How a Colorado law school dug into its history to celebrate its unsung Black graduates

The first known Black law student at the University of Colorado is pictured in a class photo from 1899. Courtesy of the University of Colorado Law School.

Class portraits line the hallways of the University of Colorado Law School, the faces of former students gazing down at the building’s current inhabitants. In a dimly lit recess in the library hangs the 1899 class portrait. Its year is incorrectly labeled as 1898, and the students are left unnamed.

In the photo, 20 men stand. Only one of them is Black. I can tell you that he was Franklin LaVeale Anderson, a successful Boulder, Colorado businessman and landowner who entered the law school in 1896 as the university’s first known Black student.