Travel Back in Time to 1923 Denver Tonight

Take a trip back in time tonight, July 5, when Colorado Public Television offers the latest, and perhaps last (if historian producer Larry Patchett is to be believed), Time Machine installment of Colorado Inside Out.

This round, the crazy CIO crew (myself included) travels back to 1923 Denver, when the sound of jazz was in the air and the Ku Klux Klan was marching in the streets (and right into the mayor’s office).

Moderator Dominic Dezzuti plays William “Doc” Reynolds, a Denver dentist who started the city’s first radio station, KLZ, out of his home on University Boulevard in 1922; I again play Emily Griffith, the educator who’d started Denver’s Opportunity School seven years earlier (and my apologies to her); David Kopel plays Representative Edward “Big Ed” Johnson, who was later elected governor and senator; Dani Newsum is Lucille Buchanan Jones, the first African-American woman known to have graduated from the University of Colorado (though she was not allowed to participate in the graduation ceremony); and Kevin Flynn is John C. Shaffer, owner of the Rocky Mountain News.

The show will air at 8 p.m. July 5, then be re-broadcast at 9 a.m. Sunday, July 7, on 12.2; at 5 p.m. Sunday, July 7, on 12.1; and on Monday, July 8, at noon on 12.1. It will also be available at cpt12.org.

These Time Machine episodes have won numerous Emmy Awards from the Heartland Regional Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences; the 1968 show is a finalist in this year’s contest, too. The results will be announced on Saturday, July 20.