Historical Studies Journal 2011
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PASTURES OF PLENTY: HISTORICAL STUDIES JOURNAL Woody Guthrie in the West .Volume 28 Spring 2011 FROM EXCLUSION TO SAKURA SQUARE: University of Colorado Denver A Chronicle of Japanese-Americans in Denver, 1942-1976 RiNo: From Then to Now FIVE ALLEGED VICTIMS PRESERVATION AND RESTORATION OF HISTORIC GHOST SIGNS IN COLORADO’S FRONT RANGE HISTORICAL STUDIES JOURNAL Spring 2011 . Vol. 28 HISTORICAL STUDIES JOURNAL Spring 2011 .Volume 28 EDITORS: Kathleen Barlow EDITORIAL STAFF: Maureen Carey, Graduate Student Carrie Hartley, Graduate Student Craig Leavitt, Graduate Student Erica Poggenpohl, Graduate Student Shannon Sharkey, Graduate Student Joseph Sokolowski, Undergraduate Student Rebecca A. Hunt, Ph.D., Faculty Advisor Thomas J. Noel, Ph.D., Faculty Advisor Alison Shah, Ph.D., Faculty Advisor DESIGNER: Shannon Fluckey Clicks! Copy & Printing Services Auraria Campus DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY University of Colorado Denver Myra Rich, Ph.D. Pamela Laird, Ph.D. U. S. Colonial, U. S. Early National, U. S. Social, Intellectual, Technology, Women and Gender, Immigration Public History, Business History Marjorie Levine-Clark, Ph.D., Christopher Agee, Ph.D. Department Chair 20th Century U. S. History, Urban Modern Britain, European Women History, Social Movement History, and Gender, Medicine and Health History of Crime and Policing Thomas J. Noel, Ph.D. Thomas Andrews, Ph.D. American West, Art & Architecture, 19th and 20th Century U. S. History, Public History & Preservation Environment, Labor, Urban, Native American, U. S. West, and History Carl Pletsch, Ph.D. Education Intellectual History (European and American), Modern Europe James E. Fell, Jr., Ph.D. American West, Civil War, Alison Shah, Ph.D. Environmental, Film History South Asia, Islamic World, History and Heritage, Cultural Memory Gabriel Finkelstein, Ph.D. Modern Europe, Germany, History Richard Smith, Ph.D. of Science, Exploration Ancient, Medieval, Early Modern Europe, Britain Mark Foster, Ph.D., Emeritus 19th and 20th Century U. S. History, Chris Sundberg, M.A. U. S. Social and Intellectual, U. S. Africa and History Education Urban and Business History James Walsh, M.A. Marilynn Hitchens, Ph.D. Immigration, U. S. Labor, Modern Europe, World History Irish-American Xiaojia Hou, Ph.D. James B. Whiteside, Ph.D. China, East Asia Recent U. S., Vietnam War, U. S. Diplomatic, Sports History Rebecca A. Hunt, Ph.D. Greg Whitesides, Ph.D. American West, Gender, Museum History of Science, Modern U. S., Asia Studies, Public History TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface ..............................................................................................................v PASTURES OF PLENTY: Woody Guthrie in the West .....................1 Craig Leavitt FROM EXCLUSION TO SAKURA SQUARE: A Chronicle of Japanese-Americans in Denver, 1942-1976 ............................................................................23 Ross Webster RiNo: From Then to Now ...........................................................37 Brandy von Kaenel FIVE ALLEGED VICTIMS ................................................................47 Michael Andersen PRESERVATION AND RESTORATION OF HISTORIC GHOST SIGNS IN COLORADO’S FRONT RANGE ..................53 Abigail Sanocki Notes ...............................................................................................................67 Bibliographies ..................................................................................................77 PREFACE When I tell friends that I am a history graduate student, inevitably they tell me that they: A) loved history or B) absolutely hated history in school. The B group proceeds to tell me that the found memorizing dates and names dull drudgery. The five articles in this edition of the University of ColoradoHistorical Studies Journal, break through that stereotype of history as uninspiring and would convert even the staunchest member of the second group. These articles show how diverse the study of history can be. Craig Leavitt sheds light on the political power of music while Abigail Sanocki and Brandy Von Kaenel focus on the preserving the built environment. Michael Andersen deals with the societal lenses of a famous court case which ended with the famous, but non-factual judicial pronouncement: “they was siven Dimmycrats in Hinsdale County, but you, you voracious, man-eatin’ son of a bitch, yah eat five of thim!” Ross Webster explores the role of the once ostracized Japanese in the successful revitalization of Denver’s skid row Japan Town as Sakura Square and the rebirth of the surrounding downtown. For 28 years, this Historical Studies Journal has proudly showcased the work of CU Denver History undergraduate and graduate students. On behalf of the editorial staff, we would like to thank the University of Colorado Denver History Department faculty for their continued support of the Historical Studies Journal. Thank you to Professor Alison Shah and Professor Tom Noel for your guidance, and unwavering support. Thank you to Shannon Fluckey at Clicks! Copy & Printing Services who creatively designed this journal. We want to add a special appreciation to the authors who worked to write and refine the manuscripts. It has been a privilege to work with you. I would like to add a personal thank you my fellow student editors. I am truly honored to have had such a great staff. Without your tireless effort, this edition of the Historical Studies Journal would not have happened. KATHLEEN BARLOW Editor v PASTURES OF PLENTY: Woody Guthrie in the West “And there on the Texas plains right in the dead center Craig Leavitt of the dust bowl, with the oil boom over and the wheat blowed and the hard-working people just stumbling about, bothered with mortgages, debts, bills, sickness, worries of every blowing1 kind, I seen there was plenty to write songs about.” Though folk singer Woody Guthrie mythologized himself, he cannot be accused of mythologizing the West. Guthrie was more social agitator than entertainer. With the phrase “This Machine Kills Fascists” etched into his guitar, Guthrie sang of the West as a venue of class conflict, the local theatre of a global war between workers and capitalists. His use of explicit political commentary and critique in a popular music format opened up new possibilities for socially conscious song craft and anticipated the revolutionary musical subcultures of the 1960s and beyond. As scholar Richard Aquila points out, Guthrie’s populist songs of struggle and suffering in the West ran against the current in the 1930s and 1940s, decades which “witnessed the triumph of the mythic West in popular music.”2 While artists like Bing Crosby, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and the Sons of Pioneers dominated the charts with songs that “portrayed the West as an exotic land where one could find freedom or happiness,” Guthrie’s compositions reflected his belief that “much of the mythic West was an illusion designed to distract people from the realities of American society.”3 Craig Leavitt is a first year graduate student in the UCD History Department. He has worked in a variety of fields, including stints as a political fund-raising director and a mortgage broker. Craig studied writing at The Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado and holds a B.A. in English Literature and a minor in History from Metropolitan State College of Denver, where he was also employed as writing tutor. His interdisciplinary essay “On the Road: Cassady, Kerouac and Images of Western Masculinity” was published in the Routledge Press anthology “Across the Great Divide: Cultures of Manhood in the American West” in 2001. Guthrie worked feverishly to expose those harsh realities. His association with the Communist Party, the Industrial Workers of the World and other leftist groups gave Guthrie a built-in audience and simultaneously informed his compositions with a scathing critique of American society. Nonetheless, a strain of idealistic optimism for America and the West accompanied social criticism in his work, as his under-examined Columbia River Basin song cycle demonstrates. The ideological and thematic importance of these songs within the Guthrie cannon deserves more scholarly attention. His vision of homesteading Okies in the shadow of the Grand Coulee Dam– renewed and reoriented to their rightful place in society as Jeffersonian farmer-citizens by the healing Columbia waters – ought to be understood as the natural and desirable resolution to the doleful image of helpless migrants on the run with which his career is so closely associated. The persona Guthrie cultivated to lament the plight of the Okies and rail against the oppression of the common man was deeply rooted in American folklore, history and musical tradition. But it also cleverly leveraged emerging modern media such as radio, cinema and mass-market literary publishing. Guthrie expanded not only his audience but the meaning of his songs by refracting author John Steinbeck’s imagery of Okie suffering portrayed in film and print through his own musical compositions. Yet Guthrie never “sold out” to Hollywood or Madison Avenue; his persona as a rustic, rambling bard from parts West made him an icon to sympathetic contemporaries and sustains his cult-like popularity today. A series of ecological and economic disasters particular to the American West drove Woody Guthrie and hundreds of thousands of other migrants from the plains in the 1930s. Low farm prices, drought, poor farming practices, unprecedented dust storms, and the burgeoning worldwide depression all contributed to the general