Jan. 20, 2003 - 19:30 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Short Trail

Looks here as if the Denver Public School System is only about 18 years older than I am, how old I am and how young DPS is, heh. In 1903 Colorado Supreme Court declares the Rush Amendment valid, thus creating the City and County of Denver.

Our first school was The Union School opened by Owen J. Goldrick in 1859, it had 13 pupils.

So I entered school while organized schools were still relatively new here. In a young child's eyes, school seemed to have been here forever.

One hundred years ago D P S schools were much different from those of today. "Back then, high school was for Johnny the banker's son, not Jenny from the block. Back then some kids were in private schools many others were working to help support their families," it says in the paper. "Girls were the majority in the high schools. The boys were out working."

Fraternities were banned in the schools, but TOP SECRET During the first quarter century the Ku Klux Klan was one of the districts biggest supporters, mostly because its members could taunt Catholic schools by backing DPS.

I was three years old when the superintendant introduced the "seperate but equal' concept when he banished black girls from swimming classes at Morey Junior High School and social functions at Manual High School. Manual was the high school nearest Five Points, the Black Harlem of Denver. The Colorado Supreme Court told DPS to stop the segregation. But the district didn't.

During the 1928 / 29 school year Marie Greenood was the only black girl in the sophomore class at East High School. An administrator informed her it would be a waste of her parent's money for a black girl to attend college. With determination she carried on and became the first black teacher to earn tenure in the DPS.

Apparently prejudice is still with us yet today. There was a special supplement to the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News on Friday the 17th apparently by Council Tree Communications as an advertising supplement celebrating One Hundred Years of Denver Public Schools. But not on the birthday of the system -- that is today. The regular issue of the paper today is not as fancy or colorful but gives more facts.

The mind set of the east was brought along with everything else by the Pioneers to Denver it appears. It was a common philosophy this black bit, in existence for all time actually, black slaves were common property here in the United States and also in Biblical times.

I think that Martin Luther King and those of his ilk and some very gutsy folks, white and black finally got the point across, some sacrificing liberty and some their lives.

Yet just how deep has it gone ? Recently down south there was a black man drug down the street behind a pickup truck till he died. A heinous crime, a blot on civilized humanity that shows that not all parents teach their children right from wrong.

I'm thinking, how little we learn - and how slowly we get it !

Here am I, a typical human needing someone to look down on, just like everybody else. Its just a different choice I guess. I choose to look down on cruel people, bigoted people, greedy thieving people, but not dumb people like me.

In essence from the trees to the cities has been a Short Trail . . . . . . . . . .

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