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303-594-2133 | john.eding@state.co.us

Activities start Sunday, September 27, when Denver artist Adri Norris begins a community-centered mural project on 12th Avenue between Broadway and Lincoln Street. Volunteers can sign up to help create the project via an online form at h-co.org/mural. Participants and passers-by can also see professional chalk artists creating ephemeral tributes to Ginsburg, and are invited to chalk their own personal tributes on the museum grounds.  

The experience culminates with a public ceremony on Tuesday, September 29, at 11:30 a.m. The gathering includes remarks from community leaders, bell tolling from the Denver City and County Building, and poetry recitation.

Bold Women. Change History. Remembering RBG
Commemoration Event
History Colorado // Virtual and Live

All participants are asked to wear masks and maintain six-foot social distancing at all times. Tuesday’s ceremony will also be streamed live on facebook.com/historycolorado. Presenters at Tuesday’s commemoration event include Rabbi Rachel Kobrin, who will offer an opening prayer; Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, former law clerk for Justice Ginsburg; and Polly Baca, 2020 Governor’s Citizenship Medal Recipient, and the first woman of color elected to the Colorado State Senate. Additional presenters will also speak.

“Justice Ginsburg changed my life, teaching me about equal justice under the law and what outstanding legal work looks like—an important life-long lesson,” Weiser said on Friday. “For millions around the world, her memory will continue to be a blessing.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Denver
The first gender-discrimination suit that Ginsburg argued in court took place in Denver’s Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1972. Ginsburg won the case, Moritz v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue. As noted by Smithsonian Magazine in its 2018 feature, the Court set a landmark precedent when it ruled that discrimination on the basis of sex constitutes a violation of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.

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The History Colorado Center currently features Adri Norris’s Women Behaving Badly exhibition. A 2019 fellow of the Center for Colorado Women’s History, Norris led the collaboration that created Denver’s official Black Lives Matter street mural on Broadway between Colfax and 14th Avenue, a stretch that is now known as Black Lives Matter Boulevard. A careful examiner of the power of voting and other forms of civic participation, History Colorado has led one of the nation’s largest centennial commemorations of the 19th Amendment—the largest voting-rights expansion in US history, which was certified 100 years ago last month—and will offer free admission on weekends in October during the final run-up to the election. Guests can experience a Smithsonian exhibit, American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith, and four floors of additional experiences devoted to the history of government by and for the people. More information is available at historycolorado.org/democracy.

About History Colorado
History Colorado is a division of the Colorado Department of Higher Education and a 501(c)3 non-profit that serves more than 75,000 students and 500,000 people in Colorado each year. It is a 141-year-old institution that operates Colorado’s oldest museum, nine additional museums and historic sites, a free public research center, the Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, and the History Colorado State Historical Fund (SHF), which is the nation’s largest preservation program of its kind. The SHF currently administers more than 280 grants worth approximately $24 million in active distributions across the state. More than 70% of its grants are currently allocated in rural areas of Colorado.

History Colorado’s outlets are publishing Black voices and confronting entrenched racism in historic preservation. Within the last year History Colorado has added curators of Latino Heritage and LGBTQ+ History to its staff, and added a full-time position to its Museum of Memory team, which works proactively to incorporate underserved communities and voices into its contemporary collecting initiative and other efforts. Its recent statement and historical essay on civil unrest have been widely shared by major news outlets.

History Colorado’s eight museums around the state were among the first cultural institutions in Colorado to reopen to visitors under new safety protocols. The swift return to in-person service in June followed an agile reorganization in response to COVID-19 that catalyzed new avenues for youth education, full-length episodes of its podcasts, a weekly digest with over 28,000 subscribers, and one of the nation’s most comprehensive collecting initiatives: a partnership with dozens of schools, communities, and more than 40 newsrooms called History in the Making. The State Historical Fund successfully distributed more than $1 million in grant dollars to community projects across the state this spring and continues its grant funding on schedule.

History Colorado’s mission is to create a better future for Colorado by inspiring wonder in our past. We serve as the state’s memory, preserving and sharing the places, stories, and material culture of Colorado through educational programs, historic preservation grants, collecting, outreach to Colorado communities, the History Colorado Center and Stephen H. Hart Research Center in Denver, and nine other museums and historic attractions statewide. History Colorado is one of only six Smithsonian Affiliates in Colorado. Visit HistoryColorado.org, or call 303-HISTORY, for more information.