FIVE POINTS
PANEL 1 TITLE: ORIGINS
Between 1880 and 1910, Denver's African American population grew from 1,046 to 5,246 - and most of the growth occurred in Five Points. The neighborhood, one of the oldest and most attractive in the city, had traditionally housed prominent Denverites of diverse backgrounds. But in the late nineteenth century, middle-class white residents began migrating out of Five Points, and African Americans - who, increasingly, faced housing discrimination elsewhere in town - rushed in to fill the vacancies. By the early twentieth century Five Points ranked among the West's largest and most prosperous black urban enclaves, with a thriving business district, three newspapers, and several fine hotels. It had enough stature to lure the national convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to Denver in 1925. Segregation and outright racism continued to plague African Americans outside of Five Points, but here they might find good opportunities - and better futures.
Work
Joseph Rivers, editor of the Colorado Statesman, touted Five Points as an "aristocratic" black neighborhood, but its residents were more accustomed to labor than leisure. Before World War I, the vast majority of Denver's African American workers held service jobs, earning their livings as cooks, janitors, domestic servants, or hotel porters. Many worked for the railroads, while others found employment in one of the neighborhood's black-owned restaurants, stores, barbershops, or dry cleaners. And Five Points supported numerous African American dentists, doctors, lawyers, undertakers, and other professionals, along with the national headquarters of the Woodmen of the World Assured Life Association (a fraternal organization that provided life and health insurance) and, briefly, a black-owned mining firm - the Bonita Silver and Gold Mining Company. Although the neighborhood didn't quite live up to Rivers's "aristocratic" claim, Five Points did possess a dignified air - one befitting a proud, hard-working, self-reliant community.
Images on this panel:
Photograph: Fire station
(Caption) When this photograph was taken, between 1910-1930, Fire Station Number Three, on 2363 Glenarm Place, was the one station where African American firefighters could work.
Courtesy Denver Public Library, Western History Collection
Photograph: Railroad Porter
(Caption) The railroads provided steady, relatively well paying work for many African American men and women. Porters, like the man in this 1910 photograph, served passengers and helped link Denver with African American communities throughout the West.
Courtesy Denver Public Library, Western History Collection
Photograph: Beauty Salon
(Caption) In the mid-twentieth century, the Granberry Beauty Salon and other Five Points' businesses not only provided jobs and services, but also were social centers for the community.
Courtesy Black American West Museum
Photograph: Muddy Street Scene
(Caption) Before the 1890s, African Americans lived and worked throughout Denver. An African American owned the drug store shown here around 1888, in downtown Denver on 16th Street.
Colorado Historical Society
Photograph: Class studying
(Caption) By the beginning of the twentieth century, most African Americans lived in Five Points and adjacent neighborhoods, but the neighborhood remained ethnically and racially diverse, as this photograph of students at Gilpin School, on 29th Street and Stout Street, shows.
Courtesy Denver Public Library, Western History Collection
PANEL 2 TITLE: COMMUNITY
Recreation and Leisure
When not working, Five Points residents enjoyed the same recreations as white Denverites - but rarely with whites. The city's culture of segregation excluded African Americans from most of the city's parks, swimming pools, golf courses, restaurants, nightclubs, and fraternal organizations for the first half of the twentieth century. The black community responded by creating its own institutions and sponsoring its own social events, including dances, picnics, bicycle outings, formal dinners, and mountain excursions. On a day-to-day basis, African American families enjoyed ice-cream sodas at the Radio Pharmacy, matinees at the 22nd Avenue Theatre, and baseball games at the local diamond (present-day Sonny Lawson Field). At night they could hear Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and other big-band stars in Five Points' theatres and cabarets. Here they often stood shoulder-to-shoulder with white jazz fans - one of the few acceptable points of contact between the races in Denver.
Community
The Mission of the Self-Improvement Club, formed in 1906 by a group of black Denver women, was to promote "all lines of literary, art, charitable, and social activities." Similar goals inspired many other benevolent societies and volunteer organizations in Five Points. The Negro Women's Club Home ran a busy day-care center, while the Taka Arts Club established a scholarship fund and the Five Points YWCA operated a summer camp in the mountains for African American girls. Labor unions, servicemen's organizations, and other neighborhood groups ran complementary programs. But no institutions were more active than Five Points' churches. In addition to providing day care, job referrals, emergency housing, and other forms of support, the churches served as vital social and civic centers - de facto town halls. None of these organizations, whether religious or secular, pursued overtly political goals, but all were decidedly activist - hard working advocates for Denver's black constituency.
Images on this panel:
Photograph: Church
(Caption) Shorter African Methodist Episcopal Church, shown here in its location at 23rd and Cleveland Place in the early twentieth century, was one of the many churches and places of worship that formed the backbone of the community.
Courtesy Denver Public Library, Western History Collection
Photograph: Women's Club meeting
(Caption) These members of the Denver Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, meeting in 1956, were part of a tradition that began in the 1890s. African American women formed literary and social clubs that organized services for the community ranging from clothing drives to book groups.
Courtesy Denver Public Library, Western History Collection
Photograph: Street scene at night
(Caption) Welton Street in the mid-twentieth century. From the days of the streetcars to the present, Welton Street has been the neighborhood's commercial life.
Colorado Historical Society
Photograph: Picnic
(Caption) Fraternities, sororities, and social clubs contributed to Five Points' lively social scene. Clubs often offered excursions and trips for their members, like this 1962 picnic sponsored by the Capetowners.
Courtesy Denver Public Library, Western History Collection
Photograph: Baseball team
(Caption) The White Elephants Baseball Club played in Denver from 1915-1935 and this 1930 photograph shows them at their prime. Pitcher Tom "Pistol Pete" Albright, (top row, fourth from the left) also played for several professional Negro League teams.
Courtesy Black American West Museum
Photograph: Jazz Band
(Caption) By the 1940s, jazz musicians throughout the country knew that they would find enthusiastic audiences in Five Points. The neighborhood's venues attracted nationally known musicians, like the all-woman International Sweethearts of Rhythm, shown here.
Courtesy Paul Stewart and the American West Institute
PANEL 3 TITLE: CIVIL RIGHTS
Civil Rights
In 1867 Congress, heeding a petition signed by 137 of the roughly 150 African Americans living in Colorado, insisted that the Territory guarantee voting rights to black men as a condition of statehood. This was the opening salvo in an ongoing battle for civil rights in Colorado, one that African Americans fought on many fronts over many decades. It flared anew in the 1890s, when Five Points resident Joseph Stuart - the first African American elected to the state legislature - sponsored a bill designed to end housing discrimination and other forms of racial intolerance. The measure passed, but segregation continued - indeed worsened, despite the efforts of political organizations such as the Denver chapter of the NAACP (formed in 1915). In the 1920s, politicians allied with the Ku Klux Klan gained control of the state government - an indication of how deep Colorado's racial divisions ran.
After World War II, Denver's wall of segregation began to erode. Many businesses started hiring African American employees in the 1950s, while restaurants and theatres - responding to pickets and boycotts organized by civil-rights activists - began serving African American patrons. The 1960s brought further gains, as local black leaders - including Rachel Noel (Denver's first African American school-board member) and Lauren Watson (head of the local Black Panthers chapter) - led campaigns to integrate the public schools, curtail housing discrimination, reform police procedures, and spur economic development in Five Points and the adjacent Whittier neighborhood. These achievements so altered race relations in Denver that voters elected a black mayor - Wellington Webb - to three consecutive terms in the 1990s. Although African Americans had by then found homes throughout metropolitan Denver, Five Points remained what it long has been - one of the mountain West's most prominent black urban enclaves.
Images on this panel:
Photograph: Black Panther family
(Caption) During the late 1960s and early 1970s, members of the Denver branch of the Black Panthers, like this family at an event in 1968, added a militant voice to the city's civil rights struggle.
Courtesy Denver Public Library
Photograph: Marchers
(Caption) These marchers at an NAACP rally in 1965 supported one of the central demand's of Denver's civil rights movement: Safe, affordable housing available to all regardless of race.
Courtesy Denver Public Library, Western History Collection
Photograph: Brown is Beautiful
(Caption) In May 1975, two central figures of Denver's civil rights movement participated in a dinner to honor George Brown, the first African American state senator and lieutenant governor. Rachel Noel, a prominent advocate of desegregation of the school system, became the first African American on the Denver school board in 1965. Regis Groff (standing) served in the state senate for twenty years.
Courtesy Denver Public Library, Western History Collection
Photograph: Dentist's office
(Caption) Denver native Dr. Clarence Holmes (1892-1978) was a dentist and leader of the city's civil rights movement in the first part of the twentieth century. He helped found the Denver-branch of the NAACP. In the 1920s, when this picture was taken, he was a leader in the struggle against Colorado's Ku Klux Klan.
Courtesy Denver Public Library, Western History Collection
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