Unrecorded 1920s Colorado African American Directory

[African Americana]: [Colorado]:

The Denver Y.M.C.A's Colored Directory. 1929 Business and Professional Guide [wrapper title].

[Denver: 1928]. [32]pp. Original pictorial green wrappers, stapled, picturing the Glenarm Branch of the YMCA on the cover, the remainder of the wrappers printed with advertisements. Minor soiling and light fading or offsetting to wrappers, top corner of first text leaf creased. Overall very good. Item #13051

An unrecorded combined residential and commercial directory for the African American community in Denver, Colorado at the end of the Roaring Twenties. The work is titled, The (Glenarm Branch) Denver Y.M.C.A. Colored Directory Vol. 1 No. 2 on the first page of text, with Fritz Cansler identified as the editor. Cansler, who was also the Executive Secretary of the Glenarm Branch, writes in his introductory note, "The Negro Citizens: The Negro in Denver," about the long and important role African Americans have played in Denver ("The Negro has been closely identified with the growth and prosperity of the city of Denver"), the positive contributions of many Black citizens, and the vital role of current Black entrepreneurs ("group of alert young businessmen now operating in the city, handling real estate, in the restaurant, barber shop, hotel, recreational and other types of businesses which are generally successful and well conducted"). He concludes with an appeal to other African Americans considering a move to Denver: "there is abundant opportunity for Negroes of energy, brains and determination backed by sufficient capital to insure a start on the road to prosperity and affluence." The directory is especially interesting as it emanates from the American West during the Great Migration.

The preponderance of the work is comprised of an alphabetical "Denver Colored Directory," which includes names and addresses for over 1,500 African Americans in the city. Among the notable Black citizens of Denver at this time were Nathan Biffle, one of the first Black Captains in the Denver Fire Department, and Hulett Maxwell, one of the first Black pharmacists and drugstore owners in Colorado, who operated in the African American Five Points section of the city, which would later be known as the "Harlem of the West." The directory listings are interspersed throughout with dozens of advertisements for a legion of local businesses, among them the Le Moine Music Company ("Race Patronage Solicited"), the Colorado and Utah Coal Company ("Miners and Shippers"), E.P. Gallup Realty ("We have some bargains in the best Colored District which we can sell on EASY TERMS"), and a handful of businesses using "Five Points" in their name.

As far as we can tell, a unique African American directory during the early part of the Great Migration, when millions of Black citizens from the American South moved to numerous points North, Midwest, and West, including Denver beginning the 1910s. Not found in commerce, auction records, or OCLC.

Price: $4,500

Status: On Hold