Then she persuaded the city manager to issue her a business license to operate a USO concession in Colorado Springs.ĭuncan borrowed money to buy a building to house her dream-the Cotton Club-where she employed a multiethnic staff to welcome soldiers whose war brides were also multiethnic. During World War II, she operated the soda fountain at the Haven Club, a facility for black soldiers at Camp Carson. She then married Edward Duncan and joined the work force. She graduated from Colorado Springs High School in 1938, the first in her family to earn a high school diploma. That won the argument, and Duncan displayed a permanent sign in her window: “Everybody Welcome.” Her courageous stand fostered the peaceful integration of Colorado Springs.īorn in Luther, Oklahoma, Fannie Mae Bragg came to Colorado in 1933 with her widowed mother and six siblings. Local authorities objected to her patrons “mixing colors,” but she defended her nondiscrimination policy because turning away white customers would deny them their constitutional rights. She founded the Cotton Club, a jazz mecca where she booked luminaries such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, Mahalia Jackson, and Etta James, which attracted a racially diverse following. Fannie Mae Duncan was the first African-American woman to succeed as an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and community activist in Colorado Springs.
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