Museum of Boulder creating exhibit, curriculum to proclaim Colorado's Black history

Nov. 26—Black entrepreneur O.T. Jackson was the Chautauqua Dining Hall's first proprietor when it opened in 1897 in Boulder, then was dismissed two years later after visitors from the South complained about the Black waitstaff.

He went on to open the beloved Jackson's Resort restaurant, then in 1910 founded Dearfield, a black homesteading settlement near Greeley that became the largest in Colorado. Dearfield was added to the to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.

The Museum of Boulder wants more people, especially students, to know stories like Jackson's as they learn about Boulder County and the state. In partnership with the Boulder Public Library and Boulder County NAACP chapter, the museum is developing an exhibit and school curriculum to highlight Colorado's Black history.

With funding from a three-year, $250,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the museum plans to collaborate with the community to collect original oral histories and research, consolidate research data and host programs about race for the Proclaiming Black History Project.

"The challenge is we have so many stories to share," said project co-director Adrian Miller, an author and soul food scholar.

Opening day for the museum exhibit is set for next fall, on Sept. 29, with the exhibit expected to remain open for two years to give area schools time to schedule field trips. Once the two years are up, there's a possibility the exhibit could travel to other museums.

"This is just the start of the conversation," said Lori Preston, the museum's executive director and the co-director on the project with Miller.

She said the museum, with a goal of serving as a vital community resource, developed the project to respond to a national racial reckoning following high profile police killings and widespread protests against systemic racism.

"The grant is really an exceptional opportunity," she said. "Boulder is often seen as a model city and, on the other end, as a bubble and a white bubble. We need to acknowledge that. Probably of anybody in the state, we need this the most. We see gaps, and we need to do this kind of work and step up to be a model."

'Black history is Colorado history'

The project will be organized around five themes: arts, business and entrepreneurship, civil rights and social justice, predominantly Black communities, and Afro futurism.

Leading the curriculum work is Aubrie Reed, who has a background in museum education. She said the plan is to focus on curriculum for high school and fourth grade, with fourth grade as the year students learn Colorado history.

"We want all students to say Black history is Colorado history," she said. "I want students to appreciate it as part of a bigger history."

The museum recently held a tour of its current VOCES VIVAS exhibit — occupying the same exhibit space that will be used for the Proclaiming Black History exhibit — followed by an introductory curriculum meeting for Boulder Valley School District representatives. Also joining the meeting were other community partners, including the Carnegie Library.

"I hope you all will see yourselves and your students reflected in this exhibit," Reed said as she talked about the project.

Boulder Valley Equity Coordinator Amy Nelson encouraged the museum to include student voices, along with sharing the work of the district's Student Equity Council and the Centaurus High students who developed and pushed for a new ethnic studies class.

Boulder Valley plans to offer the ethnic studies class at Centaurus in the spring. The students asked for an inclusive class that represents different identities, histories and cultures, including LGBTQ perspectives. Boulder High also offers an elective race relations class that focuses on the trans-Atlantic slave trade and its impacts on modern day race relations.

"Part of what (the students) are saying is they need representation, particularly positive representation," Nelson said. "They want to see it everywhere."

She said another consistent message from students is wanting to feel a sense of belonging.

"Our students, they need to know that they belong here and Boulder belongs to them and has for a really long time," she said.

Oral histories to be featured

Emily Zinn, the museum's education director and Proclaiming Black History project manager, said the museum spent a year listening and building trust and identifying people to hire for the project's current design and build phase.

"We are really trying our hardest to get out of the way and to provide resources to the community to tell their own stories," she said. "We want to elevate their voices at an institutional level."

Resources for the project include the museum's collections, the Carnegie Library, the NAACP of Boulder County, the University of Colorado Boulder, Second Baptist Church and local artists and entrepreneurs. Along with project staff members, there's a seven-person advisory council. Undergraduate and graduate students also will assist with the project. And to supplement the grant, the museum is seeking to raise $250,000 in matching funds.

Minister Glenda Strong Robinson, the project's oral history liaison and NAACP Boulder County representative, said she's most excited about recording oral histories for the project, with a list of 135 possible candidates so far. Twenty of those oral histories will be highlighted as part of the museum exhibit.

"We were born here," she said. "We lived here. We worked here. We died here."

One person she's really hoping to include is Black astronaut Jessica Watkins, a Fairview High School graduate who lived in Lafayette. She recently returned from an almost six-month stint on the International Space Station.

A longtime Longmont resident and civil rights activist, Robinson's personal history includes marching with Martin Luther King Jr. after growing up in the segregated South. Her grandfather was born enslaved, was freed in 1865 and became a farmer and a professor.

"Black people are an against-all-odds story," Robinson said. "But for the grace of God, we survived. We survived not being able to read or to learn to write. As human beings, we had the desire to do it and the will to do it. The good and the bad and the ugly has made us."

Nikhil Mankekar, an advisory council member and civil rights activist, is offering the perspective of someone who attended Boulder schools as a person of color. He also was part of the Boulder County Latino History Project and was one of the founders of Boulder's Indigenous People's Day.

As a high school freshman, he said, he pushed back on being taught a white-washed history from a colonial perspective about his own culture. He developed his own curriculum around Indian and Sikh culture and history, teaching the unit to his classmates.

"It was great to flip the false narratives, break down stereotypes and show how much of our modern lives are shaped and influenced by India," he said.

Project Advisory Council member Wendell Pryor, past director of the Colorado Division of Civil Rights, is helping organize a "convening" in December to bring together people from other organizations. Those organizations include the African American Historical and Genealogical Society in Colorado Springs, the Fort Garland Museum's Buffalo Soldiers exhibit and the Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library in Denver.

"That's where the magic is — having people come in from around the state and talk about what they can contribute," he said. "They can give us a different lens."

His history in Boulder includes earning a master's degree at the University of Colorado Boulder in the 1970s while the city elected its first — and only — Black mayor, Penfield Tate II. Tate's contributions will be part of the project, including his proposal of an amendment to Boulder's Human Rights Ordinance to prevent employers from firing employees based on sexual orientation. Boulder voters rejected it by a landslide, and he was nearly recalled.

Pryor said it's also important to bring forward the early histories of the state's Black residents "so there is some historical record to help us inform the future." Even as an adjunct professor teaching graduate level students, he said, he found many students didn't understand Black history and its impacts, including the ongoing impact of slavery.

"It's important to get students exposed as early as possible," he said. "We have got to understand our history. I'm hoping this project becomes a resource for people who want to learn more about the history of this country."

Latino project a blueprint

Offering a blueprint for the Proclaiming Black History Project is the Boulder County Latino History Project, which documented and described the history of Latinos in the area, concentrating on Boulder, Longmont and Lafayette.

For the Latino history project, local local high school and college interns joined 95 community volunteers in 2013 and 2014 to gather oral, written and photographic information about the experiences and contributions of Latinos. The project then worked with Boulder Valley and St. Vrain Valley teachers to incorporate material about Latino history and culture into the curriculum.

Teachers can continue to access source materials and lesson plans at teachbocolatinohistory.colorado.edu. The teaching resources are based on books written by retired University of Colorado Boulder professor Marjorie McIntosh.

Linda Arroyo-Holmstrom, a Boulder County Latino History Project member, said the hope was to create a project that would serve as a template for other communities. The project includes help for creating teacher workshops ad sharing information with the information.

"It was just so long overdue for our stories to be told," Arroyo-Holmstrom said. "People in the community were so generous with documents, artifacts and stories."

Arroyo also was the community coordinator for the current Voces Vivas exhibit at the Museum of Boulder that highlights the Latino community's local history. She said many of the stories were erased, forgotten or not shared by elders who didn't want to relive a painful past when racism was predominant.

"It goes to show you how incredibly strong and resilient the community is," she said. "We have a proud history, and we're the ones telling it. It's so important that another community, the Black community, will be supported in the same way by the museum."