This memoir of a man who was instrumental in shaping the vibrant Five Points neighborhood that is now Denver’s only Historic Cultural District begins with his roots. His parents fled the Jim Crow laws of Texas on an eight-month 1903 wagon train into Indian Territory where Leroy Smith was born in the oldest black town of what had by then become Oklahoma. His personal “Great Migration” began when he walked across the border into Arkansas. Working and vagabonding his way northeast to be rescued when he received a bus ticket from a friend who suggested he come west to Utah for a decent job on the railway. Working the trains, Leroy was drawn to Denver which he had learned was the “Harlem of the West.” There he met Lulu Ann Green, convinced her in a whirlwind courtship to marry and join him as a partner in a tiny shop they rented for ten dollars a month. Leroy bought black newspapers, hair products and vinyl music on his Chicago train runs that Lulu sold to Denver’s fast growing black population. By 1941 Leroy could quit the railroad to create the “Rhythm Record Shop” in a two-story building he purchased in the busy Wellton Street business district known as “The Points.” In 1944 he held his first dance concert which his ingenuity handily saved from disaster and began booking the great names of rock and roll, rhythm and blues, gospel, jazz, etc. to cities in Colorado and surrounding states. Often referred to as “the Mayor of Five Points,” he was known as a cool band leader who sold “race music,” black hair products and quality goods within the “red lines.” Smith was also a gifted sportsman who hunted, fished, and pitched on black baseball teams. He soon added the words “and Sporting Goods” to the already expanded merchandise found in his shop, offering fishing and hunting licenses with gear. He became Colorado’s first black outfitter licensed to sell firearms with his sports equipment. He was named an honorary game warden and—after lobbying for an officer-manned lockup only three doors away—an honorary police officer. An audacious masonic leader, Leroy fought city hall to bring black Shiners to his ingeniously desegregated Denver hotels for conventions. He paid to advertise his ventures on the radio by becoming, his own disc jockey on his midnight “Rockin’ with Leroy” show. His sharp instincts for enterprise and entertainment lifted him into business, cultural, mining, and other endeavors that inspired the diverse neighborhood to action. His political inclinations led him to success in opening the second floor of his building as the Voters Club, a swinging night club with live music and famed visitors which he used to rally African Americans to vote and fight for their American civil rights. All proceeds from sale of this scrapbook of photos, letters and memories are destined solely for the support of Denver’s Black American West Museum & Heritage Center.

This stunning collection of images celebrates the remarkable career of Burnis "Mac" McCloud, Denver's premiere Black photographer between 1950 and 1980. His remarkable photographs, focused on Denver's Five Points community, captured the ordinary lives of African Americans during a period that witnessed the end of Jim Crow segregation and the beginning of the Civil Rights era. Assembled from more than one hundred thousand negatives that McCloud left behind, this collection introduces his creative work to the world beyond the Mile High City. Author William Wyckoff also tells McCloud's life story, revealing the challenges to and vitality of Denver's Black community. At a time when much of what McCloud photographed is being swept away by gentrification and urban change, this collection of images preserves a time and place important not only for Denver but for all of Black America.

A new comedy by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ruined.

This text presents the history of the development of fibre optic technology, explaining the scientific challenges that needed to be overcome, the range of applications and future potential for this fundamental communications technology.

Winner of the Third Neu-Whitrow Prize (2021) granted by the Commission on Bibliography and Documentation of IUHPS-DHST Additional background information This book provides bibliographic information, ownership records, a detailed worldwide census and a description of the handwritten annotations for all the surviving copies of the 1543 and 1555 editions of Vesalius’ De humani corporis fabrica. It also offers a groundbreaking historical analysis of how the Fabrica traveled across the globe, and how readers studied, annotated and critiqued its contents from 1543 to 2017. The Fabrica of Andreas Vesalius sheds a fresh light on the book’s vibrant reception history and documents how physicians, artists, theologians and collectors filled its pages with copious annotations. It also offers a novel interpretation of how an early anatomical textbook became one of the most coveted rare books for collectors in the 21st century.