OPINION: When Words Mean Action
60 Years Making Good Trouble At 2345 Elm St.
By Dick Young
For the GPHN
Even before Lorie and I moved into our Park Hill home, built in 1910, still with a 1920 icebox and an underground lighted pistol range running from our basement to the alley, we were already involved.
I was tasked with getting the Park Hill Action Committee incorporated; then was appointed Chair of its Real Estate Committee, then Chair of the Action Committee. The challenge: how do we create, perhaps one of the first in the country, an integrated community. So we, and that is a big “we,” went at it pretty hard. After all, we were an Action committee.
And thanks to the hard work of so many, like Art and Bea Branscombe, Helen Wolcott, Fred Thomas, Ed Lupberger, Hooks Jones, Marge Gilbert, Roy Romer, and many, many others, it worked. I can’t leave out John Hasselblad, VP of Van Schaack & Co realtors, named Realtor of the year in 1965, who helped immensely.
Yes, we got a newspaper going, thanks to our next door neighbor, Ed Rollman. We beat back attempts to have liquor outlets every place available. We got the two way Pledge being passed in both the white churches and the Black churches. We, thanks to Jerry Kopel, Jules Mondschein and other dedicated volunteers, got Park Hill rezoned from R-1 to R-0 (no home businesses). We created the small park at 23rd and Dexter (the most used park per square foot anywhere). And don’t forget our evening wine tours through the neighborhoods, a unique way to meet new neighbors.
Then in 1964 we had the honor of welcoming Martin Luther King, Jr. to Denver and Park Hill for a mass meeting at Montview Boulevard Presbyterian Church and a reception at our home. The following year, in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson stopped in Park Hill and thanked us for being the best example of what an integrated neighborhood should be.
We continued to fight hard for our schools, insisting that Blacks and whites can work and learn together. Harold Scott, principal at Smiley Junior High, worked tirelessly to make this happen. Rachael Noel, on the Denver school board and with help from Ed Benton, carried on this fight. And Judge Doyle’s ruling in the Keyes v School District Number One case led to the United State Supreme Court battle that we won.
And luckily, we had Denver Mayor Tom Currigan and city council members Irving Hook and Elvin Caldwell insisting that there could and should be more integrated neighborhoods like Park Hill. Leaders throughout the city, like Sheldon Steinhouser, Min Yasui, Regis Groff and Roger Cisneros, joined in this effort.
And with our newly formed Metro Denver Fair Housing Center, getting a $300,000 grant from the Ford Foundation, we were selected by the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing as the best example of what fair housing meant.
Our four daughters lived through all of this and remember it well, each still claiming (then aged 8, 6, 3, and 1) sitting on Rev. King’s lap when he was in our home that Jan. 25 in 1964.
So we’re still here, still very active, and still fondly remembering these last 60 years and so many people that played a part in this endeavor. But the battle goes on, now trying to turn much of this area into multi-story apartments and condos, leaving no green space.
Time for action, folks.
Dick Young was one of the founders of the Park Hill Action Committee in 1960, now the Greater Park Hill Community, Inc. He and his family still live in the home they bought that same year. This essay follows last month’s retrospective marking the 60th anniversary of the Greater Park Hill News, which can be read at greaterparkhill.org/news-and-opinion/diamonds-and-rust/.