“We’re as necessary now as we were then”
University of Northern Colorado’s Garvey Cultural Center celebrates 40th anniversary
University of Northern Colorado student Kalynn Bledsoe found a place she felt comfortable on campus at the Marcus Garvey Cultural Center.
Tobias Guman found that same sense of comfort, safety and belonging 20 years earlier when he was a student on the Greeley campus. Guzman, now the university’s vice president of the division of diversity, equity and inclusion with a doctorate in education, doesn’t identify as Black. But the Garvey Cultural Center provided him with familiarity while challenging him to see different viewpoints in his academic career.
“When I first came here, I was looking for a place to hang out, and I was really trying to find a place that I felt like it would be a home,” said Guzman, a 1994 UNC graduate. “I grew up in a Mexican household, but the people who I would naturally hang around with were mostly folks of color. Coming to UNC, it was natural for me to gravitate to the Garvey Cultural Center.”
Opened in February 1983 as the Black Cultural Center before later being renamed for Marcus Garvey, the center was founded to assist students who identify as Black or African- American through their personal and academic journeys at UNC. The Garvey was the first of seven cultural and resource centers now on campus. Since its opening, it has been a pioneering, educational and safe community for Black students, staffers and faculty members who live on a campus, and in a region, where they are a minority.
This was true in 1983, and it remains true as the Garvey celebrated its 40th anniversary this month.
Marcus Garvey was a Jamaican native and Black leader in the U. S. in the early 20th century. The Garvey Center website calls Garvey “probably the most charismatic Afroamerican leader until Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”
Through his friendships at the Garvey Center, Guzman was asked to join a historically Black fraternity, Iota Phi Theta. He also gravitated to the Chavez Center, which opened in September 1985 for Latino students. Guzman said he felt welcomed in both centers.
“I think that is important for people to understand,” Guzman said. “There shouldn’t be a barrier. There has to be a sense of place for historically marginalized communities, and the places are the cultural and resource centers. These are places where people can be comfortable, and the staff has the cultural competencies because they know the identities.”
The current population of Black and AfricanAmerican residents in Greeley comprises 2.6% ( 2,842) of the total population of 109,323, according to U. S. Census data from 2021. In 1980, three years before the opening of the Garvey Cultural Center, there were 615 Black residents in Weld County.
At UNC today, with an enrollment of 7,798 students — including extended campus locations in Denver, Loveland and online — there are 303 degree- seeking students who are AfricanAmerican, according to spring census data.
Of those students, 221 undergraduates are AfricanAmerican, about 4.2% of the undergraduate total of 5,313. Among graduate students, 82 are AfricanAmerican, or 3.8% of 2,136 graduate students — for a combined total of 7,449. In an explanation of the enrollment data, the university says race and ethnicity are self- reported by students. Students may leave the question blank, but they cannot indicate they “do not wish to provide.”
In 1983, there were fewer than 20 Black professionals among staffers at the university and 235 Black students, according to former UNC professor and Garvey Cultural Center founder Robert Dillingham.
These numbers help illustrate the importance of the Garvey Center to Bledsoe, a 20- year- old junior from Denver who described the center as “a home away from home.”
A student leader of the Garvey Center, Bledsoe is a secondary education major with an emphasis in history. She is usually the only Black- identifying student in her classes. One of the reasons Bledsoe said she selected history as a major was because the subject is often taught from the perspective of a white person. Bledsoe said people of color should have the opportunity to learn history from the perspective of another person of color.
“From someone they relate to,” Bledsoe said. “Because then the education piece becomes a little bit more beneficial when you’re learning from someone that is experiencing the same things as you.”
Bledsoe is the cultural activities coordinator at the Garvey, with a key role in the events and programs at the center. One of these programs is the Garvey Table
Talk, a series of discussions open to all UNC students that has covered issues including relationships, police brutality, Roe vs. Wade and housing.
At a predominately white institution nearing official status as a Hispanic Serving Institution, the experience of Black students might be less familiar or understood to the campus community, Bledsoe said. The Garvey allows Black students a place where they are not filtered and a place “to be as we are.”
“It’s important to have those places when coming to an institution like this because there is not a lot of Black representation here,” Bledsoe said.
Getting the Garvey into Greeley
A higher level of engagement between the city of Greeley and the Marcus Garvey Cultural Center starts with a city of Greeley official and UNC President Andy Feinstein, according to the city leader.
Raymond Lee joined the city as deputy city manager in January 2021. A year later, he was appointed to replace former City Manager Roy Otto. Lee, who is the first Black city manager in Greeley, said it’s his job to work with Feinstein to create “synergy between the university and the community as a whole.”
“I think the Marcus Garvey Cultural Center is one avenue for doing that,” said Lee, who oversees the daytoday operations of the city as part of his job.
Lee called this relationship “huge” for cooperation between the city and the university. A key step in that direction was the city and the cultural center working together last year for a first Juneteenth celebration.
In a diverse city, it’s important for voices representing all resident groups to be heard, Lee said. Given
the small size of the AfricanAmerican population here compared with other populations, Greeley has to figure out how to engage effectively with the Black community — “not only African- Americans but all segments of the population,” Lee said.
“What we are doing to embrace them is key for our growth as a city as a whole.”
He said the Garvey is the type of center “we have to invest in” because it’s a resource for information some area residents might take for granted.
Origin of the center
The idea of a Black student cultural center was originally proposed in 1971 by members of UNC’S Black Student Union, according to the Garvey Center webpage. Roots of what the center would become actually reach much further back — into the early 20th century, according to Dillingham, who was chairman of the former Black Studies Department
and faculty adviser to the Black Student Union from the late 1970s into the early 1980s.
Dillingham said there were eight Black women studying at UNC in the early 1920s. The women lived in the community and were harassed by the Ku Klux Klan. Dillingham said over the next 40- 50 years, other incidents of racism sustained a belief in the need for a Black Cultural Center.
“It could be a haven for Black students to stay culturally rich in a predominately white university,” Dillingham said. “We wanted the Garvey Cultural Center to address career options and goals.”
Garvey was invited to come to the U. S. in the early 20th century by Booker T. Washington, a Black educator, writer and founder of the school now known as Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Ala. He established a chain of businesses including factories, hotels, restaurants, grocery stores and laundries. He popularized the “Black Is Beautiful” idea, recruiting followers and “giving them a sense of hope and power.”
Dillingham said the center was named for Garvey because he taught “ambition and a desire to go forward to try to improve one’s condition.”
Janine Weaver- Douglas has been the director of the Garvey Cultural Center since 2021. She is the 10th director of the center in its 40 years. The Garvey’s lifespan at UNC is a period Weaver- Douglas said has been an experiment because there were no guarantees or blueprint for success.
Weaver- Douglas, who has a doctorate in education, said the Garvey exists to provide educational support and information as well as to serve as a resource and offer community. When it opened 40 years ago, there were fewer than 20 cultural centers on campuses nationally, Weaver- Douglas said.
“No other element came together for success,” Weaver- Douglas said
Weaver- Douglas said she has three hopes for the Garvey’s future: The center will remain autonomous as the university evolves, will develop stronger and more formalized relationships with academic departments, and will establish a pipeline for outreach — for students, faculty members and staffers to attract others from the Black community.
“Our overarching goal is gratitude,” Weaver- Douglas added. “There was no guarantee that we’d be something that people could come back to. The first week we were open, a cross was burned on the front lawn. We’re still dealing with that. We are as necessary now as we were then.”