Bret Colvin says founded the “Stop Islam in Gillette” Facebook group for one reason.
“I don’t want Jihadis in my neighborhood.”
Colvin is a Catholic, and an ex-Marine. His wife passed away last year, and last month he lost his job as an oil field mechanic. Now he runs a home electronics repair business out of the small Gillette house he shares with a roommate, and a few pet turtles.
The news that African American football players at the University of Missouri threatened not to play a football game against Brigham Young reminded some Wyoming players of the time they got kicked off of their team prior to a game with BYU. In Wyoming lore, they are known as the Black 14.
After it was discovered that some of the suspects involved in last month’s terror attacks in Paris may have come to France as refugees, governors around the U.S. have announced that their states will not accept Syrian Refugees until more security checks could be promised. Wyoming governor Matt Mead was one of them, but Wyoming still does not have a refugee resettlement program to bar Syrians from in the first place.
Racial diversity is not one of the things for which Wyoming is best known. According to census data, only one-point-five percent of the state’s population is African American. Now, a class at the University of Wyoming is documenting the largely untold history of black people in the West. The class is confronting black invisibility—real and perceived.
