By Fred Norgaard '71

It was the fall of 1968 and the country was reeling from the events of the year so far. The forces pulling the country apart had been gaining strength for a long time. The Vietnam War, the anti-war movement, the draft. The Civil Rights Movement, the race riots of the mid-sixties, the Black Power Movement. Campus protests across the country, sometimes violent, and crackdowns on them, sometimes violent. Cultural upheaval everywhere: sex, drugs, rock and roll, etc.

But in 1968, the darkness dropped. In March, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced that he would not run for reelection. His decision was due primarily to the unpopularity of the war. The number of troops in Vietnam reached its highest level in 1968: over 500,000. In February, the Kerner Commission, created to examine the causes of the race riots of recent years, came to this conclusion: “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.” In April, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. In June, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. In August, Chicago police beat protesters at the Democratic Convention.

That fall, Denver Country Day School was settling into the third school year on its new campus. The Kent School for Girls had just moved in up the hill to start its first year on Quincy. The schools were adjacent but only two classes were coeducational. The merger was still six years away. 

The Wasp's Nest

On September 9th, just days into the new semester, stacks of a five page, letter size, stapled, crudely typed and mimeographed document titled The Wasp’s Nest were left at both DCD and Kent.

“The Wasp’s Nest is unlike any other communication,” it began. “It rejects the Establishment, Administration and the past.”

In fact, it was not very unlike the many underground newspapers that sprang up on campuses and in dissident communities in the late sixties. It continued:

“Today’s society is a great PHOENIX which is consuming itself, smouldering (sic), burning, falling to ashes. Already, however, a new structure of values, a new morality, and a new ethic, is evolving. It is the purpose of the WASP’S NEST to expose the narrow exclusive society which is the environment of the DCD student to some of the trends of this development,” declared another article. “The younger generation is largely a middle class conglomeration of young people who have for some uncomprehendable (sic) reason, and much to the dismay of the establishment, decided that money, and the amassing of it, is not a stand on which a society or an individual should be judged by. Not only should society not be judged on a financial basis, but money should not be used as a basis for society.”

There were two poems, one entitled “Prague West,” about the police beatings at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

There was an invitation to “ADB” to write an article.

There was a contact address listed as S.W.I.N.E (Students Wildly Indignant About Nearly Everything), General Delivery, Littleton Post Office.

The paper was confiscated.

Well, We're In

Andy Black wrote to the trustees:

“Last summer at the conclave of headmasters, I learned that unless a school had an underground newspaper it was simply not “in”. Well, we’re in. See the enclosed, which appeared here today and was also distributed at Kent. (There is some evidence that Kent girls were involved in the production of the sheet, but I prefer to operate on the assumption that it is a DCD show.)

“You will find, I think, much of the paper puerile and poorly conceived and produced, but one article seems highly inflammatory and offensive. After consultation with Mike Churchman, I have decided to ignore the paper as much as possible in the expectation that it will quietly and quickly die out. I propose to devote my regular Chapel talk next Monday to the subject of freedom and its attendant responsibilities and generally play the significance of the thing down. I believe it would be a mistake to create a loud administrative flap over this matter.”

Soon, however, a second edition of The Nest came out under the headline “Entire First Issue Confiscated." It included “An Open Letter to the Trustees”:

All DCD students know what the trustees are. They are misty demi-gods, who, from their seats in faraway Valhalla, dictate, in some vague way, the workings of the school. The average trustee has about as obscure an impression of the average seventh grader as the average student has of the trustee. Why not not do something about this obscurity? The editors of The Wasp's Nest would be very happy to meet with any trustee who would like to meet with us. And we have it on good authority that the Student Council would likewise be so willing.

The paper was confiscated again.

The third edition of The Wasp’s Nest started with the headline “The Underground Surfaces.” After the paper’s second confiscation, it reported, a “treaty” was struck with Mr. Black. “In return for disclosing our names, we have at our disposal all the printing facilities provided by DCD and Associated Schools, our paper was returned and we were granted privileges. We won.”

Andy Black had finessed it. Between the rock of The Wasp’s Nest and the hard place of the Board, he had stepped as deftly as the mountaineer he was.

This edition of the paper was the first to have a masthead. There were four DCD editors, three seniors, one junior and seven staff members, including two Kent girls. If there was a prevailing view of The Wasp’s Nest at Kent, it might have been captured by an editorial in The Shield reacting to the first issue. It accused the paper’s creators of “following in the footsteps of the boby-soxers (sic), beat-niks et al in rebelling against the Establishment, although with considerably less taste and absolutely no originality.” The Nest lobbed back its own accusations of “irrelevance” and “apathy” at The Shield and Kent.

The paper sharpened its focus on actual changes it sought, asking:

"Most students are completely unaware that they represent a select portion of our society, despite the school’s token attempts to integrate. But does the administration realize that if true economic and social integration were effected the school would benefit most?” 

Students Address the Board of Trustees

The DCD Board of Trustees meeting of Dec. 8, 1968 is recounted in Walter Rosenberry’s “Historical Notes, 1953 — 1974.” Evidently, the Board had decided to accept the invitation by The Wasp’s Nest editors to meet with them or the Student Council. This is from Mr. Rosenberry’s account, with quotations from the minutes:

In an unprecedented move, the Student Council met with the Board for the first forty minutes of the meeting.’ … Various council members presented suggestions for the improvement of the School ‘in line with the agenda they had previously submitted.’ These recommendations dealt with food service, particularly with the kitchen’s understaffing … The uneven coaching in the School was noted, and a recommendation for more professional coaching was made. ‘The Student Council requested that the Trustees give highest priority to improving the faculty salary scale, saying that to do so would be an investment in the School’s long range excellence. They pointed out that the present scale of annual incomes has failed to keep pace with inflationary trends… The scholarship program, particularly aid for economically and culturally deprived inner-city boys should be increased… It was suggested that scholarships for poor and minority students might be handled cooperatively on a multi-school basis by the Association of Colorado Independent Schools.’

In a discussion which followed, note was made that recently food had improved, and ‘it was emphasized that an increase in enrollment would help bring about solutions to most of the problems brought up by the Student Council, and the Council expressed willingness to be of help in recruitment of new students. The possibility of using student solicitors in the Annual Giving Program was also discussed … The Trustees expressed appreciation to the Student Council for their concern for the School and for their good suggestions, and [DCD Board President H. Benjamin] Duke assured the students that the Trustees would give serious consideration to all the Council’s recommendations.’

A fourth (and to be the last) issue of The Wasp’s Nest followed that early December Board meeting. Now there were four Kent girls on the masthead and eleven DCD boys. It began with “A Challenge Answered,” which summarized the topics addressed in the meeting. “The trustees appeared to listen intently to the Council’s speeches, but it remains to be seen if the historic meeting accomplished anything.”

Campus Adapts

It took another five months to find out, but on May 26th, 1969, the Board met and (according to the minutes) this happened:

At the request of President Duke, the Headmaster reported to the Student Council the substance of steps taken to fulfill their requests of December 1968 for the betterment of the school: a six percent increase in faculty salaries for the coming year; the active recruitment of minority and disadvantaged students to expand the scholarship program; an improvement in the food served at the School; and a full scale review of the School’s athletic policy to be undertaken in the summer.

On behalf of the Trustees, Mr. Duke thanked the Student Council … for their work on behalf of the School and applauded their involvement in DCD affairs.

The final edition of The Nest was devoted mostly to racial issues and anti-war sentiments. There was a long piece on the black power movement. There was also a political cartoon, a slightly snarky “Kent Diary,” which reported on the social activities of the “silver-spoon set,” and a call for the formation of a literary magazine, since Colorado Academy had one and DCD did not.

The Wasp’s Nest didn’t last past 1968, but the waves it had made kept rippling out during the rest of the school year and beyond. DCD’s curriculum was undergoing major changes. From Mr. Rosenberry’s Notes:

In 1969, at the end of the winter term, Denver Country Day held an “unusual special Symposium Week, during which the boys, in lieu of classes, would attend a variety of field trips, meetings and seminars in an effort to create in them an awareness of some problems of contemporary society.”

I remember one outing to the headquarters of the Black Panthers, where their leader, Lauren Watson, showed us bullet holes the police had shot into the front door. Other changes to come in the next couple of years were an increased number of coeducational classes, the team-taught Twentieth Century course, and the 4-1-4 school year calendar.

Mr. Rosenberry reported that “The Student Council attended portions of the December 8, 1969 trustee meeting and continued their dialogue with the trustees concerning a variety of matters affecting the students and their activities at school, a Vietnam Discussion Day, student work on greater Kent-DCD coordination, and the benefits of the enhanced scholarship program being among the topics dealt with.”

“We are here to stay,” editors of The Wasp’s Nest had proclaimed. No, but the effects of their activism were. And they were good effects: greater diversity, more financial aid, better paid teachers, and of course, good food.

Author's Note: Many thanks to Terry Tomsick, who remembers everything and saved everything and has been kind and generous to share it all.

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Looking Back: A DCD/KDCD Alum Reflects on the 1970s

Charlie Emmons ‘74 (now deceased) and Capt. William Eric Mosley ‘77 (pictured at right) were two of the early integrators at DCD/Kent Denver following student activism for greater diversity. In a 2006 article in Denver’s Core magazine, Emmons interviewed Mosley about the difficulties and challenges they faced as some of the school’s first Black students, as well as the personal growth they experienced:

“Despite the difficulties and challenges, I was able to find my stride and confidence and grew into who I am as a person,” said Kent Denver Distinguished Alumni Award recipient Mosley. “I became confident and comfortable in my own skin.” 

In a 2022 interview for the school’s Centennial yearbook, Mosley added that DCD/KDCD faculty member Walter S. Rosenberry III (English teacher, 1957–1981) offered invaluable encouragement “to defy the odds and to live up to the high standards embodied by my parents.”

Mosley’s mother, Edna, was a civil rights leader, business woman and the first black city councilwoman in Aurora, CO. His father, Lieutenant Colonel John Mosley, was a community leader, an inductee to Colorado’s Sports Hall of Fame, a combat pilot and a member of the Tuskegee Airmen.

Given his family legacy and his time at the school, it's not surprising Mosley's senior yearbook quote was: "Self-Confidence: The first secret of success. - Ralph Waldo Emerson"