You’ve heard the story of Colorado Springs founder Gen. William J. Palmer, but have you heard the story of Joyce Gilmer, the city’s first Black female real estate broker who opened her own company in the mid-1970s?

You also likely haven’t heard about Charles Banks, a Buffalo Soldier who mobilized civil rights action in the Springs, or contemporary Springs activist Isabella Snowbird, who advocates for missing Indigenous people. And maybe not even Colorado Springs School District 11 powerhouse Delia Armstrong-Busby, who served as the first Black female principal at Mitchell High School.

“Freedom to Thrive,” the new Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum exhibit, will fill many gaps in your knowledge of the Pikes Peak region’s history as it reflects on the state’s 150th and the country’s 250th anniversaries, while also asking us to ponder the question: How do we hope our community evolves over the next decades?

“As a museum of history and culture, our job is not to be nostalgic; it’s not to celebrate,” said the museum’s curator of history Leah Davis Witherow. “It’s to commemorate, to think deeply about how to use the past to help people understand why things are the way they are today and, even more importantly, getting us as a community to think about the future we want.”

A loud buzz fills the museum on a recent afternoon, in its second-floor room that once served as a courtroom in what was the El Paso County Courthouse from 1903 to 1973.

Visitors wander through the exhibit that flows in a clockwise direction, beginning with the Declaration of Independence and ending with a display on “e pluribus unum (out of many, one),” our country’s unofficial motto until the 1950s, when we adopted the line, “One nation under God,” from the Pledge of Allegiance.

Displays include life-size photo representations, histories and artifacts of more than two dozen contemporary and historic changemakers, advocates and activists of southern Colorado and the Pikes Peak region. Over the last 150 years, each one has worked in their own way to make sure we all receive the rights promised to us by the 14th, 15th and 19th Amendments.

“We don’t have to think nationally; we can think of people in our community who have worked to make this community more inclusive, more equitable, and a place where everyone has the freedom to thrive,” Witherow said.

Casimiro Barela is one such icon. Known as the “Father of the Colorado Senate,” Barela lived from 1847 to 1920, and spent almost four decades in the state Legislature, where he advocated for the Colorado Constitution and all state laws up until 1900 to be published in English, German and Spanish.

“We’ve always been a multicultural place, and he acknowledges it,” Witherow said. “People can’t abide by the law unless they can understand it. Southern Colorado has a deep history of Hispano and Hispana people. He’s saying let’s give voters the tools they need to be informed citizens.”

On his historical heels comes Charles Banks, who moved to the Springs after serving in the Spanish-American War and became president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He organized groups of young people to request service at downtown restaurants and bars in the 1940s and ’50s, and when they were refused, he sued the businesses and won.

Civil rights laws have been on the books in Colorado since 1885, making it illegal to segregate businesses or public accommodations based on ethnicity, but people did it anyway.

“For me, (the freedom to thrive) is about bringing opportunity to folks across the city, no matter the zip code or boundary,” said Charles Johnson, the youngest School District 11 school board member, who is also featured in the exhibit.

“We’re still learning to do that in the city,” he said. “I hope to represent that going forward, to have everyone have opportunities to thrive in their own way, no matter what that looks like.”

In 1969, Joyce Gilmer’s husband received a military assignment in the Springs. The matriarch longed to attend college, but it was never the right time for the mother of three. After moving to town, the couple eventually divorced and he moved on, leaving Gilmer to open her real estate agency and get her kids through school before deciding it was finally time to get her degree.

After seven years of mostly night classes at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, on the eve of graduation, she discovered her gown didn’t fit. In a panic, she decided to make her own, but couldn’t find the right fabric anywhere in town. She came home, lay down to take a nap and noticed her draperies were the same antique silk as a UCCS graduation gown. That gown, now on display, is part of the museum’s archive.

“It’s the power of storytelling. That is the center of this exhibit. We think if you tell someone a good story, you’ve hooked them,” Witherow said. “(Joyce) is an inspiration of what it is to be a woman in an industry that very few women were involved in in the 1970s. A woman of color, a woman who broke barriers, and she left this beautiful legacy of love.”

The exhibit isn’t just about remembering the past, says Harmony Quinto, president and CEO of the Philippine American Chamber of Commerce of Southern Colorado, but about growing deeper roots and asking ourselves how we can help the community. Quinto is also featured in the exhibit.

“The freedom to thrive is doing something useful and doing something to celebrate this city we call home,” she said. “From the past, we are making the future brighter for future generations of southern Colorado residents.”

Only recently did Quinto discover her grandfather was a Sakada, one of the more than 100,000 men recruited from the Philippines to work as seasonal farmers at plantations in Hawaii. From 1906 to 1946, they worked up to 14 hours a day, six days a week, for low wages, which they sent home to support their families.

Quinto’s parents traveled from the Philippines to see the exhibit and learn how their family history helps tell stories of immigration and naturalization. She watched as her father got teary-eyed looking at a photo of his father as a Sakada.

“The Sakadas were not formally organized. They did not know how to demand compensation. They organized themselves the way they knew best,” Quinto said. “There was no chamber of commerce advocating for what they should have earned. It’s our responsibility to be intentional and appreciative now that we operate in systems where we can advocate for someone and uplift them if they’re being taken advantage of. They did not have that. I am now mindful of what I can do.”

DETAILS

“Freedom to Thrive,” 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, 215 S. Tejon St., free; cspm.org