Emma Langdon is not like other women who are profiled as “pioneers.” Others were involved in women’s rights, suffrage, or independence, but Langdon wasn’t a pioneer for any of those reasons. She simply believed that gender was not a barrier to what a person could do. It wasn’t about “equal rights for women,” it was about everyone doing what they were capable of, gender notwithstanding. Her focus was more on
This series, Pioneer Profiles, explores some of the interesting characters that define Colorado history, including Bob Womack. *** Bob Womack was probably the least-likely person ever to have his share of fame, but because of his love of the Colorado back country, he became what is locally known as Cripple Creek’s first official resident. Born in 1844, Bob had a happy childhood filled with his father’s wonderful stories of the
Laura Bell McDaniel, known as the “Queen of the Colorado City Tenderloin,” was a pioneer not just because she was an early resident of Colorado City, but because, as the city’s premier madam, she was an anomaly among the soiled doves. She used her given name, she kept in close contact with her family, and she conducted business with some of the most respected people in Colorado Springs. Born in
(In honor of Veterans Day and the 100th anniversary the armistice ending the Great War I, I publish the WWI diary of Albert J. Ebert. The late Mr. Ebert was my husband’s grandfather and served in France in 1918 and 1919. He enlisted in the navy but found himself in the trenches pulling infantry duty. Just twenty-three years old when he deployed, he writes of being issued a gas mask,
In Honor of Black History Month Twenty-three years ago, I landed my first full-time college teaching position at Tuskegee University in Alabama. Originally known as Tuskegee Institute, the school was founded by Booker T. Washington in 1881 to provide vocational education for southern blacks in the years after Reconstruction. Washington, born a slave in 1856, would overcome enormous odds to become the most influential African American in the United States
If you google the name Raymond Parks, you’ll find a lot of information about a daring Georgia hillbilly. He served prison time for running moonshine in the 1930s and helped found NASCAR in the 1940s. Unfortunately, Google reveals far less about a black man by the same name. His famous wife, Rosa Parks, became an iconic civil rights leader during the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama. Yet Rosa’s husband
