COLORADO: Good Neighbors

The little (pop. 1,849) town of Fruita, in a valley of Colorado's Rocky Mountains, had always been an all-white town. Because no Negro had ever lived there, few townspeople even knew of their Jim Crow ordinance forbidding Negroes to remain in town after sundown. Then the Minters came to Fruita.

The Minters were Melvin Minter, a Negro lumber worker from Ansley, La., his wife and ten children (aged 2 to 17), heading for Yakima, Wash., where Minter had a new job waiting. One morning last month, as they approached Fruita in their pickup truck on Highway 6, a car nosed...

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