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While
scores of white Americans looked to farming
 and ranching as a means to prosperity, many African-Americans sought their fortunes in the towns and cities of the West. By 1890, with the exception of Texas, in the most populous Western states, the majority of black residents lived in urban areas. By 1910, the combined black population of the five largest Western cities -San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Denver, and Portland -totaled only 18,008, slightly more than one-fifth the number of African-Americans in Washington,D.C., home to the nation's largest black community at that time. Yet small numbers did not prevent black Westerners from organizing a rich social and cultural life, or from battling racial injustice. As early as 1862, the San Francisco Pacific Appeal called on its readers to create political, religious, and moral organizations "wherever there are half a dozen Colored people." They responded by building churches, organizing women's clubs and literary societies, and founding newspapers and civil rights groups. Denver was a hub for such
initiative. In its early days the city saw many a gun fight -including one in
1864, when the famous black Mountain Man James Beckwourth killed William Paine,
an African-American who had terrorized local residents -but by the 1870s the
city had attracted a sizable black middle class, including a number of
physicians and lawyers.The Bonita Silver and Gold
Mining Company,founded in 1896,was run by two African-American women, the
president,Mary E.Phelps, and the secretary, Mrs.L.K.Daniels. Sarah Breedlove,
an enterprising former Louisianian, arrived and married a local newspaper
reporter, Charles J.Walker. As Madame C.J. Walker, she marketed haircare
products door to door; then,in 1907, she opened a business and factory in
Denver while promoting her "Walker System" throughout the East.
Madame Walker became the most successful African-American cosmetics
manufacturer of the early twentieth century.
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