Included in this repository are information and documents surrounding the Black students who historically attended the University of Colorado Law School.
The histories of Black students, faculty, and staff have too often remained hidden at law schools across the United States. And for more than a century, that was the case at Colorado Law. However, in 2024, work began to restore these individuals to the institutional narrative.
The foundation of this digital project are the artifacts collected by librarian Rebecca Ciota as they researched these individuals. We thank Ciota for their initial donation of these digital artifacts.
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Franklin LaVeale Anderson (ex 1899)
Rebecca Ciota
Only four years after the University of Colorado Law School’s 1892 opening, Franklin LaVeale Anderson (ex 1899) enrolled at the law school in 1896. He is believed to be the first Black student to enroll at the University of Colorado Boulder and is the University of Colorado Law School’s first Black student.
Anderson was born a free person in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1859. During his early childhood, slavery was legal in Missouri. Slave-holding states in the Antebellum United States forbid the formal education of Black persons.11 However, records indicate that Anderson received some education in Missouri, while also taking up work as a barber, before he moved to Minneapolis in 1885 at the age of 26. There, he continued his barbering and schooling, graduating high school in 1886. While living in Minneapolis, he met and married his wife Ione Arella Williams.
The couple moved to Boulder in early 1892. They purchased multiple lots in town, living near 20th and Pine. Anderson established his barbershop on the corner of 12th (now Broadway) and Pearl Street.
In 1896, at the age of 37, Anderson enrolled at the University of Colorado Law School, using earnings from his barbershop to pay for tuition and supplies. He attended until 1899 and is included in the 1899 class photo. However, the law school faculty did not include Anderson in their list of students who should be conferred the Bachelor of Laws degree in May 1899.
Anderson attempted the bar exam in 1899, but unfortunately did not pass. Around 1900, Anderson and his wife sold their properties and left Boulder, settling in Fort Morgan, Colorado for some time. Anderson passed in 1918 from kidney failure.
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Franklin Henry Bryant (1907)
Rebecca Ciota
Born in 1877 and troubled from a young age by lung problems,19 Franklin Henry Bryant (1907) dedicated himself to his education. In 1898, he joined the Seventh Day Adventist Church, where he served as a stenographer for the son of the founders of the Seventh Day Adventists, J. Edson White.
Bryant traveled across the country with the Adventists. After suffering an injury to or illness in his face, he traveled to Battle Creek, Michigan, for treatment, where the Adventist Sanitarium workers received him poorly. J. Edson White and his brother W.C. White interceded on Bryant’s behalf, and Bryant moved to Nashville to receive medical training. Bryant published a collection of poems titled Black Smiles (1903) to help pay for medical school. He briefly attended Northwestern University’s Medical School in Chicago before moving to Denver in 1905 to be closer to his father.
In Denver, he lectured and performed poetry; and he joined the socialist and labor movements. He first enrolled at the University of Denver’s Law School before transferring to the University of Colorado Law School in 1906, graduating only a year later in 1907.
Bryant became the third Black attorney to pass the Colorado Bar Exam and went on to establish a firm in Denver. Five months after passing the bar, he was the first and youngest Black attorney to argue a case before the Colorado Supreme Court (55 Colo. 523, 139 P. 1099) - which he posthumously won four years after his untimely death from pneumonia in 1909.
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Adele "Della" Parker (ex 1914)
Rebecca Ciota
Adele “Della” Parker (ex 1914) was born in Rolla, Missouri, to formerly enslaved parents, John Henry and Sedonia (née Blackwell) Parker, circa 1883. During her teenage years, Parker worked as a servant in order to support her younger siblings’ education.
Around the turn of the century, Parker left Missouri and arrived in Denver, where she began to focus on her own education. She enrolled in the University of Denver’s (DU) Preparatory School and joined the school’s Adelphian Literary Society, which focused on recitation, writing, musical performance, and debates. She graduated in 1906 and enrolled in DU’s Liberal Arts program, where she studied for one year.
Parker applied to the University of Colorado Law School in 1911 and found herself a bit of a local celebrity when the local newspapers picked up her story. Fortunately, the press seemed favorable, claiming that Parker made “the superiority of masculinity...no longer self-evident" and that she had a “bright future.” She was a dedicated student and skilled debater while attending the law school.
Unfortunately, Parker did not finish her law degree as she needed to return home to care for a sick relative. She remained in Missouri, earning a teaching certificate and teaching in the Lincoln School, one of the Black schools in the St. Louis suburbs. By 1930, she owned her own home. Parker retired in the early 1950s and passed away in 1963.
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Arthur Erthal Green (1945)
Rebecca Ciota
Originally from LaJunta, Colorado, Arthur Erthal Green (Law 1945) enlisted in the military in 1942. He was promoted to the level of sergeant while stationed in California. There, he met his future wife, Gwendolyn, at a social event. The couple married shortly after in Colorado. Boulder was unwelcoming to Green and his family due to their race; for example, Boulder barbershops refused to cut Green’s hair. Arthur and Gwendolyn Green started an NCAACP chapter in Boulder.4 In 1945, Green - who believed he was only the second Black student to attend the law school5 - graduated from the University of Colorado Law School.
The Greens moved to Oakland, California shortly after his law school graduation. Arthur worked for Golden State Insurance while supporting Gwendolyn in her civil rights work. After a short time in San Diego, the couple settled in Los Angeles, where they co-founded the New Frontier Democratic Club, which is currently the largest Democratic Club in the state. Gwendolyn went on to be a significant civil rights and workers’ rights activist nationally and regionally. She credited her success, in part, to having “a husband [Arthur Green] that was willing to work together and we were involved.”