(upbeat music) - I really got fascinated by Barney Ford's journey from being a runaway slave to Colorado.

How does one even get here?

And I think about every time he had been told no, or he had been held back because of his color.

- When he was trying to be a gold miner, he was brand off of his claims simply because he was an ex slave or a black man at that time.

- Once he gained money, other things attach themselves to his color.

- He was called, the Black Baron of Colorado.

He traveled to the nation's Capitol to fight for suffrage for all men of color.

- He attained what his mother wanted him to be.

And that was Mr. Barney Ford.

- [Announcer] This program was made possible by the History Colorado State Historical Fund.

- [Announcer] Supporting projects throughout the state to preserve, protect, and interpret Colorado's architectural and archeological treasures.

History Colorado State Historical Fund, create the future, honor the past.

- [Announcer] With additional funding provided in memory of Deanna E. La Camera, by Hassel and Marianne Ledbetter, and by members like you, thank you.

With special thanks to the Denver Public Library, History Colorado, The Colorado Office of Film, Television, and Media, and to these organizations.

(upbeat music) - I first heard about Barney Ford at Campbell Chapel AME church in Denver, but I never heard about him at school, or any of the African American people who helped to settle the west.

- I didn't learn about Barney Ford until I was an intern in this Capitol, and that's that man right there over the speaker's desk.

Our young people do not learn about Barney Ford as a matter of curriculum in Colorado.

When they do, I see the pride, I see the inspiration puff up in their chest, especially as black people.

But still today, we don't know about him, right?

Still today, he's whitewashed.

- We never heard about Barney Ford in school.

We were not taught African American history, and certainly not Colorado black history.

The kids today who understand Black Lives Matter, it's too bad they don't understand that back in 1860s, yeah, black lives mattered then too.

- Barney Ford was born to a house slave named Phoebe in Stafford Courthouse, Virginia, January of 1822.

Barney's father was his owner, master of the plantation.

- His mother, of course, was raped by the owner that she worked for.

- Let's just be real, I mean, my father used to tell you in a heartbeat, I didn't get this color 'cause two black Africans were in love.

That's a part of American history.

We don't really want to talk about that, but that's what happened.

- He had light green eyes and curly hair.

Many children were born through miscegenation, and you see a lot of African Americans who are of different complexions.

And it was at one time thought they were the better of the two because they were closer to the color of the master.

Many of the African Americans that you see in history are fairer skinned, and it is an issue even to this day.

- It seems to me sometimes, darker skinned people are treated like stains in whatever space we occupy.

There is a kind of systemic privilege that is afforded to people who are closer to the Anglo-Saxon protestant man.

- You think of folks like Barack Obama, the first African American president who was also of mixed-race background, and how still his white heritage is completely washed away.

The law didn't allow Barney Ford to be a white man and a black man at the same time, and now, though it's not the law, society doesn't allow you to be both either.

- The brown paper bag rule was that if you are not lighter than a brown paper bag, you were not welcome to enter for church.

There was what was called a one-drop rule.

One drop of black blood, any indication was enough for us to be considered part of the slave class.

- [Narrator] Barney's light complexion would be his only inheritance from his master, his rich, white, slave-owning father.

Like millions of other African Americans, he got absolutely nothing.

But from his enslaved mother, Phoebe, he would get aspiration.

And an education.

Albeit an illegal one.

- Phoebe was very adamant about Barney learning.

Because of the oppressive environment of being a slave, that was pretty much impossible.

- Barney's mother knew that if they made it to freedom, an education would be key, so she took an Oxford dictionary from the main house, brought it to their little cabin and tried to beat this education into Barney.

He used that dictionary as his primer.

- There was a slave on the adjoining plantation who had taught himself to read, so they were able to sneak over to the next plantation in the evenings and they became fascinated with reading.

- When Barney was 17, Barney's mother had made contact with an agent of the Underground Railroad.

She left the plantation at night to meet with this person to make arrangements for their escape to freedom.

- She was trying to cross a river and drowned.

- Her body was discovered on a mudflat off the plantation, brought to the mistress of the plantation upon her discovery.

The mistress of the plantation, who knew that her house slave had a child, called to see that child, to inform him that his mother had died.

- As he was standing there in the living room, she called in her natural-born son.

And as he came into the room, she visibly became agitated, started patting her foot.

Looked at Barney, she looked at her son, and then she realized that Barney was a son of her dead husband.

- [June] She sold Barney to a plantation owner further south, around Columbus, Georgia.

- He was sold to a man named Matt Bartlett for $490.

Matt was a trader.

He wasn't like the other slave owners who made people work in the field.

He thought that Barney would be a good help to support him.

- Matt studied Shakespeare, and Barney would just listen to him as they traveled throughout the countryside herding pigs and horses and cattle, and he picked up that vernacular.

- Matt warned him that he must not allow anyone else to know that he could speak proper English because it would put him at risk, so he learned to change languages depending on where they were going and what was necessary.

- [Stephen] The other quote that stuck with Barney was the preamble of the constitution.

When it stated that all men are created equal, Barney just couldn't understand that one.

- His second owner also hired him out to work in the gold fields in Georgia.

And the Cherokee nation was working the fields there mostly, and it was from them that Barney learned how to identify the ground where gold could be found, how to use the equipment.

It's also where he picked up the gold fever.

- When he wasn't on the wagon, going to different areas of the country, he was home with Matt's wife and he was taking care of the children.

And so she was teaching the children, of course, the basics of reading and math, and she allowed Barney to go to school and to go to church with her children because all the kids just loved him.

And what Barney found out later was that they were Quakers and they did not believe in slavery.

- By 1754, Quakers had already indicated that slavery was wrong.

It was not right for Christians to profit from the ownership of other people.

- Matt was also a captain on the Underground Railroad.

Barney helped Matt hide the slaves that were leaving, and they hid them in the wagon.

Because of that, Barney became very interested in the Underground Railroad.

- Barney's second owner was becoming ill, and so Barney was hired out to work on the riverboats.

He was 24 to 27.

- On that riverboat, Barney learned a lot about the hospitality industry.

He learned how to wait tables, he even learned how to cook.

- [June] Eventually, he was assigned as personal steward to the onboard entertainment.

The onboard entertainment was an actor and an abolitionist.

- One day, when Barney was cleaning the actor's room, he noticed that there was one of those Shakespeare books, and Barney started quoting with the perfect diction.

And behind him was the actor, "How did you learn that?"

Barney explained it, and the actor befriended him and let Barney know that he would help him to escape.

One day, the actor called him in, and because Barney had a slight build, he was able to make him up as a young, light skinned, white woman.

When the boat docked, the actor actually walked him off, hand in hand.

And Barney had a fan in front of his face.

Barney was frightened because the captain was coming at them with a stern look on his face.

And as he approached him, he just nodded to the actor and went away.

- Arm and arm, they strolled down the gangplank.

Barney made contact with the Underground Railroad and made his way to Chicago.

- He walked off a boat in Quincy, Illinois, and he walked into freedom.

- [Stephen] He traveled at night by foot.

Every slave knew to follow the north star.

And Barney did that, and eventually he got to Chicago.

- He met Henry O. Wagoner, who was a very famous abolitionist at the time.

He was a free man of color in charge of the Underground Railroad from Chicago to Detroit.

He met Henry Wagoner's sister-in-law, who was the lovely Julia Lyoni.

Barney stayed in Chicago.

He began working in a barbershop, learning another skill that took him through his later life.

When he had earned enough money, he asked Julia to marry him.

- She saw him as a good man and an honest man and a kind man.

- Barney had not adopted the surname of either of his owners or any of the past presidents, So Julia encouraged him to find his own middle and last name.

- [Narrator] Legend has it that Barney was impressed by a new locomotive that he saw in Chicago called the Lancelot Ford.

While there is no record of that train being in the states at this time, it is the name he chose and the name he was married to Julia by in 1849.

- He's someone who chose his own name, and that's huge.

That means so much in black community.

We were given the names of our masters.

We were told to lose our names.

For Barney to then be able to select the rest of his name, that's powerful.

Barney Lancelot Ford, I think it just echoes his commitment to freedom because it's a vehicle.

It's something that moves.

And if there's no other theme in this man's life, it is his movement and his willing to just pursue freedom and justice wherever he went, no matter what.

- Now, being in the barbershop, you hear stories.

And Barney started to hear stories about the gold mining in California.

So he convinced his new wife to go with him to California.

After a year, they were able to buy a passage on a ship.

Now that ship was the only way to get to California at that time, other than to go across country.

Barney knew that he should really never try to go across country because he was an escaped slave and because of the Fugitive Slave Act.

- [Narrator] The act required the federal government, as well as law enforcement, even in free states, to return runaway slaves.

Additionally, organized bands of southern slave catchers were in pursuit.

The Fords' safest travel plan was to go the long way, by train to New York, a passenger ship to Nicaragua, trek across Central America by foot and boat, and then finally, board yet another ship to California, but things didn't go according to plan.

- When they got to Nicaragua, Barney became sick.

Just so many diseases down there, that he and Julia recognized that housing facilities were very, very rustic, old tents and shacks, and Barney saw an opportunity.

So they built a hotel and they called it the United States Hotel, probably no more than maybe a kitchen facility and bunks and hammocks.

- Made their first fortune in Nicaragua.

They enhanced their business to become restaurant and hotel, and they were successful and happy at that until 1854 when all these outside powers come in.

Tension was escalating between the outsiders and the locals.

Both the British Navy and the US Navy were in Greytown Harbor.

They all met in the Fords' US Hotel.

And the US Admiral told the Fords, "Gather your belongings, we're bombarding the city tomorrow."

And they did.

They burned down Greytown Harbor.

- [Stephen] Barney and Julia were able to be across the bay, but they watch their hotel being bombed.

- They found a brick structure, which they then turned into the US Hotel and got back into the hotel and restaurant business.

And they were happy at that for 18 months, a couple of years, until the Walker Rebellion occurred.

- [Narrator] William Walker, an American adventurer, sought to colonize Nicaragua and seized power in 1856.

During his brief rule of the country, Walker re-instituted slavery, despite it having been outlawed decades earlier.

- He wanted to bring slavery back, and Barney knew that he had best not hang around because he was an escaped slave and eventually he would be a slave again.

So he and Julia made their way back to Chicago.

- [Narrator] Barney Ford, now in his 30s, temporarily abandoned his dream of gold mining for the relative security of returning to Chicago.

But even this northward path would once again put him in harm's way, as he bought a horse stable that he would also use for his work as a conductor on the Underground Railroad.

- He bought a livery.

And with these other gentlemen which he met, they were quite important gentlemen.

So not only did he have his business piece, some of these people were in the Underground Railroad.

They would take slaves from Chicago and take them to Canada.

So they asked him if he would help them.

- Some of those trips were very dangerous for him because, once again, he could have been abducted and taken back, but he was just set on helping other black folks.

But one day in the barbershop, he heard so much about new gold being found in Colorado.

- 1859, gold is discovered in Colorado here in Breckenridge.

And once again, Barney says, "Julia, I know how to do this.

We're going to get rich in Colorado."

They had their first child in Chicago, their son, Louis Napoleon.

So that was another reason why Julia said, "Barney, you go on ahead."

I don't think she could picture herself walking alongside a wagon train with a newborn.

- He was always just driven to do something constantly.

I mean, I'm just amazed because of the lack of communication, the lack of transportation, how quickly he went from stage to stage.

- [June] Barney made his way out here to Colorado.

- [Stephen] Back in the territorial days, the black population were escaped slaves as well as free blacks.

- [June] In 1861, there were 89 men of color in Colorado territory.

- Most blacks folks who came to Denver at that time were from the south.

They were attuned to being farmers.

They were attuned to being part of the agrarian community.

But when they got to Colorado, there was very, very, very little opportunities for farming.

So they had to adjust.

- Black people had to create some things for themselves or they didn't have them.

And Barney Ford being in a situation where he escaped slavery, the one thing I'm pretty sure he knew was that he was gonna have to take care of himself.

And that self-preservation, that self-determination is what basically motivates most entrepreneurs, not wanting to have to answer to somebody else.

And I don't think that has changed.

- And when he arrived in Central City, he couldn't find a hotel that would let him stay there because of him being a black person.

So he met another person whose image, along with Barney Ford, is still now in the State House, and that was Aunt Clara Brown.

- [Narrator] Born into slavery, Aunt Clara Brown became one of the first African American women in Colorado.

She earned money cooking, opening a laundry, then in mining and real estate, all while helping former slaves and anyone of any color in need.

- Well, she allowed Barney to stay in her woodshed that night, and Barney was able to stay there for several days while he ventured out to find a gold claim.

He eventually found a gold claim and started mining.

Well, he owned the land, but eventually, someone came along with their guns drawn and told him, "Look, you're a black man.

Sure, you can own this land, but you can't file a claim.

So we want you out of here within 24 hours."

- [June] Men of color could not own real property.

They couldn't stake a claim.

- What he decided to do is to go into Denver and to contract with a white attorney to file that claim.

"All right, if you file a claim, Mr. Attorney, then you can get 20% of whatever I find."

And so Barney thought he had a deal.

He went to Breckenridge and he met two other young black men who were runaway slaves and they started mining and eventually started finding gold dust.

Well, they ran out of cash.

So Barney had to go back down to Breckenridge and cash in the gold so that they could buy provisions and so on.

Well, it just so happened that someone was looking over Barney's shoulder.

He recognized that person who was looking over his shoulder, and he was one of the individuals that he had always tried to avoid because he was a thief.

Within a couple of days of being back at the cabin, the sheriff came and gave him papers that the attorney had drawn up saying that that attorney owned the entire mine and that they had to leave.

Barney and his two partners were packing up when they heard hoof beats coming up the path, and it just so happened to be that person who was looking over his shoulder back at the assayer's office.

Barney knew that they needed to leave right away.

So they went out the back window and hid in the woods.

And sure enough, the robbers came in, ransacked the cabin.

Barney and his two partners had to walk all the way back down to Denver.

They split their gold and that was end of that partnership.

(upbeat music) - It was a true setback for him.

And I think a lot of people faced with that kind of setback would have said, "Okay, I'll move on with my life.

I'll go back to a place where I'm accepted."

He said, "No, I am going to fight through this."

- Now Barney knew that as a fugitive slave, that he did not want to be recognized.

There was no way that he could take this attorney to court.

He just didn't have that avenue.

He had to just work around the system.

- He knew how to cook.

He knew how to run a restaurant.

He knew how to actually run a hotel.

He was an excellent person who knew how to take care of people and make other people happy.

So because of that, he was able to bounce back.

All of this time, he always had in the back of his mind he wanted to be called Mr. Barney Ford and he wanted to be a millionaire.

- He went into Denver.

He worked in a barbershop there that was owned by a man of color.

- [Stephen] And did very well.

He did very well.

- [Narrator] By 1863, Barney had his own barbershop.

His wife and son had joined him in Denver, and Julia was about to have their second child, but their resilience was about to be tested again.

- April 19th, 1863, Julia is in labor with her second child when, at 2:00 am, a drunk knocked over a wood-burning stove and that started The Great Denver Fire.

Barney and Julia escaped and Julia was established with the Sanderlin family, the first barber for whom Barney worked, and Barney came back to help fight the fire.

Barney returned after learning that Julia had borne their second child, a daughter they named Sarah Elizabeth, later known as Sadie.

Barney returned to LoDo the next morning and discovered that his barbershop was gone and it was burned to the ground.

It was a bunch of smoldering ash.

Fires were common everywhere.

The structures were made of log or they were made of boards.

Crumbled up newspaper was used as insulation.

If a wood-burning stove was knocked over onto a plank floor, well that smolders and then ignites.

- Barney didn't know what to do.

- He is standing in the street looking.

The smoke is still rising from everywhere.

He realizes he is now homeless.

His livelihood is gone, and he's got a growing family.

He has no collateral.

He has no prospects, and he sees that one of his barbershop clients, Luther Kountze, had set up a desk in the half burnt out building across the street where he was making post-fire business loans at 25% interest.

- He went to Mr. Kountze knowing full well that he could not borrow money, but he told Mr. Kountze his story, and he asked for a minimum amount.

He said, "Mr. Kountze, if I can have $1,000, I can just get started."

Mr. Kountze says, "I've known you, Barney.

You're a hard worker.

You're very honest, and $1,000 is not going to do the job for you.

I'm going to loan you $9,000."

Barney was just amazed.

He was taken aback, but he still had his doubts, because he had been swindled.

He had been run off his gold mine.

He thought, "Maybe this could be just one other situation where somebody is taking advantage of me," but he took that money.

- And at 1514 Blake Street, he created the People's Restaurant.

His barbershop and salon was in the basement.

His restaurant was on the first floor, a saloon and some boarding rooms on the second floor, maybe some gambling, and the top floor was his family's apartment.

Mr. Barney Ford was the first person to repay a post-fire business loan.

He did so 90 days after opening his doors.

- He built that business for $9,000, and eventually, he sold it for $23,400.

And Barney realized at that point that maybe that's what he should be doing.

He should be building restaurants and hotels.

- There was nothing specific in the territory constitution that prohibited Luther Kountze from lending to a person of color.

There weren't many though, who had Barney's standing in the financial society, or his ambition, or his courage to seek a loan.

- He bought 15 properties over time.

- He was an example of a black entrepreneur who was able to more than just take care of himself, but to thrive and help his family thrive.

- And guess what?

They called him Mr. Barney Ford.

- [Narrator] Mr. Ford had become a successful businessman, but he now had his eyes on a different sort of prize.

Mr. Ford wanted to vote.

Since clients at his barbershop were some powerful white men, he began by lobbying his customers for his right to join them at the ballot box.

- Even the publisher of the newspaper, Mr. Byers, decided that, "No, black folks are nice.

They're hard workers, but they're not ready to vote."

And Barney found out that nine out of the 10 people that he thought that had befriended him in his barbershop were against the black vote.

And Barney was just, he was devastated.

This was the one item that depressed Barney more than burning down businesses.

And Barney was not willing to stay here in Colorado.

He sold the restaurant and decided that they had enough money to go back to Chicago and just stop working.

- [June] But Mr. Ford then said, "I have got to do something.

I have got to fight not only for my people, but Native Americans, and Asian and Hispanic Americans, as well as African Americans."

He traveled to Washington DC to lobby Congress at that time.

- [Narrator] Barney's voting rights trip to Washington coincided with the end of the Civil War in 1865.

But the conclusion of that conflict, while ending slavery, did not give African Americans in the United States the right to vote.

Since the Colorado Territorial Legislature had just canceled voting rights for all citizens of color, Barney and his compatriots told Congress to delay allowing Colorado its much-desired statehood.

The territorial constitution had only granted all white male citizens the right of suffrage.

So Barney and his fellow petitioners beseeched the US Congress not to admit the territory as a state until the word white be erased from the state constitution.

- For him to be willing to make a stand, to say, "Let's not join the union.

Let's not join these United States."

- His success in terms of advocating for black suffrage on the state constitution is perhaps his biggest accomplishment.

- And we became the first state in the nation to have full enfranchisement as the state became a state.

- [Narrator] At the state and territorial level, the voting rights success of Barney Ford and the other petitioners was one of the very few winning civil rights struggles of the 19th century.

After suffrage rights, Barney advocated for better education for African American children.

When Colorado failed to address the problem, Barney Ford and Henry Wagner created their own school.

Mr. Ford not only opened doors for others, he built them.

- Barney went on to build other barbershops.

He made real estate investments.

He built, in 1873, the Inter-Ocean Hotel in Downtown Denver.

The total cost of the Inter-Ocean Hotel was around $54,000.

Mr. Ford had part of the capital, and I believe he financed another portion of it.

At its heyday, it was first with electric enunciator bells.

It was first with wall-to-wall carpeting and overstuffed upholstery in the lounge, in the lobby.

There was a balcony that went all around, so people could go up to the gallery and they could see the mountains on one side and the planes on the other, and Denver growing in the center.

It was quite the place.

- Within a year, he built another one in Cheyenne.

So things were going just beautiful.

But many of his party were just really, really down on him, because he was very successful in making sure that Colorado was rejected as a state.

But when he ran for office, Barney had this very, very, very wonderful diction, but his opponent was a white individual with very rusty vocabulary, and so on.

So Barney was just noted as an uppity, pretentious black person.

He lost that election, and decided that that was the last time he would ever run for office, but he was still very influential in politics.

This was in the 1870s.

He was invited to become a member of the Colorado Pioneer Club, the first black person to be a member of that.

But then the business started to go down in Cheyenne.

- He left the Cheyenne Inter-Ocean in the hands of another manager who didn't do quite a good job, and since Mr. Ford was holding the note, it bankrupted him to cure it.

- And that pulled everything down here in Denver also.

He lost his home.

Since Julia had relatives in San Francisco, they would go to San Francisco, and Barney would try his hand at mining one more time.

So they went to San Francisco, and they stayed there until they decided that that just wasn't going to work.

So they came back to Breckenridge and did very well.

But the myth was that Barney came back because he really did hide some of that gold before they ran him off.

One of the side effects of having Barney to find gold on that hill, it was called Nigger Hill.

And Barney fought to have that changed all the time that he was living.

- It is a word that has caused a lot of harm and has been a source of pain.

It's a word that precedes lynchings.

It's a word that precedes shootings.

It's a word that precedes some act of extraordinary violence that causes the death or destruction of people of African descent.

And the word itself is meant to do just that as well, sometimes without the attachment of any further violence.

So when the hill in Breckenridge got that name and kept that name, it doesn't surprise me that it wasn't until 1964 that the name became Barney Ford Hill.

(upbeat music) - 1878, Breckenridge was coming up to boom time again.

There were a couple of thousand miners here, and Mr. Ford came in and he provided lodging for the miners that were coming to town that needed it.

And a square meal, anytime, day or night.

- [Stephen] In the meantime, he had an architect to design his home up there.

- With this house, Mr. Ford was demonstrating how far he had come from being beaten to learn how to read from a stolen dictionary to now.

He was Breckenridge's first black entrepreneur.

He was called the Black Baron of Colorado.

He was proud of the respect that he had earned both in civil rights and in his business acumen.

Mr. And Mrs. Ford left Breckenridge in 1890.

A change in Julia's health required a lower elevation.

They sold the house, and Mr. Ford also sold his restaurant here on Main Street in Breckenridge to another man of color, a man named Bob Lott.

And he changed the name of the restaurant from the Saddle Rock to the Night Owl, and he continued Mr. Ford's tradition of serving a square meal, anytime, night or day.

- They came back to Denver around 1890.

They built a home at 1569 High.

And Barney once again had a barbershop, and he was just very, very happy at that time.

He had several row houses and other properties.

He had put them into the hands of an attorney.

When he came back, he found out that that attorney had sold those properties and left town, but Barney had other properties, and they had funds that they could live on, and so they were doing well.

And in 1899, Julia came down with pneumonia and she passed away.

- Barney then was left alone.

His greatest supporter was always his wife.

- One day, Barney decided he would go out and shovel the sidewalks.

As he was shoveling the sidewalks, he had a stroke, and that was Barney's death.

- [Narrator] When Barney Ford died in 1902, his political influence was so great that even his obituary writer thought he had been an elected official.

And although he had helped get the black vote included in the Colorado State constitution, he was never a legislator.

Barney and Julia left no heirs.

Although they had three children, all died.

And their one grandchild perished just four years after Barney's death.

It is not known to whom this self-made man of so many accomplishments left his wealth.

- He was the first black man to serve on a Colorado grand jury.

He was the first black man on the bank board of directors.

His wife, Julia, was the first black woman on the Denver Social Register.

He supported an amendment to our state constitution that gave access to public facilities, and events, to all persons of color.

(chattering) - As black folks are right now fighting for our freedoms, I find so many parallels with that and Barney Ford.

People did not value him as a black man, so many times.

- Barney Ford was the first person in Colorado who said black lives matter.

And he proved that black lives matter.

- Barney was in one of the first legs of this marathon.

And what he achieved was tremendous in his day.

Just making people aware that these oppressive policies, they still exist.

And that's what this movement is all about.

And that's what Barney Ford did.

Human beings are like that.

They need to be awakened from time to time, and that's what's happening now.

And that's what Barney did.

Bless his soul, he did it.

- I'm sure Barney Ford doesn't want to hear that things haven't changed that much.

Yes, we've made some strides, but institutional racism is still alive and well.

And the kinds of things that he had to fight for, black people are still fighting for every day.

- [Narrator] Even after Barney Ford found freedom from over two decades of slavery, he endured claim jumpers and multiple real estate thieves who could so easily steal from a black man.

Yet, despite every obstacle society could throw in his path, he did become the Black Baron of Colorado.

Barney made a small fortune from a gold mine.

These large nuggets of income allowed Mr. Ford to build the home befitting his legacy.

Today, tourists and scholars make pilgrimages to see the painstaking restoration of The Barney Ford House and to learn how this tenacious pioneer and his family lived.

- In 1882, when he contracted with the most prominent architect here in Breckenridge, this house was the grandest home in Breckenridge at its time.

With five rooms, two bedrooms on the east, so they would get up with the rising sun, the dining room on the west, so they would have their supper with the setting sun.

A wallpaper and chandeliers.

He had a stove in every gathering room.

- He was operating a restaurant at the time that he bought this house.

And the restaurant was just in front of the house, down on Main Street.

So the house did not have a kitchen in it.

- High ceilings.

His wallpaper was embellished with gold leaf.

And a signature feature of the architect, Elias Nashold was the Nashold window.

And it is a rectangular bay window with Victorian gingerbread on the outside.

Particularly in Nashold window, they are diamond shaped, applicase or wood carvings.

Which you can see.

That was showy.

Definitely showy.

And then in 1947, the Theobald family purchased the home.

- My parents started basically immediately on fixing the problems.

Then rewiring it and re plumbing it, and getting a foundation under the whole entire house.

And they put in water and heating system with baseboard heat.

- [Narrator] The Barney Ford House stayed in the Theobald family long after they had moved out.

Robin, always intending to make it a museum one day, did just that.

- [Robin] The year was 2001.

We set up a nonprofit organization and partnered with the town of Breckenridge to do the restoration.

- Auto-engraving of the house does not show this bay window, and once we got everything off, that archway was actually in this opening that had been closed up.

- The restoration consisted more than anything of undoing a lot of the things that my parents had done to make it into a modern home.

We think that the paint color that we have it now is pretty close to the original paint color.

Some of the wallpaper is fairly close to what he had.

- The renovations took place from 2003, I believe is when they began.

And July 4th, 2004, the Barney Ford home museum opened as a project in progress.

- We've done a lot of work to try to replicate how the Fords would have lived here in the 1880s.

So when you walk in the door, you really feel like you're stepping in to the Ford's residence in 1882.

- [Announcer] Not all of Ford's buildings have received the same meticulous care.

The once grand Inter-Ocean Hotel was neglected, and became a victim of urban renewal in 1973.

The dilapidated 100-year-old building was demolished to make way for a parking lot.

One of the other few standing Ford buildings was originally home to People's Restaurant.

Barney had built this establishment in 1863 after the Great Denver Fire, with the unexpected trust of a banker's $9,000 loan.

Offering luxuries like oysters and Havana cigars, it was an immediate hit that made him rich.

More than a century later, a piece of Barney's personal legacy in this building was saved for posterity.

- [June] The only thing that we knew Mr Ford's hands had touched were the front doors.

Those big grand front doors.

And we were allowed to bring them back here to Breckenridge.

- Preservation gives you history.

Nothing works well in terms of determining how a culture gets to where they are.

What happened before to actually get them to the point that they are nowadays?

It also gives people courage.

It gives them pride, and dignity, in their beginnings.

And it also tells them that maybe some of those people, or some of those buildings, or some of that history had something to do with my family.

Which definitely brings forth pride.

Barney Ford's legacy is history, preservation, determination, dignity, community, family 'cause he was a great man and he made great contributions to build a fabulous Colorado.

- [June] In his stained glass window at the Capitol building, in which he is memorialized as a founder of the state, in it, Mr. Ford is standing with a walking stick and it looks like a diamond stick pen, maybe a Pearl stick pen.

He is portrayed standing in front of a depiction of one of his many businesses out west.

The Inter-Ocean Hotel.

In the front of the Inter-Ocean Hotel is a tribute to his first business in Denver, his barbershop.

And at the bottom below the scroll that bears his name, is what he started with here in Colorado, a gold pan, a pick and a shovel.

And that surrounded by the state flower, the Columbine.

Most impressive is the scroll he's carrying, which says, "Colorado, free state, and black vote."

- He was one of the founding members of Zion Baptist Church.

This church, established in 1865, was one of the first black congregation west of the Mississippi.

That's huge.

- Barney Ford is our most obscure civil rights activist.

He does not deserve to be so unknown in our history.

I can see he would be synonymous with Frederick Douglas, with Henry Wagner, with other leaders of the civil rights movement in other States.

- It is essential for our wellbeing and for the strength of our country, for the stories of the people that made this country what it is.

That did the work, that laid the foundation, that built the traditions and the institutions, that those stories are told.

This country was built on the backs of black and brown, and yellow, and red people.

We could not have achieved what we have without their efforts.

What's too bad in my world, is that all of those American stories didn't get folded in to American history.

And until we come to grips with why all of the contributions are important, our country is never going to be great.

- I think he would say to keep trying to do the right thing, to be kind to people and inclusive for people.

And like John Lewis said, " Do good trouble."

- The obstacles that Barney Ford faced were hundreds of times more than the obstacles we face today.

We got a lot of work to do, make no mistake about it.

But I am encouraged, I am hopeful.

And I need to believe that Barney Ford is looking down and saying, "Right on."

(upbeat music) - These are extraordinary times, and they call for extraordinary commitment and focus and engagement.

- Black folks are right now fighting for our freedoms and our ability to even live and not be killed.

I guess people's comfort level in saying the words like black lives matter, even.

I find so many parallels with that and Barney Ford.

People did not value him as a black man so many times.

As we're saying these words, black lives matter, we must also remember black people in history who didn't matter, who today still aren't heard about or read about in our history books.

And we have to continue to fight as black people to make sure that that divide no longer exists.

That we can stand together and say, yes, black lives matter.

Yes, we all deserve these freedoms and these rights and this ability to be everything we are, everything that we want to be.

That's what we're asking for right now in the Black Lives Matter movement.

And I think that's what he was searching for as Barney Ford, finding his way in the west.

- This is a time that requires us to be diligent.

Kind of pervasive politics of hatred and division call for relentless, constant, handwork to establish a more just way, a more perfect union.