Fannie Mae Duncan - "Everybody Welcome", Owner of The Cotton Club

As Fannie Mae’s biographer, Kay Esmiol, published the book, Everybody Welcome: A Memoir of Fannie Mae Duncan and the Cotton Club, in 2013. The sculpture of Fannie Mae Duncan, whose Cotton Club on West Colorado Avenue was the first business in the then segregated city to permit patrons of all races, will be designed and sculpted by a Fort Collins-based artist and dedicated in front of the Pikes Peak Center on October 26th. Kay Esmiol, chairwoman of the committee behind the project, said that the statue will not only be the first in the Pikes Peak region to honor a black female, but also the first to honor an historic local woman. 

The club was known for the black-and-white sign that Duncan placed in the window, which read: “EVERYBODY WELCOME.”

Esmiol, who wrote Duncan's biography before the influential businesswoman died in 2005, said that sentiment is still relevant today.