1125 Pine Street
Boulder, CO 80302
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Call Number OH3107Date 2023Contents Single recording; 1 hour, 28 minutes, 33 secondsDescription Dr. Reiland Rabaka is a professor of African, African American, and Caribbean Studies, as well as the founder and director of the Center for African & African American Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In this interview, he details being raised by his grandmothers and his mother in Texas. He speaks of the effects of poverty and racism, but also of the positive ways his family shaped him through the social justice and feminist theology of his family and the Black church. He talks about the early and deep influence of music in his life and the impact of his early education at arts-oriented, integrated schools. He details his path through higher education and his academic career, including his approach to teaching; the field of Black studies; inspiring mentors he has had; his transition from teaching at Cal State, Long Beach, to the University of Colorado, Boulder; experiences with racism and classism in academia; enthusiasm of Boulder students for the subjects he teaches; and the founding of the Center for African and African American Studies. Other topics include the cultural and sociological importance of the African American church, the deep influence on him of W.E.B. Du Bois, Africana critical theory, the Black community in Boulder and Colorado, Black feminism, and reflections on the legacy of slavery.
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Call Number OH3105Date 2023Contents Single recording; 1 hour, 39 minutes, 24 secondsDescription Gary Jackson, who graduated from CU Law School in 1970, describes the dearth of Black lawyers in Colorado at that time (only 15 in the state) and the founding of the Sam Cary Bar Association as a specialty bar association that provided support for Black lawyers. He talks about Sam Cary, after whom the Bar Association was named, and about the seven founders of the Sam Cary Bar Association (of which he was one). He details some of the projects and other actions pursued by the association over the years, and reflects on its achievements and legacy. Other topics include the influence of the Ku Klux Klan in Denver in the 1920s and ‘30s; some of his mentors, including William Harold Flowers, Ruth Flowers, Dale Tooley; those whom he mentored and influenced; and awards he has received.
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Call Number OH3104Date 2023Contents Single recording; 1 hour, 24 minutes, 13 secondsDescription Gladys Forshee grew up on a dryland wheat farm, north of what is now Denver International Airport, then lived in Commerce City after marrying Larry Forshee. In 1970, they moved to Superior. From 1970 to 1973, she had the job of town clerk. Topics related to her time as town clerk include public health improvements; obtaining firefighting services for Superior, which eventually became the Metro West Fire Department; and the “Flamettes” women’s firefighting group. She describes using excess money that had accumulated from the Superior Volunteer Fire Department to create historical markers. She talks about the creation of the Superior Historic Commission and describes her research for and the writing of local history books, including a cookbook for the Superior centennial, a book about the Box Elder farming community that was located near where Denver International Airport is today ("Where Memories Linger Silver Birds Will Someday Land: From the Quiet Farm Life of Box Elder Community, Adams County, Colorado, to Denver International Airport," published in 1994), and two other publications that were ready to go to the publisher when they were destroyed in the Marshall Fire. The last part of the interview contains a detailed account of her self-evacuation during the Marshall Fire, the difficulty of finding a place to stay during the fire, and the aftermath of the fire for her as she worked to find housing in the wake of her house having burned.
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Call Number OH3102Date 2021Contents Two parts merged into single recording; 2 hour, 23 minutes, 03 secondsDescription Brian Dillman begins the interview by talking about growing up in Boulder and then serving in the Navy in the 1960s during the Vietnam War. He joined the Boulder Emergency Squad (BES), originally called the Eleven-Meter Club, when it first formed in 1963 and has worked with it ever since. BES, as he says, provides “a career-level rescue service with an all-volunteer staff.” He served as chief of BES for more than 10 years. He details the history of the squad from its inception to the present day, decade by decade. Topics include: the need for volunteer rescue services at a time when firefighters and sheriff/police officers were not equipped for such services; services BES has provided, including vehicle extrication, accident scene lighting, water/dive rescue, accident traffic control, firefighting hand crews for wildland fires, search and rescue services, drone services, and field force extrication; the changing relationship between BES and firefighting/law enforcement agencies; equipment needed and purchased; growth of BES; buildings where it has been housed; funding, including the Worthy Cause Tax; Chicano activism of the 1970s; changes in technology over time; division of services between BES and Rocky Mountain Rescue; the ebb and flow of volunteering among community members; and the future of BES. He also describes several notable rescues.
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Call Number OH3099Date 2023Contents Single recording; 1 hour, 37 minutes, 38 secondsDescription Jane Brautigam was Boulder’s city manager from 2008 to 2020. She describes how she grew into her career as a city manager; other places she worked, both as a city attorney and a city manager; and how she came to be hired as Boulder’s city manager. Her wide-ranging discussion of issues handled as Boulder’s city manager include guiding Boulder through the financial crisis of 2008 (the Great Recession), capital bond projects undertaken including facilities updates and expansions, zoning policy changes, attempts to municipalize the city’s electrical system, providing services for the unhoused population, policing and race, priority-based budgeting, transportation including RTD services and the Folsom bike lane experiment, prairie dog management, the city/university relationship, student alcohol use, planning for the CU conference center, the CU South land with regard to flooding and development, racial equity, and handling emergencies—such as floods, fires, and the Covid pandemic. Other topics include the variety of problems with which a city manager deals, a city manager as a facilitator of solutions to these problems, Boulder in 2008, the relationship between city manager and city council, characteristics of a good city manager, retirement, and continuing to serve on nonprofit boards and as a mentor to others. Note that further biographical information about Jane Brautigam is available at Boulder’s Carnegie Library for Local History; and Jane’s curriculum vitae is added to the bottom of the transcript.
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Call Number OH3097Date 2023Contents Single recording; 1 hour, 11 minutes, 29 secondsDescription Sharon Amirfathi and her husband lived on seven-and-a-half acres at the base of Spanish Hills in Boulder County. The house, where she and her husband had lived for about 25 years, along with greenhouses and a barn that were part of her husband’s agricultural business, burned in the Marshall Fire in December 2021. Topics discussed include evacuation during the fire; things taken and things left behind at the time of evacuation; issues with communication between government and citizens during the fire; the immediate aftermath of the fire, including finding housing and incidents of invasion of privacy on their land; the process of rebuilding after the fire; the upside of getting to start all over; relief efforts that helped fire victims after the fire; how their lives have changed as a result of the fire; replacing passports with the assistance of Joe Neguse’s office; and the generosity of people during recovery.
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Call Number OH3096Date 2023Contents Single recording; 38 minutes, 27 secondsDescription Marc Sobel and his wife moved to Boulder in 1998, some years after they had retired from careers at IBM. He describes volunteer work he did after moving to Boulder. He and his wife moved into the Frasier Retirement Community at the beginning of 2020, just before the Covid-19 pandemic hit Boulder. He describes the pandemic lockdown at Frasier, the protocols that were followed, the relative success of these protocols at keeping people healthy, and his role in developing a Zoom-meeting program to help counteract isolation among residents. He reflects on the ways things changed as more became known about the disease and how different people handled the challenges of the pandemic in different ways. Other topics include social aspects of living at Frasier, Resident Council committees, the national response to managing the pandemic, and the way residents used the Touchtown social media program within Frasier to keep in touch and keep informed.
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Call Number OH3095Date 2023Contents Single recording; 1 hour, 40 minutes, 11 secondsDescription Jeannette Smith grew up in Denver, spending summers in Nederland, Colorado, where her mother ran the Junior Catholic Daughters Camp for girls. Jeannette rode horses and bicycles with the girls. She met her husband, Mike, when she was twelve and he was fourteen, just before a ten-year drought in Nederland, and she has lived the rest of her life in Nederland. Many Nederland residents worked in the Conger Tungsten Mine until it closed. Nederland lost much of its population after the mines closed. Mike’s father owned a tungsten mill. The mill burned down in 1956 when the few men not in the mine that day were unable to douse the flames. In another incident, Mike was working in the garage of their house when the roof blew off from a gas leak, and he crawled out of the dust like Lazarus. Jeannette talks about racism in Denver during her childhood, in the Jim Crow era. Also discussed is limited medical care in Nederland and its one-man police force. Jimmy Griffin was the only town marshal until an influx of hundreds of hippies living in tents and using drugs required drafting additional marshals to patrol the town. Jeannette tells the story of the Hells Angels being bested by a lone cowboy. Other topics include doing laundry before modern washing machines, severe weather events in Nederland, recreational activities during her and her children’s childhoods, hiking in the Indian Peaks Wilderness, working for the Title 1 program, and the financial difficulties of mining.
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Call Number OH3094Date 2023Contents Single recording; 45 minutes, 27 secondsDescription Stuart Dodd talks about his work with the Indian Peaks Wilderness Alliance (IPWA), an organization that works in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service to preserve and protect the Indian Peaks and James Peak Wilderness Areas. He began as a volunteer with the organization in the mid-1990s—patrolling trails, educating the public, collecting data on usage, and helping to ensure safety—and eventually moved into a leadership role. He discusses the history of the IPWA and his work as board chair for four years. While board chair, the organization defined its mission, increased trail restoration work, established a sawyer certification program, started a winter patrol program, created a scholarship program to fund alpine research by college students, created a student intern program, and created a trailhead host program. Other topics discussed are divergent views of how to manage public lands, the boundaries for usage of wilderness areas set by the Wilderness Act, IPWA as a 100-percent volunteer organization, working with the U.S. Forest Service, the challenges of managing a wilderness area that receives so much usage, working with other wilderness friends’ groups and the National Wilderness Stewardship Alliance as a source of ideas and funding resources, and the challenges inherent in continuing to protect wilderness areas.
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Call Number OH3093Date 2022Contents Single recording; 1 hour, 32 minutes, 8 secondsDescription Glenda Strong Robinson describes her family’s history in the American South, including the enslavement of her ancestors, experiences of segregation and discrimination, and the strong involvement of many family members with religion and education. She discusses her college years during the 1960s, including the contrast between attending a historically Black college versus Memphis State where she was racially in the minority, and the larger events that were happening at that time—the civil rights movement, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the civil rights march in support of the striking sanitation workers in Memphis in which she marched, and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. She draws parallels between voting inequalities and civil rights struggles of the 1960s, on the one hand, and those happening at the time of the interview in 2022. She goes on to describe her move to California; the work she did there; meeting her husband, who worked for IBM; and moving with him when IBM transferred him to IBM-Boulder in 1980. She describes settling in Longmont, where she has lived for 42 years. Topics include her children’s schooling, working for Ball Aerospace, race relations in Boulder County, the high quality of life in Boulder County, the family-oriented culture of IBM, storytelling to “bring history to life,” conducting Black history programs and other social justice and religious programs, and work with the NAACP of Boulder County.
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Call Number OH3092Date 2022Contents Single recording; 1 hour, 20 minutes, 17 secondsDescription Gaylon Ferguson talks about growing up as a Black child in the segregated society of east Texas during the 1950s; his experience of being part of integrating a public school in the mid-1960s when he was in eighth grade; and the values, including respect for education and community service, that he absorbed from his mother and grandmother. He details his educational journey from his last year of high school on, which included attending Exeter as a scholarship student; his mother’s death in a car accident when he was 18, on the cusp of his starting to attend Yale University; dropping out of Yale after two years in the wake of his grief at the loss of his mother; learning about meditation and Buddhism; and his subsequent involvement in Buddhist teaching, earning a PhD in anthropology, and ultimately melding the two—academics and Buddhism. Other topics include studying under and teaching for Chögyam Trungpa in various location, including at Naropa Institute (later Naropa University); studying and teaching African studies and anthropology; using a Fulbright Scholarship to live and do field work in Nigeria; returning to teach at Naropa from 2006 to 2021; teaching meditation to African American divinity students; teaching mindfulness in Chicago to community members working for social justice and on counteracting violence; Black Americans and Buddhism; the significance of Shambhala to him and to Boulder; and the problem of reconciling religious teachings with the reality of abuse by religious individuals.
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Call Number OH3091Date 2022Contents Single recording; 44 minutes, 7 secondsDescription George Jones, born in the mid-1930s, grew up in Yonkers, New York, the last of ten children. He starts by relating experiences relevant to being a Black young adult, such as being told by his high school guidance counselor that he should stick with woodworking rather than pursing academics (he eventually received a PhD in medical sociology), being the first Black person accepted by his college fraternity, and racial discrimination that he experienced as he tried to get hired after earning a master’s degree at Columbia University. He relates work he did in Colorado, beginning in 1962, with the developmentally disabled population, including as Director of Mental Retardation for the state; working for the White House in the 1960s; and the extensive public-health-related work he did for many decades with USAID in many African countries. Other topics include raising children in an international environment, and experiences of both racial discrimination and a sense of inclusive community in Boulder in the 1960s and 1970s.