—by Matt Holman
B50 Note: Hisashi “Taki” Takimoto died on February 9th, 2009, after almost 20 years of serving delicious and healthy food on east Colfax in Denver. Kyle Wagner wrote an excellent appreciation of Taki for the Denver Post. See more of Matt-san Holman’s comics on his website, Square 1 Comics.
—by Marshall Sprague (1909-1994)
Excerpted from “Colorado: A History”, published in 1984 by the American Association for State and Local History. Reprinted in paperback in 1996 by W.W. Norton & Company and available from Amazon.com.
I cannot read the gallery's xml file: /home/12842/domains/buckfifty.org/html/images/kkk/gallery.xml“1921 marked the start of one of the most serious aberrations in the state’s history—the rise of the Ku Klux Klan under the Grand Dragonship of a strange Denver physician Dr. John Galen Locke. Many residents of Colorado, like Americans everywhere, found themselves full of fears after World War I—fears of hard times, of the communism of Karl Marx, of Eugene Debs and his American socialism, of the Industrial Workers of the World and their violence, of spies in the land working for foreign governments.
To these fearful people, especially in the Front Range cities, Locke’s program of “One Hundred Percent Americanism” had great appeal. They found joy in Klan activities, dressing in sheets, burning crosses on Table Mountain near Golden and atop Pikes Peak, and boycotting the businesses of their opponents. They persecuted Catholics and Negroes and, especially, successful Jews such as Jesse Shwayder, the son of a Polish immigrant who had created the huge luggage firm, Samsonite Corporation.
The Klansmen took advantage of the unemployment to attack recent immigrants to Colorado from Greece and Hungary who had jobs in the Denver smelters around the Globeville section and at the C. F. & I. steel works of South Pueblo. The Klansmen advised Denverites to cease patronizing restaurants bearing “foreign” names like Pagliacci or Benito or Ciancio or Wong or Torino.
By 1924 the Klan membership was large enough to elect the state’s governor, a senator, the mayor and chief of police of Denver, and a majority in the general assembly. But within months most of these Klansmen turned out to be inept public officials. And when Locke resigned in June of 1925 as Grand Dragon after being jailed for contempt of court in an income-tax matter, the power of the Klan ended abruptly and completely.”
B50 Note: It is difficult to imagine the amount of power and influence the Klan held in Denver and Colorado between 1920 and 1926; Mayor Ben Stapleton and Governor Clarence Morley were both members of the “Silent Empire.” Eighty years later, Colorado is the only state in the country to have both houses of its legislature headed by African-Americans (Terrance Carroll and Peter Groff).
Marshall Sprague was a author and historian, well known for his prose about the American West. Images are courtesy of The Denver Public Library Western History Collection. The definitive resource on this topic is “Hooded Empire: the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado” by Robert Alan Goldberg, published by University of Illinois Press in 1981. A review of the book (from 1987) is available on Dark Cloud’s site.
This video is the introduction to Downtown Denver: Heart of the Queen, produced by Havey Productions. The full DVD is available at the Colorado History Museum and Denver area bookstores.
It says thusly:
This memorial is the property of the State of Colorado
—
Commemorating the route of the
Platte River Trail
Principal route of Colorado Pioneers
Trail of Major S.H. Long in 1820
Trappers’ trail of 1830s and 1840s
The 1858-9 route of goldseekers with
pick and pan. Homeseekers in covered
wagons, bullwhackers with ox teams,
stagecoaches with treasure and mail
The path that became an empire.
—
Erected by
The State Historical Society of Colorado
from
The Mrs. J.N. Hall Foundation
and by
State Civil Service Employees of Colorado
1932
B50 Note: This historical marker is located at 5200 Brighton Boulevard, at the intersection of Brighton and York.
— by Kelan Smith
In 2008, as I watched an immense hole being dug for the new Four Seasons Hotel at 14th and Lawrence, evidence of former structures and their foundations were slowly revealed to absolutely no acknowledgment. I had heard of some of the grand structures that were razed between the 1960’s and 1980’s to leave behind a dead and unimpressive surface parking lot — like most of Denver. Now that the block is rising to new heights, I did some research and found photos of the former proud structures and pieced the block back together again.
I currently work in the Hover Building on Lawrence next to the Teatro Hotel. I am amazed these two structures survived as they watched their siblings across the street fall to the ground one by one. Once on this block stood a surprising variety of structures, including a Methodist church — subsequently revamped into the Salvation Army Barracks — a bank, the Chamber of Commerce, a streetcar station and numerous 2-4 story structures now long gone and forgotten. Close by, on 15th and Arapahoe, once stood the gorgeous “Richardsonian” Mining Exchange Building. All that remains is the statue of the miner on the ground in the shadow of the hideous Brooks Tower.
While Block 074 will still remain somewhat incomplete for the near future, with a small surface parking lot on 15th, the new high-rise will help re-energize 14th Street as an entertainment thoroughfare. I will not go deep on my critique of the Four Seasons value-engineered architectural finishes and some of the brutal elevations, simply because it is better than a barren parking lot.
I am well aware that, whether standing or gone, buildings do not love you back. The admiration and regard is a one way street. But that doesn’t stop me from closing my eyes and imagining myself walking around these lost structures to ponder the cycles of a City.
I cannot read the gallery's xml file: /home/12842/domains/buckfifty.org/html/images/block074/gallery.xmlB50 Note: Historical images are courtesy of The Denver Public Library Western History Collection. Contemporary images are courtesy of the author.
