Five Points

Five Points, historic neighbourhood in Denver, Colorado, that was one of the largest African American communities in the western United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Five Points was founded in the 1860s as a residential suburb and was quickly populated by African Americans seeking better lives outside the South in the years after the Civil War. Indeed, the African American population of Denver grew from 237 in 1870 to more than 5,000 in 1910, with many of them settling in Five Points. The growth of the African American community in Five Points represents a pattern that occurred throughout the American West in the last half of the 19th century.

Five Points provided an economic foundation for the growing community and had numerous African American-owned businesses, including barbershops, restaurants, and stores. In 1874 Barney Ford, a local entrepreneur, opened the Inter-Ocean Hotel, which catered to African Americans. By the turn of the century, Denver’s African American community featured three newspapers, nine churches, a funeral home, and a drug store as well as two African American doctors, three lawyers, and several professional musicians.

Economic growth in Five Points even extended to African American women. Besides working as dressmakers and shopkeepers, some of Denver’s African American females worked in mining. Two of them, Mary E. Phelps and L.K. Daniels, ran the Bonita Gold and Silver Mining Company in the late 19th century. One of the most famous residents of Denver’s Five Points was Madam C.J. Walker, an African American woman regarded as the first self-made female millionaire in U.S. history. She began selling hair-care products in the late 19th century. She moved to Denver in 1906, and her business included a manufacturing headquarters that distributed her cosmetics throughout the country.

During the early and mid-20th century, the Five Points commercial district became a favoured stop for some of the world’s premier jazz musicians, including Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, and Lionel Hampton. Those and other musicians came to play in Five Points clubs and performance halls, and many stayed in the Rossonian Hotel.

By the mid-20th century, segregation in housing had caused Five Points to become overcrowded. More than 89 percent of African Americans in Denver lived in Five Points by 1950, and the 19th-century housing available to those residents fell well below safe standards. Five Points declined in the 1960s and ’70s but subsequently revived to become a vibrant multicultural neighbourhood.

It was designated a cultural historic district in 2002 by the city of Denver. In addition to its commercial areas, old residential buildings, and new housing developments, Five Points features many cultural attractions, including the Black American West Museum and Heritage Center, which is located in the former home of Justina Ford, the first African American licensed female physician in Colorado. The neighbourhood is linked directly to downtown Denver by a light rail line, and the Juneteenth celebration attracts more than 100,000 people annually.