A bill creating the Black Coloradan Racial Equity Commission was signed into law June 4.
But supporters must raise $785,000 to prove there is strong community support for what the law directs History Colorado to do — assess and quantify the financial impact of slavery, racism and discrimination on Black Coloradans and make recommendations for corrective measures.
The group is about $30,000 short of reaching that goal by a self-imposed deadline of July 1.
“This is not us using public dollars for something other folks didn’t think we needed a study on,” said state Sen. James Coleman, a Black Denver Democrat and lead sponsor of the law. “We had a big fundraising effort this year, and at this point, we’re short about $30,000. I feel strongly we’ll be able to raise the rest of that money to begin implementing the bill.”
A similar bill, House Bill 1327, which passed in 2022, included $618,611 in state funding for History Colorado to investigate abuses at a federal Native American boarding school at Fort Lewis, in southern Colorado, and others like it statewide.
This year, the governor signed House Bill 1444, which provided $1 million to fund the Federal Indian Boarding School Research Program until the end of 2027.
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State lawmakers did not ask for funding when they drafted the new racial equity study measure, Senate Bill 53, for Black Coloradans because “we knew it wouldn’t have passed,” said Sade Cooper, co-founder and chief executive officer at CHIC Denver. The group is helping fundraise for Senate Bill 53, and helps families break free of intergenerational poverty and violence.
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Read more“We have similar studies that have passed,” Cooper said. “There was just one about the Indian boarding schools — that came with funding. But when it comes to really, truly, wanting to study this, in a partnership, we knew that if we went in there asking for money for something as contentious as this was, this wouldn’t have seen the light of day. That’s sad and it says a lot about our political environment.”
Senate Bill 53 establishes a commission to direct History Colorado to conduct historical research across areas such as economic mobility, housing, education, health care and the criminal justice system. Racial equity studies can be used as tools to qualify and quantify past discrimination and develop ways to make corrections.
Slavery, systemic racism and discrimination continue to harm Black Coloradans, who still disproportionately struggle to gain wealth and access other basic necessities such as health care, higher education, financial stability and housing.
Black people who were enslaved and unpaid for their work decades ago helped other Americans become wealthy and powerful and they’re now owed those same opportunities and resources, the preamble to Senate Bill 53 says. Their lost wages and assets not only affect them but also detract from Colorado’s labor force, tax base and the overall health of the state’s economy.
The results of the racial equity study will hopefully show that communities came together to do, Cooper said, “what’s right for all.”
We can now be the architects for the next generation,” she said. “That is what I want to know, as a Black Coloradan — that we are taking care of those that I might never know.”
While lawmakers and other organizations are working to raise the money needed to begin the analysis required by Senate Bill 53, many Black Coloradans are commemorating Juneteenth, which marks the date when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, to take control of the state and ensure enslaved Black people were freed — more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed on Jan. 1, 1863.
“We may not be shackled at the wrists and ankles literally, and working as indentured servants, but we are still unfortunately shackled by a lack of access to good education and a lack of access to the financial wealth needed to buy a home,” Coleman said. “These are the kinds of things that still affect our communities.”
How the commission is supposed to work
Senate Bill 53 describes a 14-member commission, to be convened by Sept. 1, that will help shape a three-year study that aims to determine how Black Coloradans have experienced and continue to experience racial discrimination because of harmful state systems, policies and practices.
The study group must include people with legal expertise in constitutional law and racial justice; a historian who has studied Black history, slavery and racism; a person with experience quantifying the economic impact of those harms on Black people; and other public servants who have worked with Black Coloradans.
The members of the study committee will be appointed by the governor, the speaker of the House of Representatives and the president of the Senate.
Researchers on the committee may examine Black Coloradans’ ability to build financial wealth by studying residential and commercial loan trends and tax policy, the law states.
The committee will also likely determine Black Coloradans’ ability to access higher education and workforce training programs and may study health disparities, police brutality and incarceration, among many other trends, to help estimate the financial toll on African Americans in the state, the law says.
History Colorado must conduct at least two public engagement sessions in different parts of the state that allow community members to offer comments virtually or in-person about how state government has influenced policies that have resulted in systemic racism and discriminations against Black Coloradans.
The dates for those community engagement sessions will likely be published in news media advisories and at leg.colorado.gov, when they are scheduled, Coleman said.
By September 2027, the study commission must submit a report outlining its findings and recommendations to the governor, the Colorado General Assembly, the State Board of Education, the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, the Colorado Attorney General and the Health Equity Commission.
The study commission must also make the report publicly available on the Colorado General Assembly website.
The commission must present the findings in the report to the Colorado General Assembly and the governor.
After that, the commission must work with lawmakers and anyone else necessary to implement the recommendations outlined in the report, the law says.
If the study determines the financial toll of racism and discrimination on Black Coloradans, the sum will be used to help inform future policy decisions, Coleman said.
“We will begin the first year of the work upon receiving the funds — hopefully by July 1,” Coleman said. “After funds are secured, we’d love to kick off the task force in August and begin doing preliminary work with History Colorado and the task force to talk about Black history in Colorado. Then, the goal would be to continue looking at the data we have in the second year, as we’re moving into 2025.”
Job descriptions are being drafted
History Colorado expects to begin hiring researchers this summer.
“As the research outcomes of this project are quite expansive, History Colorado is already in the process of drafting job descriptions, so we can move forward with hiring a team of researchers who can accomplish this serious and significant project,” Luke Perkins, a spokesperson for History Colorado, wrote in an email to The Colorado Sun.
“This team will consist of four Black history scholars as well as a project manager who will help coordinate the team’s efforts,” he wrote in the email. “It is History Colorado’s goal to have these postings up before the end of summer and to have this team work in collaboration with our existing Black history and engagement team to diligently complete the scope of this project.”
The research team will use historical documents such as those already archived by History Colorado and Denver Public Library, and will work with community members to find information excluded from those records, Perkins wrote in the email.
Colorado was not a state that enslaved Black people, but the state benefited economically from labor done by them, Perkins wrote.
“Many early prospectors brought enslaved persons to the Colorado territory to do labor,” he wrote. “Colorado wasn’t considered a state when emancipation was proclaimed but enslaved people worked here prior to statehood and the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.”
The Ku Klux Klan also wielded great power and influence in Denver and in state politics in the 1920s. Major Colorado towns, including Denver, Grand Junction, Pueblo, and Cañon City were hotbeds for Klan activity, and by 1925, the racist organization had infiltrated all levels of state government, controlling many members of the legislature and people in the state supreme court, and on some town councils, according to the new law.
Some of the most notable KKK members at that time included the mayor of Denver, the Denver police chief and the governor. The group’s presence in those higher levels of government has influenced state policies and systems and created inequalities that still negatively affect Black Coloradans, Senate Bill 53 says.
Statistics consistently demonstrate the disparities that Black people still face show there’s no better time for states to pass similar legislation, Cooper said.
- In 2020, the homeownership gap between Black and white Coloradans was 32%.
- Black people in Colorado are incarcerated at a rate that is more than seven times higher than white people in the state, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.
- Black people face a higher unemployment rate compared with any other racial group in the state.
- Black Coloradans also face many poor health outcomes at rates much higher than white Coloradans such as food insecurity, infant and maternal mortality, asthma, diabetes and HIV and AIDS.
- Despite the falling poverty rates, in 2021, Black Coloradans were still about twice as likely to live in poverty when compared with white Coloradans, according to a U.S. Census Bureau data analysis by the Colorado News Collaborative.
- The average Black American has a life expectancy of nearly five years fewer than the average white American, according to The Kaiser Family Foundation.
“We collect this data but it hasn’t been organized,” Coleman said. “We will use this information to help determine what policies we can run in the future. We want policies that are data-driven and data-informed. The goal is to also share this information broadly for any other projects,” he said of the study’s potential findings.