FOR THE RECORD

presented the group in a negative light, with words such as “fugitive,” “thugs” and “militants.” And, the Transcript appeared to rarely cover the Black community in the city and wider region. Because of this, their voices are missing in archives, now online as an important chronicling of Colorado’s history.

By not including these voices in an accurate light, and by publishing stories that reinforced harmful stereotypes and/or recorded Black people’s traumatic experiences in an apathetic or ippant way, the Golden Transcript’s coverage contributed to systemic racism, according to researchers and Black community leaders.

Jameka Lewis, senior librarian at the Denver Public Library’s Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library and a freelance researcher on this report, said Transcript readers may have had their beliefs about the Black Panther Party, and the Black community in general, shaped by the Transcript’s negative portrayals.

“ ere is harm when it comes to media and the Black community in Denver and Colorado,” Lewis said. “If we want to repair the harms, we have to acknowledge that (they are) factual.”

Alfonzo Porter, editor-in-chief at Denver Urban Spectrum and a journalism professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver, said mass media has been at the epicenter of “propagating negative images and re ections of the AfricanAmerican community.”

“It really stems out of our country’s background, and we’re still dealing with those biases,” he said.

While almost all of the Transcript’s stories about the Black Panther Party were from wire services like United Press International, Porter said the Transcript and other newspapers are accountable for reprinting those stories.

“It’s exactly like original reporting, because … the editorial sta sat in a room, looked at this piece, determined that it was appropriate and ran with it in the paper,” he said.

The Black Panther Party e Black Panther Party for Self Defense started in 1966 in Oakland, California. Founders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale started the organization as a response to police brutality there and in other Black communities, according to Lewis’ research. e party had a 10-point program that included demands for Black liberation and societal

The Coverage

How national, Denver-area papers covered the party Sisters Ida Daniel, Pat Rogers and JoEllen Greenwood grew up in Denver and graduated from East High School in the ’60s and early ’70s. ey recalled reading e Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News and watching the nightly news on TV. ey also listened to the city’s Black radio station, KDKO, and read Black-oriented magazines like Ebony and Jet.

Overall, the three didn’t recall a lot of news stories about Black people in the mainstream press, unless it was negative. e news covered Black people who were arrested for murder, robbery, rioting and other crimes. Rogers summarized the coverage as: “Be afraid of Black people.” at kind of coverage played out with the Black Panthers. In 2016, e New York Times analyzed stories about the Panthers, noting “journalists were at once fascinated and frightened by them” and their activities in the 1960s and ‘70s. Coverage about the Denver Panthers in Black newspapers in the area at the time was scant. Of those Lewis researched, the Black-owned publication e Denver Blade published the most articles on the group’s activities, both locally and nationally, in 1969.

Its coverage appears to be fairly balanced, Lewis said.

One Blade article discussed the Panthers’ orga- improvement. Eventually, the Black Panthers led more than 35 community programs across the country, like the Free Breakfast for School Children Program — also known as e Free People’s Food Program, which helped feed Black children from economically disadvantaged families.

In Denver, a chapter gained recognition in 1967. Led by Lauren Watson, the chapter’s history was largely erased or ignored, Lewis said, adding that the Denver Panthers were instrumental in the ght for civil rights in Colorado.

It’s important to note that many Black community members both then and now have mixed feelings about the Panthers and their work, Lewis stressed.

Longtime Denver residents she interviewed formed their opinions largely based on what they read about the Black Panthers in newspapers and saw on TV. Yet that coverage contrasts with what many in the community saw the Denver Black Panthers doing. ey were involved in school board and City Council meetings, provided free meals for children, and worked to nizing a meeting to discuss policing and police presence at Cole Jr. High School in Denver’s diverse Whittier neighborhood. It chronicled the Black community’s e orts to address a racial gap between teachers and Black students. One possible solution, and likely at the suggestion of the Denver Black Panthers, was to establish Cole as a Freedom School, a concept that focused on Black pride and Black liberation in academics.

In contrast, the Denver Post also covered the meeting but didn’t mention the Panthers’ involvement in organizing the event or the Freedom School proposal. In a review of Post archives, the story focused on arrests. e Denver Blade coverage did not mention any Black Panther arrests.

“Oftentimes, it was up to Black news media to cover this group in a more comprehensive way, which I believe e Denver Blade did,” Lewis said. “It covered all aspects of the local and national Panthers, and o ered readers a more balanced view of the members of this group.” e Denver Blade stopped operating in 1970.

How Golden’s newspapers covered the Panthers e Transcript published approximately 170 articles that used the terms “Black Panther” or “Black Panthers” between 1969-1971. Almost all of these were reprinted stories from wire services, which seldom described anything positive about the party or its members. improve the welfare of their neighborhoods and its residents.

“Many Black people believed what the media said about the Panthers,” said Terry Nelson, a lifelong member of the Denver community. “ … It depended on the source. We recognized that the newspapers weren’t telling the truth about the members. … We knew that the Denver members were active in schools, speaking with teachers and parents. We never saw that in the major newspapers.”

Tracie Keesee, a former Denver police captain and co-founder of the Center for Policing Equity, described how during this tumultuous period, the press played into the hands of government o cials.

Newsrooms considered police as trustworthy and well-respected sources, so it was easy for them to hand reporters a story and have it taken at face value, Keesee said.

Keesee added: “We see it now, right? at divisiveness in the media, the stories that are being told — or not being told.” e only article referencing the party’s free breakfast program was published April 30, 1970, about Baltimore police rounding up Black Panthers suspected of killing a patrolman. After searching party headquarters, police searched a school where it conducted its breakfast program, among other locations. e coverage used negative language to describe the Panthers, their neighborhoods and any activities they were involved in. Because of this, Golden-area residents absorbed and believed what they heard and saw in the news coverage, Lewis stated. e role of the press in forwarding racial inequality really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, Keesee said, especially to communities of color.

In contrast, the Colorado School of Mines student paper, e Oredigger, published at least two stories about the Black Panther Party. Both were straightforward accounts of Lauren Watson, the head of the Denver chapter, visiting Golden.

Ultimately, while coverage of the Black Panthers varied by publication, the Golden Transcript failed to cover the party’s community initiatives or involvement. It did, however, print dozens of wire stories about the party’s supposed criminal activity and police raids associated with the group.

“It’s not just that person that wrote the story, that person had an editor, right? ere wasn’t anything in that editor’s mind that said, ‘Yeah…this seems a little biased. Did you even go into the community, or did you just take that o the wire and repeat it?’” ere’s no excuse for sloppy journalism, as it is harmful and contributes directly to a larger narrative, Keesee said.

“When you talk about media coverage, there were only three channels on the television, back then; there was no social media,” she said, adding, “the newspapers were cranking out those stories overnight and you were waiting for your morning paper. Nobody was up waiting for breaking news. So, the news that was coming out, it was more focused and easier to control.”

And when news was breaking, “it

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 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 Overt discrimination in Golden against Black people and other was breaking only one way, and those narratives were pretty narrow,” she added.

The newsroom

During this timeframe, the Transcript was a daily paper with a small sta of six and a wire service that provided regional and national news.

Neil Paulson, who was managing editor from 1970-75, said the paper relied on United Press International reports to cover many issues, including the Black Panthers.

“It was a terrible service, especially for a small paper,” he said. “It cost us a little more, but eventually we went to e Associated Press.” e only dictate from the paper’s owners, e Kansas City Star and the Great (Kansas) Tribune, was to run a local story on the front page, Paulson said. National and regional stories ran inside.

Paulson noted that Golden’s population at the time, as it is today, was communities peaked with the Ku Klux Klan, which had a strong presence in the city and throughout Colorado, particularly in the 1920s. 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.

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 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 Jefferson 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 predominantly White.

He knew two Black Goldenites during his years as editor. One was Monroe Jordan, an assistant chef at downtown Golden’s historic Holland House, who later worked at the nearby Ace-Hi Tavern.

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 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 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 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.” after.”

Perhaps the most evident example of this was in 1942, when Logus Butler and Susie A. Allison paid $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