From Leah Davis Witherow, Curator of History
After over a decade since it first opened, the “Any Place North and West” exhibit at the CSPM is closing on Saturday, January 3, 2026. This important exhibit was created in partnership with dozens of local families and community members who contributed stories, photographs, and quotes that helped visitors understand both the Great Migration, and what Black families found when they arrived in Colorado Springs in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Fleeing repressive Jim Crow laws, state-sanctioned violence, voter suppression, and limited economic opportunities, African American families came north and west seeking social, economic, political, and educational freedom. What they found was a different type of discrimination that was enforced not by law as in the Jim-Crow South, but by practice and custom in the American West.
For the past thirteen years, the “Any Place North and West” exhibit has shared powerful stories of the supportive business, social, educational, and religious community African Americans created for themselves, their tireless work to create equality for all residents in the Pikes Peak region, and the vital role they continue to play in shaping the city we live in today. But now, after so many years on display — the artifacts must be removed from exhibition for preservation reasons. We have been extremely hesitant to remove this critically important exhibit until we had plans in place to open a much more expansive and complex exhibit to share even more stories and more context about our community’s unique past. And now we do.
Opening on July 2, 2026, the “Freedom to Thrive: The American Experiment in Colorado Springs” will be our contribution to the 250/150 commemoration next year. Reflecting on both the Semiquincentennial of America and the Sesquicentennial of Colorado’s statehood, “Freedom to Thrive” will examine the opportunities and obstacles to freedom in our community, focusing on numerous changemakers/advocates/activists who have worked and continue to work to make Colorado Springs a community where all residents have equal opportunity to live healthy, safe, and prosperous lives. Finally, we want to assure our visitors that we will be including many of the people and stories from “Any Place” in the new exhibit, while adding a tremendous amount of new research, oral history interviews, and artifacts that tell a more nuanced and complete history. Perhaps most importantly, the exhibit is being developed in partnership with a talented array of Community Curators including L’Bertrice Solomon, Joyce Salazar, Patience Kabwasa, Chauncey Johnson, Maria Cordova, and Jay Byron. We look forward to sharing more with you in the coming months.
African Americans in Colorado Springs
In his poem, One Way Ticket, Langston Hughes eloquently described the exodus of millions of African Americans out of the South following the Civil War. Pushed out by repressive Jim Crow laws, acts of violence and intimidation, and economic and political repression, Blacks moved Any Place That is North and West. This permanent exhibit explores what they found when they arrived in Colorado Springs, the supportive community they created for themselves, and the role they played in shaping the city we live in today.
An enduring myth in American History is that the nineteenth-century west offered settlers complete economic, political and social freedom, unfettered by the traditions and limitations of the east. But in fact — Americans moved west with their values and prejudices intact. Many white northerners and westerners objected to slavery in principle but did not welcome free Blacks as their neighbors and routinely voted to deny them suffrage and equal access to education.
A great deal of recent scholarship has been dedicated to studying both the impact of the Great Migration (1915-1970) on industrial cities of the north, and the independent communities of Exodusters on the Great Plains. However, the history of African Americans in small communities across the west has largely been ignored. There are many stories to tell as the Black population in the west increased dramatically following the Civil War. According to historian William Loren Katz, “Between 1870 and 1910, while the total black population (of the country) more than doubled, the mountain states of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada increased thirteen fold.”
Lacking both an urban center and a significant number of industrial or manufacturing jobs, Colorado Springs did not attract the same number of Black residents as Colorado’s capital city of Denver. The Black population in Denver grew from 237 people in 1870 to 5,426 in 1910. By contrast, in 1870 Colorado Springs had yet to be founded (1871) and the United States Census recorded one African American in all of El Paso County. By 1910 the Black population in Colorado Springs had grown to 1,009 residents and accounted for just 3.3% of the population.
African Americans migrated to Colorado Springs in small numbers but for a variety of reasons. Some families came here for their health, others to reunite with friends and family, while many were pulled west by the promise of better educational and employment opportunities. However, once they arrived they faced many obstacles. As America entered the twentieth century, racial attitudes across the country hardened and African Americans in Colorado Springs increasingly faced de facto segregation and discrimination in the North and West.
Blacks familiar with de jure (in law) segregation in the Jim Crow South often found de facto (in practice) segregation in Colorado Springs confusing and harder to cope with on a daily basis. As Lulu Stroud Pollard remembered, “It was worse than anything in the South. You see, in the South you knew where to go. You had signs. You knew what you could do. In Colorado Springs you had no idea what you could or couldn’t, and still you knew the law said you could do everything. Despite overwhelming obstacles, the lives, work, faith, philanthropy, and perseverance of Black Families in Colorado Springs has helped shape the community we live in today.
