With a fascination for history and an enthusiastic demeanor, Dr. Polly Bugros McLean, University of Colorado professor, was teaching a course on Black Women for Women & Gender Studies and was eager to localize the class curriculum by exploring the history of Black Women in Boulder County. Initially, her students laughed at her, and colleagues teased her for such an idea. Not one to back down, especially when challenged, McLean threw herself into uncovering the history of Boulder County’s Black women when an uncanny sequence of events led her to discover Lucile Berkeley Buchanan Jones.
“I went to the Heritage Center at the university that had historical archives on famous alums," McLean says. "One day the director said, we received this article, and it says, ‘CU’s First Black Female Grad: A Pioneer Buried Without a Headstone.’”
Criminals, slaves, some celebrities, and people who wanted to stay unknown were buried in unmarked graves. McLean took it upon herself to continue the investigation as accomplishing this research project was likely going to take more than a semester.
Born in 1884 and dying at the ripe old age of 105 in November of 1989, Lucile Berkeley Buchanan Jones was the first child born of emancipated slaves in Colorado. With three older siblings, Lucile’s parents had left Virginia and moved to Denver with cash to purchase land and build a house, which still stands today. Lucile attended Colorado State College for Education at Greeley (today the University of Northern Colorado) and was the first Black to graduate from UNC in 1905 and the first Black female to graduate from CU in 1918.
Dedicating about 10 years of her life to uncovering Lucile’s life history, McLean admired, “The way she challenged discrimination. The way she worked towards assuring that education would be primary for Black students. She would go out of her way to make sure that happened, and when something happened, she knew how to shake it up.”
For example, when she was teaching in Hot Springs, Arkansas, a fire broke out and burned both the Black school and the White school. The White school got rebuilt quite quickly, but the Black students were left to go to basements of churches. Quite obviously, Lucile was not onboard. She took action immediately when she saw Black students were being mistreated, and she resigned mid-semester. One of the letters that McLean found was from the principal of the school begging for Lucile to return.
“When I started hearing her determination with the racism that she faced, and her determination not to bow, that made me interested in her story. The determination to fight the good fight,” McLean shares.
Much like Lucile, McLean’s determination led her to conversations with three living family members, Lucile’s birthplace, children of Lucile’s previous employees, trunks full of Lucile’s possessions and letters, and incredible tales of her tenacity. With many twists and turns in Lucile’s story, McLean traveled across the country multiple times to find the truth of her history.
As if every breadcrumb was left for McLean to discover, Lucile lived a full life with palpable traces of her essence behind. With intriguing stories of history on the horizon, McLean continues to uncover fascinating tales of all walks of life. She shares, “We all are historians. Even if it’s a memoir that you write, leave your life behind with somebody to read it. Leave something behind, don’t just leave.”