For generations, Denver's Five Points neighborhood was the heart of the city's Black community. Known as the Harlem of the West for its rich jazz history, the neighborhood was home to Black-owned restaurants, shops, barbershops, music venues, and families whose lives were deeply connected to the businesses along Welton Street.
Today, Five Points looks considerably different. Decades of gentrification, redevelopment, and rising costs have changed the neighborhood's demographics and commercial landscape. Many longtime businesses have disappeared, and vacant storefronts remain along portions of the historic corridor. Yet Five Points continues to be a center of cultural identity, community organizing, and Black history in Denver.
Among the businesses that have endured is Welton Street Cafe, founded in 1986 by Flynn and Mona Dickerson, who brought their Caribbean roots and family recipes to Colorado. What began as a small family operation grew into one of Denver's most recognizable soul food restaurants, serving everything from fried chicken and catfish to Caribbean-style patties.
Over four decades, the restaurant has operated from several locations and under different names, including Sadie's and Wings and Tings. In the early 1990s, light-rail construction forced the family to relocate from Welton Street. In 1999, the business settled into its longtime home at 2736 Welton Street, where it remained for more than two decades.
For co-owner Fathima Dickerson, preserving the Welton Street Cafe has always meant more than keeping a restaurant open. Growing up in Five Points, she remembers a neighborhood where Black-owned businesses lined the streets and neighbors knew one another by name.
" All the business owners knew each other. They knew their kids. It was more heavily populated with Black entrepreneurs when I was growing up in the '90s," said Dickerson.
"The cleaners, we had gift shops, we had restaurants, there were bars. We had the Minerva's Hats. And it gave that neighborhood feel."
She has also witnessed the gradual disappearance of many of those businesses and the sense of community they helped sustain.
" You see it slowly just trickle down, and we consider ourselves the last man standing. Your neighbors make the neighborhood, and so when you lose neighbors, the neighborhood changes, and it feels different because there's absence there," she said.
In March 2022, Welton Street Cafe closed its location at
2736 Welton Street, after the family was unable to secure an extended lease. The closure followed years of building maintenance challenges, pandemic-related pressures, and the growing need for a larger space. The Dickersons temporarily operated a takeout kitchen and continued serving food through community events while raising funds to rebuild.
After extensive renovations and delays, the restaurant reopened in November 2024 at 2883 Welton Street, remaining rooted in the same neighborhood that had supported the family for decades.
The story of the family-run restaurant is one of resilience, but also of resistance to erasure. As Denver continues to grow and change, Welton Street Cafe remains a reminder that the history of Five Points lives not only in its buildings, but in the people, families, and businesses that continue to shape its identity.
That story is part of a Rocky Mountain Community Radio project marking Colorado’s 150th year of statehood and the United States' 250th birthday.
Rocky Mountain Community Radio is a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, including Aspen Public Radio.
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