‘It was like a refuge:’ Neighbors remember Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard history, then and now
DENVER – As she drives west on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Risë Jones is flooded with memories.
Summers swimming at the Hiawatha Davis Jr. Rec Center (then-called Skyland Rec Center), barbecues with neighbors around Ivy Street and walking up snow-covered streets to play with neighboring children all marked her childhood.
The neighborhood kids jokingly called themselves “alley kids,” Jones said, because they could play sports and games in alleys between homes without dumpsters taking up space or cars speeding through.
Jones spent most of her life in North Park Hill and Skyland neighborhoods. Her family moved houses throughout her childhood, but each home was within four blocks of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, which felt significant to Jones.
“It was a middle-class working-class neighborhood with Black families,” Jones said. “Not as much anymore.”
The legacy of a street
Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd – previously known as 32nd Avenue – earned its name in 1989 under Denver Mayor William McNichols. The mayor and City Council originally left “Jr.” off the boulevard name, and the suffix was added in 2022.
The boulevard begins at Downing Street and runs east to Peoria Street, where it merges into Fitzsimons Parkway on the Denver-Aurora border.
Terri Gentry, engagement manager for Black communities at History Colorado, said the street’s location is significant because the neighborhoods surrounding it – Whittier, Skyland, Clayton, Cole and North Park Hill – make up Denver’s historically Black neighborhoods.
“It’s still an important part of our community and a major resource and access point to a lot of places in the neighborhood, so we want to continue to celebrate and remind ourselves of the work Dr. King did in our community,” Gentry said.
King first visited Denver in 1956 to deliver a sermon at New Hope Baptist Church in Park Hill, Denver author Phil Goodstein wrote in his book “Park Hill Promise.” King made several more trips to Denver after delivering his famous “I have a Dream,” speech in Washington, D.C.
After World War II, Colorado’s legislature passed a series of civil rights reforms, including a ban on racially-restrictive housing. The laws were scarcely enforced, however, said Vern L. Howard, chair of the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Commission.
Black families were excluded from downtown Denver, Howard said, and were pushed northeast into Five Points, according to archives from Denver Public Libraries.
As Black families tried to push east of Downing Street, they ran into a practice known as redlining, Howard said. Redlining is now an umbrella term used to describe racially-discriminatory housing, but the practice began as specific neighborhoods were outlined, literally a boundary, to exclude Black residents.
As Black families continued to move east, Howard said, many settled in what is now known as Park Hill, which runs from Colorado to Quebec Street, along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
“We weren’t welcomed in the white neighborhoods,” Howard said. “But in Park Hill, we were around others like us and you didn’t feel lesser, because everyone was equal.”
Howard described Park Hill in the 1960’s through the 1990’s as a family. Police officers knew neighborhood kids. If a child was breaking the law, Howard said, officers – who usually lived in the area – would speak to the child’s parents, rather than using enforcement tactics.
He recalled being able to knock on the door of any house on their street and count on children eager to play basketball or hopscotch in an alley. Summer days were spent having outdoor gatherings, and winters were spent playing in the snow.
“We didn’t have to worry about someone who didn’t know us or didn’t live in the community coming by and not caring about us,” Howard said. “It was like a refuge.”
Macedonia Baptist Church is a historically Black Church on Martin Luther King JR. Blvd. (Peter Vo/Rocky Mountain PBS)
A neighborhood family
Gentry’s family immigrated to Denver in 1903. Her great-grandfather, Ernest McClain, was the first licensed Black dentist in the state. Her grandparents fought for civil rights in Colorado, and she feels a sense of duty to pass on Black history in Denver to youth, particularly as states around the country are banning Black history from schools.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say I have about 6,000 cousins in Denver, because we’re so close and have intergenerational connections with people in our community,” Gentry said.
“It was a connection for all of these different churches and businesses and community organizations,” she said.
As a child, Gentry remembers walking down the street to a local corner store and having moms around the neighborhood poke their heads out of windows and step one-footed into driveways to wave at her and other kids.
The greater point, Gentry said, was to ensure parents were watching each other’s children. A community of interconnected families, rather than individual families living side-by-side.
Over time, Gentry, Howard and Jones said many intergenerational families have left Park Hill. While some have moved further east to Montbello, Green Valley Ranch or Aurora. But many have left Colorado altogether.
“As hard as they pushed to keep Black people out of Park Hill, they pushed eventually just as hard to make us leave Park Hill,” Howard said.
“They tried to convince some of those Black families that ‘you don’t want to live here, you want to live in Montbello or Green Valley Ranch’,” he said.
Denver’s most recent demographics report on North Park Hill – published in 2017 – showed 42% of the neighborhood is Black or African American, with 26% identifying as Hispanic or Latino and 45% as white.
Terri Gentry, engagement manager for Black communities at History Colorado, reminisces on generations of her family who lived in Park Hill. Gentry was priced out of the area and now lives in Southeast Aurora. (Peter Vo/Rocky Mountain PBS)
Gentry and Jones said many families left because of rising property taxes. Even those who lived in generations-old homes with no mortgages struggled to keep up with high taxes as the value of their properties increased.
Others – like Jones’ two sisters who left Colorado for the East Coast – fled the area as they recognized fewer faces. Over time, Jones said, many started to feel like strangers in their home.
“Once people have moved out of Park Hill, it’s economically very hard to move back in,” Jones said.
Housing website Zillow showed seven homes for sale in North Park Hill in January, they range in price from $530,000 to $748,000.
“Gentrification doesn’t happen overnight,” Jones said. “You begin to see it gradually until one day, everything feels different.”
As Jones drove down Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, many houses looked the same as she remembers from her childhood. Off-white driveways covered in chunks of ice leading to brick homes with large windows and slanted roofs.
But near the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Ivy Street – where Jones spent most of her life – many houses are painted different colors and look like tall rectangles, an entirely different build than the brick squares Jones remembers. Xeriscape gardens sit where manicured lawns used to.
“Some of the houses fit into the neighborhood, some of them just feel obstructive,” Jones said. “They’ve torn down the houses and just used the land because the land is what’s valuable.”
A row of new houses line a street near Martin Luther King JR. Blvd (Peter Vo/Rocky Mountain PBS)
Jones described major intersections leading to different neighborhoods off MLK, Jr. Blvd. as “arteries of a heart.”
Each artery – York Street, Steele Street, Colorado Boulevard and Monaco Street Parkway – represents a specific area of community for Jones. Each carries memories of different churches, families and community gatherings.
“I don’t think of it as just my experience,” Jones said. “I think of it as a community and neighborhood experience.”
Jones now lives in Central Park, home of the former Stapleton Airport until 1995, when Denver International Airport opened to the east. Once the airport was torn down, houses, offices, grocery stores and restaurants popped up, advertised as a neighborhood for people to “live where they work and play.”
The neighborhood was known as “Stapleton,” named after Mayor Benjamin Stapleton, who was a Ku Klux Klan member. In August 2020, Denver City Council renamed the neighborhood “Central Park,” after mounting political pressure.
Old and new
Central Park is the neighborhood furthest east along the Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard. It’s filled with new condos, large, single-family homes, and upscale bars and restaurants.
While Jones knows some may see Central Park and think of gentrification, she doesn’t see newcomers and development as inherently bad, and she enjoys her life there. Still, the memories of a thriving and tight-knit Black community in Denver feel long-lost for Gentry, Howard and Jones.
“We still have some representation of some of the old guard in Park Hill, but it's nowhere near the same,” Howard said. “Gentrification has changed so much of Denver.”
Denver City Council Member Darrell Watson – who moved to the Whittier neighborhood in 1997 from the Virgin Islands – said he and his husband chose Whittier because he wanted to be surrounded by other Black families.
“I wanted to live in a community that was very-much engaged and understood the struggle of what it meant to be a black family and what we’ve been through living in Denver,” Watson said.
The irony that redlining once brought Black families to Whittier and Park Hill, and now gentrification is driving them out is not lost on Watson.
“It’s been a very dramatic change,” Watson said.
As a City Council member, Watson feels responsibility to slow gentrification while welcoming newcomers, he said. The process doesn’t have to be either/or, he said.
“We can welcome new neighbors while providing education about the work that was done prior to them moving in and asking and inviting them to be a part of our discussions,” Watson said.
“It’s remembering our history and the battles we fought for access to fair and equal housing.”
Next generations
Though many have left Denver for more diverse areas, Gentry said she feels older Black Denverites have a responsibility to educate youth and create safe and diverse communities to keep their legacies in the city.
“I know how much my ancestors had to do so that I could be here, and I want to make sure the kids know, too,” Gentry said. “It’s so critical that they know where they come from, that they know who they are and they can make this a better place.”
Alison Berg is a reporter at Rocky Mountain PBS and can be reached at alisonberg@rmpbs.org.
Peter Vo is a multimedia journalist at Rocky Mountain PBS. You can reach him at petervo@rmpbs.org.