HISTORY COLORADO | FALL 2020

what FREEDOM means

Toppled Monument / The Most Corrupt Colorado Election / Doing Our Part The Monumental Relevance of History

For most of our recent history, old monuments have been seemingly neutral backgrounds of the HISTORY COLORADO civic landscape and passive witnesses to history in the making. Today, forcefully, this irrelevance is no BOARD OF DIRECTORS more. Here in Colorado and across this country, AND LEADERSHIP monuments hold a magnetic new power, and those invested in civic progress must choose how we Cathey M. Finlon harness that power, or risk letting it go to waste. Chair, Board of Directors History Colorado is meeting these incredibly historic moments with action and engagement. This Tamra J. Ward October, we placed the 1909 Civil War statue, which was toppled from its Vice Chair, Board of Directors pedestal in front of the State Capitol this summer, on display with a multi- Marco Antonio Abarca prismatic interpretation that spans three historic periods and includes many Luis Benitez perspectives. (See pages 6–7 to learn more.) Cathy Carpenter Dea Part of this statue’s history is the selflessness exemplified by the all- Donna Lynne, Ph.D. volunteer force that comprised Colorado’s response to the Civil War. Another Robert E. Musgraves part of this history is also the atrocities committed against the Cheyenne Ellen S. Roberts and Arapaho under the flag of the Union forces and state of Colorado. This Alan Salazar monument is a source and a symbol of so much. Stephen F. Sturm We believe that service to community—all of our Colorado Mary Sullivan communities—is as important as our stewardship of the artifacts and archives Penfield W. Tate III Ann Alexander Walker that document Colorado’s histories. Placing this monument statue on display is an example of how museums and historical societies can rise in these Steve W. Turner AIA tenuous times in ways that are constructive and meaningful to both civic Executive Director dialogue and healing. and State Historic Preservation Officer In this spirit, we will be showcasing the inkwell that was used at Appomattox, Virginia, on April 9, 1865, to end the Civil War. This important artifact of American history is surprisingly in History Colorado’s collection. State Historian’s Council We are placing the object on display at the History Colorado Center from Dr. Duane Vandenbusche, State Historian November 20–30, as a symbol of our country reunifying when it was at its Western Colorado University most fractured. Dr. Nicki Gonzales History museums, like our eight museums across Colorado, continue to Regis University demonstrate that we can expand how we share and understand our history Dr. Tom Noel and who is included. We offer community, continuity, belonging, and the University of Colorado Denver space to understand the many elements that define us and bind us to each Dr. Jared Orsi other. Colorado State University Dr. William Wei University of Colorado Boulder

The Colorado Magazine (ISSN 2765-8856) contains Steve W. Turner articles of broad general and educational interest that Executive Director and State Historic Preservation Officer link the present to the past, and is distributed quarterly to History Colorado members, to libraries, and to institutions of higher learning. Manuscripts must be documented when submitted, and originals are retained in the Publications office. An Author’s Guide is available In the spirit of healing and education, we acknowledge the 48 contemporary at HistoryColorado.org. History Colorado disclaims tribes with historic ties to the state of Colorado. These tribes are our partners. responsibility for statements of fact or of opinion made We consult with them when we plan exhibits; collect, preserve, and interpret by contributors. | Postage paid at Denver, Colorado artifacts; do archaeological work; and create educational programs. We © 2020 History Colorado recognize these Indigenous peoples as the original inhabitants of this land.

HistoryColorado.org / 2 PUBLISHED SINCE 1923 / For more Colorado history: h-co.org/publications This publication was supported in part by the Josephine H. Miles Trust.

DEMOCRACY FOR BREAKFAST Satisfy your appetite for democracy on a provocative historian-led encounter with America’s democratic traditions, featuring the Smithsonian Institution’s American Democracy exhibition presented at the History Colorado Center / Thursdays, 9 am Tours are limited to 10 people to ensure safe social distance for everyone. Your ticket also includes admission to the museum. HistoryColorado.org/what-democracy-looks-events-and-programs

2 The Monumental Relevance of History by Steve W. Turner / 4 The Forum / 6 Constructive Context for a Toppled Monument / 8 Big, Complex, Incomplete Story of the Vote by Jillian Allison / 10 The Most Corrupt Election in Colorado History by Devin Flores / 14 Freedom, Faith & Black Empowerment by Amy Unger / 16 Colorado Is My Classroom by Jason L. Hanson / 20 “Is America Possible?” by Nancy Ríos / 24 Doing Our Part: 11 Ways World War II Came to Colorado by Flint Whitlock / 34 Immigration to Colorado by William Wei / 46 Philanthropic Response to COVID-19 Crisis

HISTORY COLORADO MEMBERS RECEIVE THE COLORADO MAGAZINE AS A BENEFIT OF MEMBERSHIP. Individual subscriptions also available, $45 per year (four issues) / Join or subscribe: h-co.org/join

ON THE COVER / Freedom of Worship by David Ocelotl Garcia HistoryColorado.org / 3 Most importantly, tell the story. The Court, examining the role the courts have THE FORUM whole story from as many perspec- played (in Colorado and beyond) in our We love hearing from you tives as possible. Because each angle history. It sounds similar to what you are reveals something new and perhaps suggesting. not understood. The statue represents Additionally, History Colorado has The Colorado Magazine several things at once. It’s not as sim- a special initiative this year celebrating the Your most recent magazine arrived ple as just a piece of metal on a stone centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment and the articles, the intent and the pedestal. It’s something more. Thank called Bold Women. Change History. tone were very dramatic. . . . Even the you for taking the time to explain the We’ve brought in a number of elected graphics and layout are different and nuance and remembering the mean- political leaders, scholars, and others to much improved. Thank you and well ing behind the subtext. explore women’s history. The celebration of done! —Rachel Gamblin, via Facebook the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second —John Gray, former director, woman appointed to the Supreme Court Smithsonian National Museum of State Historians Council and herself a “bold woman who changed American History Instead of a state historian, @History history,” was, we believe, an appropriate Colorado has “council of historians,” part of that initiative. I read with interest the Summer 2020 with each taking turn as lead historian Colorado Magazine. I have a question sharing scholarship with public, advis- Borderlands Lecture Series about the “This is what Democracy ing on current issues. We should have Your programs are just wonderful. It looks like” portion. I assume that this nationally, serving collectively as has helped me get through these dif- the two political articles by Anthony “historian laureates.” ficult times we are all going through. I Grimes and Nicki Gonzales will be —John Garrison Marks, via Twitter hope you keep them online once this balanced by two political articles from pandemic is over. Because I cannot two conservative writers. If this is Lost Highways Podcast come into Denver to see these. not correct I would like to know what My COVID-19 binge. A must for —Denise Knowles, History Colorado the political position of our historical every Colorado transplant! This is a Member society actually is. great way to feel connected to not —Michael L. Larsen, Colorado just the beauty of the state, but also Springs its history. It’s also been comforting Editors’ Note: The articles you referenced in in these wild times to know that we as the most recent issue were intended to provide a state have faced similar challenges. historical context to current events. We study —Cnbella, via Apple Podcasts history, after all, to help us illuminate the Steve Grinstead, Managing Editor present more clearly. At History Colorado, Justice Ginsburg Mural Lori Bailey, Editorial Assistance we are always interested in understanding our I understand the powerful memorial Katie Bush & Jori Johnson, Photo Services present more fully by approaching it from a statements for RBG. But I would Dawn DiPrince, Chief Operating Officer historical and inclusive perspective. applaud even more a History Colora- Jason Hanson, Chief Creative Officer do program discussing the role of the EDITORIAL TEAM Toppled Civil War Monument on Supreme Court, its record of consti- tutional successes (as well as failures), Megan Eflin Display Devin Flores and the fine line it always treads to I still struggle with the idea that we’re Maria Islas-Lopez memorializing and honoring the con- maintain true-impartial balance of Aaron Marcus cept of the soldiers who committed power in our representative constitu- Chelsea Párraga such atrocities. I wonder what other tional system. Jessica Pierce items could be installed near it to help —James Grafton Rogers Hart Amy Unger tell a more complete story—could we Editors’ Note: We agree with you that it’s Keith Valdez Bethany Williams also put up statues of Cheyenne and important for an organization like ours to Arapaho leadership next to it? Where focus on the role of the judiciary in a de- THE COLORADO MAGAZINE do we draw the line between remem- mocracy. We’re happy to say that we recently ONLINE bering/learning from history vs using released an audio companion piece to our John Eding art to revere people and actions that American Democracy exhibition that Brooke Garcia shouldn’t be revered. does just that. It features Justice Gregory Adriana Radinovic —Cathryn Matheson, via Facebook Hobbs, formerly of the Colorado Supreme Zach Werkowitch

HistoryColorado.org / 4 fort

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BECOME A MEMBER WE ARE TODAY! COLORADO H-CO.ORG/JOIN CONSTRUCTIVE CONTEXT for a TOPPLED MONUMENT

COLORADO WAS BORN IN THE MIDST OF THE throughout the nation. This bronze figure of a dismounted CIVIL WAR. Colorado troops, drawn primarily from local Union cavalry soldier, titled On Guard, was installed on the volunteers, fought for the Union Army. They engaged in west side of the State Capitol in 1909 to honor Coloradans several battles, most notably the Battle at Glorieta Pass in who’d served in the Union Army. John “Jack” Dare How- northern New Mexico, where they played a vital role in land, himself a veteran, designed the sculpture. Plaques protecting western gold fields from Confederate takeover. on its pedestal listed engagements Colorado troops had But in this wartime context, soldiers also used mili- fought in. tary force to clear Indigenous peoples from their homes But monuments like On Guard represent the values and secure the land for white settlement. On November and agendas of their time even as they honor events of the 29, 1864, US cavalry regiments attacked a peaceful camp past. Among the soldiers’ laudable actions, the monument of Cheyenne and Arapaho people on Colorado’s eastern also included the Sand Creek Massacre, characterizing it as plains at Sand Creek. Under Colonel John Chivington’s a “battle”—one among many—in a way that masked the command, the troops murdered more than 230 women, atrocities committed that day. In 2002 the State Legislature, children, and elders. It was the bloodiest day in Colorado in consultation with Cheyenne and Arapaho descendants history. of Sand Creek, added a plaque to the monument con- The over-militarized response to Native peoples was demning this damaging mischaracterization. an action of a nation at war, and events like the Sand The monument was toppled in June 2020 during pro- Creek Massacre sparked decades of government-sanc- tests for Black lives. Now, it stands in the History Colorado tioned violence against Native Americans in the West. Center to give everyone an opportunity to discuss what it In the early 1900s, as the generation of Civil War means to them. veterans was beginning to pass away, veterans’ groups Following are just a few of the viewpoints shared with representing both Union and Confederate soldiers worked us. We invite you to come in, or write to us, to share your to commemorate their service by erecting monuments own.

Don’t focus so much on the monuments, focus on bigger issues like As a Vietnam Veteran and founder of the Colorado Veterans getting hate laws passed in Wyoming. This pandemic has pulled Monument, I am concerned that the statue could be hidden away everyone out of the dark and I look forward to having a hate crime from public view. It is important that this physical symbol of proud law in Wyoming where I live. I support both the veterans and service and sacrifice be available for the past, present and future. I their sacrifice and my people, many who died at Sand Creek. The would like to see the Colorado community get together to reach an Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes are survivors of genocide and the Sand inclusive agreement about the statue’s future. One option would be Creek Massacre. They are resilient and remember and memorialize a place among other military monuments/memorials in a renamed the victims and survivors at Sand Creek. I hope we get a memorial Colorado Veterans Park across from the State Capitol. to the Sand Creek Massacre in place of the soldier statue. I respect —Tim Drago, Founder of the Colorado Veterans everyone’s intentions in these matters—ideas and teachings change, Monument sometimes for the positive. “We Forgive and Don’t Forget.” —Gail Ridgely, Tribal Historian and Sand Creek Descendant, Northern Arapaho Tribe

HistoryColorado.org / 6 PHOTO / History Colorado Executive Director Steve Turner speaking at press event for the installation of On Guard, Civil War monument statue, at History Colorado Center

Having researched, written about, and given tours at the Colorado Designed by Private John D. Howland, who fought in 1862 at State Capitol for nearly a quarter-century, I feel a kinship with the Glorieta Pass, New Mexico, the statue represents and honors all building and its grounds. When I visited hours after John Howland’s those brave Colorado soldiers who sacrificed, fought, and died to On Guard was toppled, I felt a numbness deep within me. The preserve the Union, end slavery, and defeat the invading Confederate statue had become a casualty of the passions that turned the capitol forces. The vandals who tore down the statue had no idea of its true into a battleground of chemical weapons and vandalism. The meaning and demonstrated their own ignorance and intolerance. As monument has its flaws, its interpretive plaques in particular. Their a veteran myself, and a military historian, I believe that defacing casual portrayal of the Sand Creek Massacre has long infuriated history equals erasing history. many Coloradans, and rightly so. Yet I believe that the statue’s place —Flint Whitlock, Author, Distant Bugles, Distant Drums: The remains on the statehouse grounds, accompanied by a more inclusive, Union Response to the Confederate Invasion of New Mexico, and honest interpretation of Colorado in the Civil War. I hope to see Board Member, Broomfield Veterans Museum Howland’s On Guard restored to its pedestal, where it can honor the past, embrace the present, and enlighten the future. Traditionally, history has been told by the winners, who have taken —Derek R. Everett, Colorado Historian and State Capitol pains to shape the historical narrative so that they’re seen in the best Scholar light. This means we don’t get the full story, unless we do a lot more work to find it. With the toppling of this statue, we have a rare The statue stood for the Civil War. But because of what happened opportunity to address disparities in history and to tell, if not a more right after the Civil War, the Southern Arapahoes think of the complete story, one that elevates stories of those made most vulnerable soldier as the militia that were involved in the Sand Creek Massacre. by the victors’ actions. When the statue fell, I said a little, “Yea! It’s gone.” It’s a small Missing from mainstream Civil War history is its impact on victory because it will be replaced and we’re trying to commemorate Native Americans. Also missing is the fact that Anti-Blackness was Sand Creek in our own way. I’m not saying that Colorado wasn’t as prevalent in the North as it was in the South, and that Union in the Civil War and they should not commemorate that victory at Soldiers also mistreated the formerly enslaved. These narratives feed Glorieta. History should be told. This was a part of our nation’s into one another and have shaped race relations in the United States growth. But the Civil War commemoration and the Sand Creek today, not just as a Black and White issue, but also among races commemoration are two different things. considered “minorities” in this country. I believe it’s important to —Fred Mosqueda, Arapaho Coordinator, Southern bring them up in tandem to better understand who we are as a people. Arapaho and Cheyenne Tribe —Adri Norris, Artist ■

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J PHOTO / Colorado ratifies the 19th Amendment, December 12, 1919. Library of Congress, Records of the National Woman’s Party Collection.

In the fall of 2018, I started working on plans to COMMEMORATE THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 19TH AMENDMENT. As we marked this occasion on August 26, 2020, what I thought would feel like an ending to this work felt like just the beginning.

The simple stories that we have been told about the women’s vote quickly unspooled and became unwieldy as I traveled throughout the state to talk with people about their local history, looked through archives, and discovered more about the national conversations on this subject. HistoryColorado.org / 8 alking about this history is a bal- in particular, was in an economic 1918, The Denver Post called on readers ancing act of letting go of the crisis after the Silver Panic wreaked to sign a petition urging the Senate neatly packaged narratives and havoc on the mining industry. During to adopt the amendment in order to Tof being precise because the words Reconstruction, labor organizations “keep America safe for Americans.” used to explain the story can change like the Grange sought to build more The Women’s City and County’s the impact. It has been a reminder that stability and innovation for their indus- Defense Council members are listed we are living in a continuing history, tries. Many allowed for women to fully among the petition supporters. The not discrete moments in time. participate and serve in their offices. call claims that women wanted to The story of Colorado and the Women’s clubs had also formed, and “carry forward to the polls in the spir- 19th Amendment is often summed the confederation of these clubs al- it and will of their men” and “outbal- up in this way: women got the right lowed for strong grassroots organizing. ance the vote of enemy aliens.” to vote in 1920 and Colorado was the The Populist Party rose as a formida- This single Denver Post article is first state to enfranchise women using ble third-party alliance that competed one example of the complexity of a referendum, or by popular vote, with, and in some instances beat out, this moment. It demonstrates the in 1893. These two statements are the Democrats and the Republicans. intersection of local and Colorado far too simple, and, set side by side, In this climate of stress and women’s history, the national suffrage one begins to challenge the other. destabilization, suffragists cam- campaign, and a world war. It raises The 19th Amendment itself is even paigned throughout the state, reach- questions about the role of the press, simpler and less absolute than I had ing struggling mining towns, rural the changing voting rights of immi- been taught. It states: “The right of farming communities, and cities on grants, anti-German sentiment during citizens of the United States to vote whistle-stop tours. They wrote for the war, organizations that supported shall not be denied or abridged by newspapers and convinced many in women’s suffrage, and the individuals the United States or by any state on the press to support their cause—or who signed the petition. account of sex.” Although its adop- at least not come out against them. In my endeavor to commemo- tion was the largest expansion of They called on pastors and religious rate this amendment’s milestone, I voting rights in our nation’s history, it leaders to do the same. As national realized that the history of the vote does not give or guarantee the vote. suffrage leaders like Carrie Chap- does not begin and end with women’s Practices like poll taxes and literacy man Catt toured the state, suffrage suffrage. It is intertwined with the tests have been used to disenfranchise organizations formed to convince narratives of war, economics, identity, Black people, Indigenous people, and neighbors, fathers, and brothers to and health because our vote gives us other people of color throughout stand with them in solidarity. After political power within those contexts the nation. We also know millions securing their own vote, women from as well. The history of the vote is of women could vote before 1920 in Colorado continued to campaign for one we are all living. With each new Colorado and other states. national women’s suffrage. election, a new chapter begins. The Talking about what happened Leading up to the passage of the candidates, the initiatives, and access requires some precision to reflect an 19th Amendment, another “conflu- to the vote are ever changing—our accurate story, but talking about how ence of conditions” was building the long, complex, and endlessly fascinat- it happened challenges us to tell a foundation for change. The United ing history can help give us tools to big, complex, and incomplete story. States declared war on Germany in understand the process. ■ One of the reasons this history is so 1917 and the war ended in 1918. expansive is because of the circum- Earlier that year, what is now known Learn more about the Women’s Vote stances of these pivotal moments of as the Spanish flu pandemic broke out. at the Center for Colorado Women’s change. Another is the sheer number The 18th Amendment was ratified in History. Bold Women. Change of people it took over decades to January of 1919, launching Prohibi- History. The Exhibition is on view secure the amendment. tion. The suffragists continued on with through February 2021. It is often said that a “confluence their efforts, changing and adapting of conditions” led to the women’s their tactics as the world and their JILLIAN ALLISON is the director vote in Colorado in 1893. This was goals changed. of the Center for Colorado Women’s a second attempt at a referendum. Unlike the suffragists of Colo- History. In addition to her work at the In 1877, one year after becoming a rado in 1893 who appealed directly museum, located in a historic house in state, Colorado put equal suffrage on to the voters, now the larger suffrag- Denver, she also collaborates with the the ballot. It failed in every county ist movement worked to sway the other Community Museums of History except Boulder. By 1893 the state had legislators to adopt a constitutional Colorado throughout the state. changed. The nation, and Colorado amendment. In an article published in HistoryColorado.org / 9 1904 The Most Corrupt Election in Colorado History BY DEVIN FLORES

PHOTOS / Governors Peabody, Adams, and MacDonald: These three men were all governor of Colorado within the same twenty-four hours. While none of their political careers would survive the 1904 election scandal, Adams’ brother William Adams would serve as governor in the 1920s, while his son Alva B. Adams was a US senator in the 1920s–40s. History Colorado

IN THE EARLY MONTHS OF caused by one of the most corrupt the cost. Things had grown especially 1905, THE WHOLE STATE elections in American history. bad in Colorado, where over a decade OF COLORADO WAS IN AN The election of 1904 came on of troubles were reaching a boiling UPROAR. Miners were on strike, the tail end of the Gilded Age, a time point. an election clerk had just jumped of rampant corruption nationwide. The incumbent governor was out of a moving train while fleeing Political machines were hard at work Republican James H. Peabody, and the law, and nobody knew who the in every major American city, churn- while his political career was rela- governor really was. And it was all ing out votes for their party no matter tively short it was also very contro-

HistoryColorado.org / 10 POSTER / Riots, arrests, and violence marked 1904 as the Colorado Labor Wars were in full swing. The Colorado National Guard, with the backing of business owners’ associations and corrupt local governments, often assaulted and arrested union members. In return, the union workers would strike, riot, and ultimately defend themselves violently. The tumultuous situation inspired this nationally distributed poster, which boldly asks: “Is Colorado In America?” Wikimedia Commons. HistoryColorado.org / 11 The investigation swelled to a truly ludicrous level, eventually amounting to almost 200,000 pages of evidence and the testimonies of over 2,000 witnesses. versial. During his tenure, the state Peabody to appoint members of the Fuel Company to his assembled was wracked with continuous strikes state Supreme Court if he conceded, workers, “. . . And if the Republicans by miners fighting for rights and yet he refused to cooperate even after should win and find out that one of representation. Previous governors Adams took his governor’s oath for the working men voted the Demo- had sided with the working class in the third time. cratic ticket, they would fire him.” such disputes, but Peabody instead An investigation was called, The mine workers were furious at responded with brute force. He sent which rapidly devolved into chaos. being bullied like this and they were out the state militia to crack down on The probe was headed by the state all too happy to report these threats striking workers, starting the brutal legislature, but as more and more to investigators, along with other tales Colorado Labor Wars. Peabody gave corruption was uncovered, seats were of physical coercion, voter fraud, and command of the militia to an officer suddenly changing hands. ballot stuffing. The mining towns of who notoriously scoffed: “They want According to The Denver Post, southern Colorado, especially Cripple habeas corpus? We’ll give them post “Never has there been such wild Creek, Walsenburg, and Trinidad, mortems!” disorder in any legislature.” came under close scrutiny as a result. Peabody was beloved by big The investigation soon found The furor of investigation and business and hated by working-class evidence of blatant and egregious scandal reached its climax when Juan citizens. So when the election of 1904 corruption on behalf of both par- Montez, the election clerk of Huerfa- came around, it quickly became one ties. In Denver, the Democrats had no County, jumped out of a moving of the most fiery in state history. stuffed ballot boxes to ridiculous train. Peabody’s opponent for gover- extremes. Democrat-controlled police He was en route from Denver norship was Democrat Alva Adams, had promised criminals acquittal if to Walsenburg with orders from the who had already served two terms as they committed voter fraud by voting court to bring back a ballot box used governor. He was more popular than multiple times using disguises, or in the most recent election—and a Peabody, but his reputation was far simply by traveling from ballot box Denver County sheriff’s deputy rode from spotless. Leading up to the elec- to ballot box. One individual was along to ensure there was no funny tion, both parties threw accusations found to have personally voted 169 business. He had already failed to of corruption at each other freely. times—and 717 Democrat ballots produce the ballot box once, and And when election day finally came it were cast in a precinct with only 100 the legislature wanted to be sure he was a wild affair, with bristling reports legal voters. In addition, the police brought it back this time. But not of voter fraud and stuffed ballot box- were not only turning a blind eye to long after the train left the station, es coming in from all over the state. the obvious crimes, they were often the clerk jumped off and tried to flee. Once the dust had settled and assisting in them. He was captured and was eventual- the votes were counted, Adams had Meanwhile, in the mining towns ly charged with election fraud, but won the governorship by a narrow Republican voter coercion was every- he was far from the last to attempt margin and the Democrats had won where—and just as brazen. Mining manipulation of the election results. the state senate. But the fight was far and railroad companies were banking The Huerfano County ballot box from over. on Peabody’s victory, so they told was eventually recovered—complete- Immediately, accusations of cor- their workers—who had suffered ly empty. It didn’t even have a poll ruption broke out again, and the state the worst of Peabody’s anti-union book inside. Apparently the official government ground to a halt. Pea- crackdowns—that they had to vote box hadn’t even been used during body contested the results, demand- Republican or lose their jobs. the election and, as a result, all of ing an investigation before Adams “If the Democrats should win, the ballots cast in the precinct were could be sworn into office. At first we may have to close the mine down considered unofficial ballots and had the two parties struck a deal, allowing . . .” said the owner of the Victor to be discounted.

HistoryColorado.org / 12 Many other ballots were thrown out, and not all of them justly. It’s hard to say where investigation turned into even more corruption, but Coloradans were quickly losing faith in their government. Thousands of voters across the state were furi- ous when their own legal votes were dismissed, leaving them voiceless in one of the most energetic elections in state history. The investigation swelled to a truly ludicrous level, eventually amounting to almost 200,000 pages of evidence and the testimonies of over two thousand witnesses. The entire governance of the state had come to a halt, with Adams in office but unable to exercise any power without being called a “usurper” while legislators dedicated weeks to hurling corruption charges against one another. In the end, the “most flagrantly corrupt incident that has ever hap- pened in Colorado,” according to the Rocky Mountain News, ended not with justice but with backroom deals. Adams, his once-robust polit- ical career now in tatters, willingly CARTOON / This political cartoon (first printed by The Denver Post in 1904) is focused on the Denver resigned late in the day on March 16, mayoral race, not the gubernatorial one, but it depicts the general air of corruption surrounding the elections that year. Especially noteworthy is the “city detective” on the far left, wielding a smoking gun. Denver police were 1905. He had been in office for barely known to coerce voters and to aid and abet in voter fraud. Courtesy Colorado Encyclopedia. two months. Peabody was immediate- ly sworn in as his replacement, but his simultaneously retired from politics were changed. The political machines victory was extremely short-lived. in disgrace. To be blunt, the 1904 were shut down, and united work- He had also agreed to concede election was a failure of democracy. ers refused to be bullied by crooked the election, so early the very next But it was obviously not the end of employers. Voter fraud went from a morning he, too, resigned and lieu- democracy in Colorado. casual crime, likened in 1905 to public tenant governor Jesse MacDonald Voters all across the state were drunkenness, to a serious charge. It was sworn into office. The question emboldened by this election, espe- took decades, dozens of elections, of the governorship was finally cially traditionally underrepresented and many bitter struggles, but eventu- resolved—a full five months after groups who fought to secure their ally the lessons of 1904 were learned. the election—and Colorado won the representation. Many of the loudest With hope, those lessons will contin- dubious distinction of being the only voices calling for fair elections were ue to serve us well as we participate state in American history to have women voters, who had only won the in future elections and our democrat- three different governors within a sin- right to vote in Colorado eleven years ic process as a whole. ■ gle twenty-four-hour period. earlier. Mine workers, many of them The election of 1904 was unique- immigrants, continued to unionize DEVIN FLORES is History Colorado’s ly undaunted in its corruption, and and valiantly stand up to their em- Digital Storytelling Coordinator for Com- it left a lasting mark on everyone ployers and the state government. munity Museums. He graduated in 2019 involved. Many careers were ruined, With thousands of voters fight- from CSU-Pueblo with a degree in mass from police chiefs to election clerks ing back against corruption, laws communications and Spanish. to both Adams and Peabody, who

HistoryColorado.org / 13 BY AMY UNGER

February 1903, a small group of freedpeople and IN children of freed- people, led by Frank Loper, formed the People’s Methodist Episcopal Church to serve the needs of the growing African American commu- nity in northern Colorado Springs. A stately Queen Anne–style church was completed in 1904 and for sixty-one years, the People’s Methodist Epis- copal Church served as a focal point for social justice work while playing a central role in the social and religious lives of its congregants. Born into slavery at Jefferson Davis’s Brierfield plantation, Loper arrived in Colorado Springs in 1886. As headwaiter at the Antlers and Al- amo hotels and later doorman at the second Antlers Hotel, he became well known to tourists and local residents alike. In the 1890s, Loper and two partners formed the Antlers Pub- lishing Company and established the Colorado Springs Sun, the city’s second black-owned newspaper. Over the years, the People’s Methodist Episcopal Church provid- ed meeting space for civic and social organizations seeking to improve the lives of Black Americans, including the People’s Literary Society, Du Bois Study Club, Colorado Springs Unity Council, and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. From 1921 to the mid-1930s, the church housed the headquarters PHOTO above / Marcus Garvey and Amy Jacques of the Colorado Springs Division Garvey, Cheyenne Canyon, Colorado Springs, May 1922. Published in Ebony, March 1960. Wikimedia Commons. PHOTO right / Frank Loper, circa 1925, when he was working as a doorman for the Antlers Hotel (with FREEDOM, FAITH Mrs. Glen Hutchinson, the hotel’s bookkeeper). Pikes Peak Library District, 001-9142. HistoryColorado.org / 14 Communities League in continuing the UNIA’s work, editing Kingston. Negro World, and proving herself a After his ideas gained compelling orator. After Garvey’s little traction in Jamaica, release, the couple traveled west on Garvey relocated to New a membership drive with stops in York City in 1916. He trav- Denver and Colorado Springs. eled extensively for a year, On October 13, 1924, Jacques giving speeches and wit- Garvey delivered a stirring message nessing firsthand the unfair of Black pride at the People’s Meth- and hostile treatment Black odist Episcopal Church. Her words people received throughout impressed skeptics such as Dr. I. the United States. After re- E. Moore, a physician in Colorado turning to Harlem, Garvey’s Springs and medical director of the Black nationalist rhetoric Lincoln Sanatorium for Colored made him the target of People, and inspired local UNIA federal investigations and members. put him at odds with Du Garvey was again incarcerated in Bois and some Black civil 1925 and deported in 1927, actions rights leaders. Nevertheless, that began to erode the organization’s Garvey’s message of Black influence in the United States. In the pride resonated throughout 1930s, UNIA Colorado Springs Divi- the world and his influence sion Number 508 disbanded. grew quickly. In 1917 he In 2014, the People’s Methodist opened the first US chapter Episcopal Church was listed in the Na- of the UNIA in Harlem and tional Register of Historic Places for his newspaper, Negro World, both its architectural significance and, became the most widely read most importantly, its historical asso- Black weekly in the country. ciation with the Black empowerment Number 508 of the Universal Negro Colorado’s first chap- movement in Colorado Springs. ■ Improvement Association (UNIA). ter of the UNIA, Division Number Founded by Marcus Mosiah 118, opened in Denver’s Five Points AMY UNGER is a State and National Garvey, Jr., in his native Jamaica, the neighborhood in 1921. Shortly after, Register Historian in History Colorado’s UNIA grew into one of the largest in January 1922, Reverend G. Sterling State Historic Preservation Office. Black empowerment movements Sawyer, the new pastor at People’s in the world. Garvey decried the Methodist Episcopal Church, orga- PRESERVATION INCENTIVES rampant racism and unjust working nized UNIA Colorado Springs Di- PROGRAMS / Properties listed in conditions he witnessed while living vision Number 508 with the church the National or State Register may in Jamaica and Latin America and es- as its headquarters. In May, Garvey be eligible for investment tax credits tablished several newspapers devoted visited Colorado Springs as part of a for approved rehabilitation and to to publicizing social justice issues and multistate membership drive, deliver- compete for History Colorado State promoting Black pride. Moving to ing a speech to a large and supportive Historical Fund grants. The next London in 1912, he studied the work crowd at Colorado College. nomination deadline is January 29, of leaders such as W. E. B. Du Bois Garvey returned in October 1924 2021, and the State Historical Fund’s and Booker T. Washington under the with his second wife, Amy Jacques summer competitive grant deadline is mentorship of Pan-African nation- Garvey, who played a pivotal role in forthcoming. alist Dusé Mohamed Ali. Returning the UNIA, especially after Garvey’s to Jamaica in 1914, he organized the incarceration in 1923 for mail fraud. HistoryColorado.org/preserva- first chapter of the Universal Negro Jacques Garvey stepped forward, tion-archaeology Improvement Association and African & BLACK EMPOWERMENT IN COLORADO SPRINGS HistoryColorado.org / 15 With schools facing surging COVID-19 cases in their communities as winter approaches, an educational experiment during another pandemic more than a century ago suggests an intriguing possibility: Could fresh air be part of the solution to school in the time of coronavirus?

HistoryColorado.org / 16 COLORADO IS MY CLASSROOM What Earlier Pandemics Can Teach Us About School BY JASON L. HANSON

No more pencils, no more books, No more teacher’s dirty looks! School’s out for summer! — Traditional children’s rhyme, or Alice Cooper, depending on when you were in school

he usual children’s song celebrat- about how to continue learning ing the end of another school through the long winter have grown Tyear sounded different last sum- more pointed than a freshly sharp- mer, tinged with the hollow, echoey ened pencil. A growing consensus sound of a Zoom call on tiny laptop suggests that this novel coronavirus speakers. By the time school let out, is not transmitted as readily when students around the country had been we’re outside, particularly if we keep learning remotely since spring break. our distance and wear masks. Which School officials spent the summer raises the question: Could school be sizing up strategies to continue learn- held outside? ing in the face of COVID-19, but no More than a century ago, open- consensus emerged. The new school air classrooms had a moment in re- year opened unevenly across Colorado sponse to another pandemic. Then it and the nation, as school districts and was tuberculosis, another era-defining families weighed the merits and neces- airborne pathogen that attacked the sities of opening schools to in-person respiratory system. And the results PHOTO / In Cañon City, the senior class learning, conducting classes virtually, were encouraging. But this breath put “every safeguard” in place, including wearing masks in class, as they completed their or exploring new arrangements like of pedagogical fresh air was largely studies for graduation during the 1918 flu homeschooling or privately tutored abandoned during the second half of pandemic. History Colorado. “pods.” the twentieth century. Could bringing Now, as COVID-19 cases crest them back be part of the solution to again throughout Colorado and in school in the time of coronavirus? many parts of the nation, questions

HistoryColorado.org / 17 The Origins of Keeping Schools Open regularly monitored students’ health, Open-Air Schools During the and public health officials deployed additional resources where circum- in the United States 1918 Flu Pandemic stances warranted. In all three cities, these measures The idea for outdoor classes in the When the (misnamed) Spanish flu proved largely successful. None saw United States originated in 1907 with struck American cities in the fall of uncontrollable influenza outbreaks in two doctors in Providence, Rhode 1918, many public health officials schools. Nonetheless, many parents Island, as a strategy for teaching suggested that the disease was less kept their children home, and absen- children with tuberculosis. Classes likely to be transmitted outside. tee rates were high—between a third were convened in an unused school (Tragically, they rarely paired that ob- and half of students in Chicago and building remodeled to have floor- servation with suggestions to remain New Haven stayed home during the to-ceiling windows that allowed air well-spaced or wear masks even when pandemic. and light to wash over the classroom. outdoors, which in many cities led to The windows remained open straight a second wave of the pandemic pro- through the cold winter months (and pelled by crowded parades celebrating it was an unusually cold winter in the end of World War I.) However, Colorado Schools Providence) with students wrapped despite the existing models provid- During the in “Eskimo bags” and warmed by ed by open-air schools, instead of 1918 Flu Pandemic heated soapstones at their feet. heading outside, districts throughout By the time summer arrived, the Colorado and in most urban centers School officials in Colorado did not concept had proved successful by every around the nation closed in the fall of scale up existing models for open-air measure—children recovered their 1918 and spring of 1919 during the schools to keep children healthy and health, did well academically, and gener- most intense waves of the influenza in school during the 1918 pandemic. ally thrived—and the model was adopt- pandemic. Schools around the state—in loca- ed in cities throughout the country. While most cities closed their tions as varied as Ouray, Rifle, Cañon Within a decade, more nine- schoolhouse doors in the face of City, Montrose, Greeley, and Denver ty-three American cities had open-air the flu, a few notable exceptions —closed for extended periods during public schools for sick children, and persisted. Schools in New York City, the intense first and second waves of nearly another sixty had adopted the Chicago, and New Haven bucked the the pandemic from October 1918 to model for unafflicted students (more nationwide trend, remaining open as March 1919. than half of these were in California, officials argued that students were During the closures, some com- where the weather made the concept “better off in school.” While some munities provided alternative activi- especially popular and viable). Often classes in these cities were held out- ties for otherwise footloose students. situated on the edges of the city, in side, they were part of the already-es- In Denver, the city worked with the parks, or in remodelled buildings like tablished open-air schools, and the Red Cross, the YMCA, and other the Providence school, campuses were vast majority classes continued as organizations to provide outdoor ac- established in major urban areas such normal indoors. tivities and “military fun” to keep idle as New York City and Chicago as well The strategy in each city hinged students engaged. But these activities as smaller communities like Hazelton, on the assumption of Progressive-era were not formal education, and many Pennsylvania, and Eveleth, Minnesota. reformers that, as a result of signif- districts—then as now—were keenly As one might expect in a place icant investments in public health aware of the potential impact on known as a haven for “lungers” (as infrastructure in the decade leading learning. Around the state, schools those suffering from tuberculosis up to the pandemic, even indoor reopened each time the flu seemed were often called), Colorado cities schools were more sanitary spaces— to abate, hoping to make up for lost were among those giving students a and therefore safer—than home for instructional time. breath of fresh air. In 1911, officials many students. In New York City, for In Cañon City, schools were in Denver Public Schools created two instance, 75 percent of the district’s closed through the fall of 1918, but open-air classrooms at existing city nearly one million children lived in mid-December the senior class schools to serve afflicted children, in tenements whose crowded and was allowed to come back to the high patterning them after the examples in unsanitary conditions were notorious school to complete their studies for New York, Chicago, and Providence. for spreading infectious diseases. graduation. Local reports specify that By 1916, another open-air school had Schools were kept exceedingly clean, the school put “every safeguard” in opened in Boulder. school officials and medical personnel place, including requiring masks, spac-

HistoryColorado.org / 18 parents continued to keep their chil- the existing open-air school models dren home. quickly enough, or secured the re- Many parents At the college level, a few schools sources necessary to keep all students seemed more did experiment with holding courses warm through the Colorado winter, outdoors during the early days of to effectively move classes outdoors. concerned the pandemic. Newspaper reports In most places throughout Colorado, with their in Gunnison note that the Colorado schools safeguarded their students State Normal School (today’s Western and communities by closing during children’s Colorado University) held classes out- the most intense waves of the flu. doors in early October. But these out- The abrupt arrival of COVID-19 health than door classes were not widely reported last spring recalled the sudden assault instructional on, and appear not to have contin- of the flu in 1918, leaving schools ued for long as winter arrived and little option again but to send stu- time. The the pandemic deepened. The state’s dents home, albeit in most cases with superintendent largest universities—the University of some effort at virtually continuing the Colorado in Boulder, Colorado State lessons. But as the virus’s initial blitz of Montrose University in Fort Collins, and the has settled into a siege, the approach- University of Denver—all closed their ing school year has given us more schools campuses. At CU and CSU, soldiers time to prepare and consider our estimated that who had been stationed on campus options. Some are opting for (or have became sick, prompting campus and little choice but) in-person learning absenteeism Army officials to establish hospitals on with strict safety protocols in place, ran as high the otherwise-shuttered campuses. similar to the successful efforts in In the end, the students who New York City, Chicago, and Prov- as 70 percent missed significant instructional time idence during the Spanish flu. In during the 1918-19 school year and many other communities, instead of when schools lived under the twin stresses of war closing schools outright, teachers are reopened in and pandemic proved to be, as a being asked to develop robust remote group, resilient. In Colorado and learning strategies as an alternative to December 1918. around the nation, they grew up to be in-person classes. the leaders of the so-called “Great- Yet history shows that the est Generation” who led the United options go beyond this binary. As ing out desks in classrooms, and elim- States through the Great Depres- students, parents, and school offi- inating opportunities to congregate sion, powered the Allies to victory in cials explore additional alternatives, between classes. In Denver, The Denver World War II, and inaugurated an era open-air classrooms offer a compel- Post reported on the reopening of city of astounding economic growth and ling possibility. Already, in an echo schools on January 2, 1919, lament- social reform in the middle of the of the past, public health officials are ing that school had been in session twentieth century. recommending that schools “increase for only five weeks (spread over two circulation of outdoor air as much as separate periods) during the fall se- possible” to keep students healthy. mester. Both communities announced What Earlier Pandemics The innovative open-air approach to they would hold classes later into the Teach Us About School school that proved so successful in spring to make up for lost time. combating another airborne dis- Many parents, however, seemed Despite the existing model of suc- ease more than a century ago seems more concerned with their children’s cessful open-air education in the first poised to have another moment. In- health than instructional time. The decades of the twentieth century, stead of a treatment for sick students, superintendent of Montrose schools Colorado classes—indeed, most class- can open-air classrooms be deployed estimated that absenteeism ran as es around the nation—did not move to keep them healthy? ■ high as 70 percent when schools re- outside in significant numbers during opened in December 1918. The Denver the 1918 pandemic. The flu descend- JASON L. HANSON is the Chief Cre- Post also reported that attendance was ed on communities ferociously fast, ative Officer and Director of Interpretation notably below normal when schools and it’s doubtful whether the state’s and Research at History Colorado. there reopened in January 1919, as school districts could have scaled up

HistoryColorado.org / 19 “Is AMERICA The Space Between David Ocelotl Garcia’s and Norman Rockwell’s Freedom of Worship BY NANCY RÍOS

The author borrowed her title, “Is America highlights erasure and affirmation the series. Possible?,” from an interview with Vincent within American society and provides We returned to this topic in Harding in the On Being with Krista space to reflect on the future. our second conversation, when we Tippett podcast and his essay of the same Garcia’s murals, paintings, and discussed how Rockwell’s elimination name. Harding was active in the Civil sculptures can be found throughout of color gestured towards a diversity Rights Movement and chaired the Veterans Denver and beyond. Born and raised of faiths as fundamental to Ameri- of Hope Project at Denver’s Iliff School of among Denver’s multiracial com- can democracy. We further discussed Theology. He reminds us that the movement munities, Garcia and I discussed his how perhaps this also gestured was also a deeply spiritual one and that artistic process and his commissioned towards a vision of a colorblind, hope can be found in our youth, who are the painting over two conversations. Our separate-but-equal society, which, future. first took place one Saturday morning in Rockwell’s time, was still racially in September at Denver’s History segregated by law and would continue Colorado Center, where Garcia, to be so until after World War II. mountainous and Lucha Martinez de Luna (History Rockwell’s Freedom of Worship fea- pyramid-like terrain is Colorado’s Associate Curator of Lati- tures seven heads crowded together set in the distance of no Heritage and founding director of in repose with three figures dominat- David Ocelotl Garcia’s the Chicano/a Murals of Colorado ing the space. The remaining four fig- Acreative interpretation Project), and I explored the American ures on the canvas include an African of Norman Rockwell’s Freedom of Democracy exhibit. American woman who can barely be Worship. Rockwell’s original mono- Our walkthrough elicited nu- discerned in the top left corner. As chromatic grey-hued painting from merous comments, but it was Gar- Bridget R. Cooks, art historian and 1943 features human forms tightly cia’s comment regarding Rockwell’s scholar of African American studies, assembled in profile with hands in use of color in Freedom of Worship writes, “Rockwell’s awkward tilt of prayer facing towards the left of the that frames the conversation before her head positions her profile so close canvas.1 Religious objects—a rosa- you. Garcia explained that color is to the picture’s edge that she seems to ry, a wedding ring, and a book of one of the techniques he favors in have just made it onto the page. She worship—can also be discerned. In his artistic expressions because of is tightly compressed into the shallow Garcia’s interpretation, commissioned its emotive qualities. Colors’ ability representational space with a group by History Colorado for its installa- to inspire emotions in the viewer, of figures Rockwell painted to show a tion of the Smithsonian exhibition he explained, reveals that color is diversity of faiths.” Further obscuring American Democracy: A Great Leap of imbued with energy, and energy is at her presence are the words “Each Faith, the land appears to give rise to the core of Garcia’s worldview and According To The Dictates of His six human forms placed in the fore- of his abstract imaginism—his use of Own Conscience” at the top of the ground, each holding and offering technique, color, and composition to canvas. Cooks helps us understand their unique blossoming hearts to manifest what moves as energy in the how Rockwell’s oeuvre ultimately what is just out of view to the right material world and in the imagination. portrays “white national unity” given of the canvas. Garcia’s Freedom of Consequently, Garcia shared how he his engagement of African American Worship is a personal meditation on had been struck by the absence of figures throughout the span of his spirituality told through color, form, color in Rockwell’s painting, which career. While Rockwell used models and elements of Chicana/o muralism. was especially pronounced when to capture his iconic realism, this The historical space between the two placed among the other Freedoms in realism belies reality as his narrative

HistoryColorado.org / 20 Possible?”

IMAGE / Freedom of Worship, by Norman Rockwell IMAGE / Freedom of Worship, by David Ocelotl Garcia of America equates equality with mask of a jaguar, or ocelotl in Na- is a response to colonization and as- diversity, significant given the logic of huatl. This figure, Garcia explained, similationist efforts that seek to erase elimination as a framing principle of represents himself and affirms his and eliminate these knowledges and settler colonialism. spirituality and beliefs in Indigenous practices. Although Garcia emphatically lifeways. His worldview, he said, is When Rockwell painted Freedom explained that he does not make grounded in Indigenous lifeways, of Worship, US tribal Indigenous overt political statements in his art, aesthetics, and symbolism, specifically nations were not legally permitted he inevitably partakes in a politicized Mexica, which he first began ex- the freedom of worship, and racially landscape since he affirms lifeways ploring at home through his father’s segregated US combat units fought that have continuously been denied copy of the Codex Nuttall and later and lost lives in defense of freedom and erased in American society. (Of through his participation in Denver’s and democracy and against grow- note is that Garcia’s first exterior Chicana/o communities. Indigeneity ing fascism on European soil. This mural, Huitzilopochtli of 2009, was among Mexican-descent populations hypocrisy was a catalyst for social whitewashed and erased earlier this and communities is complex, but and racial justice movements of the year in violation of the Visual Artists the holding of space for Indigenous mid-twentieth century, which led to Rights Act of 1990.) The viewer of lifeways, including Mexica-embod- judicial, political, educational, and cul- Garcia’s Freedom of Worship may be ied practices of dance, storytelling, tural changes in pursuit of racial, eco- drawn to a central figure wearing a symbolism, and the Nahuatl language, nomic, and gender equality. Garcia’s HistoryColorado.org / 21 inclusion in a cultural institution’s erasure.3 Garcia’s Freedom of Worship exhibition on American democracy affirms the self and the people in his is demonstrative of this effort but community, whose knowledge and still politicized given museums’ and passions are shared and kept alive cultural institutions’ enduring legacy through memory and practice, while as institutions that have historically also honoring the Mexican-descent excluded racialized others as visionar- peoples’ relation to land as herencia, ies of, and as belonging to, the nation. or heritage—much like Chicana/o In the decade leading up to the muralists in Colorado have historical- When Rockwell signing of the American Indian ly done on exterior and interior walls Religious Freedom Act of 1978, in public spaces.4 painted members of Denver’s Chicana/o Garcia explained that for this community used public spaces to project he began with a meditation on Freedom of Worship, express their presence and grievances worship and the role of spirituality in against an oppressive government his life, which led him to recognize US tribal Indigenous that did not protect and invest in their his art as a spiritual practice reliant on communities and instead continually faith and passion. He also shared that nations were not favored their displacement and crim- he had not been surprised that chance inalization while ignoring their histo- had granted him Freedom of Worship to legally permitted ries and contributions to the history reinterpret, given that it features pro- of Colorado. One telling example file imagery, one of Garcia’s favorite the freedom of took place in 1936, when Colorado creative manifestations. He elaborated: Governor Edwin C. Johnson created “I love profile imagery of people worship, and an international stir because of his because when you look forward, you anti-Mexican position (against both only see a certain part of the lines of racially segregated New Mexicans, who were American your face. A three-quarter view is a citizens, and Mexican nationals), little better because you can see more US combat units which he constructed as a defense of the nose structure and face struc- of American, i.e. white, laborers.2 ture. But from the profile, it’s just fought and But absent from his position was the this amazing organic line that travels articulation that a migration pattern around a person’s face and even their lost lives between New Mexico and Colorado body.”5 had been created after US annexation Lines, for Garcia, capture move- in defense of had dispossessed former Mexican ment and the essence of energy, nationals and then American citizens while angles capture depth—aspects freedom and of those lands through a litigation of his work that he describes as ab- system foreign to them. stract imaginism. democracy World War II would see an Garcia’s artistic process relies on increase in Mexican migration to the self, intuition, and instinct, which and against Colorado and other parts of the he recognizes as energy and hence as United States as the Bracero Pro- an abstraction in part because of the growing fascism gram, a series of laws and agreements difficulty in defining it and imaginism between Mexico and the United because it requires disconnecting from on European soil. States established in 1942, recruited the physical world and materializing Mexican laborers to work US agri- what lies in the mind. His exploration cultural fields, creating new networks of lines and their movement results and communities of Mexican-descent in a distortion and the creation of peoples in the United States. figures that resemble caricatures but These histories are seldom retain a realism—for they invoke a affirmed in official historical nar- feeling, a curiosity, an energy within ratives, but art, inside and outside the viewer. Garcia’s abstract imagi- of gallery walls, does so in spite of nism affirms the existence of energy and because of constant threats of that lies within each one of us and

HistoryColorado.org / 22 within our communities, while the his- torical space between the two works of art suggests that manifesting and achieving a more perfect union, which has been structured by racializations and the logic of elimination, is a per- sistent work in progress. ■

NANCY RÍOS is a Hulbert Mellon Faculty Scholar at Colorado College, where Give the gift of she teaches in the Hulbert Center for a History Colorado membership! Southwest Studies and conducts ethnographic research on the Colorado Springs Fine Arts free admission to our museums Center at Colorado College’s acquisition free tickets to ride the Georgetown Loop Railroad® of the mural Arte Mestiza (1986) by free subscription to The Colorado Magazine Emanuel Martinez. She also serves as Ed- ucation Director for the Chicano/a Murals h-co.org/join or 303/866-3639 of Colorado Project. She received her PhD in anthropology and a doctoral portfolio in Mexican American studies from the Uni- By naming a bench at the versity of Texas at Austin. History Colorado Center, you can make a gift that SOURCES not only impacts our mission, Bridget R. Cooks, “Norman Rockwell’s but celebrates someone Negro Problem.” Cultural Critique 105 (fall special in your life. 2019), 40–79. Karen Mary Davalos, Exhibiting Mestizaje: Your donation supports Mexican (American) Museums in the Diaspora (Al- our programs and exhibits, buquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2001). so we can continue to Patrisia Gonzales, Red Medicine: Traditional offer quality education and Indigenous Rites of Birthing and Healing (Tucson: connection to Coloradans University of Arizona Press, 2012). and visitors, in person or Dwanna L. McKay, Kirsten Vinyeta, and virtually. Kari Marie Norgaard, “Theorizing Race and Settler Colonialism within U.S. Sociology.” Sociology Compass 14 (2020). For more information: Give Thanks for Lucha Martinez de Luna, “Chicano Mu- [email protected] rals in Colorado: The First Decade.” Colorado 303/866-4736 Someone Special Heritage, September/October 2015 (Denver: History Colorado, 2015).

NOTES 1 Rockwell illustrated President Franklin Season 2, Episode 1: A Line in the Sand Delano Roosevelt’s 1941 vision of a postwar society based on the democratic ideals of the freedoms of worship and speech and the freedoms from fear and want. Rockwell’s Four Freedoms first appeared inThe Saturday Evening Post and were then circulated by the U.S. De- partment of the Treasury to sell war bonds and stamps as a war effort. 2 History Colorado’s Lost Highways: Dis- patches from the Shadows of the Rocky Mountains podcast shares some of this history in the episode “A Line in the Sand.” History Colorado’s award-winning podcast! 3 Between 1968 and 1978, sixteen Chicana/o/x murals, five interior and eleven exterior murals, made claims to public space, Lost Highways: Dispatches from but only three remain visible. 4 Garcia specifically honors Kasi Garcia the Rocky Mountains (his wife), Melissa Ortiz, Eduardo Sandoval, Siri Martinez, and Adrianna Abarca. HistoryColorado.org/lost-highways 5 This quote has been edited slightly for clarity. or wherever you find podcasts

HistoryColorado.org / 23 Doing Our Part 11 Ways World War II Came to Colorado

BY FLINT WHITLOCK

PHOTO / In July 1941, Clara May Morse took this photo of her sons Francis and Norman, who were born in Lamar and raised there and in Denver, as they shipped out to war. When she heard the news flash about Pearl Harbor, she dashed off letters to each of her sons, only to have them returned to sender unopened. Both brothers perished in the attack. See Clara May Morse’s letters and more powerful artifacts in Liberated: America Fights For Freedom in World War II, on view at the History Colorado Center. History Colorado, 90.441.5

HistoryColorado.org / 24 HREE-QUARTERS OF A CENTURY HAVE PASSED since the most widespread and destructive war in history ended—a war that many historians have called the pivotal event of the twentieth century. That the conflict ended in victory for Tthe Allied nations—the United States, France, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and its commonwealth partners, and others—has much to do with Colorado’s role in it. While the state had no shipyards or tank or aviation production facilities, that didn’t mean Colorado’s contributions were insignificant. Far from it. Let’s take a look back and see what our state contributed to the war effort—and vice versa.

1. We embraced the end of isolationism Ever since Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and then when Nazi Germa- ny invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, many in the United States had been viewing the growing conflict with alarm but also a reluctance to see the country get dragged into another foreign war. It was one thing to sell the tools of war (through the Lend-Lease Act of 1941) to Britain and the Soviet Union so that they could fend off the attacker, but send- ing American boys to fight was quite another. That isolationist sentiment vanished in an instant on Sunday, December 7, 1941. The bombs that fell on Pearl Harbor sent shock waves across the country. Millions of young PHOTO / Women make clothing, Arapahoe Manufacturing Company, Englewood. History Colorado, 94.308.2 men (and many women, too), angered Ordnance Plant—a “bullet factory” lessen the explosion risks involved by the surprise attack, flocked to mil- that the Remington Arms Company in ammunition production. Nearly itary recruiting offices, eager to serve would operate. It would be built on 20,000 people—half of them wom- their country. Colorado saw an out- the 7,000-acre Hayden Ranch in what en—worked in three shifts around pouring of patriotic sentiment that would be known as Lakewood. the clock. has never been equaled; in December The contract was a godsend for The primary product was the 1941 alone, more than 2,000 citizens Denver, which, like virtually every- .30-caliber bullet—used in stan- swamped recruiters’ offices. where across the Depression-ravaged dard-issue American weapons like the country, was suffering from high un- M-1 Garand rifle, Browning automat- 2. We built the arsenal of employment rates. The Denver Ord- ic rifle, and M-30 Browning machine democracy nance Plant project created thousands gun. Eventually the plant was turning On January 4, 1941, eleven months of construction and factory jobs over out an astonishing 6.2 million rounds before the Pearl Harbor attack, the the next five years. of ammunition per day—more than federal government, perhaps an- On October 25, 1941, the bullet any other factory in the United States, ticipating that war was inevitable, factory was dedicated at a ceremo- and perhaps anywhere in the world. awarded a $122 million contract ny, five and a half months ahead of Workers later made fuses for 8-inch, for the development of land, build- schedule. Some 200 buildings were 90mm, and 155mm artillery rounds. ings, and equipment for the Denver grouped according to function to The plant was declared surplus in

HistoryColorado.org / 25 PHOTO / A worker stokes a furnace for the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company in Pueblo, around 1940. History Colorado, PH.PROP.215

October 1945. Today, the complex of of platform stake trailers capable of nearly 20,000 acres of land northeast buildings, known as the Federal Cen- carrying 7,000 pounds. Gates Rubber of Denver and began construction ter, sits at its original location at West Company, farther south on Broadway, of the $50 million (in 1942 dollars) Sixth Avenue and Kipling Street. switched from making tires and fan Rocky Mountain Arsenal. This facility As young men were drafted or belts for everyday use (virtually no manufactured deadly chemical weap- volunteered for military service, other new tires were available to the civilian ons such as mustard gas, Lewisite, massive changes began to sweep the market for the duration of the war) chlorine gas, and incendiary (napalm) state. Government contracts revived to making tires and fan belts for jeeps munitions because it was believed moribund businesses that had strug- and other military vehicles. And the that the enemy was making the same. gled to stay open during the Great Coleman Motor Company of Little- The controversial facility was deac- Depression. The Schaeffer Tent and ton produced the Model G-55A 4x4 tivated in 1992 and, after extensive Awning Company, a small Denver chassis with a 6-cylinder engine as the cleanup, turned into a wildlife refuge. manufacturer, received an order from platform for a Model E crane made Pueblo also made a great con- the Army Quartermaster Corps for by Quick-Way Truck Shovel Compa- tribution to the war effort. Colorado thousands of eight-man pyramidal ny of Denver. Engineering units used Fuel & Iron steelworks, then the canvas tents. Soon the plant was the combined 4x4 truck-crane vehicle state’s largest private employer, pro- scrambling to find and train enough for bridging, construction, and other duced barbed wire, railroad rails, pig workers to turn out nearly 100 tents a purposes. iron, iron and steel bars, and plates day at its facility at 1421–1423­ Larim- Eight other Denver fabricating for use by heavy industry, as well as er Street. firms were shaping and welding hull coal, limestone, and iron ore from its The army needed vehicles, and parts to fulfill a $56 million contract many mines across the state. Denver manufacturers answered for the US Navy. They shipped the The Pueblo Ordnance Depot, the call. The Winter Weiss Com- parts to Mare Island Navy Yard near 15 miles from the city, was built in pany, at 620 Broadway in Denver, San Francisco for assembly. 1942 to serve as an ammunition and was a manufacturer of automotive In addition to bullets and shells, material storage and shipping center; items, including commercial auto tents and tires, the military needed it employed thousands of defense and motorcycle bodies. It received weapons of great destructive pow- workers during the war. Today, as an Army order to build thousands er. In 1942, the US Army acquired the Pueblo Chemical Depot, its main

HistoryColorado.org / 26 function is to destroy hundreds of extinction. Steel was in great wartime Counties in an area known as the thousands of obsolete chemical demand and the ore from Leadville’s Southern Coal Fields. The major em- weapons. A warehouse here was also Climax Molybdenum mine became ployer was Colorado Fuel & Iron. once the repository for Third Reich a highly prized commodity. In the In 1943, the scientists involved in propaganda war art before the col- 1940s, the mine’s annual production the top-secret Manhattan Project con- lection, numbering about 300 pieces, was more than $13 million. The tracted the Coors Porcelain Company was relocated in the 1980s to the US mining boom, plus the presence of of Golden because the company had Army Center for Military History in 15,000 young soldiers training for the experience, expertise, and capacity Washington, D.C. high-alpine warfare at Camp Hale just to make large quantities of desperate- The sudden availability of jobs 10 miles away, brought an economic ly needed ceramic insulators capable brought in a tidal wave of new resurgence to the old town. of handling the tremendous electrical residents to Colorado. According Zinc, too, was an important loads produced by the calutrons used to Colorado historian Tom Noel, in metal. The Empire Zinc Company in the separation of uranium 235 the decade between 1940 and 1950, had established a mine at Gilman, and 238—materials needed to make Denver’s population grew almost 29 south of Minturn, in the early 1900s. atomic bombs. percent—from 322,412 to 415,786. During the war, the mine was in full That uranium: It came from The suburbs, too, exploded; Adams production. Empire Zinc built a Uravan, a mining town near Grand County’s population increased nearly company town on a spectacular ridge, Junction. 79 percent; Arapahoe County, 62 per- which still stands along Highway 24, The state’s agriculture sector cent; Boulder County, 29 percent; and weathered and abandoned. also boomed with the heightened Jefferson County, 83 percent. While mining companies contin- demands of wartime. In 1942, the ued to extract gold, silver, lead, and federal government asked Colorado 3. We powered the war zinc from Colorado’s mountains, coal farmers to increase the production effort was an essential mineral, too—nec- of their spring pig crop by 30 per- essary for electrical power genera- cent, eggs by 10 percent, and milk High in the mountains, the discovery tion, factory furnaces, locomotives, by 4 percent. The government asked of molybdenum, an element used to and home heating. The Colorado cattlemen to increase the slaughter of strengthen steel, brought the down- coal-mining industry was primarily cattle and calves by 18 percent and of and-out silver- and gold-mining town located in Las Animas and Huerfano sheep and lamb by 9 percent. And the of Leadville back from the brink of

PHOTO / A woman plows her family’s field on the Colorado plains during wartime. History Colorado, PH.PROP.2583

HistoryColorado.org / 27 feds requested a 13-percent increase in because the Army alone needed some yards into “victory gardens” and built potato acreage along with a 6-percent 15 million pairs of combat boots.” coops so they could raise chickens for increase in oats and 2 percent in barley Rationing of items “from gasoline to fresh eggs and meat. and corn. tomato ketchup” kept supply chains Strict quotas on gasoline pur- As a result, during the war Colo- active and inflation down. chases went into effect nationwide, rado had its highest agricultural output Certain fabrics—such as silk and beginning in the spring of 1942. De- ever—much of which went to the nylon—were in short supply because pending on one’s occupation, drivers armed forces, leaving little for civilians. they were needed for parachutes and with an “A” ration windshield sticker ropes. Skirts and dresses became were limited to four gallons a week 4. We sacrificed for the shorter because cotton and wool were while those with “B” (issued primarily common good needed for military uniforms. Shoes to business owners) and “C” (issued were almost unattainable. primarily to seventeen professions— Though the state’s economic en- The Office of Price Adminis- physicians, nurses, dentists, clergy, gines were on overdrive, Colora- tration issued every family a ration farm workers, and construction or dans were not enjoying the benefits. book and ration stamps that were maintenance workers) stickers quali- Coloradans, like everyone else across required to buy items at the local fied for five gallons a week. America, were hit hard by rationing. grocery store. The OPA’s complex, It goes without saying that The much-despised Office of Price ever-changing “point system” allotted black-market activities proliferated, Administration (OPA) imposed strict a certain number of points to each both for gasoline and food. rationing on the American people food item—meats, butter, sugar, In 1940, Colorado’s tourism in- for most of the war’s duration. As and processed foods—based on its dustry was the state’s largest and most Time-Life noted, “The major sacrifice availability. profitable enterprise, grossing about that was required of most people on It took 48 “blue points” a month $100 million annually. But the onset the home front was involuntary—the to buy canned, bottled, or dried of the war, with its gasoline rationing unprecedented rationing of some 20 foods, and 64 “red points” to buy and other priorities, saw tourist travel essential items by the federal govern- meat, fish, sugar, coffee, and dairy in the West plummet by as much as a ment. . . . Canned foods, for example, products each month—if the items third. Further burdening tourism, the were rationed because tin went into were even available. Butter was so government imposed a nationwide armaments and cans for soldiers’ scarce that margarine, made from speed limit of 35 miles per hour. Be- C-rations, coffee because the ships vegetable oils, became a substitute for sides saving fuel required for military that would ordinarily carry the coffee the dairy product. purposes, drivers had to cut down beans from South America had been Because food shortages were real, on their driving to save tires. Civilian diverted for military purposes, shoes many Colorado families turned back- tires were virtually unavailable during the war because rubber, needed for military vehicles, was in short supply. No new cars were available for the duration, either; the major car manufacturers—Ford, General Motors, Dodge, Chrysler, Plymouth, Packard, Studebaker, Nash, Hudson, DeSoto, and Graham-Paige—com- pletely ceased making cars for the civilian market and devoted their assembly lines to turning out military vehicles and aircraft. Because of the scarcity of tires and fuel, many drivers simply put their cars up on blocks and waited for the hoped-for peace and return to normalcy. To further give civilians the sense PHOTO / A woman feeds livestock around 1944 in a photo from the collection of Edmund Aladar Schramko, that “we’re all in this together,” the who served as a medical officer at Camp Hale for the 10th Mountain Division. History Colorado, 2019.123.11 government encouraged nationwide

HistoryColorado.org / 28 scrap drives. In Colorado’s big cities and small towns, wherever there was a Boy Scout or Girl Scout troop, a 4-H Club, or a church youth group, young people could be seen pulling their Radio Flyer wagons from door to door, asking residents for their scrap. People gave up tin cans, iron, steel, and scrap aluminum, old tires, automobile bumpers, newspapers— anything that could be recycled and turned into military products. They even turned in kitchen fats so the glycerol/glycerine could be converted into explosives. “Sacrificing” because of a lack of consumer goods paled in comparison to the personal sacrifices many fami- lies made. Virtually every household with a family member in the military PHOTO / Stationed in Guam, the crew of a B-29 bomber display their plane’s Denver decal. displayed a “service flag” in a front History Colorado, 2019.96.1 window of their home or apartment. bomber crews. Eight different bom- Base—a name it retains to this day. This was a small white flag with a red bardment groups also trained there Its name honors Lieutenant Edward border and one or more blue stars in before being deployed overseas. To- Joseph Peterson, who died in a crash the center, each star representing one day the facility is the Pueblo Munici- of his P-38 “Lightning” photo recon- family member in military service. If pal Airport, which is also home to the naissance plane at the base in 1942. a member was killed, the family could Pueblo Weisbrod Aircraft Museum. A smaller air base, named Ent Air exchange the flag for one with a gold Colorado Springs also benefited Force Base after its first commander, star, indicating the loss. from the building boom with several Major General Uzal Girard Ent, was Colorado newspapers often projects. South of the city, Camp established in 1943 at the site of a carried stories about “local boys in Carson (named for the Army officer closed sanatorium in the Knob Hill uniform”—which, of course, in- and fur trapper Christopher “Kit” neighborhood of Colorado Springs. cluded “girls” in uniform, too—and Carson), sprawled across 60,000 Ent housed the first NORAD com- lists of casualties. Over 3,400 Colo- mostly barren acres. On land bought mand headquarters. Today the US radans died in the war that claimed by the city, civilian contractors com- Olympic Training Center occupies over 405,000 American lives, and pleted the camp’s first building, the the site. thousands more were wounded. headquarters, on January 31, 1942— Straddling the line between Auro- Many, too, were listed as “missing in less than two months after the United ra and Denver was the Lowry Army action”—a status that did nothing to States declared war on Japan and Air Force Base. In 1935, a group ease the heartbreak. Germany. An army of 11,500 civilian of prescient state and local officials workers quickly put up hundreds of contacted the War Department in 5. We provided spaces other wooden buildings, and soon order to secure a military airfield for bases more than 35,000 new recruits and and training base for Colorado. The their cadre populated the post; more group offered to donate the Agnes C. Facilities to train the millions of than 100,000 trained there during the Phipps Tuberculosis Sanatorium and enlistees or draftees who had never war. Renamed Fort Carson in 1954, adjoining property for the site; the fired a rifle or flown a plane were in today it’s Colorado’s largest military War Department accepted the offer great demand across the country, and establishment at 137,403 acres, or 214 and began building the base, which Colorado saw its share of a nation- square miles. was named for Denverite Lieutenant wide military building boom. Nearby, the Army established Francis B. Lowry, a pilot who was In Pueblo, the Army established the Colorado Springs Army Air killed during World War I. an advanced school to train Boeing Base in 1942; within a year its name The base’s main focus was tech- B-17 “Flying Fortress” and Consol- had changed to Peterson Air Force nical training, including aerial photog- idated B-24 “Liberator” four-engine HistoryColorado.org / 29 raphy. It remained active until 1994, Air Force base, training over 50,000 the Army Specialized Training when it closed and transformed into airmen to become bombardiers and Program—which offered a college a large, master-planned residential armorers. Buckley today is an active education to gifted soldiers with the and commercial community. A few Air Force base with over 12,000 mili- anticipation that they would become original buildings remain, including tary and civilians working there. officers. As part of ASTP, the Univer- the officers’ quarters, headquarters Also in Aurora, Army General sity of Colorado at Boulder opened a building, and Chapel No. 1, called the Hospital No. 21 (later renamed Fitz- Japanese-language school on cam- “Eisenhower Chapel,” and two im- simons Army Hospital) was built in pus, and Colorado Agricultural and mense hangars, one of which houses 1918 to care for wounded World War I Mechanical College (later renamed the Wings Over the Rockies Air & soldiers. A few months before Amer- Colorado State University) in Fort Space Museum. ica was thrust into the Second World Collins offered veterinary training. In Twenty miles southeast of War, the US government expanded Colorado Springs, Colorado College Denver, the military established the and upgraded the hospital. After the offered the similar V-12 Navy College 100-square-mile Lowry Bombing and war, when President Dwight D. Eisen- Training Program. Gunnery Range in 1938; pilots based hower had a heart attack while golfing at Lowry used the range for bombing at Denver’s Cherry Hills Country Club 6. We were the home of practice during World War II. The in September 1955, he was nursed soldiers on skis range closed in 1963, and the site back to health at Fitzsimons. Perhaps the Army’s most unusual became home to a Titan interconti- Since 1903, Golden had been post was Camp Hale, sited at 9,250 nental ballistic missile complex. The home to Camp George West, a feet above sea level along Highway 24 Lowry Landfill, an EPA Superfund training facility for Colorado National between Leadville and Minturn. From site today, is at the northwest corner Guard soldiers. While a rifle range April to November 1942, 10,000 of the range. was located on post, artillery practice workmen built nearly 1,000 buildings In Aurora is Buckley Air Force went on at Green Mountain, near in this remote valley. This 250,000- Base, named for 1st Lt. John Harold Lakewood. Today Camp George West acre training ground prepared the Buckley, a World War I fighter pilot is home to the Colorado State Patrol men of the famed 10th Mountain from Denver who died in 1918 while training academy and Colorado Cor- Division for winter and mountain on a mission over France. Shortly rectional Center. warfare in the Apennine Mountains before World War II began, the City Colleges and universities also of Italy in 1945. of Denver bought 5,740 acres of felt the impact of the manpower Also at Camp Hale was a detach- land and donated it to the US Army, drain caused by the war. The US ment of 200 WACs—the Women’s which quickly established an Army government established the ASTP— Army Corps. They did secretarial work, served as drivers and as tele- phone and telegraph operators, ran the post office and finance office, and more. About 75 nurses in the camp hospital and ten American Red Cross workers served at the camp as well. Because the Army believed there would be no future need for specially trained mountain troops, it tore the camp down after the 10th departed in 1944. (There is no truth to the per- sistent rumor that Camp Hale was dis- mantled in error.) Only a few building foundations remain, but a memorial to the 1,000 mountain troopers who died in the war is at the top of Tennessee Pass, at the entrance to Ski Cooper, which once had been the division’s PHOTO / Camp Hale near Leadville housed the “soldiers on skis” of the 10th Mountain Division, who trained for advanced ski-training facility. wintertime warfare in the mountains of Italy. History Colorado, After the war, many of the veter- Edmund Aladar Schramko Collection, 2019.123.27 ans returned to start the ski resorts of HistoryColorado.org / 30 Aspen, Vail, Arapahoe Basin, and oth- er ski areas around the country. The Colorado Ski and Snowboard Muse- um in Vail has an extensive display of 10th Mountain Division memorabilia.

7. We lived with the enemy in our midst As the war rolled on, the military brought more and more captured German and Italian soldiers to the United States, housing them in prisoner-of-war camps far from the battlefields. Across the nation, about 700 POW camps held some 425,000 captured enemy soldiers (375,000 of them German, the rest mostly Italian); from 1943 to 1946, Colora- do maintained three large camps and more than forty smaller ones. Most of the POW camps had PHOTO / Nursery school teacher Sumi Kashiwagi serves milk and graham crackers to children in a recreation hall at Amache in December 1942. Photo by Tom Parker. History Colorado, 88.312.1 barracks and other buildings sur- rounded by watchtowers, searchlights, barbed-wire fences, armed guards, the Great Western Sugar dormitory at and dogs. In spite of that, life for 8. We had a prison camp Third Avenue and Kimbark Street into for American citizens the POWs was about as pleasant as it a barracks where Italian and German Only slightly lower than the POWs in could be. For entertainment the pris- POWs who worked on area farms the eyes of many Americans were the oners could watch movies, participate lived. Issei and Nisei—American residents in sports, organize singing and theat- Because America’s military draft or citizens of Japanese descent. In the rical groups, play musical instruments, had reduced the number of available panic following Pearl Harbor, there have free medical care, and use the agricultural workers, many POWs were fears (unfounded, as it turned camp’s library facilities. in Colorado helped tend farm fields out) that many Japanese Americans Camp Carson in Colorado and ranches; for their labors they were likely to be spies and saboteurs Springs held the greatest number of earned a small daily wage that they working secretly for the Japanese prisoners (12,000), followed by Trini- could spend in their camp canteens. government. dad (2,500) and Greeley (2,000). The In December 1944 The Denver On February 19, 1942, ten weeks military established other camps in Post ran a story under the headline after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Longmont and Brighton, while Rose “Denver Soldiers Overseas Don’t President Franklin D. Roosevelt was Hill at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Like Coddling of Nazi Prisoners.” persuaded to sign the controversial held as many as 300 who had been The soldiers were reacting to news Executive Order 9066 that authorized captured in North Africa; Rose Hill that Colorado farmers were too nice the relocation of nearly 120,000 Jap- operated from November 1943 until to the German POWs who worked anese Americans from their homes April 1946. A Denver Post story noted their fields. along the West Coast and sent them that, one day, three Afrika Korps pris- Although fraternization was to ten temporary “assembly centers” oners walked away from a work detail officially discouraged, many prisoners around the country, there to be held at Rose Hill and went into Denver, developed close bonds with indi- under guard until the war was over. looking for female companionship; viduals and families for whom they To the Japanese Americans, these they were quickly rounded up and worked. Sometimes the fraternization were little better than the concentra- returned to the facility. went too far. At Camp Hale, some of tion camps where the Nazis isolated In Brighton, the Colorado Sani- the WACs got a little too friendly with and incarcerated Jews and other peo- tary Canning Factory became a POW the Germans, and six of the women ple thought to be “undesirable” or a camp for 589 German POWs while, were court-martialed. in Longmont, the military converted threat to Germany. HistoryColorado.org / 31 One of these camps, known as earning more medals for courage— ver after the war, was the tail gunner both Camp Amache and the Granada many of them awarded posthumous- on the Enola Gay—the B-29 bomber War Relocation Center, was built in ly—than any other US Army unit of that dropped the atomic bomb on August 1942 in southeastern Colo- its size. One of the men, George T. Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The rado near the small farming town of Sakato, who moved to Denver after atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Granada in Prowers County, 140 miles the war, received a belated Medal of and of Nagasaki three days later, east of Pueblo. Barbed wire surround- Honor from President Bill Clinton in unleashed previously unimaginable ed the windblown camp, and armed 2000. Kiyoshi Muranaga, an internee destruction and human suffering in guards stood watch over the internees. at Amache, received a posthumous hastening the end of the war in the Families were forced to live in Medal of Honor after being killed in Pacific. Japan surrendered shortly cramped quarters, and the govern- action in Italy. thereafter. ment provided three meals a day, One man who tried to fight this Another unit with Colorado roots and offered internees work to relieve injustice and prejudice was Colorado was the 3,000-man 157th Infantry the boredom: digging ditches and Governor Ralph L. Carr. He refused Regiment, a part of the 45th Infantry irrigation canals, tending gardens, to allow any Issei or Nisei living in Division—made up of two National and working in the mess hall. Profes- Colorado to be sent to a relocation Guard regiments from Oklahoma and sionals (doctors, nurses, teachers, and camp, believing that the Constitution one from Colorado. Whereas the 10th others) could practice their disciplines protected all Americans. Likely be- Mountain Division saw only about in the camp. There was a school for cause of his stand for human rights, three months in combat, the 45th children and a Boy Scout troop. he was voted out of office in 1943. saw 511 days of combat—in Sicily, There was also a compensation But he was later memorialized by a Italy, France, and Germany—made system that paid professionals $19 statue in Denver’s Sakura Square, the four amphibious combat landings in a month, skilled workers $16, and naming of the Ralph Carr Memorial the Mediterranean, and liberated the non-skilled workers $12. As the war Highway along US 285 from Denver Dachau concentration camp in April turned in America’s favor, according to his hometown of Antonito near 1945. And, while the 10th lost 1,000 to a National Park Service brochure, the New Mexico line, and the Ralph men, the 45th had over 3,500 men “From all ten camps, 4,300 people L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center in killed and more than 14,000 wound- received permission to attend col- Denver’s Civic Center. ed—a casualty rate of over 100 per- lege, and about 10,000 were allowed cent, as many soldiers were wounded to leave temporarily to harvest sugar 9. And, of course, we more than once. beets” and other crops. served One of the thousands of Colora- At its peak, Amache held over dans who died in combat was Major In addition to the men of the 10th 7,300 men, women, and children, General Maurice Rose, a graduate Mountain Division and the Fighting making it the smallest of the relo- of Denver’s East High School. He 442nd, many other Coloradans served cation camps—but the tenth largest became a two-star general in com- with distinction. Ten men with a “city” in Colorado. The government mand of the 3rd Armored Division connection to Colorado were award- released most internees in August fighting in Germany—making him ed the Medal of Honor—the nation’s 1945 and closed the camp on Oc- the highest-ranking Jewish officer to highest award for valor in combat— tober 15. After the war, the camp’s serve in the war. On March 30, 1945, six of them posthumously. One of 550 buildings were auctioned off and five weeks before the end of the war them, Joe P. Martinez of Ault, has a removed. Today the mostly barren in the European Theater, Rose was statue dedicated to him in the park in site is a National Historic Landmark; leading a tank column when it came front of the State Capitol. Colorado’s efforts are underway to reconstruct under enemy fire; he was killed by a Medal of Honor recipients and their some of the buildings. burst of machine-gun fire. After the deeds are remembered in a display at Proving their loyalty to the Unit- war, Rose General Hospital in Denver the Broomfield Veterans Museum. ed States, scores of young men from was named in his honor. Colorado A&M University phys- Amache—and the other nine camps Another prominent wartime icist Philip G. Koontz contributed across the country—enlisted in the Coloradan was Victor H. Krulak, to the war effort by working on the Army as part of the 3,000-man 442nd who rose to three-star rank in the “Manhattan Project”—the top-secret Regimental Combat Team. That unit, Marine Corps. Born in Denver in atomic bomb program in laboratories made up almost entirely of Japa- 1913, Krulak graduated from the US in both Chicago and New Mexico. nese Americans, compiled a sterling Naval Academy. While serving as And George “Bob” Caron, who combat record in Italy and France, an observer in Shanghai during the would move from Brooklyn to Den- HistoryColorado.org / 32 Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, he saw Japanese landing craft whose bows could be lowered to permit the discharge of troops. So unique was the idea that he passed it along to New Orleans boat builder Andrew Higgins, who developed the idea; the US military adopted the design, and the LCVP (Higgins boat) was born. Krulak repeatedly distinguished him- self in combat in the Pacific Theater, and served later in Vietnam.

10. We liked Ike (and he liked us) Undoubtedly the most well-known individual with Colorado ties was Dwight D. Eisenhower. A year after graduating from West Point in 1915, he married Mamie Doud, daughter of a prominent Denver family (her family home still stands at 750 Lafayette Street). They honeymooned at Eldorado Springs near Boulder. Stationed from December 1924 to September 1925 at Fort Logan, in the Denver suburb of Sheridan, “Ike” went on to become the supreme commander of SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) and oversaw all forces in the PHOTO / Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower and their children greet admirers outside Denver’s Brown Palace European Theater of Operations. hotel in May 1959. History Colorado, PH.PROP.5708 Seven years after the war, he became the thirty-fourth President of the On August 18, the national that littered the city’s streets—worse, he United States and enjoyed spending wartime speed limit of 35 miles per said, than after the Armistice in 1918. his summers in Colorado, with Lowry hour was lifted. Two days later the Pueblo held a massive victory ju- Air Force Base as his “Summer White front page of The Denver Post sported bilee on August 26, complete with pa- House.” an eight-column banner headline: rades, marching bands, and fireworks “Nylons & Girdles Due Any Day at the Colorado State Fairgrounds. 11. We went a little crazy Now”—much to the relief of fash- To the great relief of people ion-conscious women. The govern- around the world, the war that had for peace ment suspended the rationing of claimed 60 to 80 million lives was at On May 8, 1845—Victory in Europe shoes and ceased most food rationing last truly over. Day—Nazi Germany officially by year’s end. And Colorado had done its part surrendered. The Japanese did likewise Two days of celebrations— to bring about the Allied victory. ■ on September 2, 1945, in a formal marred by drunken brawls, car ceremony aboard the battleship USS accidents, and small fires—broke out FLINT WHITLOCK is a full-time mil- Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay. throughout Denver and other Colora- itary historian, editor of WWII Quarter- Throughout the nation and Colorado, do cities and towns as the end of the ly, and a member of the board of directors people laughed, cheered, celebrated, war was in sight. Scotty Wallace, head at the Broomfield Veterans Museum. He got drunk, danced, paraded in the of Denver’s street-cleaning depart- is the author of two books about Colorado streets, and went to church to give ment, could only shake his head at the Army units in World War II: Soldiers on thanks. mounds of paper and broken glass Skis and The Rock of Anzio.

HistoryColorado.org / 33 Immigration to Colorado MYTH AND REALITY BY WILLIAM WEI

PHOTO / T. Owaki and family, 1915. Photo by Oliver E. Aultman. History Colorado, 2001.41.625 HistoryColorado.org / 34 What started the colonization of or most of its history, Colorado was the 1858–61 Colorado Gold Rush, also known as the Pikes America has been a Peak Gold Rush. This initiated a flood of habitation into what was once deemed an uninhabitable region. In haven for those seeking the wake of the gold rush and in the F midst of the secession of the south- a better life and a refuge for ern states, which precipitated the Civil War, the US government established those fleeing for their lives. the Territory of Colorado on February 28, 1861. The creation of the Colora- Indeed, since its inception, do territory enhanced federal control of the Intermountain West and its resources, protecting them from dep- America has been an redations by southern secessionists. By 1870, immigrants constituted inspiration to others, a place 16 percent of Colorado’s population. For most of them, westward migra- where the downtrodden tion was a two-stage process: first they migrated from the East Coast to the Midwest, then they migrated could find hope. again to the Interior West. They were welcomed in labor-starved Colora- Among the proponents of immigra- Of course, another president, do. Edward M. McCook, Colorado tion was President John F. Kennedy, Donald J. Trump, has more recently Territorial Governor in 1869–73 who laid out his inclusionary vision been the country’s most prominent and 1874–75, certainly appreciated of America in his 1958 book, A Na- opponent of immigration. Like many their value. As a Union general in the tion of Immigrants. in the past, he has often cast immi- Civil War, he readily acknowledged Kennedy’s paean to immigrants grants as a burden on the rest of the important role that immigrants notwithstanding, the history of immi- society. Is that really the case? played in the Union’s victory against grants in America has been a fraught the Confederacy and considered them one. Their story is more complex Where Immigrants the solution to Colorado’s chronic than the proponents of immigration Came From labor shortage. In his 1870 message would have it. Instead of working A mountainous and arid area, Colo- to the Territorial Legislature, McCook together to transcend their cultural rado initially attracted few coloniz- observed that “those new States of differences to achieve the ideals em- ers. Up through the first half of the the West, like Iowa, Wisconsin and bodied in America’s founding docu- nineteenth century, it was a relatively Minnesota, which have made orga- ments, immigrants brought with them sparsely populated place, inhabited nized efforts to secure European their inherited prejudices of race and mainly by Native Americans, who had emigration, have increased in popula- nationality. As historian Thomas An- long occupied the area, and Hispano tion and wealth beyond all precedent drews notes in Killing for Coal: “The settlers, who traced their origins in in the history of our country.” He Welsh and Scots despised the Irish, the region back to the seventeenth further observed that European im- the French bore a grudge against the century. Before the Territory of migrants were interested in coming to Germans, and the Germans claimed Colorado could become an integral Colorado, noting that he had received superiority over the Poles, who part of the United States, it needed communications from “two German could not forgive the Austrians, who settlers willing to face the daunting colonies containing over two hundred despised African Americans, who dis- challenge of an inhospitable land- families each, and from one contain- trusted Yankees, who saw Hispanos scape and climate and, later, to weath- ing forty families” inquiring about as dirty, lazy, and primitive.” agricultural and other resources of er the area’s boom-and-bust economy. Indeed, immigrants have often Many of the people who took on this the territory. contended with each other in their challenge were immigrants and their From the information provided pursuit of the American Dream. descendants. by the 1870 Census, it is evident that

HistoryColorado.org / 35 The grim reality in many areas of the world was that there were now too many people on too little land to support them, a situation exacerbated by adverse climatic changes. the majority of immigrants living persuaded that a better life awaited century, there were about 900 million in Colorado who had been counted them in the Colorado Territory. inhabitants on earth. Within a century a decade earlier in the 1860 Census Many of these descendants of that number had climbed to 1.6 bil- were the offspring of immigrants immigrant Americans identified with lion. The grim reality in many areas who had settled in nearby midwest- their ethnic group first and spoke the of the world was that there were now ern states as part of an earlier wave group’s language rather than English. too many people on too little land to of immigration. The Census Bureau As the 1870 Census itself noted, it support them, a situation exacerbat- appreciated their immigrant ori- was commonplace to refer to people ed by adverse climatic changes. For gins as well, so in 1870 the Census by their ethnicity rather than their example, in the 1800s, southwestern began to enumerate the number of nationality, that is, where they were Germany suffered from extreme descendants of earlier immigrants. born. With the end of the Civil War weather conditions that resulted in a It noted the value of “ascertain[ing] (1861–65), these descendants of im- series of disastrous crop failures. In the contributions made to our native migrants, along with other Americans, the early 1900s, so-called Volga Ger- population by each principal country would increasingly identify with the mans—Germans who had migrated of Europe; to obtain . . . the number nation rather than the state or their to Russia—were eventually forced by of those who are only one remove.” ethnic group, a phenomenon that was famine and politics to migrate again. Because most of the immigrants who reinforced by civic education taught For those wishing to escape this came first were males, the descen- in American schools. precarious existence or live at some- dants of immigrants tended to have thing better than a subsistence level, foreign-born fathers and native-born Why Immigrants Came the solution was to become economic mothers. As people moved westward, A variety of push/pull factors led to immigrants. Many Germans volun- there was increasing intermarriage. immigration to America and Colo- tarily went to America in search of a Of the Coloradans enumerated in the rado, and these changed depending materially better life for themselves. 1870 Census, 23 percent had foreign on the prevailing circumstances. The Many of them settled in Colorado’s parents, and an additional 26 percent national narrative emphasizes the farm country. had one parent who was foreign. search for freedom that brought early As the 1860 Census observed, Most of the migrants were young colonists to America. In 1883, Emma for immigrants America was a place men who migrated from nearby Lazarus described immigrants as the “more than anywhere else, [where] Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa. “huddled masses yearning to breathe every man may find occupation A significant number also migrated free.” This is reflected in the 1860 US according to his talents, and enjoy from as far away as New York and Census that described immigrants as resources according to his industry.” Pennsylvania. In all likelihood, those those “impelled to seek . . . a refuge And that primary resource was “land from New York and Pennsylvania from the persecutions of religious beyond the capacity of the people to were also descendants of immigrants: bigotry and political exclusion at till, and consequently cheap.” This Irish (the so-called famine Irish) who home.” English Pilgrims, French Hu- vision of plentiful land was encour- sought to escape the urban ethnic en- guenots, and German “Forty-Eight- aged by the Homestead Act (1862), claves into which they were crowded ers,” for example, were religious and a bill signed by President Abraham and German (the so-called Pennsylva- political dissenters who sought refuge Lincoln to stimulate western migra- nia Dutch or Deutsche) who sought in America. tion by providing settlers 160 acres of land to farm. Because of proximity, A more important reason the ma- public land. To receive ownership of midwestern descendants of immi- jority of immigrants came to America their homesteads, settlers had to be grants were able to take advantage of was poverty. Many were driven from US citizens and complete five years the opportunities afforded by Colora- their homelands because of an unfa- of continuous residence on the land. do. And the advent of rail transporta- vorable land-to-people ratio. Popu- With this incentive, immigrants came tion enabled those living on the East lation growth was a driving factor. in droves looking for land they could Coast to do so as well. They were At the beginning of the nineteenth call their own. In 1880, immigrants

HistoryColorado.org / 36 represented only 13 percent of the national population, but 23 percent of those who settled in the American West. Their settlement of the land was expedited by the building of the Transcontinental Railroad (1863–69), a 1,912-mile railroad line that con- nected the US rail network at Coun- cil Bluffs, Iowa, to San Francisco, California. The railroad provided a comparatively cheap and fast way for people in the United States and from around the world to go beyond the 100th meridian to Colorado. Along with another advance in technolo- gy—steamships—railroads brought America and the Interior West closer than ever before to immigrants. Ad- vances in modern technology facili- tated the settlement of the American West. Railroads and steamships made America and the Interior West closer than ever to people around the world. The Transcontinental Railroad, which promoted immigration to the American West, was also built by immigrants, mainly Chinese who worked on the Central Pacific and Irish on the Union Pacific. Arguably, the over 20,000 Chinese who worked on the railroad had the worst of it since they had to negotiate the Sierra Nevada Mountains. As Ava Chin, a descendant of a Chinese railroad worker, described it in a May 26, 2019, article in the Washington Post, the workers “risked their lives hammering and detonating gunpowder, surviving avalanches and extreme conditions— engaging in the kind of backbreaking, chisel-to-granite ‘bone-work’ that others refused to do.” The Chinese and Irish immigrants can be credited PHOTO / Tintype of Volga German immigrant, circa 1872. History Colorado, 87.155.12 with unifying the nation economically and culturally. After completing the railroad, many immigrant workers Another sizable group to migrate remained in the Interior West, making their way to Colorado and the other to America were those who Intermountain states, where they con- involuntarily immigrated as a matter tributed significantly to local econ- omies by working in the mines, on of life and death. They were refugees. railroads, and in other occupations.

HistoryColorado.org / 37 Another sizable group to migrate to America were those who invol- untarily immigrated as a matter of life and death. They were refugees. The best known were the Irish, who fled rural areas because of the Great Potato Famine. The famine claimed the lives of more than a million Irish peasants who died from starvation and disease. Ironically, food was available in Ireland to feed them, but their English landlords exported it abroad. As journalist Timothy Egan has recently observed, some of the English thought that “a merciful God was doing a favor by killing off the starving masses” who came from a country infested with crime, famine, and disease. Penniless Irish peasants thus joined the exodus abroad, ending up in unfamiliar urban enclaves on America’s eastern seaboard. In the first half of the nineteenth century, some three million immigrated to America.

What Immigrants Did By the 1870s, 74 percent of those liv- ing in Colorado were born in Amer- ica, mainly descendants of an earlier wave of immigrants; 26 percent were newly arrived immigrants. The 1870 Census grouped these immigrants and their descendants into four major employment cate- gories: agriculture, professional and personal services, trade and transpor- tation, and manufacturing and min- ing. Most were engaged in some sort of physical labor: agricultural laborers (with immigrants comprising 41 per- PHOTO / Florence Bath (shown circa 1920) immigrated from Scotland to the town of Avalo in Weld cent of that workforce), laborers (at County, Colorado. History Colorado, R.93.2009.319.2 53 percent), officials and employees of railroad companies (34 percent), Immigrants arrived at a crucial moment and miners (46 percent). Among the laboring masses were large numbers in Colorado’s history. of British and Irish, viewed at the Besides contributing to the economy, time as boasting superior strength. Lacking the capital to start farms their very presence provided the or the skills needed to farm the numbers needed for arid high plains of Colorado, they had few alternatives but to work as Colorado to become a state. common laborers. In this capacity,

HistoryColorado.org / 38 immigrants played a significant role different levels of discrimination. resulted in violent clashes such as the in developing the territory’s economy, While the bigotry against immigrants Philadelphia Nativist Riots in 1844, a doing the work necessary to make it from Southern and Eastern Europe result of rising anti-Catholic senti- a wealth-producing area and building was severe, the discrimination lasted ment and the growing presence of the infrastructure necessary to make longer and was far worse for peo- Irish Catholic immigrants in the City the area accessible to the rest of the ple of color. Traditionally, Asians, of Brotherly Love. Anti-Catholicism nation. They laid the economic foun- along with Black people, Latinos, and persisted in America to at least the dation necessary for the Territory Native Americans, were stigmatized sixties, when John F. Kennedy’s elec- of Colorado to become the State of because of their race rather than tion was dogged by allegations that as Colorado. ethnicity. a Catholic, he was a de facto agent of Immigrants arrived at a cru- Discrimination against newcom- the Pope. cial moment in Colorado’s history. ers has been a recurring pattern in The Germans were similarly Besides contributing to the economy, the history of immigration. Earlier viewed unfavorably for being Teuton- their very presence provided the European immigrant groups, such as ics and Catholics. They were feared numbers needed for Colorado to the Irish and Germans, also per- and disliked for allegedly being social- become a state. Jerome Chaffee, terri- ceived succeeding groups of new ists with violent tendencies and then torial representative from Colorado in immigrants this way, even though for being potential subversives during Congress, was able to push through they themselves had experienced World Wars I and II. Early on, during the enabling act for statehood only discrimination. Compared to British colonial times, the venerable Benja- because he could convince his con- immigrants, who were Anglo-Sax- min Franklin took a dim view of their gressional colleagues that the territory on and Protestant, the Irish were language and customs, complaining had the required 150,000 people viewed unfavorably for being Celtic of the adverse influence they were in 1875 due to a rapid increase in and Catholic, their Catholicism being having on Pennsylvania, though it population. In 1870, according to the considered their most unfavorable should be noted that they, along with Census, Colorado’s population stood characteristic. The Irish were also the Swiss, were the ones who opened at a mere 39,864; by 1880, the popu- racialized, described as dark, brutish, up Pennsylvania’s backcountry. lation had increased almost five times and simian-like. Generally speaking, native-born over to 194,327 people (20 percent When different immigrant Americans (themselves descendants of them first-generation immigrants), groups found themselves in econom- of immigrants) condemned Irish and making it the most populous as well ic competition, the perception of German immigrants, considering as prosperous mountain state. Colora- racial or ethnic otherness provided them unalterably foreign and inferior. do became the nation’s thirty-eighth fuel for heightened antagonism. In The national nativist Know-Nothing state on August 1, 1876. Gilpin County, for example, Cornish Party (1844–60) opposed their immi- and Irish immigrant miners found gration to America, seeing them as Changing Patterns of themselves competing with each oth- an existential threat to the American Immigration er. The Cornishmen (from Britain) way of life. As far as nativists were The pattern of immigration to had arrived the earliest and had been concerned, the Irish and Germans Colorado was changing, however. recruited for their expertise in sinking were suspect people intent on stealing From the nativist perspective, the shafts and tracing veins. But they felt American jobs. The Know-Nothings change was ominous. Though there that their livelihood was being threat- tried to disempower Irish and Ger- were comparatively few immigrants ened with the arrival of the Irish, man immigrants already in the coun- from Southern and Eastern Europe, who were being paid less. The an- try by requiring them to be residents and Asia in the 1880s, the general tagonism of the Cornishmen toward for twenty-one years before being populace in Colorado, including the Irish was exacerbated by what eligible for citizenship. Fortunately, earlier groups of immigrants, viewed was considered a natural antipathy this did not come to pass. the newcomers with apprehension. based on cultural and religious dif- As time went on, the Irish, Ger- Indeed, the populace believed the ferences. As Lynn Perrigo observed mans, and other white ethnic groups new arrivals would overwhelm them. in her 1937 Colorado Magazine article assimilated into mainstream soci- Their response to these later immi- on the Cornish and Irish conflict in ety. They became citizens, attained grants was out of proportion to any Gilpin County, “it did not take many political power, and moved up the real threat the newcomers actually drinks to precipitate a fight between economic ladder. Through ethnic posed to their livelihoods or culture. members of these two groups.” solidarity, Irish immigrants advanced Different groups of immigrants faced Sometimes, such ethnic differences themselves politically whenever

HistoryColorado.org / 39 ed to America looking for economic opportunity. Many were recruited by labor contractors known as padrones during the great railroad construction period from 1880 to 1895. By 1890, Italian immigrants could be found working in industrial centers and mining camps in Colorado. Like other immigrants, the Italians endured what they did to earn money to send back home to support their families, or to save enough to enable them to buy farmland or open a business when they returned to their native land. Many succeeded in improving their economic circumstances. Even with the hardships they experienced, Italians and other immigrant workers wrote letters to friends and relatives PHOTO / Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly, August 7, 1869. Courtesy of Library of Congress. about the high wages that could be earned in America. In comparison they could. For example, in 1881 bottom of the economic ladder to its to their homelands, America was the in Denver, though most Irish were middle rungs and higher, enjoying a place to make money. Democrats, they banded together to status they never could attain in East Though Italians suffered discrim- elect a countryman, Robert Morris, as Coast urban ghettos. “An Irishman ination, exploitation, and hostility, Republican mayor. might be described as a lazy, dirty they did have one advantage. They White ethnic assimilation was Celt when he landed in New York, were Europeans and were consid- facilitated by intermarriage, which but if his children settled in Califor- ered whites, which paved their way served to attenuate the individual’s nia [or in Colorado] they might well to acceptance into American society. original ethnic identity by combining be praised as part of the vanguard of The Italians eventually found com- it with that of another. As previous- energetic Anglo-Saxon people poised mon ground with other European ly mentioned, immigrants married for the plunge into Asia,” as Regi- immigrant groups in their opposition native-born Americans at a high rate. nald Horsman has noted in his study, to the capitalists who exploited them. Contrary to nativists’ conviction Race and Manifest Destiny. However, Many of them participated in the that immigrants were unassimilable, Irish upward mobility came at the labor movement in Colorado, where immigrants always assimilated into expense of other groups. The Irish they engaged in labor disputes. Some American mainstream society to stood shoulder to shoulder with older of the disputes ended violently, such some extent for reasons of survival, immigrants in opposition to other as the infamous Ludlow Massacre if nothing else, and their descendants immigrants who were viewed as being on April 20, 1914, where twenty-one assimilated to an even greater extent, even more foreign than they were. people were killed, mostly children learning to speak English (the Amer- Southern and Eastern Europe- and women. ican version, of course), embracing an immigrants were denigrated for Unlike Irish and Italian immi- American customs, and espousing belonging to an alien culture, exhib- grants, the Chinese were ostracized American values as the way to achieve iting exotic customs and having a because of their race. But they were security and success for themselves low standard of living. For example, condemned for being racially rather and their families. Ironically, this Italians, most of whom were from than ethnically different, placing them included the acceptance of the main- southern Italy, were among the most squarely in the middle of the long- stream’s prejudices toward various unpopular immigrants in Colorado. standing black-and-white binary that ethnic and racial groups. They were recruited as cheap labor has shaped race relations in America Take the Irish, for example. As for mines, smelters, and railroad ever since its founding. The Chinese they moved westward, their socio- construction gangs. With the prom- bore the dual burden of being new economic circumstances improved ise of good pay and safe working immigrants as well as a people of steadily. They moved up from the conditions, Italian workers immigrat- color. The driving force behind the

HistoryColorado.org / 40 anti-Chinese movement was mainly racial antagonism toward Asians. As John Higham notes in his classic, Strangers in the Land: No variety of anti-European sentiment has ever approached the violent extremes to which anti-Chinese agitation went in the 1870s and 1880s. Lynchings, boy- cotts, and mass expulsions still harassed the Chinese in 1882. . . . Americans have never maintained that every European endangers American civilization; attacks have centered on the “scum” or “dregs” of Europe, thereby allowing for at least some implicit exceptions. But opponents of Oriental folk have tended to reject them one and all. The Chinese tried to defend themselves against this hostility but were handicapped. Chinese (and other Asians) were among the most vulnerable because they suffered the disadvantage early on of being declared aliens who were ineligible for citizenship. In 1870, Congress had passed a Naturalization Act that limited naturalization to whites and Africans. Denied the right to vote and to hold political office, Chinese were unable to protect themselves from their nativist enemies. For them, “Not a Chinaman’s Chance” was more than just an expression. Politicians demonized Chinese immigrants as a way to gain people’s votes, and union organizers vilified IMAGE / An engraving by N. B. Wilkins in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper of November them to build up their incipient labor 20, 1880, depicted Denver’s Anti-Chinese Riot. History Colorado, 2001.149.9 movement. Together, leaders of these groups waged a vitriolic campaign against the Chinese. They encour- of a restrictive immigration policy. It goats, declaring “the Chinese must aged the lynching and expulsion of was only a short step from the racism go!” Nativists engaged in a campaign Chinese, and the boycott of Chinese that was the basis of this policy to the to drive them out of Colorado’s businesses. Their enmity toward establishment of an ethnic hierarchy mining communities. In Leadville, the Chinese, couched in terms of that would later restrict new immi- where the silver boom began in 1877 solutions to the so-called Chinese grant groups from Southern and and one third of the miners were Question in the 1870s, centered on Eastern Europe during the 1920s. Irish, the Chinese were forbidden the need for restrictions on their The nativists did not wait for an from entering the town on pain of immigration to the United States. The answer to the “Chinese Question.” death. In Como, during the so-called exclusion of the Chinese from the In the wake of the Panic of 1873 and Chinese-Italian War (1879), Italian country in 1882 was the harbinger the worldwide depression, nativists in miners attacked and expelled Chinese Colorado used the Chinese as scape- miners whom they feared were being HistoryColorado.org / 41 brought in to replace them, vowing to Golden Door to Guarded Gate Europe, some of whom had benefited kill them if they returned. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act had from upward mobility and were now The hate campaign against the consequences well beyond the Chi- working in a managerial capacity. A Chinese in Colorado culminated in nese. As an opponent of the original significant portion of all European the Denver anti-Chinese race riot legislation, Massachusetts Senator immigrants, however, continued to of October 31, 1880. An estimat- George Frisbie Hoar (Republican), work as laborers, particularly in the ed three to five thousand people, noted in 1882 that the act legalized mining industry, which remained the approximately 10 percent of the city’s racial discrimination. It was the first preeminent part of the state’s econo- residents, descended upon the city’s law enacted targeting a specific group my. Mine workers accounted for fully Chinatown to rape and pillage. They of people to prohibit them from im- 10 percent of those employed, with sought to kill or expel Chinatown’s migrating to the United States. Before workers from Southern and Eastern 450 residents. Given that Chinatown then, there were no significant re- Europe filling the most dangerous and was located in an area of the city with strictions on immigration, and those onerous occupations in the mines. a large immigrant population, com- that existed were simply ignored. The After World War I (1914–18), prising between 30 to 40 percent of Chinese Exclusion Act signaled the emigration from Southern and the population, it is highly likely that beginning of the end of free immi- Eastern Europe to the United States many of the rioters were fellow im- gration to the country. was severely restricted because of the migrant workers. After the race riot, By the end of the nineteenth post-war economic depression and there was never a recurrence of large- century, the character of immigration a rising isolationist sentiment that scale violence against the Chinese in to the United States and Colorado had emerged across the country. As Colorado, though there were a series had changed. In 1890, immigrants was the case with the earlier Chinese of isolated incidents. Ethnic cleansing constituted 20.3 percent of Colora- Exclusion Act, people called for of Chinese continued. do’s population and those with a for- immigration restriction because of The Denver anti-Chinese race eign parent constituted 33.02 percent, the widespread fear they would lose riot contributed to the passage of the a significant portion of the popula- their jobs and suffer a decline in their federal Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), tion. Immigrants from Northern and standard of living. which blamed the Chinese for local Western Europe began to decrease Justifying the call for immigra- disturbances and held them respon- while those from Southern and East- tion restriction were eugenicists who sible for the violence against them, ern Europe began to increase, with created a hierarchical taxonomy of adding insult to injury. The Exclusion some groups like the Italians present races. They placed Nordics at the top Act placed a ten-year moratorium on in numbers almost equal to those of the hierarchy, justifying this rank- the immigration of Chinese labor- from Great Britain and Germany. ing with pseudo-scientific arguments ers from entering the country as a Between 1890 and 1910, immi- about Nordic genetic supremacy. way to ensure social order. By 1902, grants to Colorado from Southern According to eugenics adherents, anti-Chinese groups were able to and Eastern Europe rose steadily but Nordics from Northern and Western convince the US Congress to make did not surpass those from Northern Europe were superior in every way the Exclusion Act permanent. and Western Europe. The number of that mattered and should be encour- Colorado’s need for workers per- immigrants from Asia continued to aged to immigrate to America, while sisted, however. So Japanese and oth- be comparatively small. By 1910, 38 “Mediterraneans” from Southern and er Asians immigrants were recruited percent of the immigrants were from Eastern Europe were inferior and to replace the Chinese. At the same Southern and Eastern Europe, and 51 should be discouraged from immi- time, anti-Asian groups lobbied to percent were still from Northern and grating. A corollary to this was that exclude all Asian immigrants from the Western Europe, while only a handful intermarriage with people belonging country. Unions used the race card were from Asia, mainly Japan. Much to intellectually inferior and morally to foster worker solidarity among of this change had occurred since degenerate groups inevitably led to its members at the expense of racial 1900, with the numbers of immi- the birth of weaker rather than stron- groups such as Asian and Latino grants coming from Italy, Russia, ger progeny. Nativists claimed that immigrants, Blacks, and Native Amer- and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire eugenics proved beyond a shadow of icans. The Western Federation of showing the largest increases. a doubt that certain disparate groups Miners, for instance, publicly opposed The influx of immigrant workers of people did not mix well and when the continued presence of “Asiatics” from Southern and Eastern Europe they did, the result was degeneration. in the United States” in 1901. compensated for the decrease of On the one hand, eugenics those from Northern and Western adherents advocated what was called

HistoryColorado.org / 42 PHOTO / Italian and/or Hispano coal miners pose in front of coke ovens at Tercio, Colorado, in Las Animas County, circa 1910. Photo by Almeron Newman. History Colorado, 86.296.5375

“positive eugenics,” emphasizing se- new immigrants from Southern and older immigrant groups from North- lective breeding of those at the top of Eastern Europe. ern and Western Europe, who saw the racial hierarchy, and on the other, At first, Congress tried to reduce it in their interest to disavow their “negative eugenics” to restrict or end the number of entrants with the past and direct animus toward newer the breeding of those on the bottom. passage of a Literacy Act in 1917. immigrant groups from Southern Tragically, this movement would lead The act required that all immigrants and Eastern Europe. By so doing, the to such malevolent practices as the be able to read or write English or earlier immigrant groups deflected sterilization of Black people in Amer- some other language, and created the criticisms from themselves onto the ica and the genocidal extermination “Asiatic barred zone,” which prevent- new arrivals while also affirming their of Jews in Europe. Not surprisingly, ed immigrants from most of Asia and assimilation into mainstream Amer- to prevent intermarriage among races, the Pacific Islands from emigrating to ican society. The older immigrants many states kept supportive anti-mis- America. But this proved inadequate and their descendants dealt with this cegenation laws on their books until for the nativists, so they persuaded cognitive dissonance by declaring that they were struck down by the US Congress to institute the notorious the new immigrants were somehow Supreme Court in the case of Loving “national origins” system to restrict different from their own immigrant v. Virginia in 1967 as violations of the immigration even further. In 1924, group, though their criticisms of the Equal Protection and Due Process Congress passed the Johnson-Reed new immigrants were eerily similar to Clauses of the 14th Amendment. Act, which limited the number of those that had been leveled against On the basis of bogus genetic immigrants to two percent of those their own ethnic group in the past. science, nativist leaders called for the living in the United States according In 1929, the government made country to change its time-honored to the 1890 decennial census. The this restrictive immigration system policy of free immigration and adopt act also excluded all Asians, including permanent with the National Origins restrictive policies to prevent “inferi- Japanese, from entering the country. Clause, limiting the total number of or” people from entering the country. In essence, the measure sought to so-called quota immigrants to no The federal government responded return the country to what it was like more than 150,000 a year. The immi- by passing a series of measures to before 1882, when the majority of gration system put in place served as do so. The laws were patently preju- the population consisted of white an invisible wall to exclude emigrants dicial from the get-go, favoring the people from Northern and Western from Southern and Eastern Europe old immigrants from Northern and Europe. This new immigration barri- and other parts of the world, notably Western Europe and disfavoring the er was erected with the complicity of Asia. Given the antipathy toward the

HistoryColorado.org / 43 PHOTO / Braceros traveling to northern Colorado, 1959. Denver Public Library, Western History Collection, Z-769 new immigrants, it is hardly surpris- citizenship as a result of the Treaty in Colorado and throughout the South- ing that in 1931, for the first time in of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Altogeth- west to recruit workers. American history, the number of mi- er there were 57,676 Coloradans As seasonal agricultural workers, grants leaving the country exceeded of Mexican ancestry in 1930 when Hispanos and Mexican migrants were those entering the country. Conse- they were first counted as a separate essential to Colorado’s sugar beet quently, from 1930 to 1970, immi- census category. Previously, their industry, which became the mainstay grants as a percentage of Colorado’s numbers had been included with of the state’s commercial agricultural population began to decrease. the white population. But as the economy after World War II. Working Fortunately for Colorado, there 1930 Census noted, “Because of the in the beet fields required workers to were no quotas or limitations applied growing importance of the Mexi- perform some of the most physically to immigrants from the Western can element in the population and demanding and disagreeable jobs in Hemisphere, that is, Canada and among gainful workers, [the Mexican the agricultural sector. Hispano and Latin America. Immigrants from population] was given a separate clas- Mexican migrant workers engaged in Latin America, mainly from Mexico, sification.” Between 1910 and 1950, other types of back-breaking “stoop continued to enter the United States Mexican immigrants constituted a labor” as well. in general and Colorado. More than significant proportion of the state’s Between 1910 and 1930, it half of the net increase in immi- population, reaching a highpoint of has been estimated that more than grants to the United States from 13.4 percent by 1930. 30,000 Mexican migrants worked 1910 to 1930 was due to immigration The Hispanos and the Mexican in the state’s sugar beet industry. from Mexico. By 1900, an estimated immigrants played an important role This number is far greater than was 12,816 immigrants from Mexico had in the state’s economy. They could be recorded in the Census, suggesting come to the Centennial State, joining found working in the coal mines, in the that many may have been undocu- the large Hispano population who smelters and steel mills, and in the beet mented immigrants. Even though were already here. The Hispanos fields. As coal consumption increased Colorado farmers needed them, racial were originally Mexican inhabitants exponentially during the late nineteenth antagonism towards Mexicans and who had been incorporated into the and early twentieth centuries, coal mine other Latinos increased. This led to United States and given American owners went to Hispano communities the strange and short-lived border

HistoryColorado.org / 44 incident in 1936 when Governor fortunately, employers often violated For Further Reading Edwin “Big Ed” Johnson tried to the agreements, failing to provide Works referenced are John F. Kenne- halt mainly New Mexicans from them with adequate housing, health dy, A Nation of Immigrants (New York: entering Colorado to work in its beet care, safe working conditions, and Harper Perennial; Reprint Edition, fields. An “America First” isolation- even wages. Most braceros endured 2008); Thomas G. Andrews, Killing ist, Johnson declared martial law and the exploitation and discrimination for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War sent 800 National Guardsmen to because they believed correctly that (Cambridge: Harvard University police Colorado’s 370-mile southern they would make more money in the Press, 2008); Governor Edward M. border to blockade what he called the United States than they could in Mex- McCook, “Female Suffrage,” in “Mes- invasion of “aliens” and “indigents” ico. They saw it as an opportunity to sage to the Colorado Legislature, from New Mexico. Implicitly, John- improve their family’s prospects. The January 4, 1870,” in Council Journal of son was questioning whether New monies earned in the United States the Legislative Assembly of the Territory Mexicans were really Americans or at allowed them to own a home, open of Colorado, Eighth Session (Central least the type of Americans who were a business, start a farm of their own, City, CO: David C. Collier); Ava Chin, welcome in Colorado. His pretext and send their children to school. “Racists kicked my Chinese ancestor was to save jobs for Coloradans, but Contrary to what some critics be- our of America. He still loved the the blockade was actually an act of lieved, the braceros did not adversely railroad he worked on.” Washington political posturing intended to curry affect native-born farm workers, and Post, May 26, 2019; Timothy Egan, favor with voters. It was also a brief when the braceros no longer were “Send me back to the country I came effort, as New Mexico Governor available, the economic situation of from,” New York Times, July 19, 2019; Clyde Tingley announced a boycott native-born farm workers did not Lynn Perrigo, “The Cornish Min- of Colorado products in response, improve. ers of Gilpin County,” The Colorado and Johnson met with pushback from As a result of the program’s suc- Magazine 14 (May 1937): 92–101; Colorado farmers and ranchers who cess, American farmers came to rely Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest had difficulty recruiting enough low- on Mexican migrant workers. When Destiny: The Origins of American Racial wage workers from within the state. the Bracero Program ended in 1964, Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge: Harvard After ten days, Johnson rescinded his they complained to the US govern- University Press, 1981); and John xenophobic executive order. ment that Mexican workers had done Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns As a result of labor shortages jobs that Americans refused to do of American Nativism, 1860–1925 during World War II, when farm and that their crops would rot in the (New York: Atheneum, 1974). workers left to join the armed forces fields without them. This situation or went to work in the better-paying continues to the present day. Ever This essay is adapted from “Immigra- defense industry, sugar beet com- since then, Mexican workers have tion to the Intermountain West: The panies as well as farmers in general been coming to the United States and Case of Colorado,” presented at the once again relied on Mexican work- Colorado to work, some on H-2A 9th Annual Arts, Humanities, Social ers. They were recruited through the temporary work visas and others as Sciences & Education Conference, Bracero Program (the Spanish term undocumented migrant workers. Honolulu, January 2020. It has been bracero means “one who works using With the passage of the discrimi- published in the conference’s online his arms” or “manual laborer”), the natory immigration laws of the 1920s, proceedings. largest contract labor program in US the United States was able to prevent history. In an effort to provide farms so-called undesirable peoples from and factories with the workers they entering the country for several de- sorely needed, President Franklin D. cades. It would take World War II and WILLIAM WEI was the Colorado State Roosevelt established the program in the Cold War to end these prejudicial Historian for the 2019–2020 term. A 1942. It was agreed that the braceros laws and replace them with fairer frequent contributor to History Colorado’s would receive a minimum wage of 30 ones. These new laws significantly publications, he was the lead advisor on the cents an hour, be given decent living changed the character of immigra- History Colorado Center exhibit Zoom conditions, and be protected from tion to Colorado. But by the early In: The Centennial State in 100 racial discrimination such as being twenty-first century, some Americans Objects. The book he authored for that excluded from segregated “whites would, once again, advocate that im- exhibit, Becoming Colorado: The Cen- only” public facilities. The braceros migration in general be curtailed and tennial State in 100 Objects, is due out traveled around the country, working that some immigrants be denied entry from History Colorado and the University wherever their labor was needed. Un- into the country. ■ Press of Colorado in 2021.

HistoryColorado.org / 45 A Philanthropic Response to the COVID-19 Crisis

OSE COMMUNITY mitment to funding through lenses end, but we do know that the eco- FOUNDATION’S found- of equity, justice, and inclusion is not nomic, public health, and societal ers could never have an- only expressed in our mission, values, ripple effects will be felt far beyond Rticipated the COVID-19 and strategic goals, but is embedded that time horizon,” says Lent. “We pandemic, but in many ways this is in our organizational DNA.” must all commit to our region’s long- a moment for which the foundation That commitment is evident in term recovery and to building a new was built. Started in 1995 with pro- the foundation’s philanthropic re- normal that is more resilient, equita- ceeds from the sale of Rose Medical sponse to the COVID-19 crisis. From ble, just, and inclusive.” Center—built by the local Jewish mid-March to date, the foundation community as Denver’s first hos- and its donor-advised fundholders PHOTO left / The Emergency Family pital to allow physicians to practice have awarded over 525 grants total- Assistance Association is helping mitigate regardless of their race or religion— ing over $7 million. While deploying the pandemic’s economic impact on Boulder’s Rose Community Foundation proudly rapid-response dollars to nonprofits low-income households through housing carries on the hospital founders’ on the front lines of prevention, con- support, food distribution, and resource legacy of philanthropy, inclusion, and tainment, and response and support- navigation. EFAA is one of the 395 or- a commitment to serving the region ing efforts to mitigate the pandemic’s ganizations that received a grant from Rose in all its diversity. mid-term and longer-term impacts, Community Foundation during the second “Twenty-five years after our the foundation directed funds to phase of COVID-19 grantmaking. founding, Rose Community Foun- organizations serving populations dation’s roots and values continue and communities disproportionately PHOTO right / Rose Community to inform our approach to serving impacted by the pandemic’s health Foundation president and CEO Lindy the seven-county Greater Denver and economic implications. Eichenbaum Lent engages with community community,” says President and CEO “None of us knows when the members. Lindy Eichenbaum Lent. “Our com- COVID-19 pandemic will ultimately

HistoryColorado.org / 46 This is UPCOMING LECTURES

13 JANUARY Wed / 7 pm / History Colorado Center + Virtual what What Does Democracy Look Like? Democracy Anthony Grimes 10 FEBRUARY Wed / 7 pm / History Colorado Center + Virtual Laboratories of Democracy looks Gale Norton

24 MARCH Wed / 7 pm / History Colorado Center + Virtual like. Media & Democracy Maeve Conran and David Barsamian

AND MORE! Exercise your right to participate fully Become a member. Attend a lecture. Visit an exhibit. historycolorado.org/democracy

11 FEBRUARY Thur / 6 pm / Virtual Gustavo Arellano author, Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America

11 MARCH Thur / 6 pm / Virtual Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz author, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

8 APRIL Thur / 6 pm / Virtual Maria Montoya author, Translating Property: The Maxwell Land Grant and the Conflict over Land in the American West, 1840-1900 Nonprofit Org US Postage PAID Denver, Colorado Permit No. 1080

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