Everybody Welcome: A Memoir Of Fannie Mae Duncan and the Cotton Club

In the summer of 1933, widowed Mattie Brinson Bragg arrived in Colorado Springs hoping to find opportunity for her family. Five of her seven children were crowded midst all their worldly belongings, everybody in the back of an open-air truck, and upon seeing majestic Pikes Peak for the first time, the youngsters from the back country of Oklahoma began screaming at the top of their lungs, "Colo-RAID-o! Colo-RAID-o!" No one could have imagined that one of the youngsters in that desperate farm family would grow up to work for a Russian count, pressure City Manager Earl Mosley to give her a business license, persuade a wealthy Broadmoor socialite to lend her money or a business venture, stand up to the admonitions of formidable Colorado Springs Police Chief "Dad" Bruce, and as a result, peacefully integrate the city to the musical accompaniment of the top black artists of the day at her Cotton Club. Who was the young teenager arriving that summer day in 1933? Colorado SPrings bid WELCOME to Fannie Mae Duncan.