Files
Download Full Text (1.9 MB)
Download The Coloradan (1909) at 37. (5.6 MB)
Download "For County Judge," Denver Post (Oct 28, 1908). (1.1 MB)
Download "Some Black Smiles," The Colored American (Mar 14, 1903) at 5. (43 KB)
Download "To Alabama et al," The Colored American (Sept. 7, 1901). (50 KB)
Download "The Best Yet," Daily People (Nov. 1, 1906), at 2. (34 KB)
Download [Franklin H. Bryant presents on Industrial Unionism,] Denver Post (May 29, 1906) at 2. (1.6 MB)
Download "Federation Considering Butte Delegates Contest," Denver Post (May 29, 1906) at 5. (1.5 MB)
Download "Denver University Students Win State Honors in Law," Denver Post (Aug. 7, 1907) at 4. (1.9 MB)
Download "The Mission of Industrial Unionism," Denver Post (Oct 13, 1907) at 22. (2.0 MB)
Description
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.
Publication Date
1907
Disciplines
History | Legal Education
Recommended Citation
Ciota, Rebecca, "Franklin Henry Bryant (1907)" (1907). Black History at Colorado Law. 2.
https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/black-history/2
Comments
Original image from Black Smiles (1903), a book of poetry written by Franklin H. Bryant in order to help pay for his medical expenses.
The majority of these documents are donations from Rebecca Ciota from their research.