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Eric Harris talks about growing up in segregated Texas in the 1950s and 1960s. He discusses his school experiences both before and after integration in Galveston, Texas, including the experience for both him and his brother, William Harris, Jr., of playing high school football as Black athletes. He came to the University of Colorado, Boulder, on both athletic and academic scholarships and graduated with a degree in business. He describes experiences of racial discrimination while playing college football and ways in which his teammates did and didn’t support the Black students on the team. He also describes his brother’s experiences of racial bias while playing in the NFL in the south in his post-college years. He reflects on race, inequality, and progress in the US during his lifetime. He talks about his personal family history as an adult, including his marriages, the illness and death of his second wife, the support of his wife’s family and the Boulder community during this crisis and beyond, his approach to parenting, his children’s experiences as people of color in Boulder and their ultimate career paths, and some of his community involvements in Boulder.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Carole Jones relates her family’s history, reaching back as far as the 1700s, and including those who were “free coloreds” in Baltimore and Freedmen of Oklahoma. She describes her upbringing in Washington, DC, her college education at Oberlin, and becoming a social worker in her post-graduate years. After marrying George Jones in 1959, they moved to Colorado and eventually to Boulder. She explains where they have lived over the years in Boulder, including where they live now. A large portion of the interview details the work that she and her husband did in the Boulder/Denver area and then for 25 years in various African countries (alongside her husband) mainly through USAID, ranging from social work to developing post-apartheid policies for equitable salary levels among all workers, to developing programs for victims of torture and trauma. She also reflects on the challenges of blending work with child-rearing and coordinating her career with that of her husband. Other topics include the Black community in Boulder, the shortcoming of education for children of color in Boulder during the 1960s, and her current volunteer work in Boulder.