This story was first published at Colorado Newsline.
DENVER | Researchers for Colorado’s racial equity study said they plan to have a draft of the full historical report by next November that details inequalities caused by systemic racism in the state.
“That will allow us to spend the remaining months of the study both revising the report and pulling together a variety of supplementary materials, such as data tables, maps, images, primary sources and so on,” researcher Scott Spillman told members of the Black Coloradan Racial Equity Study Commission on Wednesday.
The study is mandated by a 2024 state law and is meant to determine the historical and ongoing effects of racism against Black Coloradans. The commission, which is chaired by Colorado Senate President James Coleman, a Denver Democrat, will use the historical research and economic analysis to make legislative recommendations.
So far, researchers say they have completed six investigations on certain topics — such as criminal justice in the 20th century and banking in the New Deal era — and should have eight more finished by the end of this year and around a dozen others completed by next fall. They want to complete about 100 new oral histories for the study and digitize dozens of existing ones. They have completed community listening sessions in Denver and Pueblo and have scheduled sessions in Boulder, Durango and Colorado Springs.
Researchers are under budget and ahead of schedule to deliver the historical study, according to Chloé Duplessis, History Colorado program manager, but there is a $550,000 funding gap for the economic analysis phase of the project.
Duplessis, Spillman and other members of the team shared some research updates to the commission during their quarterly meeting Wednesday. That includes the conclusion that the percentage of botched executions for Black Coloradans was “much higher” than for other demographics, according to researcher Melissa Jones.
“The ways in which those executions were carried out, or the manner by which they met their deaths, was much longer and over a prolonged period of time,” Jones said.
Additionally, Jones said the percentage of incarcerated people who were Black between the 1870s and 1940s was about five to 10 times that of the Black population in the state. She also noted the “reductive language” used in arrest records and newspapers, such as a woman in 1906 described as “enraged” and of a “perverted nature” with “kinky” hair and a “dark brown” complexion.
“But there’s an incredible, rich story there that we can bring back to life, and show some of the harms that were done to her in reducing her to just a few descriptions and a few lines on an arrest record,” Jones said.
Researcher John Valdez shared information about a Denver “gentleman’s agreement” between banks and realtors to not let Black Coloradans buy houses in certain areas until the 1970s.
“One of the major quotes that I thought was important to bring up was from a realtor out at Denver National Bank, and he said in one of our reports that there is an ‘unwritten law amongst real estate agents that Negroes cannot buy houses outside of their area no matter what the individual financial standing might be,’” Valdez said.
Various human relations reports, he said, showed that bankers and realtors were not afraid to blatantly discriminate.