Ethnic Groups In Denver From 1940-1970

What are the things that divided ethnic groups along racial lines in Denver from 1940 – 1970 and how did change take place? Introduction

Human beings pay a lot more attention to the differences between people than the things people have in common. Sometimes that attention to the differences leads to conflict and separation among the groups. We can trace that conflict and separation to the beginning of America with the landing at Jamestown in 1607.

The institution of slavery in America, the Mexican American War, the building of the railroad, and America’s manifest destiny, all contributed to the separation of the races and mistrust that eventually lead to poor relations

The labor vacuum helped African Americans and Hispanic. Factory and clerical jobs at the Remington Arms Plant went to the qualified, including African American Women who were paid the same wages as anyone else in a similar job. The war vastly improved the number of lower-rung jobs. As whites move up, minorities found new opportunities. The war also put money in the cash registers of enterprising African business owners in Denver’s Five Points District where restaurants, night clubs, and barbershops catered to African American servicemen. African American population nearly doubled in the 1940s. Although the war the consequent economic advances of African Americans and Hispanics laid the foundations for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s

Dr. George E Bardwell, a professor of statistics and mathematics at the University of Denver, had studied park hill housing and school development for many years and prepared a report for the Denver Commission on Community Relations, published in 1966, entitled Park Hill Areas of Denver. In his report he laid out was happening in housing schools, and the gradual segregation in Park Hill and northeast Denver. The real estate practices known as “redlining” and “blockbusting” were at work in these areas of Park Hill. Years earlier In 1948, the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause outlawed the states’ legal enforcement of racially restrictive covenants in state courts.{9} In this event, decades of segregation laws which compelled Black Americans to live in over-crowded and over-priced ghettos created economic pressures to avail black people of housing in racially segregated neighborhoods were annulled. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 established federal causes of action against blockbusting, including illegal real estate broker claims that Blacks and Hispanics, et al. had or were going to move into a neighborhood, and so devalue the properties. Cultural