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Barney Ford

Added by Nick Johnson on 12/10/2015 - 14:54, last changed on 10/18/2022 - 13:43

Barney Ford

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Born into slavery in 1822, Barney Ford escaped to freedom and moved to Colorado in 1860. He soon became a successful businessman and an influential civic leader who pushed for Colorado statehood with suffrage for all. Ford died in Denver in 1902 and has been recognized for his contributions to the...

Clara Brown

Added by yongli on 08/20/2019 - 14:48, last changed on 11/09/2022 - 12:41
Clara Brown (c. 1803–85) was an ex-slave who became a philanthropist, entrepreneur, and humanitarian in Denver and Central City . She is said to be the first African American woman to have traveled West during the Colorado Gold Rush . While in Central City, she established Gilpin County ’s first...

Elizabeth Ensley

Added by yongli on 06/18/2021 - 15:56, last changed on 11/09/2022 - 03:41
Elizabeth Piper Ensley (1847–1919) was a political activist and reformer who worked throughout her life for gender and racial equality. The daughter and wife of formerly enslaved people, she came to Colorado in 1887 and soon helped lead the first successful campaign for statewide women’s suffrage...

Elvin R. Caldwell

Added by yongli on 05/02/2017 - 10:38, last changed on 10/26/2022 - 04:41
Elvin R. Caldwell Sr. (1919–2004) was one of the most significant African American policymakers in Colorado history. An accountant and businessman, Caldwell joined many community organizations before beginning his political career in 1950 in the Colorado House of Representatives. He later served on...

Garveyism in Colorado

Added by yongli on 06/19/2018 - 13:12, last changed on 11/01/2022 - 12:43
Marcus M. Garvey (1887–1940) was president of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL), an organization that offered hope to millions of African people in the United States and worldwide. In the early twentieth century, Garvey had large followings in...

Lucile Berkeley Buchanan

Added by yongli on 08/09/2022 - 12:47, last changed on 08/09/2022 - 12:49
Lucile Berkeley Buchanan (1884–1989) was a gifted teacher and the first African American to graduate from the State Normal School of Colorado (today, the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley ) in 1905. Following graduation, she occasionally worked as a substitute teacher; race-based...

Margaret W. Campbell

Added by yongli on 03/13/2020 - 16:06, last changed on 03/02/2023 - 03:39
Margaret West Norton Campbell (1827–1908) was an ardent advocate of women’s rights and one of the nation’s most sought-after suffrage speakers. In Colorado she was instrumental in the 1877 campaign for women’s suffrage . The measure failed, but her work paved the way for suffrage to be enacted in...

Michael Hancock

Added by yongli on 07/08/2020 - 15:56, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 15:45
Michael Hancock (1969– ) is the forty-fifth mayor of Denver , elected in 2011. Currently in his third term, Hancock succeeded fellow Democrat John Hickenlooper and interim mayor Guillermo Vidal. Widely seen as a pro-growth mayor, Hancock is credited with boosting the city’s economy by investing in...

Oliver Toussaint Jackson

Added by yongli on 09/29/2016 - 14:47, last changed on 11/11/2019 - 10:24
Oliver Toussaint “O. T.” Jackson (1862–1948) was an entrepreneur and prominent member of black communities in Denver and Boulder during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1910 he founded Dearfield , an-all black agricultural settlement some twenty-five miles southeast of Greeley...
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