There were no formal Jim Crow laws in Denver, home to Colorado’s largest African American community. But Black citizens still faced widespread discrimination in the early twentieth century. Denver’s Five Points neighborhood created a sense of community when people  had trouble finding housing except in limited areas, were largely confined to low-paying jobs, and met with segregation in schools, parks, and other public places.  CLICK ON THE STARTS TO EXPLORE DENVER IN THE 1920s.

By 1883, enough children called this suburban neighborhood home to warrant the construction of Whittier School. In 1938, Marie Greenwood taught first grade at Whittier as the district’s first African American teacher. Her grueling yet successful three-year probationary period opened the schoolhouse doors to many African American teachers, including Jessie W. Maxwell, the state’s first African American principal.


Like every other Rocky Mountain resort, Lincoln Hills offered fresh air, beautiful scenery, and a peaceful retreat from the city. But it had something most destinations lacked: African American tourists. Opened in 1922 by black entrepreneurs from Denver’s Five Points neighborhood, Lincoln Hills was an oasis in a segregated society—the biggest resort west of the Mississippi built by and for African Americans. People from across the country came to Lincoln Hills to camp, stay in Wink’s Lodge, or buy a lot and build a cabin. Here amid the splendor of the Rockies, African Americans enjoyed a sense of openness and freedom that was denied them almost everywhere else.


Named for Sonny Lawson, community leader and business owner, this park is one of Denver’s oldest baseball facilities and reportedly the first to feature night games. Denver’s semi-professional African American baseball teams, including the White Elephants and the Stars, played here in the 1930s and 1940s. Professional Negro League players such as Byron “Mex” Johnson, Oliver “Ghost” Marcelle, and Theodore “Bubbles” Anderson also called Denver home


The settlers at Dearfield, Colorado’s largest African American colony, experienced most of the same triumphs and disappointments as their white counterparts. Founded in 1910 with just seven families, Dearfield grew into a town of seven hundred by 1920, with 15,000 acres under cultivation. Over the next decade, however, drought and falling prices hammered eastern Colorado, and Dearfield’s farmers fared as poorly as their neighbors. Debt forced most of them off their land, and by 1930 the colony’s population stood at just twelve.


Playing cowboys and Indians as a child, Paul W. Stewart always had to play the Indian because, as playmates told him, “There is no such thing as a black cowboy.” In 1971, Stewart founded the Black American West Museum to preserve the memory and tell the stories of the countless black cowboys (and Indians!), miners, mountaineers, homesteaders, teachers, and poets who helped settle and develop the American West. The BAWM highlights the accomplishments of African American pioneers in the historic home of Colorado’s first black female doctor, Justina Ford.


Located in the heart of Five Points, Fire Station No. 3 opened in 1888 and housed an all-white fire company until area taxpayers demanded that the Denver Fire Department hire African American firefighters in 1894. When four firefighters perished in an 1895 hotel fire, Denver’s fire chief said of the company:“I only wish every man in the department was their equal.”6- 


Between 1880 and 1910, Denver’s African American population grew from 1,046 to 5,246. Most of the growth occurred in Five Points, the neighborhood surrounding the star-shaped intersection at Welton Street, East 26th Avenue, 27th Street, and Washington Street. 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, several fine hotels, and a vibrant cultural and musical scene. In 2002, the Denver City Council designated Welton Street as a cultural and historical landmark district.


Former enslaved people established the "Mother Church of the Rockies” in 1863. Zion has long served as the core of civil rights activism in Denver, from the movement to establish voting rights for Black people in Colorado Territory to the protest marches of the 1960s to current missions of cultural, social, and economic revival. Zion also represents the movement of African Americans from their original neighborhood north of downtown Denver into Five Points in the 1890s. Zion parishioners bought this building from Calvary Baptist in 1913.


1865-1965 Centenial Celebration Zion Baptist Church Women's Salute Denver, Colo. Mar. 26 1965

Photograph, Centenial Celebration Zion Baptist Church Women's Salute

History Colorado

A former enslaved person and agent on the Underground Railroad, Barney L. Ford made and lost fortunes in Chicago and Nicaragua before reaching Colorado in 1860. Denied a mining claim because of his race, Ford established the People’s Restaurant in Denver in August 1863. Ford opened other hotels, restaurants, and barber shops throughout Colorado and Wyoming. His success led to the inclusion of his wife, Julia L. Ford, on the Denver social register—a first for Denver blacks—in 1898.At 1514 Blake Street in Denver is the building that once housed Barney Ford’s Restaurant. Though it’s been altered over the years, the building’s first two stories are part of the original 1863 structure.


Named for entrepreneur H. W. Ross, who bought the original Baxter Hotel in 1929, the Rossonian Hotel hosted international jazz favorites such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Billie Holiday during their Denver gigs. Along with other neighborhood dance halls such as the Capri Lounge and the Casino Cabaret (now the home of Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom), this 1940s hotspot earned Five Points fame as the “Harlem of the West.”


Shorter AME represents the resilience of African American culture in the face of racial intimidation and economic challenges. Church organizers Mary E. Smith and Mary Randolph solicited donations from patrons of saloons and gambling houses to build the parish’s first church building in 1866. Today’s congregation worships at 3100 Richard Allen Court, at 31st Avenue, one block south of Martin Luther King Boulevard.The Shorter AME Church rose majestically at the corner of Twenty-third and Cheyenne Streets in Denver. In 1925, Ku Klux Klan members allegedly set fire to the building.The Shorter AME congregation built a new church at Twentieth Avenue and Washington Street. In 1970 the building became home to Cleo Parker Robinson Dance.


When a group of African Americans tried to swim at Denver’s Washington Park beach in 1932, white citizens attacked them with sticks and rocks. Police arrested ten of the would-be swimmers for instigating a riot.


The Ku Klux Klan grew nearly as powerful in Colorado as in the South—maybe more so. With 17,000 members in Denver alone, the Klan voted allies into the governor’s mansion and throughout the state legislature in 1922. Instead of intimidating through violence, the Colorado Klan used political power to create a hostile environment for African Americans, immigrants, Jews, Hispanos, and other minorities. The backlash was swift: Klan-affiliated candidates were soundly defeated in 1926. But the echoes of their intolerance lasted many years.


Curtis Park, Denver’s oldest streetcar suburb, took root in 1871 when the Denver Horse Railroad completed its commuter line from downtown Denver. African Americans began migrating from their traditional lower downtown residences to the Curtis Park region beginning in the 1880s. There, they joined Italian, Chinese, Jewish, and Hispanic pioneers to create a vibrant multicultural neighborhood.


The Roxy Theater, established in 1934, was the only one in town where African Americans were not dismissed to the segregated balcony known as the “crow’s nest.” For five-cents admission, Five Points mothers purchased a few hours’ peace of mind, knowing their children would be safely entertained.


Standards for Explore Denver in the 1920s