Rocky Mountain High

The parallels keep mounting. Now it is that Tesla and Garvey also had Colorado Springs, COlorado in common (albeit at different times) The following extracts speaks to the rise of the UNIA in the Rocky Mountain State.

Abstract:

Two years ago, a colleague and I discussed the history of a relatively small African American population in Colorado. The two of us concluded that despite the persistent small numbers that one cannot negate the fact there is a very rich and extensive history of Black migration, pioneering Black family histories, and Black institutional building in Colorado Springs and Denver, Colorado. The Black population in Denver, though once confined to the isolated Five Points neighborhood, constitutes the largest in the state, while the second largest was located in the St. Vrain neighborhood of Colorado Springs. More interesting, with the rapid rise of Garveyism and the phenomenal growth of Garvey’s organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) due primarily to the wave of Black migration to the state, and two visits of Marcus and Amy Jacques Garvey in Colorado during the 1920s, there is no doubt that Colorado’s rich Black history needs continued documentation. A close reading of the Denver UNIA Division reports published in The Negro World, the official organ of the UNIA, reveal some astonishing results. Further information about the activities of the Denver Division was covered in The Colorado Statesman and The Denver Star, as well as information about the Colorado Springs Division Number 508 in The Colorado Springs Gazette. While touring the state, both Marcus and Amy Jacques Garvey captured the attention, imagination, and spirit of race consciousness among Black Coloradans. This essay provides an expansive model and framework for understanding the significance of the Garvey Movement at the micro-level, focusing on the political and religious activism of Garveyites in both communities.

It is in this direction that this essay explores three important contributions in the literature about Garvey and Garveyism. First, it advances prior scholarship about the Black presence in Colorado, exploring the social forces that gave rise to black migration in mass numbers to two major cities in the state during the first, second, and third decades of the early 20th Century. Secondly, it seeks to increase our understanding in determining some of the reasons behind the couple’s two organizational tours to Colorado Springs and Denver, as Marcus and Amy Jacques Garvey and other UNIA-ACL leaders labored to liberate the mindset of a sizeable Black presence in Colorado. Between the economic aspirations, and the political and religious activism of these communities, not to mention the racial politics of the KKK, which was connected to economic power and white skin privilege, lay the reasons why the UNIA existed in Colorado. Thirdly and finally, the chapter explores the extent to which the activism of local Garveyites on St. Vrain Street as members of the Peoples Methodist Episcopal Church in Colorado Springs and on Welton Street in the Five Points Neighborhood of Denver, proved successful. In effect this essay seeks to rescue and recover local Black history in the State of Colorado.

-RJ Stephens