Councilwoman Shontel Lewis during a committee meeting Tuesday, originally calling it a “labor acknowledgment.” Later in the meeting, she said she may change the name to call out slavery more specifically, since that is what the text centers on.

The proposal sparked debate about whether it’s inclusive enough, with the committee postponing a vote until next month.

The acknowledgement, which would be read in conjunction with and the Pledge of Allegiance, also references segregation, Jim Crow laws and the Ku Klux Klan. Denver was among cities to adopt a land acknowledgment in 2020 — intended as a reminder of earlier Native American inhabitants of the territory — and the new proposal would build on efforts to recognize past injustices and their lingering effects.

“The intent really is to think about what¶¶Òőap the pain that is in our communities, and how can we turn that pain into policy that lifts them out of that suffering?” Lewis said during Tuesday’s meeting.

The language of the proposed acknowledgment is:

“We acknowledge that our country’s economy, infrastructure, and resulting generational wealth would not exist as they do today without the stolen and forced labor of enslaved Africans and their descendants who suffered the horror of the transatlantic trafficking, chattel slavery, and, later on, dehumanization through segregation and Jim Crow laws.

“We acknowledge and remember those who did not survive the Middle Passage, as well as those who were beaten and lynched at the hands of White Americans. We recognize the terror inflicted by the Ku Klux Klan, who historically counted among their members numerous government officials in Denver and others in positions of power. We stand with those who are still suffering while fighting for their freedom.

“We acknowledge how these dehumanizing practices have social, legal, and economic legacies that continue to reverberate through the generations, and in so acknowledging, commit to truth, accountability, and repair.”

During the council’s Finance and Business Committee meeting, council members voiced general support for the idea but suggested ways to make the acknowledgement more inclusive.

Council President Diana Romero-Campbell asked whether other groups, such as migrant workers and people held in Japanese internment camps, could also be acknowledged.

“There are multiple things that could be captured,” she said. “If we’re going to do this, I’d like to be really thorough about it and think about it so it is reflective of a broader Denver and Colorado experience.”

Councilman Chris Hinds asked if similar acknowledgements specifically called out “White Americans,” as the proposal would, instead of oppressive systems.

Lewis, who is running for mayor next year, said she would talk with the groups she worked with to develop the language to see about possible tweaks. But she added that the intent was to recognize the labor done by people who were slaves.

Lewis said she worked on the resolution with several local groups, including the city’s African American and LGBTQIA+ commissions, Justice for Black Coloradans, Collaborative Healing Initiative within Communities, and the city’s .

Six years ago, the council approved the resolution to adopt its . That script, which a council member reads each week, was home to the Ute, Cheyenne and Arapaho people.

The committee voted 4-1 to postpone consideration of the new resolution until its Aug. 11 meeting to spend more time on the language. The measure would also need approval from the full council.

Denver officers removed two banners hanging from a over I-25 near 16th and Central streets about 7 a.m. Sunday, a spokesperson for the police department said.

According to Fox31, , one read “Bring back Jim Crow.” Another said “Justice for Iryna Zarutska,” referring to the Ukrainian refugee last month.

The department declined to confirm the slogans on the banners. As of Tuesday, no suspects had been identified publicly.

Anyone with information about the signs is asked to contact Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867, police said.

“Since the time of Jim Crow, (Black) travelers have always dealt with racial discrimination and incidents of violence,” he said.

On their journeys, people of color remained especially wary of “sundown towns,” or enclaves of entirely white populations that wouldn’t accept their business or company, which existed in Colorado and beyond. Instead, they’d plan their trips to not only avoid these indignities, but to also guarantee their physical safety.

Jackson recalls an instance from his junior year at the University of Colorado Boulder in 1966 when he and his college roommate, W. Harold “Sonny” Flowers Jr., embarked on a road trip from Denver to Oakland, Calif., for spring break. Flowers drove his Oldsmobile, which broke down in Rawlins, Wyo.

A repairman informed the friends that the fix would take a couple of days.

The students — both young Black men — “went to one of the local hotels in Rawlins, and we were turned down,” Jackson said. Instead, “the mechanic that was repairing our car allowed Sonny and I to sleep in his trailer overnight until the car was repaired.”

The U.S. — Colorado included — is dotted with former sundown towns where people of color suffered myriad degradations: from restaurants, hotels and gas stations declining to serve travelers to neighborhoods rallying against potential homeowners with melanin.

And the possible threat of physical harm always loomed for those who dared to linger after sunset.

While Jackson, a retired senior Denver County Court judge, doesn’t consider Rawlins a sundown town because of its small Black population, his experience as a young man echoes stories passed down to him by his relatives detailing their own struggles with sundown towns.

The reach of sundown towns — established as “all-white on purpose” — could also apply to cities, counties and subregions, according to Tougaloo College in Jackson, Miss. The late sociologist James Loewen and his students developed a historical database of suspected former sundown towns by crowdsourcing information based on U.S. Census data on racial composition, local newspapers, oral histories and more.

Called “the world’s only registry of sundown towns,” the database “is and will always be incomplete,” according to its . “There are too many sundown towns for us to have found them all.”

Tougaloo College’s database of for Colorado includes 11 towns — several of which remain unconfirmed. But some, such as Cherry Hills Village, are recognized by Black Coloradans as communities where they weren’t embraced, along with others that didn’t make the official list like Golden, Estes Park and Loveland.

Today, about 5.8 million people live in Colorado, with around 67% of them identifying as white alone, 23% as Latino and close to 5% as Black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

As many Black Americans left the South to build new lives in other parts of the country, they often faced the same kind of discrimination they were trying to leave behind.

In Colorado, 175 instances of lynching, “a form of vigilante punishment involving mob execution,” took place between 1859 and 1919, according to . Before statehood, it was often used in mining towns as a type of “frontier justice.”

“Only five recorded lynchings are explicitly tied to race, but many more took place, particularly in the early 20th century,” Colorado Encyclopedia says.

In 1900, hundreds of people in Limon watched as Preston Porter, Jr. — a Black 15-year-old boy working on the railroad with his father — burned alive for the alleged rape and murder of a white preteen girl, Louise Frost, according to . Pages of his Bible were distributed as souvenirs.

Two years later, thousands joined in the lynching of Washington Wallace, a Black man accused of knocking a 67-year-old woman unconscious, in La Junta, reported in 1902. The news article says the mayor protested as “the mob was not sure that they had the right man,” but the crowd still proceeded to hang Wallace.

The Ku Klux Klan – a white supremacist hate group founded in Tennessee in 1865 – also made its way to Colorado, with a “” in the state at the turn of the 20th century. Klan member Clarence Morley served as a Republican governor from 1925 to 1927.

“In Denver, if you threw a rock in the early ’20s, chances are you’d hit a Klansman because there were so many,” said historian Tom Simmons.

Black residents also faced prejudice in the housing market, with white property owners and landlords not only refusing to rent to Black tenants, but also establishing “restrictive racial covenants that prevented purchase of property in many neighborhoods” through the 1960s, according to a portion of the dedicated to the history of the northern Colorado community. Black students at Colorado State University continued to struggle with these issues into the 1970s, as at least two subdivisions – Circle Drive and Slade Acres – illegally continued to ban “non-whites from owning or occupying property within their boundaries.”

Even outside of these neighborhoods, a practice called  hamstrung Black Americans who tried to buy their own homes.

“Local banks and the Federal Housing Administration drew red lines around Black neighborhoods, rating them D-Level areas, thus making them ineligible for government-backed mortgage loans,” author Alvin Hall wrote in his book, “Driving The Green Book.”

As a result, “predatory lenders often offered the only source of funds,” he wrote. “For example, some Blacks had so-called sign-on-contract deals that charged them two or three times what the house was really worth.”

For more than a century, as these events unfolded, The Denver Post and other newspapers encouraged discriminatory behavior by contributing to “the negative stereotypes of Black people,” said Jameka Lewis, branch supervisor of the Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library. “The bias is glaring.”

Today, Lewis finds that conversations about historical race issues among Coloradans can be stunted by “this idea that Colorado has always been liberal.”

“Once you dig into the history, you find that there was that fight for civil rights” in the Centennial State, she said. “There was that fight for integration. There was that fight for equal treatment.”

Lincoln Hills

Jackson’s great-grandfather, William Pitts, was born into enslavement in Missouri, but learned to read, write and work as a carpenter.

He encouraged his family to move to Colorado after a visit in 1919 to see his son, who was injured in World War I and hospitalized at Fitzsimons Army Hospital in Aurora. Pitts noted that “the quality of life was better in Colorado than in Missouri.”

Today, Aurora is home to one of the state’s largest Black populations, making up almost 17% of the city’s 393,500 residents. It’s also 44% white, 29% Latino and 7% Asian.

Pitts went on to build several family homes in Cherry Creek North and a cabin in Lincoln Hills, “the country’s only Black-owned resort community west of the Mississippi” from 1922 to 1965, Jackson said.

Coloradans bought up the majority of the development – made up of 1,700 total lots, with more than 1,100 occupied – but others from Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming and more also purchased land in Lincoln Hills, the reports.

, an African American lodge now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, served vacationers in Lincoln Hills from 1925 to 1965, with famous guests like writer Langston Hughes, musician Duke Ellington and writer Zora Neale Hurston, according to the U.S. National Park Service.

It’s likely to become a National Historic Landmark later this year, historian Simmons said.

Today, the winding drive up through the mountains to Lincoln Hills takes drivers past Wondervu, a small community in Gilpin County that Jackson describes as a “town where we were not welcome to stop for gas or food,” and Golden, which once served as a in the Denver area.

“Our community, like all others in the United States, has struggled with racial inequality and hatred since its founding,” wrote Nathan Richie, director of the , in a post in 2020. He highlighted instances of “harassment and mistreatment of Chinese business owners at the turn of the 20th century, Klan rallies atop Castle Rock in the 1920s, and threats of violence against a local Islamic center in 2016.”

Golden, with more than 20,000 residents, breaks down as 84% white, 10% Latino and 2% Black. Mayor Laura Weinberg didn’t respond to a request for comment.

But Jackson’s family traveled on until they reached the safety of familiar dirt roads nestled among aspen trees.

The Green Book

Jackson’s mother, 98-year-old Nancelia Jackson, has resided in the same Denver home for 97 years. She told him about their family’s travels back to Missouri to visit relatives from 1926 until the late 1950s and the precautions they would take to keep themselves safe.

They’d leave Denver at 4 a.m., so, “by the time they got to Kansas to make their first stop, it would be before sundown,” Jackson said. They’d bring box lunches to avoid being turned down at restaurants, and would rest for the night in the parked car in public areas like parks “where they would feel safe.”

Jackson’s relatives followed the same protocol as many other Black travelers. Dexter Nelson II, museum and archives supervisor at the Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library, recalled hearing an anecdote about one motorist “having to drive with a chauffeur’s cap in the back of the car.”

“They had to have that, just so, if they did get pulled over, they would then say, ‘Oh, this isn’t my car,’ or ‘I’m just working,’ as a tool for safety,” he said. That account “spoke to how difficult it really was being non-white and traveling back then.”

Black commuters would’ve been wary of Colorado Springs, Limon and Longmont among other towns, Nelson said.

The Colorado Springs Mayor’s Office – representing the city’s first elected Black mayor, Blessing “Yemi” Mobolade – didn’t respond to a request for comment, along with City Council President Randy Helms and President Pro Tem Lynette Crow-Iverson. Limon town manager Greg Tacha and Longmont Mayor Joan Peck didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Jackson’s family would utilize The Green Book, “an annual guidebook for African-American roadtrippers” that the refers to as “‘the bible of black travel’ during the era of Jim Crow laws.” Produced from 1936 to 1967 by New York City postal carrier Victor Hugo Green, it provided the Black community with recommendations on hotels, gas stations, restaurants and more that would serve them.

from 1946 lists several friendly businesses, including taverns, drug stores and liquor stores, in Colorado Springs, Denver, La Junta, Pueblo and Trinidad. Ten words of advice printed on the front of the guidebook: “Carry your green-book with you. You may need it.”

The American public largely learned about The Green Book with the release of the 2018 film by the same name, winning three Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

Today, “times are changing. There are those that are trying to overcome their legacy of discrimination and trying to do the right thing,” Jackson said.

He credits a lot of this progress to his ancestors. “Because of Williams Pitts and Black people like him, racial barriers have been eradicated,” he added.

“I have stayed at the Brown Palace (in Denver), the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, and I regularly stop for a great meal at the Wondervu Cafe on my way to and from Lincoln Hills,” Jackson said. Representatives for the three hotels didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Estes Park

Although Estes Park isn’t included on Tougaloo College’s registry, has recorded several instances in which the town and “much of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains remained unwelcoming to Black Americans throughout the first half of the 20th century.”

It referred to Estes Park as “less friendly” toward Black travelers, who wouldn’t come across opportunities to eat or lodge there. One example was detailed in an article about the Stanley Hotel published by The Chicago Defender, a Black American newspaper.

“Travel editor Fred W. Avendorph reported that a sales representative had approached the Defender in 1960 about marketing the Stanley to individual Blacks and convention groups,” reports. “An hour after making his sales pitch, the salesman called to say that he had made an error and that ‘the manager of the Stanley Hotel still enforced racial bias against (African Americans) and none would be accepted without protest.’ ”

Travis Machalek, town administrator for Estes Park, started doing research into the town’s archives about a year ago. He points to “disheartening episodes in our community’s past” that have come to light, including an instance when a family of Japanese ancestry was “not received well” during the World War II era.

The Kato family managed an art shop and a tea garden in Estes Park in the early 20th century, and didn’t face any trouble until they were forced into a Japanese internment camp. Once released, the family members tried to return to Estes Park, but the townspeople no longer welcomed them, refusing to give the patriarch Ryoji a business license, the reports.

Mayor Wendy Koenig acknowledged the Katos with a formal letter of respect at the town’s board of trustees meeting earlier this year. She declined to comment for the story.

While Machalek hasn’t found much in the local papers yet about other accounts of discrimination, “that’s an important part of our history, and something we haven’t really known much about.” But he recognizes the possibility of the community’s awareness that “this may have been an issue.”

Since “the pioneer days, yes, it’s been a pretty overwhelmingly white community,” Machalek said. Still, he notes its demographics are growing more diverse today because of the tourism industry.

Almost 6,000 people now live in Estes Park, with 87% identifying as White, 10% as Latino and 1% as Black.

Machalek wants to utilize the Estes Park Museum “to paint a full picture of what life was like back then” – even its darkest moments.

Museum Director Derek Fortini described his team as in the “very early stages of exploring” accounts of prejudice within the town’s history. He has yet to find any laws that contributed to bias, but he’s digitizing the museum’s photo collection to look for evidence like unwelcoming signs in downtown shop windows and scanning old newspapers for related information.

Referring to the museum as “an institution that’s very receptive to hearing these things,” he’s now seeking input from Coloradans with research or context about any discriminatory incidents in Estes Park.

“They are going to be heard,” Fortini said.

Places “we had to be careful of”

Terri Gentry, History Colorado’s engagement manager for Black communities, points to “sundown towns scattered all over the state.” Black drivers leaving Denver to travel north would invest in “a full tank of gas, so you wouldn’t run into any trouble between here and Cheyenne.”

“You could drive north, and see a sign that says, ‘We honor Jim Crow laws,’ ” she said. “There may not be any signs at all. There may be people that will approach you, and let you know what your limitations are in their community.”

And depending on the region, sundown towns impacted other marginalized communities, too.

“They might have laws back in the day that said no Chinese were allowed, or Indigenous people were on a reservation nearby a town, and they weren’t allowed to go in,” Gentry said.

Even communities near urban areas like Denver — and neighborhoods within them — could be dangerous. “You might go into a city, and there’s a neighborhood you better not drive through,” she said.

As of last year, Denver’s population of around 713,000 breaks down as 54% white, 29% Latino and 9% Black.

A native Coloradan, Gentry’s relatives arrived in the Centennial State over a century ago. On her maternal side, her great-great-grandparents moved in 1903 from Nashville, Tenn., with the white family they worked for. On her paternal side, her great-grandfather made a name for himself as the first licensed Black dentist in Colorado.

She recalls the discrimination her great-grandparents faced in the 1920s when Black Denverites tried resettling beyond Five Points, the historically Black neighborhood referred to as the “Harlem of the West.” Gentry’s relatives attempted to move to the nearby Whittier neighborhood.

“The neighbors found out that it was a Black man building this house, and so they did everything they could to get him out of there,” Gentry said. “They burned a cross on the front lawn, and they threatened him.”

He packed up his family and moved west of Downing Street to 32nd Street instead.

And throughout her own childhood, Gentry felt the effects of prejudice. She would camp in the mountains with her grandparents, and they’d use a camper to feel safe, instead of relying on lodging.

Today, “we still have areas throughout the state where you have to pay attention because they still don’t want people of color living in different areas,” she said. “That’s not as prevalent as it was 50, 60, 70 years ago, but it’s still part of our consciousness.”

For her part, she pays extra attention when traveling through Cherry Hills Village. Gentry attended an event in the city a few weeks ago, “and we made every effort to be on the road out of the area as the sun was setting,” she said.

Cherry Hills Village, with a population of a little over 6,000, is made up of 91% white residents, 6% Latino and 0% Black, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated last year.

“I moved to Colorado in 1995 and to Cherry Hills Village in 2004, so I don’t know anything about those assertions nor do I know what may or may not have changed since then,” said Mayor Katy Brown in an emailed statement. “I have no information upon which to comment.”

As a Black woman, Gentry is often left disheartened by the discrimination that still exists.

“Every day – I get up every day, and have to confront somebody wishing I wasn’t here, somebody wishing that I didn’t exist,” Gentry said. “When do we come to the table, and understand that equity and freedom should be for everybody, and not just for a select few?”

“Don’t let the sun set on your back”

Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders, assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Department of History, pointed to racism as “a national phenomenon.”

“It should not be a surprise that places that were settled in the West and beyond the South – even in the Northeast – had the same kind of exclusionary policies,” said Lawrence-Sanders, a Black academic who grew up near Charleston, S.C.

What she’s often heard from residents of former sundown towns: “Oh, Black people never wanted to move here.” To that, Lawrence-Sanders counters, “Why didn’t they want to move there?”

Although the West claims a smaller population of Black residents, “that’s not accidental in some ways,” she said. “Towns themselves were settled with the explicit intent of keeping out African Americans and, sometimes, Mexican Americans and other people of color.”

Because much of the “collective memory” of Black Americans relies on word of mouth, the true number of sundown towns remains unknown, Lawrence-Sanders added.

In the 21st century, “some of this history has been deliberately buried,” she said. But Lawrence-Sanders pointed to “one of the more well-known” former sundown towns as Loveland.

In Loveland, two signs – unsanctioned by the city – were once put up by townspeople, said historian and artist Olivia Lowe. “One said, ‘We observe the Jim Crow laws here,’ and the other one said, ‘Blacks, don’t let the sun set on your back,'” she said.

At some downtown businesses, other signs warned people of color against entering, with the phrase, “White-trade only.”

Through her research, Lowe from Loveland residents, including the late . Born in 1934, he worked on the area’s beet farms before joining the military.

While several neighborhoods outside of Fort Collins were dedicated to Latino farmworkers, like the of Andersonville, Alta Vista and Buckingham, “Loveland didn’t have anything like that,” Lowe said. “They all lived on the farms, and that’s where you stayed.”

“Ivan was the first Hispanic, with his family, to buy a house on the west side of the tracks,” she said.

After his daughter faced bullying at Garfield Elementary School, he talked to the principal about her treatment. As a result, “he got fired from his job” at Samsonite-Lego, Lowe said.

Vasquez would go on to march with Latino civil rights leader CĂ©sar ChĂĄvez.

“If you are not a melanated person, you don’t know what happens here,” said Lowe, who is white. “Until you have walked in their shoes, you have absolutely no idea what they go through. No idea.”

Loveland Mayor Jacki Marsh acknowledges the city’s history, adding that many longtime residents are likely aware of it, too. “It’s something that I think a lot of us assume we’ve moved past,” she said.

With 78,000 residents, the city’s population breaks down as 83% white, 13% Latino and 0.5% Black.

With six years in office under her belt, Marsh has learned that “areas that I thought we had made progress in as a society – sometimes, I get a wake-up call that, really, we have so far yet to go.”

In 2020, after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Marsh held listening sessions with her constituents to hear about their experiences as people of color, including prejudices they’ve faced.

“It was shocking to know that that is still going on,” she said. “I recognize that I’m treated different because I’m white.”

One story that stood out to her was told by a young Latino man who wore a hoodie during the summer and received leery reactions. His reason for the outfit choice: “He didn’t want his skin to get darker,” Marsh said. “He knew he would be treated worse.”

That year, she also issued a mayoral proclamation, alongside city council members, in support of Loveland’s people of color.

“Out of nine of us, only three were willing to sign it,” Marsh said. “There was pushback against using the word diversity, claiming that would be divisive.”

When she looks at the diverse student bodies at Loveland schools like Winona Elementary School, she’s “hopeful” for the future. And yet, discrimination faced by people of color in daily life “has gone on, and some continues to go on,” Marsh said.

The Indigenous and Mexican ancestors of Caitlin Wyrick, 34, moved to Loveland more than a century ago, and they all faced obstacles as people of color trying to build lives there.

Her grandmother’s grandfather originally spoke his Indigenous tongue, but “it was frowned upon even to be Native American in this town,” Wyrick said. He stopped doing so in order to better assimilate, and the family lost touch with those roots.

Wyrick described the town’s Latino community as relegated to the “east side of the tracks.”

“There was definitely a very clear line in Loveland,” she said.

Over five decades ago, her great-great aunt wanted to purchase a house in west Loveland, “and the only reason that they could do that was because some of the neighbors that were white had to sign and vouch for them to be able to live on that side of the city,” Wyrick said.

And her grandparents recalled adolescent memories of being unable to dine in restaurants or visit stores downtown.

“It’s not that far off. My grandparents are still alive today,” Wyrick said. “This is very much a part of their experience growing up here.”

She decided to take those past hardships and channel them into a greater cause. Wyrick, born and raised in Loveland, now serves as executive director of nonprofit to promote diversity within the community.

“My blood is literally in the land,” she said. “My family fought so hard to survive and thrive here that that means something to me. And I’m not gonna let that go.”

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The lawsuit filed by the families of students who attended Castle Rock Middle School and Douglas County High School in U.S. District Court in Denver names as defendants the Douglas County School District, its elected school board and Castle Rock principal John Veit. The teens are unnamed in the complaint because they are minors.

The students’ attorney, Iris Halpern, confirmed that two of the teen plaintiffs include Jeramiah Ganzy and his sister Neveah Ganzy, who earlier this year told The Denver Post about racist bullying so egregious that it prompted Jeremiah to finish his school year online and the family to flee Castle Rock altogether.

The lawsuit claims the defendants violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects people from race-based discrimination and breached the students’ Fourteenth Amendment right to “equal protection of the laws.”

Officials with the Douglas County School District could not be reached for comment Wednesday afternoon.

In May, a spokesperson told The Post that the district was addressing the Ganzy family’s allegations in a manner “consistent with the DCSD Student Code of Conduct and DCSD Board of Education policies.”

The new lawsuit alleges the students were regularly called racist slurs, threatened with lynching, subjected to comments about ethnic cleansing, referred to as “monkeys” and racially bullied in a Snapchat group comprised of more than 100 students.

Despite “explicit knowledge” of the “hostile environment” the students of color faced, the defendants made no effort to address the situation, the lawsuit said, and would sometimes punish the students of color if they fought back.

“It’s important to recognize how brave these children are for stepping forward,” Halpern said. “The harm and damage done to these students for the rest of their lives shouldn’t have happened. They’re depending on school administration to keep them safe and recognize their humanity and support them… It¶¶Òőap a disturbing situation to see adults in the school district, including school leadership, modeling racist behavior for their student body to adopt. We have to make sure there’s accountability from the top down because these students are learning from adults.”

Addressing racism in school district

The lawsuit alleges the Douglas County School District has a history of underserving minority students, noting that the population of more than 60,000 students and 4,440 educators is made up of about 1% Black students and 1% Black educators.

In 2020, students spoke before the Douglas County school board asking its members to address racism in the school community by requiring teachers and administrators to undergo anti-racism training, among other asks, the lawsuit said.

The district adopted a plan to address racism following the students’ pleas and created an educational equity policy that promised “to establish an inclusive culture to ensure all students, staff and community members feel safe and valued by increasing and embedding authentic and relevant learning opportunities and experiences involving inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility.”

But following the 2021 school board election, a new conservative majority took control of the board. The new members had run on a campaign that attacked the equity policy, suggesting that it was racist, the lawsuit said.

The conservative candidates erroneously stated the equity policy promoted critical race theory while some conservative members of the board said the equity policy was teaching students to feel shame and guilt for being white, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit alleges that the racially-hostile environment in the Douglas County School District was exacerbated after the heated 2021 school board election.

“Not brushed under the rug”

Neveah Ganzy was attending Douglas County High School during the 2022 school year when her social studies teacher had the students debate the pros and cons of the Jim Crow laws that enabled racial segregation. The teacher placed Neveah, the only Black student in the class, on the side supporting the Jim Crow laws, the lawsuit said.

Neveah also was routinely called racial slurs by students including “fat cotton picker,” the lawsuit said. School officials told Neveah they could not take action against the students using the slurs even after teachers vouched to overhearing them, according to the lawsuit.

Eventually, Neveah was pulled from school to avoid the racist bullying, the lawsuit said.

“I’m hoping to make it easier for everybody in Douglas County who is a minority or has been discriminated against,” Neveah told The Post in an interview this week. “Racism and discrimination needs to be taken way more seriously and talked about and not brushed under the rug. I hope all we’re doing is worth it so minorities can have a better and safer school year.”

The lawsuit alleges Jeramiah and two of his peers of color were subjected to repeated racist bullying at Castle Rock Middle School — an experience Jeramiah documented to school board officials in March when he emailed them his concerns about racial discrimination.

The students were often taunted with racist slurs such as “go back to the plantation, you cotton-picking monkey,” or asked where the students picked the cotton for their clothes, the lawsuit alleges. Students took pictures of one of the unnamed plaintiffs using the restroom at school and circulated the photos online, the lawsuit said. The incident prompted the victim to refuse to use the restroom at school, impacting his health, the lawsuit said.

All three student plaintiffs at Castle Rock Middle School reported the racist bullying they were experiencing, the lawsuit said, but only faced retaliation by students.

Misty Martin, mother to one of the unnamed students in the complaint, said the bullying of her son was so severe that a Castle Rock Middle School assistant principal asked to meet with her to suggest a safety plan for her son that included keeping him after class in order to dismiss him when the hallways were empty.

The stress on Martin’s son was so great that he began suffering from health problems that landed him in the emergency room, she said.

“I want to see that racial bullying is considered hate speech and that the district will address it in policy so that the next time a student is called a racial name of any kind, there is appropriate discipline,” Martin told The Post.

“I wore this scarlet letter”

Parents of the bullied students said they believe only one student in the Snapchat group was punished, the lawsuit said. Screenshots taken from the Snapchat group after it was reported to the school show students who used racist slurs threatening the plaintiffs for reporting the group and lamenting that the Black students had ruined their lives.

“MY WHOLE LIKE (sic) IS RUINED MY BLOOD IS ON YOUR (expletive) HANDS” one response read.

Lacey Ganzy said that when the Castle Rock principal saw the Snapchat messages, he assured her the children involved would be reprimanded, charged criminally and suspended. A Douglas County School District spokesperson previously told The Post she couldn’t say whether any students had been disciplined.

Castle Rock police in May said they had investigated the Snapchat messages and sent a report to prosecutors. On Wednesday, Eric Ross, a spokesman for the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, said prosecutors are still reviewing the incident and no charging decisions have been made.

Eventually, Jeramiah and Martin’s son were pulled out of Castle Rock Middle School before the academic year ended for their safety.

Jeramiah and his family went public with their story and felt they had to leave Castle Rock to protect themselves from further abuse, said Lacey Ganzy, mother of Jeramiah and Neveah.

“I wore this scarlet letter until we got out of the town,” Lacey Ganzy said. “Just based off the reaction I was getting that were doing this, I feared my for my kids’ safety. Some of my kids lost their jobs because of this. We were basically forced out of town. I hope this paves the way for other people to speak out and for change.”

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She’d most certainly ask,“Lord! Lord! What is this world coming to?”

Not that Mama knew Trump all that well, but she did watch the evening news and was familiar with the now twice-indicted, twice-impeached politician who was also found liable for sexual assault.

If she were to learn of the shenanigans he has pulled since her death in 2005, she’d undoubtedly scoff, “I wouldn’t trust that man as far as I can throw him.”

Mama was born in the backwoods of Alabama in 1912. So you can imagine that during her 93 years of living in the Jim Crow South, she was keenly aware that Black people were thrown in jail for far less than fomenting an attack on the Capitol.

It¶¶Òőap beyond maddening that the false idol that many Republicans worship continues to get off scot-free for his obvious law-breaking.

But that fact may not last much longer because “God don’t like ugly,” Mama might exclaim.

As a New York City resident in the ’80s and ’90s who experienced local tabloids constantly making Trump front page news, I recognized then that he is a narcissist, a sociopath, a racist, a grifter, a liar, and a cheat.

Though his Christian right supporters prefer the description “not a perfect vessel,” Mama would describe him as “full of devilment.”

A friend of mine was a manager at the defunct Tower Records store inside Trump Tower back in the day. She says they were ordered to alert Trump whenever a famous musician was visiting so he could hurry downstairs and take a picture with his toothy, fake smile.

The cringy, and often inappropriate, thumbs-up gesture became a thing after he entered politics.

“Well, if he don’t look like a-don’t-know-what doin’ that,” I can hear Mama say, laughing at the man with the orange tan.

While that ridiculous pose excites the sycophantic MAGA crowd, it won’t save him from Special Prosecutor Jack Smith whom Mama would surely see as “Trump’s pea liquor cooler.”

Translation: The ex-President is in a heap of trouble and reminds us every time he opens his mouth.

Ever question a toddler who, let¶¶Òőap say, was not supposed to touch a freshly baked cake but is caught with icing in his hair, on his face, and covering his fingers?

Said kid can’t stop volunteering a string of excuses that further entangles him in a web of lies. Sound familiar?

A notorious interview with Brett Baier on FOX recently is a perfect example of Trump’s rambling about why .

“The Donald” vomited something about golf shirts in a box and the feds should’ve begged him for the documents and he was too busy to comply with subpoenas and he had already declassified everything anyway and he is totally innocent and the dog ate his homework.

“Boy, you need to quit yo’ foolishness,” my exasperated Mama would have concluded.

Observers note that Trump has a metaphorical Ph.D. in sewing confusion and chaos, something that makes his diehard followers giddy. They proudly stand by their man and donate money whenever he asks.

I used to think that a millionaire grabbing their hard-earned cash allegedly to pay his legal fees was wrong. But now I want Trump to take the suckers for every penny they have.

As Mama might surmise, “Trump is making a monkey out of them white folks.”

Trump usually escapes real consequences for his wrongdoing by setting up loyal underlings to take the hit; the latest being his valet and co-defendant, Waltine Nauta.

However, this time may be different.

The 45th president¶¶Òőap trashing of the sacred oath he took to protect and defend our country may come home to roost since the documents case appears to be open and shut.

Hopefully, if he’s found guilty of these charges, it will land Trump in prison where he belongs just like everyone else who blatantly breaks the law.

Anything less begs Mama’s question:

“Lord! Lord! What is this world coming to?”

Jo Ann Allen retired recently from Colorado Public Radio in Denver after 47 years of reporting the news. She is the creator and host of the podcast .Ìę

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Re: “Teen faces racial slurs, threats of lynching,” May 1 news story

I was shocked and appalled when I read the article entitled “Teen faces racial slurs, threats of lynching” in The Denver Post on May 1. NaĂŻvely I did not think we had school districts and communities in the state that were so overtly racist.

To equate to teaching critical race theory is just absurd. Critical race theory has been a hot button for conservatives but it is not taught in public high schools. The behaviors of teachers blaming a minority student for stealing a water bottle or putting Nevaeh Ganzy into the group supporting Jim Crow laws is cruel and certainly does not dignify the teaching profession.

The platitudes of the district spokesperson Paula Hans where she says “we appreciate the Ganzy family bringing their concerns to us so we can make sure our system is addressing their needs” does not match with the behavior within the district.

She would not answer the question are the students’ threats being addressed but instead fell back on privacy. It is not a privacy issue to say yes or no and explain how change is being implemented without naming students.

The disregard by both the principal and the executive director of schools to Jeremiah’s email is an indication that no one in the system wants to address the problem of white supremacy in the Douglas County School District.

Susan Schiff, Arvada

Get the best security for our DPS students

I understand Denver Public Schools is seeking to protect our schools with security walkthrough weapons detectors. There are a few systems out there and I am asking our DPS leaders to make sure they choose the best system available to protect our children.

I am asking them to not do what the Douglas County Commissioners did and put a lower grade system into Stem Schools without properly comparing and testing. I am asking DPS to do a complete RFP (request for proposals) and due diligence and run side-by-side testing to make sure our children are protected with the best system available, not the second best.

Don’t just believe snake oil salesmen.

I am asking our citizens to make sure DPS does proper testing.

Doug Schull, Castle Rock

Property tax increases are driven by government greed

Government should be on the side of the people they represent. We’ve just received our new property valuations with dropped jaws. Just by sitting here, our house increased by $100,000 each of the past two years, meaning higher real estate taxes that are already high enough.

As for young families looking to get out of pricey rentals, the government has moved the goal line farther back, making it almost impossible to own. I don’t think my conscience would allow me to sell at the current sticker price. Regarding inflation; let’s call it by its real name: greed.

June Ammerman, Arvada

Property owners have a right to be upset about an average increase of approximately 38% in their taxes. However, they are stating their concern all wrong.

It¶¶Òőap true that home prices probably have inflated tremendously in the past two years since our last assessments. But what does that have to do with my property taxes? If the counties need to raise our taxes from year-to-year in order to keep up with the increased costs of maintaining roads, policing the neighborhoods, fighting fires, and educating our 2.2 children then the increase ought to be tied to the actual increase in those costs based on inflation.

Suppose that someday the value of our homes goes down. Would we tell firefighters, police, and teachers, “Sorry, this year your salary is dropping”? The value of our homes, whether they rise or fall, does not affect the cost of providing those services.

Denny Cannon, Littleton

Finding common ground

I, like others, want to expand the conversation, to find the common ground that we know is there but is obfuscated by those who profit by provocation.

One obstacle is the division between those who think that everyone should be responsible for themselves (the “personal responsibility” argument), and those who think that society should provide some level of safety net to those who need it (the “we as a society have a duty to help others” argument).

Often the focus is on one or the other when the reality is that both are valid. We all have the responsibility to take care of ourselves and our families, and to make good choices; but circumstances, whether influenced by us or outside of our control, impact our ability to provide for ourselves.

When we discuss social issues, can we acknowledge that both these ideas can coexist? People who identify more as “left” need also to speak about personal responsibility, and those who identify more as “right” need also to acknowledge that some either can’t or, yes, don’t, take care of their basic needs, but that society will benefit if all our citizens have the ability to meet their basic needs.

If we can get to that place of mutual acknowledgment, then we can all argue about the “hows” of doing something about it.

We have common ground. We need to find it and silence the provocateurs who have only division as their goal.

Robin Flowers, Golden

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In March, 14-year-old Jeramiah Ganzy was so fed up with what he said was racist treatment at Castle Rock Middle School that he wrote an email to district officials. In that message, provided to The Denver Post, Jeramiah wrote that he experienced repeated instances of discrimination, including students directing racist slurs at him and teachers unfairly targeting him for discipline.

“There had been a lot of bullying of people calling me a monkey and a cotton picker,” Jeramiah told The Post in an interview. “I wanted something to happen. I sent the email in anger and frustration, hoping to get a response — and I didn’t.”

Jeramiah also told his mother Lacey Ganzy about a Snapchat group chat with more than 80 Douglas County students, in which students repeatedly used racist slurs, called for the genocide of Black people, and threatened to shoot Black people and bring back the Holocaust.

Attorney Iris Halpern, who is representing the Ganzys as they explore legal options, provided The Post with screenshots of those messages.

When students in the group learned Jeramiah had shared the messages, Lacey Ganzy said the students talked about lynching him.

“He can never go back to these schools,” she said. “They’re talking about lynching my son. I am not sending him back there. He is someone who thrives on education and is nominated for awards and is in AP classes… The options are for him to be homeschooled or move out of town. We are looking to get out of Castle Rock as quickly as possible. We do not feel safe. I grew up here, and I’m run out of town because my family decided to speak up about something that is not right.”

Lacey Ganzy said she showed the Castle Rock Middle School principal the racist messages and threats, and he assured her the students who sent them would be reprimanded, charged criminally and suspended.

The Post asked if any students faced discipline, but Paula Hans, a spokesperson for the Douglas County School District, said she could not answer that due to student privacy laws.

Hans said the district is addressing the matter “consistent with the DCSD Student Code of Conduct and DCSD Board of Education policies.”

“It is our goal to take care of each and every one of our students in our district,” Hans said. “We appreciate the Ganzy family bringing their concerns to us so we can make sure our system is addressing their needs.”

Taylor Temby, a spokesperson for Castle Rock Police Department, said police looked into the matter but information about the investigation could not be shared because minors are involved. Police sent a report to the district attorney’s office, which will determine if charges should be filed, Temby said.

Lacey Ganzy said she only learned of her son’s email to the district two weeks ago when Jeramiah was being investigated by Castle Rock Middle School because a staff member claimed the teen stole a water bottle — a bottle that belonged to Jeramiah. The staffer questioned where he bought the bottle, Jeramiah said, and how he could have obtained the money to buy it.

“Douglas County School District has a racism problem,” Halpern said. “This racist message and culture is coming from the top down. It’s the school district, its leadership and parents and adults. Students don’t learn white supremacy in a vacuum.”

The Douglas County School District confirmed Jeramiah’s March email was received by the school principal and executive director of schools. Halpern said the Ganzys didn’t hear directly from anyone at the district until Monday, nearly a week after the family shared their experiences publicly at a .

The Ganzy family said Jeramiah’s experience with racism in Douglas County schools is not an isolated incident.

Nevaeh Ganzy, Jeramiah’s 16-year-old sister, said she transferred to a charter school after a teacher at Douglas County High School made students debate whether they were for or against Jim Crow laws enabling racial segregation — and put her on the side supporting the laws.

The evening the Ganzy family spoke before the Douglas County school board, Halpern noted, was the same night the board discussed the district’s equity policy — a polarizing policy that’s been debated for more than a year and which lays out how the school district handles equity and diversity issues.

Conservative school board members erroneously claimed the policy would prompt teaching critical race theory, and former superintendent Corey Wise claimed the policy and his advocacy for supporting students of color was at the heart of his firing, which a judge found to have been unlawful.

Lacey Ganzy said she wants the Douglas County School District to understand there is a difference between bullying and hate speech and to treat them differently. The mother wants students to have a victim advocate available who can fight for them. She wants teachers, staff and administrators to have robust diversity training to educate them about topics like racism. Friends set up a as they search for a new place to live outside of Castle Rock.

“The one thing I want is for kids to be better educated on Black history and to have better enforcement with hate crimes and hate speech and some consequences for that,” Jeramiah said. “It’s not fair that I’m the victim, and I’m forced to change my life and those who do the hate crimes are not.”

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History Colorado’s will also nominate at least one of the locations to both the , officials said this week, opening the site up for grants and tax credits.

“There’s an incredible, rich history here, and we need to and will learn more about it,” said Patrick Eidman, chief preservation officer for History Colorado. “This is a recognition at the federal level that this is an important project.”

The oases of motels and hotels that catered to African American travelers in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood, for example, were joined by unofficial spots known as “tourist homes.” Black travelers also moved frequently between Denver and , a nationally rare Black lodge that hosted legends such as Duke Ellington and Zora Neale Hurston.

Still, the “bible of Black travel during Jim Crow,” as once called it, has all but been forgotten in many historical corners. And chances to preserve that history are fading fast.

“This is just one of the first phases of the project,” Eidman said of the funding. “We’re doing surveys, and we’re going to be doing community engagement and collecting oral histories.”

“I think a lot of building owners will even be surprised that their private homes hosted Jim Crow-era travel for African Americans,” he added.

History Colorado’s survey is part of a larger effort by the State Historic Preservation Office to make up for the severe lack of historic preservation in marginalized communities. As of 2020, only 8% of all locations listed on the National Register of Historic Places represented communities of color and/or women, officials said, and only 5 percent of properties listed in Colorado’s State Register of Historic Places were related to women and people of color.

The — with funding from History Colorado — to catalog Green Book locations across the state, such as Lamar’s Alamo Hotel, Pueblo’s Coronado Motel, Durango’s Strater Hotel and the Chipeta CafĂ© in Montrose.

The latest award is History Colorado’s third grant from the Underrepresented Community Grant from the National Park Service, following support in 2021 and 2017 for sites associated with the women’s suffrage movement across the state and Hispano communities in the San Luis Valley, respectively. The total for all three grants is $167,201.

Including Colorado, the National Park Service over the last 8 years has awarded $5.75 million through the Underrepresented Communities Grants program. See the full list at

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Election officials warned about poll watchers who had been steeped in conspiracy theories falsely claiming that then-President Donald Trump did not actually lose the 2020 election. Democrats and voting rights groups worried about the effects of new election laws, in some Republican-controlled states, that President Joe Biden decried as “Jim Crow 2.0.” Law enforcement agencies were monitoring possible threats at the polls.

Yet Election Day, and the weeks of early voting before it, went fairly smoothly. There were some reports of unruly poll watchers disrupting voting, but they were scattered. Groups of armed vigilantes began watching over a handful of ballot drop boxes in Arizona until a judge ordered them to stay far away to ensure they would not intimidate voters. And while it might take months to figure out their full impact, GOP-backed voting laws enacted after the 2020 election did not appear to cause major disruptions the way they did during the March primary in Texas.

“The entire ecosystem in a lot of ways has become more resilient in the aftermath of 2020,” said Amber McReynolds, a former Denver elections director who advises a number of voting rights organizations. “There’s been a lot of effort on ensuring things went well.”

Even though some voting experts’ worst fears didn’t materialize, some voters still experienced the types of routine foul-ups that happen on a small scale in every election. Many of those fell disproportionately on Black and Hispanic voters.

“Things went better than expected,” said Amir Badat of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. “But we have to say that with a caveat: Our expectations are low.”

Badat said his organization recorded long lines at various polling places from South Carolina to Texas.

There were particular problems in Harris County, Texas, which includes Houston. Shortages of paper ballots and at least one polling location opening late led to long lines and triggered an investigation of the predominantly Democratic county by the state’s Republican authorities.

The investigation is partly a reflection of how certain voting snafus on Election Day are increasingly falling on Republican voters, who have been discouraged from using mailed ballots or using early in-person voting by Trump and his allies. But it¶¶Òőap a very different problem from what Texas had during its March primary.

Then, a controversial new voting law that increased the requirements on mail ballots led to about 13% of all such ballots being rejected, much higher compared with other elections. It was an ominous sign for a wave of new laws, passed after Trump’s loss to Biden and false claims about mail voting, but there have been no problems of that scale reported for the general election.

Texas changed the design of its mail ballots, which solved many of the problems voters had putting identifying information in the proper place. Other states that added regulations on voting didn’t appear to have widespread problems, though voting rights groups and analysts say it will take weeks of combing through data to find out the laws’ impacts.

The Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law is compiling data to determine whether new voting laws in states such as Georgia contributed to a drop in turnout among Black and Hispanic voters.

Preliminary figures show turnout was lower this year than in the last midterm election four years ago in Florida, Georgia, Iowa and Texas — four states that passed significant voting restrictions since the 2020 election — although there could be a number of reasons why.

“It¶¶Òőap difficult to judge, empirically, the kind of effect these laws have on turnout because so many factors go into turnout,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles law school. “You also have plenty of exaggeration on the Democratic side that any kind of change in voting laws are going to cause some major effect on the election, which has been proven not to be the case.”

In Georgia, for example, Republicans made it more complicated to apply for mailed ballots after the 2020 election — among other things, requiring voters to include their driver’s license number or some other form of identification rather than a signature. That may be one reason why early in-person voting soared in popularity in the state this year, and turnout there dipped only slightly from 2018.

Jason Snead, executive director of the conservative Honest Elections Project, which advocates for tighter voting laws, said the fairly robust turnout in the midterm elections shows that fears of the new voting regulations were overblown.

“We are on the back end of an election that was supposed to be the end of democracy, and it very much was not,” Snead said.

Poll watchers were a significant concern of voting rights groups and election officials heading into Election Day. The representatives of the two major political parties are a key part of any secure election process, credentialed observers who can object to perceived violations of rules.

But this year, groups aligned with conspiracy theorists who challenged Biden’s 2020 victory recruited poll watchers heavily, and some states reported that aggressive volunteers caused disruptions during the primary. But there were fewer issues in November.

In North Carolina, where several counties had reported problems with poll watchers in the May primary, the state elections board reported 21 incidents of misbehavior at the polls in the general election, most during the early, in-person voting period and by members of campaigns rather than poll watchers. The observers were responsible for eight of the incidents.

Voting experts were pleasantly surprised there weren’t more problems with poll watchers, marking the second general election in a row when a feared threat of aggressive Republican observers did not materialize.

“This seems to be an increase over 2020. Is it a small increase? Yes,” said Michael McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida. “It¶¶Òőap still a dry run for 2024, and we can’t quite let down our guard.”

One of the main organizers of the poll watcher effort was Cleta Mitchell, a veteran Republican election lawyer who joined Trump on a Jan. 2, 2020, call to Georgia’s top election official when the president asked that the state “find” enough votes to declare him the winner. Mitchell then launched an organization to train volunteers who wanted to keep an eye on election officials, which was seen as the driver of the poll watcher surge.

Mitchell said the relatively quiet election is vindication that groups like hers were simply concerned with election integrity rather than causing disruptions.

“Every training conducted by those of us doing such training included instruction about behavior, and that they must be ‘Peaceful, Lawful, Honest,’” Mitchell wrote in the conservative online publication The Federalist. “Yet, without evidence, the closer we got to Election Day, the more hysterical the headlines became, warning of violence at the polls resulting from too many observers watching the process. It didn’t happen.”

Voting rights groups say they’re relieved their fears didn’t materialize, but they say threats to democracy remain on the horizon for 2024 — especially with Trump announcing that he’s running again. Wendy Weiser, a voting and elections expert at the Brennan Center, agreed that things overall went smoother than expected.

“By and large, sabotage didn’t happen,” Weiser said. “I don’t think that means we’re in the clear.”

___

Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections.

Colorado agreed to a $50,000 settlement with former Parks and Wildlife director Dan Prenzlow for “emotional distress” and other issues in the wake of an outside investigation that found he facilitated an unhealthy work environment.

The state also agreed to pay more than $75,000 to an employee, Alease “Aloe” Lee, who was the target of a racist remark from Prenzlow at an April conference in Vail, according to settlement agreements obtained Wednesday by The Denver Post under the Colorado Open Records Act.

Lee resigned last month, while Prenzlow retired last week after 36 years with Colorado Parks and Wildlife — both departures contingent on the settlement agreements. His three-year tenure at the helm of the agency came to an end six months after he attempted to thank Lee, who is Black, at the end of a conference this spring by saying, “There she is, in the back of the bus, Aloe.”

The state agreed to pay Prenzlow $26,160 for “emotional distress,” according to the Oct. 4 agreement, while $17,440 of the total settlement went toward “disputed wages.” The remaining $6,400 went to the former director’s attorneys.

The settlement also stipulated that Prenzlow voluntarily retire Nov. 1 in lieu of termination.

The state and the former agency head reached the agreement to “avoid the expense and vagaries of litigation… without admission of liability or wrongdoing.” It included a non-disparagement clause, barring Prenzlow from making any disparaging remarks against the agency and its leaders.

Prenzlow’s media relations advisor, Pete Webb, said the former director “regrets profoundly that an off-hand remark did away with the goodwill that he fostered over his years with the state.”

“He had a great career with the state, he was a dedicated state employee, and really lived and breathed the mission of the Division of Wildlife,” Webb said, referring to the precursor to what’s now the Parks and Wildlife division.

Lee agreed in her settlement to withdraw a discrimination complaint that she had filed with the Colorado Civil Rights Division. The state agreed to pay her $75,634 — the equivalent of one year’s salary. In exchange, Lee agreed to resign and not to sue the agency or disparage its leaders.

The state agreed with both Lee and Prenzlow to provide a neutral job reference for any future employers, saying they resigned for “personal reasons.”

The state suspended Prenzlow after the “back of the bus” remark — which harkens back to Jim Crow-era laws mandating Black people sit in the back of public buses — and subsequently hired a third-party firm to conduct an investigation into the comments he and others made at the conference.

The probe, first reported Monday by The Post, found Prenzlow fostered an unhealthy workplace in terms of equity and could no longer effectively lead the agency.

Witnesses told investigators that Prenzlow led a “good ole’ boy” culture within Parks and Wildlife that made some uncomfortable. He pushed back on the title of a diverse presentation at April’s “Partners in Outdoors” conference, the report found, and asked certain personality questions about female job candidates that he wouldn’t ask of men.

Investigations Law Group, which conducted the review, found the Parks and Wildlife chief violated several state and departmental policies surrounding harassment, discrimination, ethics, equity, diversity and inclusion.

Prenzlow, in a statement through his attorney, said that while “I do not agree with much of the tone of the state’s review of my conduct, it is time to close this chapter and find more reasons to experience our wonderful Colorado outdoors.”

Lee also was suspended after the conference. A separate investigation found she violated state and departmental policies by sending several explicit messages to conference attendees, in which she took aim at Prenzlow and other state leaders.

An attorney for Lee could not be reached Wednesday evening. Lee has not responded to requests for comment from The Post since May.