Denver Post: Remembering Carrie Collins, Littleton teacher and figure in Colorado black music community; Collins spent 21 years in Littleton Schools

Carrie Collins, who taught music in Littleton schools for more than 20 years, listens at a symphonic concert held in her honor in 2011 in Huntsville, Ala.
(Provided by Renee Collins)

The Denver Post

By Joe Rubino

PUBLISHED: September 20, 2016

If you went to elementary school in Littleton between 1965 and 1986, there is chance Carrie Collins was your music teacher. But Collins’ work as the first African-American woman ever hired as a vocal music teacher instructor in a suburban Denver school district is only part of her story and the impact she made on Colorado and the country.

Carrie Beatrice Holloway Collins died on Aug. 24. She was 85. Services were held Sept. 9 at South Suburban Christian Church in Centennial..

Collins, who her family said was a “fabulous pianist,” and her husband, Clinton C. Collins Sr., were already veterans of the civil rights movement when they moved from Mississippi to Colorado in 1964. 

“My father was the first person of color to run for office in the state of Mississippi since Reconstruction,” said Beatrice Renee Collins-Williams, youngest of Collin’s three children. “The Klan burned a cross in our yard.”

The family moved to Denver on Carrie Collins’s urging, her daughter said. Her mother was impressed by the city when visiting for a National Baptist Convention in the 1950s. Clinton Collins Sr. ran unsuccessfully for State House seats in Colorado twice — in 1970 and 1980 — while also teaching history in Littleton schools. Carrie Collins meanwhile was leaving her own mark through education and music.

“Education has always been very strong in our family because they saw it as a ticket to better life,” Collins-Williams said. “My mother got her first college degree at 19. By the time she was 27 she had her master’s degree. She was a pioneer for women at that time.”

During her time in Littleton Public Schools she worked as a full-time music teacher and head of her department at Field Elementary and later Lenski Elementary schools. Her tenure brought her numerous honors including and honorable mention for Colorado Teacher of the Year, according to her 2004 autobiographical book “Love, Endurance and Perseverance.”

“Whenever possible, I would expose my students to cultural experiences from other sources,” Collins wrote in her book. “Our years in Littleton Schools were both productive and rewarding.”

Collin’s patriotic original composition, “Two Hundred Years Ago” was performed by the Field Elementary choir at the state capitol during the nation’s bicentennial celebration. The poem was read aloud on the floor of United States House of Representatives in 1995, Collins-Williams said.