself all over.”

He said the biggest turning point came after the 2016 election. It was the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Stewart said. It reminded him of “what Hitler used to do.”

The Charlottesville rally turned violent when a man drove his car into a crowd of people, killing one person and injuring more than 30. Dave Reilly, a self-proclaimed Christian nationalist and alt-right provocateur, was involved in the planning and promoting of the rally at the time.

He was employed as a consultant for a time by the Idaho Freedom Foundation. The vice president of the organization, Alli Megal, wrote on social media Tuesday that he no longer works there.

Reilly, who lives in Coeur d’Alene, interrupted the Tuesday news conference that also included Coeur d’Alene public officials, and claimed he was a member of the media, but would not say which organization. He brought his child to the event and asked a question unrelated to the racial harassment, which led to a tense back and forth between speakers and Reilly. The conference was quickly shut down as people in the crowd booed him.

In the wake of Charlottesville, North Idaho Representative Heather Scott defended the white nationalists when she took to social media to say a white nationalist is “no more than a Caucasian who (sic) for the Constitution and making America great again.

“Therefore, if one is ‘guilty’ of being white, one is clearly racist. And if one is white AND loves America, they are a white supremacist capable of carrying out violent acts against nonwhites.”

Coeur d’Alene was also subject to national news when 31 masked members of a white nationalist group were arrested, suspected of conspiring to riot in the city’s downtown on the same day as a scheduled Pride in the Park event. The group, known as the Patriot Front, is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “a white nationalist hate group” that broke off from a different far-right group after the deadly rally in Charlottesville. Five members of the group arrested in Coeur d’Alene were convicted of conspiracy to riot in July .

While he finds it abhorrent, Stephen Piggott isn’t surprised at the Utah team’s harassment, considering “what we’ve seen brewing in North Idaho over the last couple of years,” he said.

Piggott, a program director with the nonprofit Western States Center that supports communities in social justice organization, said while it’s not “off the table,” there is no evidence the epithets came from a larger coordinated effort of the part of any white nationalist group in North Idaho.

That said, the fact that the individuals responsible felt comfortable to spew slurs openly is a side effect of the atmosphere created by such groups congregating in North Idaho, and a lack of condemnation from public officials.

“Those folks feel emboldened because they’ve been embraced by powerful political institutions in that neck of the woods,” Piggott said. “They haven’t been marginalized, they haven’t been denounced and they feel kind of comfortable saying those things.”

To counteract this mentality, Piggott said a clear censure of white nationalism and bigotry from officials in politics is necessary. To make it clear, “the Idaho you’re trying to create is not going to work; it’s not representative of who we are,” he said.

Stewart said he still thinks there’s a long way to go. The incident just tells him that racism is still around in the pockets of North Idaho.

“Although we have made progress in race relations in our country over the last few decades, particularly with federal laws and state laws, the prejudice and hatred is still with us,” he told reporters. “(It’s) still very much alive.”