EYES ON THE PRIZE

This past June, Wellington Webb, one of the West’s most prominent Black politicians of the late 20th century, was at the high-rise office of his eponymous lobbying firm, in a conference room overlooking the north side of the state Capitol. For weeks, the gray granite structure had been the epicenter of protests in the city, its facade marked with black and white and red graffiti that looked like tiny dots from Webb’s window on the 28th floor. The Capitol’s golden dome gleamed beneath him in the morning light.

It is not an overstatement to say that 2020 has been a cataclysmic year: The confluence of historic social unrest over the treatment of Black Americans by police and a global pandemic that continues to threaten the physical and economic health of our nation has inexorably changed the country, and the world. For Webb, the collision of events marked a definitive shift in his public life. Now 79 years old, he could feel his time in the political spotlight slowly drawing to a close.

As late May melted into June, the former three-term mayor of Denver had found himself in a contemplative mood. His age made him particularly vulnerable to the pandemic. His race made him vulnerable to poor outcomes with police officers. As a thirtysomething state legislator in the early 1970s, he’d challenged Denver law enforcement and twice led protests outside City Hall after Black men had been brutalized. He kept the newspaper clippings as proof, and he handed the photocopies to me when I met with him this summer. It was a not-so-subtle reminder—he was not quite gone, and he definitely would not be forgotten.

As protests gained momentum in the city and COVID-19 continued its advance throughout the country, Webb had necessarily taken a secondary role, advising the young Black men and women who now were making their own headlines at the forefront of the social movement. At a time when Webb and Denver’s other older Black leaders suddenly found themselves sidelined by the threat of illness, this newer generation had become more visible, leading protests and marches and pushing consequential legislation under the gold dome down the street.

“Everybody’s worried about my health,” Webb said as we sat in the conference room at Webb Group International, the firm he started when he left office in 2003. He tugged at a white surgical mask that hid his omnipresent mustache.

He did not seem distressed about this new