“Aunt Clara” - First Black Resident of the Colorado Territory

Clara Brown was a slave at birth, in Virginia, in 1800. She married at 18, and had four children. They were split up when the slave owner's estate was sold.

At 57, upon the death of her owner, Brown was freed and moved to Kansas where she opened a laundry. From there she went to Central City, Colo., where she opened another laundry. She bought mining claims and brought ex-slaves west.

"Aunt Clara's" home was used as a hospital, hotel or refuge.

In 1882, three years before she died, she found a daughter from whom she'd been separated for 30 years.

Brown is memorialized with a leaded-glass window in the Colorado Capitol, and in 1932, the Central City Opera House Association dedicated a chair to her.

Black History Blogger Bob Jackson

Bob Jackson starts blogging on SpectrumTalk about great African Americans during Black History Month. Jackson, a Chicago native, is a retired staff writer and columnist for the Rocky Mountain News, where he worked for 22 years, starting in 1982. He wrote the column CITYSCAPE, and specializes in writing about ethnic minority affairs.

Jackson also worked as a general assignment reporter for the Chicago American and Chicago Today for 11 years. He covered the 1963 March on Washington; the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala.; the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's Poor People's Campaign; The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr's, Chicago campaign; and riots in Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles.