Denver's Gang of 19 inspired a movement in 1978 that's still important today

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Civic Center Park was inspired by the City Beautiful movement that swept the country at the turn of the last century. But six decades later, a protest on the edge of the park exposed a very ugly reality: The Regional Transportation District, established in 1969 by the Colorado Legislature, was about to buy more than 200 new buses…all without wheelchair lifts.

At the time, only ten buses in the RTD fleet were accessible; the year before, attorney John Holland had filed a lawsuit on behalf of Atlantis, a community of disabled individuals, arguing that the new buses, approximately one-third of the fleet, should be fully accessible to people in wheelchairs. But the district court ruled in favor of RTD.

So on July 5, 1978, Wade Blank, a Presbyterian minister and co-founder of Atlantis, an independent living center for those with disabilities, led a group of nineteen people in wheelchairs to the corner of Broadway and Colfax, where one tried to board a bus, then blocked the bus. The group of nineteen then blocked a second bus, chanting “We will ride.” The blockade snarled traffic at the heart of Denver, and police officers — whose squad cars were not accessible — wound up arresting two aides, rather than the disabled protesters. The 24-hour action grabbed attention across the country. “The Gang of 19 started shocking the world,” Holland told Westword. “It was the beginning of a protest that was nationwide in scope.”

The charges against the aides were dropped and Holland appealed Atlantis’ original suit; RTD settled, agreeing to retrofit all 213 buses with wheelchair lifts. The Gang of 19 ultimately achieved its goal of wheelchair accessibility for all buses in Denver, sparking a nationwide movement aimed at modifying public transportation and facilities (not to mention police cars and courts) to accommodate people with disabilities.

“What it said to people was that we weren’t going to stop. It was really dramatic how that unfolded,” says Barry Rosenberg, who co-founded Atlantis with Blank. “It was the shot heard around the world with disability rights.”

A dozen years later, Congress passed the Americans With Disabilities Act. “RTD made its buses accessible ahead of the ADA,” says Gabe Christie, RTD’s ADA manager, who adds that the Gang of 19 protest had a profound effect still felt today at the agency. “The community told us what they want. We needed to listen. We stopped being reactive, and we did our level best to be proactive.”

That work continues. RTD recently completed an assessment of who owns the bus stops in the district (RTD owns less than 2 percent), and is accountable for their upkeep and accessibility upgrades; that info is now accessible on a page on RTD’s website. At the start of the year, RTD’s remodeled Civic Center station was named after Wade Blank (who’s otherwise remembered with a little plaque in the sidewalk by the site of the protest) — although a dedication ceremony was scuttled because of concerns over another accessibility protest involving Uber. The agency has a working group of accessibility advisors and is already talking about how to commemorate the Gang of 19 on its 50th anniversary. “When we talk about civil rights cities, we usually look to the South,” says Christie. “As a seventh-generation Coloradan, I see this is a civil rights city, and we get to celebrate.”

The city is celebrating that heritage as part of the massive Civic Center Park renovation, where a Gang of 19 memorial is an intrinsic part of the redesign. “The history of the Gang of 19 emerged in our research, after a lot of digging into 2012, when Denver Civic Center became a national historic landmark,” says Jenna Harris, the Downtown Parks Program manager for the Department of Parks & Recreation. That honor focused largely on architecture and the park’s role in the City Beautiful movement, while the Gang of 19, “an important moment in the history of this district, was not included.”

It will be now. At focus groups with community members, including Phamaly, Denver’s theater troupe for artists with disabilities, Parks & Rec considered both the past and future of Civic Center. And Studio Gang, the firm charged with the design for Civic Center’s next hundred years, “came up with an ingenious solution to change orientation,” Harris says, “allowing us to make the Greek Theater fully accessible for the first time in its 100-year history.”

The park’s main entrance is shifting to the south side, off the 14th Avenue Parkway, and the walkway leading into the park and that theater will feature a giant medallion dedicated to the Gang of 19, complete with the slogan “We Will Ride.” A $1.8 million Mellon Foundation grant for monuments is covering that homage; the rest of the money for Civic Center’s $50 million upgrade includes $4 million from Elevate Denver and $30 million from the Downtown Development Authority.

When the project is completed next fall, Councilmember Chris Hinds, who uses a wheelchair, will be able to easily access the Greek Theater for the first time. Once he got to the stage on a lift, and a second time via a 60-foot ramp that took two days to set up and two more to dismantle.

“Not only do we get this homage — ‘We Will Ride’ — on the ground, but we get unimpeded access,” Hinds says. “It’s worth talking about and sharing. Forty-nine years ago, these people created access. It is thanks to Wade Blank, and it is still having repercussions today. Denver was the national center of the accessibility movement, starting in 1978.”

But there’s still work to do. “We were the leaders, and sometimes we’re still the laggards,” notes Hinds.

“Once you start looking at this work,” says Christie, “Wow, we still have so much left to do.”

Still, when the new entrance to Civic Center Park is revealed next fall, it should be a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

“The project to honor the Gang of 19 and make the Civic Center wheelchair accessible, in my mind and those of many, many persons with disabilities, is simply incredible,” says Rosenberg. “The attention to detail has been phenomenal, and the location of the Gang of 19 placement at the heart of Denver clearly shows that persons with disabilities are not in the shadows, but are an integral group in Denver’s diversity.”

Read the 1977 50 for 50 story here, and send suggestions to patricia.calhoun@westword.com.