Richard T. Castro

Richard Thomas Castro (1946 – April 13, 1991), an educational and civil rights activist, was director of Denver's Agency for Human Rights and Community Relations at the time of his death from an aneurysm. In the 1970s, Castro had been the chairperson of the West Side Coalition, a Denver neighborhood organization. During that time, he was the subject of an attempted dynamite attack on his house, allegedly by Chicano radicals associated with Crusade for Justice members. He was beaten by Denver police and was shot.

He was elected to the school board in the mid '80s. He was a Colorado state representative, first elected in 1974 at age 25. Castro was an early instructor in what would become the Chicana and Chicano Studies Department at Metropolitan State College of Denver, where he is honored by the Richard T. Castro Distinguished Visiting Professorship Castro was an opponent of the proposed "English Only" amendment, "Say it In English."

Virginia Castro met Richard Castro when they were both students at Metropolitan State College of Denver in 1967. "I didn't even know who he was, but I knew he was in a leadership position," she shared. After attending several meetings to organize Chicano students in the movement, the two got closer and were married in 1972. They attended University of Denver graduate schools together. Virginia Castro worked her way through school as a nurse and then spent several years inside Denver Public Schools as a social worker. Later, she became the supervisor of social work services. "I had a case load at work and then a case load at home," she chuckled referring to her five children.

Richard Castro was born in Walsenburg, Colorado to father Archie and mother Josephine. With his ancestral roots in the southern Colorado coal mines and in soldiered frontiers of northern New Mexico, his ancestors have inhabited the land for centuries. Virginia Castro's mother was born in Mexico and came to Colorado around 1925. She met her husband in the fields on the western slope where they worked as migrant workers in Glenwood Springs.