Estes Park YMCA and Marie L. Greenwood

During the mid 1910s to the mid 1920s, Colorado had the second highest membership of Ku Klux Klan leaders. It caused Black people to create safe spaces for themselves, often outside the space of whiteness. Black Coloradans created neighborhoods and towns to save themselves from racism and violence. This act of preservation was also segregation, however the YWCA saw the significance of establishing diversity and friendship through different groups. The YWCA established the Girls’ Reserves and Business Girls Conference. These conferences took place all over the country at predominately white YWCAs and YMCAs, including Estes Park’s YMCA. 

 In 1929, Marie L. Greenwood and Margaret I. Shelton became two of the first Black girls to attend the girls’ conference in Estes Park, as well as one of the first Black mentors, Lillian Bondurant. Little information about Lillian Bondurant and Margaret I. Shelton exists about their life after the conference; however, Marie L. Greenwood would go on to make her mark on Colorado history. 

Marie L. Greenwood, born in Los Angeles, California, on November 24, 1912, was the first tenured African American educator in Colorado. When she was thirteen years old, she and her family moved to Denver, Colorado to seek better opportunities. When she was seventeen years old, she attended the Girls’ Reserve and Business Girls Conference in Estes Park. In 1931, she attended Colorado Teachers College, now the University of Northern Colorado. She could not join clubs, student organizations, or live on campus because of her skin color. In 1938, she began teaching as a tenured educator at Denver’s Whittier Elementary School. Her legacy continued as she grew to become a revered teacher. In 2001, Denver Public Schools named a new elementary school in her honor, and in 2010, Denver proclaimed November 4th as Marie Greenwood Day. She went on to publish two books: By the Grace of God and Every Child Can Learn, an autobiography that chronicles the stories of some of her most notable students. She also received an honorary Doctorate from the University of Northern Colorado, as well as the Martin Luther King Trailblazer Award in 2010. In 2019, she died at the age of 106. 

Quin’nita F. Cobbins-Modica, “Marie Louise Greenwood,” BlackPast, October 7, 2019, https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/people-african-american-history/marie-louise-greenwood-1912/.

“Her History,” Friends of Marie L. Greenwood, accessed November 7, 2022, https://www.friendsofmlg.org/her-history.

https://cdm16079.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15330coll22/id/67811