FOR THE RECORD

When Jordan died, Paulson ran a story on the front page that brie y memorialized him but mostly discussed an attempt to nd his relatives, as no one had come forward to claim Jordan’s body nearly two weeks after his death. Readers didn’t react positively to the

The Community

Golden in the 1960s and ’70s Built on lands traditionally inhabited by the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Ute and other tribes, Golden City was founded in 1859. According to Allan Tellis, a doctoral student of political science at the University of Colorado-Boulder and freelance researcher on this report, Golden has never had a signi cant Black population.

Census data from 1960 shows that the Golden division of Je erson County had 28 Black residents. By 1970, that number had increased to 86. Overall, those numbers represent 0.15% and 0.27% of the total population, respectively, according to Tellis.

As of 2020, Golden had 388 Black residents, representing 1.9% of the city’s population.

Longtime Golden residents recalled how many of the city’s Black residents in the late 1960s and early ’70s were associated with Colorado School of Mines as students, professors or their family members. As far as discussions about the Black Panther Party speci cally or race relations in general, longtime White residents said the topic didn’t come up much because there wasn’t a large Black population in the area.

Rick Gardner, a resident who has studied Golden’s history extensively, said the community had “other preoccupations at the time,” such as

The Impact

In the community

While growing up in Denver in the ‘60s and ‘70s, Daniel and her sisters used their education and life experiences to help them decipher which news stories were biased and which were reputable. ey also relied on family and friends’ advice.

“I don’t think news at the time covered Blacks in the world that they lived in,” Daniel said. “To me, the general stories about how Blacks lived, what they did, what their concerns were and some of their needs, were not covered.” e sisters felt this trend in coverage didn’t change until the ’80s, when news about Black people and Black communities became more prominent.

As an example, Daniel described how e Denver Post did a feature article on her late husband, Wiley Y. Daniel, who was a prominent attorney and the state’s rst Black U.S. district court judge. She also recalled how e Post’s society section ran pictures of positive stories happening in the Black community.

“I do think it began to change in the ’80s,” Daniel continued.

“ ere were positive stories (but) front-page piece.

“I got a couple of nasty phone calls, but no one admitted to their bias,” Paulson said. “ ey refused to apologize, of course. ey said I shouldn’t have put that on the front page. In typical Golden fashion, there was nothing speci c, other than to say, ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’ e thought of another race didn’t exist.”

For the Transcript’s newsroom, Paulson said there was no “codi ed policy on racism” during his time labor clashes at the Coors brewery and the Vietnam War.

John Akal, a longtime Goldenite and current columnist for the Transcript, described how he spent his summers in Chicago, where it was “a whole di erent situation.” Because of the 1968 Chicago riots, which were sparked by the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Akal remembered a lot of racial tension in the city at the time. But that was Chicago. Golden was di erent, but not necessarily better.

The KKK in Golden e Klan began in Denver in 1921 and eventually “all but took possession of the state of Colorado,” according to a report in the Steamboat Pilot. Klan members throughout Denver gathered on Golden’s South Table Mountain for cross-burnings and other rituals. According to Golden History, the mountain could attract up to 10,000 members.

Overt discrimination in Golden against Black people and other communities peaked with the Ku Klux Klan, which had a strong presence in the city and throughout Colorado, particularly in the 1920s.

Overall, the Klan helped prevent or deter unknown numbers of Black people from carving out lives in the area. History Colorado recently released ledgers of KKK membership that show seven members of the terrorist organization resided in the

… the stereotypes were still going on.”

Diversity in the newsroom also seemed to improve during this timeframe, the sisters said. ey recalled Reynelda Muse, the rst Black person to anchor a newscast in Colorado, and Bertha Lynn, who started in Denver television in 1976.

While a lot has changed in how traditional outlets cover Black people and Black communities, the sisters believe there’s still plenty of bias. Rogers admitted that she avoids local news because there are still more negative stories about Black people than positive ones.

“I think there absolutely still is biased coverage,” she said. “I don’t want, every day, to hear about, ‘there’s another Black person who got in trouble.’”

In the country

Going back through American history, the Urban Spectrum’s Porter described other incidents where media outlets didn’t give Black people the bene t of the doubt. He listed the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and the Emmitt Till lynching as examples of the media portraying those involved as “guilty until proven innocent,” adding how there.

“We condemned it, but we made little e ort to actively attack it,” he said. “( e) Black Panthers seem remote from Golden, where there were few Black families.”

One place where Paulson thought racism showed up was on the editorial page. e paper had four syndicated columnists every day who lived outside the community. ey were selected by the publisher because “they were cheap and not already

Golden area, Tellis added.

Racist housing policies, practices

While the Klan’s activities are certainly one reason Golden has a small Black population, it’s not the only reason. Discriminatory housing practices also contributed.

Don Cameron, a former Je erson County teacher and current Golden city councilor, has researched zoning history and discriminatory housing policies and practices, including some accounts recorded in the Transcript.

While many Black residents in Denver were constricted by redlining, their counterparts in Golden faced other challenges.

“Starting in the ’20s and into the ’40s, it was common for people to say that they would only sell their individual property to those of the Caucasian race, or non-Negro race individuals,” Cameron stated in a self-published article about Golden’s zoning history.

“ e courts backed up this right because they were protecting the homeowners’ use of their land and had no civic duty to prevent this discrimination,” the article continues. “Blacks were excluded from being shown properties in these restrictive neighborhoods, and if they tried to purchase them, (they) might have it taken away soon after.”

Perhaps the most evident example of this was in 1942, when Logus Butler and Susie A. Allison paid being published by the two Denver dailies,” he stated.

Paulson said he had no doubt the paper could be accused of racism for its coverage in those days.

“But I’d like to think it was by omission rather than intent,” he said. “We rarely spoke of racism and did little to come out against its pernicious e ects. I don’t remember anyone on the sta making racist remarks, and I think I would have remembered that.”

$1,500 for 30 acres near present-day Boyd Street in north Golden. ey planned to build on it, but they were forced to sell a few months later after Golden residents drove them out.

“A large number of citizens appeared before the City Council Wednesday evening,” the Transcript reported Oct. 22, 1942, “and stated that a group of colored people had taken possession of the land recently purchased by them east of the Clark’s Garden addition, within the city limits of Golden, and were apparently staking out some building sites.”

After Butler and Allison were forced to sell the land, plots on the same land were listed for sale two years later. Ownership was restricted to “members of the Caucasian race.” ese accounts are just glimpses of Golden’s treatment of people of color, but Tellis emphasized how they demonstrate “institutionalized anti-Black behaviors and norms” in the area. So, he said, it’s no surprise that the Black Panther Party, an organization that “unapologetically called for Black liberation and the dismantling of White supremacist power structures, would catch the ire of local reporting.”

Tellis added: “Golden has displayed a deep commitment to the marginalization of Black people. To re ect on this legacy is pivotal if we desire to not replicate the racial strife and injustice of our past.” the trend has persisted into today’s coverage of police shootings and similar incidents.

“And it seems as though that men-