HISTORY
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Cultural History: African Americans
A History of Black Americans in California by Eleanor M. Ramsey, Researcher and Writer From FIVE VIEWS: California Department of Parks and Recreation Sections Introduction A.M.E. Church References A History of Black Americans in California: This report, an historical overview of the Afro-American experience in California, was drawn from both oral and documentary accounts to identify and interpret significant Afro-American cultural resources. The study broadly covers the period from the Spanish and Mexican era through World War II, with the years between 1850 and 1940 examined in greatest detail. To date, little factual information has been collected concerning Black presence in the decades immediately following statehood. There are few references to the experience of Black people either in nineteenth century local histories or in later and more scholarly interpretive histories. It is only recently that rural, poor, and ethnic minorities have been given serious consideration by American historians. Yet, despite scholarly neglect, the experience of Black Californians has been recorded in the memories of living people. And it is from these memories -- both recollections and eyewitness accounts -- that much of the historical data compiled in this report has been obtained. Lay persons and scholars alike seem to believe that before 1940 there were virtually no Black people in the state. Contrary to these notions, although Afro-American people were comparatively few in number before World War II, they were settled throughout the state and made significant contributions to its development and growth. Population centers during the nineteenth century were located in the state's northern region. More than 60 percent of the Black persons in California counted in the United States Census of 1850 lived in Mother Lode mining towns. Within the decade of the 1850s, the population doubled and shifted away from the mines, so a mere 30 percent of the 3,721 Black persons enumerated in the 1860 census lived in the Mother Lode. By 1900, 7,858 Black people lived in California, widely distributed among both northern and southern counties. Numerically small until the late 1940s, the group maintained a steady growth rate, although it never exceeded one percent of the total population. However, once the population center shifted to Southern California in the two decades before World War II, the growth rate in Los Angeles County alone doubled the rate for the entire state. In this study, Black life has been examined from several perspectives: work experience, social organization, political status, and economic development. But these processes, like the social and political constraints on them, have been given only cursory consideration. Enough, however, has been done to unequivocably demonstrate the breadth in time and geographical space of the Afro-American experience and the availability of both archival and oral history resources for further study. Further research should be done in a timely manner, since the most valuable resource for this type study, the living memories, are not timeless. Without the benefit of elderly Blacks' recollections and eyewitness accounts, many dimensions of the Afro-American contribution to California will never be known. A History of Black Americans in California: The presence of Black people in California dates back to the Spanish colonial expansion. When the Spanish expeditions to the Pacific Coast were being organized, Africans, present in Mexico by the sixteenth century, were recruited. Serving in various capacities, free men of African ancestry helped establish California missions and pueblos. They constituted 25 percent of Juan Bautista de Anza's 1775 expedition to San Francisco, and more than 50 percent of the colony established at Los Angeles in 1781. In fact, the first non-Indian buried in Monterey was a Black man. Entry number one in the first Book of Deaths at the Mission San Carlos Borromeo, the second mission established in California and the first in Northern California, was a Black man, Alex Nino. Under Mexican rule, some Black persons who were naturalized Mexican citizens attained eminence in California. At the beginning of the American period, Richard Freeman, an Afro-American born in the eastern United States, joined the small American colony at San Diego. On February 10, 1847, Freeman bought the Ponciano property, a lot and a four room, one-story adobe building. There, he resided with Allen Light, the colony's other Afro-American, until his death in 1851 . These men operated a profitable grog shop known as the San Diego House in the adobe during their four years' residence. Not much is known about the association of these two men before the period of their San Diego residency, although there are a few records on Light's life. Light, a native of Philadelphia, was in New York by 1827, the year an affidavit was prepared certifying the 24-year-old man's free status. History records him as present in California sometime around 1835. Light deserted the ship Pilgrim that year to remain in the Mexican territory. Along the Pacific Coast, he quickly gained prominence as a sea otter hunter. Some of his activities have been recorded in Richard Henry Dana's book, Two Years Before the Mast. By 1839, Light was a Mexican citizen, commissioned by the Alcalde of Santa Barbara to enforce Mexican maritime law as it pertained to sea otter hunting. Light moved to Humboldt County sometime after Freeman's death and died there in 1881. Mary Light, whom he apparently married after leaving San Diego, died six years before her husband. Black people also settled in the village of Yerba Buena on San Francisco Bay. William Alexander Leidesdorff, born in 1810 in the Virgin Islands to a Danish man and an African woman, was reputedly the wealthiest and certainly one of the village's most influential men. He achieved great prominence during his seven-year residence in San Francisco, through commercial and political endeavors. In addition to San Francisco properties, Leidesdorff received Rancho Rio de los Americanos (later known as Folsom) in eastern Sacramento County as a Mexican land grant. Following Leidesdorff's untimely death, the city fathers, as a tribute to their distinguished early citizen, staged an impressive funeral. However, a memorial befitting this famous pioneer was never erected in the city to which he made such a profound contribution. Delegates to California's 1849 constitutional convention drafted a charter that created a non-slave state, yet they severely proscribed the civil rights of free persons of color. After admission to the Union, the California Legislature, in its first sessions, enacted further proscriptions in order to disenfranchise Black citizens. Black people had no right to: 1) testify in court against a White person; 2) receive a public education; 3) homestead public lands; or 4) vote. California's Black leadership held conventions in several northern counties during the nineteenth century to develop political strategies and social programs designed to bring about a new political order. Four State Conventions of the Colored Citizens of California were convened between 1855-1865 in order to secure full citizenship. Sacramento's Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first Black church west of the Mississippi, hosted three of the four conventions. The fourth was held in San Francisco. Born of political circumstances, the African Methodist Espiscopal (A.M.E.) Church was the oldest Black church in the United States. In 1787, Richard Allen led the withdrawal of Black Methodists from the predominantly White Philadelphia congregation with whom the group had worshipped, and created a racially separate church. W.E.B. DuBois described that church as "the greatest Negro organization in the world," an accolade earned through active involvement in secular affairs. Black theology, as the A.M.E. Church interpreted it, was inseparable from practical matters of liberation. Committed to combatting institutionalized prejudice and bringing about a new political order, the church made available financial support, meeting rooms, and an educated leadership wherever it emerged. Whenever possible, new branches of African Methodism were organized. Thus, the church seized on the opportunity to establish African Methodism in California immediately following statehood. Sacramento's A.M.E. Church formally established the A.M.E. Church of California, and for more than three decades it was the principal Black denomination in the state. A.M.E. churches emerged in various towns, built on the efforts of the church's educated leadership and the strength of its political program. By the time the Third Annual Convention of Ministers and lay delegates to the California Conference met in September 1863, substantial and comfortable houses of worship stood in Coloma, Marysville, Sacramento, Stockton, San Francisco, Grass Valley, and Nevada City. All that remains in most gold mining towns to designate the first sites of Black political activity are the words, "African Church," written across lots on nineteenth-century property maps. The decision was made in 1854 for the first State Convention "to take into consideration the propriety of petitioning the Legislature of California for a change in the law relating to the testimony of colored people in the Courts of Justice of this State." [1] Forty-nine delegates from 10 counties were present at the First Colored Convention of California, held in Sacramento's Bethel African Methodist Church November 20-22, 1855. The general assembly created an association with county auxiliaries and a $10,000 discretionary fund to wage a formal statewide campaign against statutory disenfranchisement. The right to testimony was virtually tantamount to free status. Without it, individuals could not protect personal status or property from either the allegations or assault of others. The Civil Practice Act, Section 394, which passed into law in 1852, made the testimony of a Black person in admissable in the courts when offered in cases involving a White person. A History of Black Americans in California: While the convention's primary objective was repeal of the law that deprived Black people of the right to testimony, education was also recognized as a key issue. Many delegates considered education to be the vehicle for change. Convention delegates spoke of education as "a quality, a means to dignify men, to enable them to command respect of their fellows and increase their intelligence and wealth." An education committee was created at the Second Convention, held at the same location in Sacramento, December 9-12, 1856. The education committee did much to secure educational opportunities for Black youth. A statewide committee of Black men selected by the Second Convention's general assembly spearheaded the campaign to repeal the 1852 law that barred Black children from the common schools. Concurrently, it assisted parent groups trying to secure admission to their local common schools, and as an interim measure, it established private schools to provide immediate instruction. The Black church, and particularly the African Methodist Espiscopal Church of California (A.M.E.), through its missions and stations, opened the first schools. By 1854, both the Sacramento and San Francisco A.M.E. churches had set up classrooms in their basements. Actions taken by Black parents in local school districts precipitated a series of amendments to legislation concerning segregated schools. Incremental changes between 1852 and 1879 gave Black children legal access to a separate, although unequal, education. Statutory proscription of Black children's right to a public education was not repealed until 1880. For a limited period in the 1850s, some school districts admitted Black children to common schools. When the Grass Valley Common School opened in 1854, three Black children were admitted. Parents, on learning that the presumably White children each had a Black parent, petitioned the trustees for their removal. The trustees refused, and the petition was forwarded to the State Superintendent of Public Instruction who invoked the 1852 statute and ordered the trustees to exclude the children or lose their state funding. The trustees refused. The superintendent, who at that time did not have the power to revoke funding, could not censor the trustees. The legislature soon amended the school segregation bill to give the State Superintendent censorship power. After 1860, the superintendent could indeed censor a district by removing its state funds. Formal educational institutions housed in buildings outfitted as schools began to appear in the 1860s through efforts organized by Black communities and supported by their subscriptions. Private schools opened in towns like Nevada City, Marysville, Oakland, San Jose, and Red Bluff. In 1864, the State Superintendent of Public Schools, John Swett, in his Thirteenth Annual Report, stated that there were 831 Black school-age children in California, and six state-supported "colored schools." Located in San Francisco, Sacramento, Marysville, San Jose, Stockton, and Petaluma, these schools could serve only a fraction of the Black youth. Furthermore, the colored schools did not meet the Black communities' requirement that their children enjoy equal access to publicly supported education. In 1872, Mrs. Harriet A. Ward, on behalf of her daughter Mary Frances who was denied admission by Principal Noah Flood of the Broadway School in San Francisco, initiated California's first school segregation court case. Eighteen months later, the State Supreme Court established the principle of "separate but equal" in California school law, in the Ward v. Flood case. Even after the school segregation legislation was repealed, vestiges of discriminatory practices against Black students had to be removed through judicial intervention. Visalia, a district in Tulare County that resisted educating its Black youth until 1873, did not desegregate until 1890, and then only under a court order. Edmund Wysinger, a Black resident of Visalia, filed a writ of mandate on behalf of his minor son, Arthur, on October 2, 1888, challenging a public institution's authority to deny a group its constitutional right because of race, color, or national origin. On March 1, 1890, the California Supreme Court, in Wysinger v. Crookshank reversed a lower court decision and ordered 12-year-old Arthur Wysinger admitted to Visalia's regular school system. School segregation emerged again in the twentieth century. The pattern, however, differed from that of the previous century. By 1910, schools staffed with White personnel were the general practice. Black teachers were barred as public school teachers, just as they were from most other non-menial occupations. School districts excluded trained Black professionals until the 1950s by requiring teachers to have at least one year's experience in California under a regular appointment, an eligibility criterion that could not be met in a closed system. Ironically, El Centro's Elementary District, among the state's most rigidly segregated systems, inadvertently made it possible in 1913 for a few teachers to circumvent the barriers to professional opportunity. El Centro followed the Southern segregation model, in which the staff and students were a racially homogeneous group. Consequently, only Black teachers could be assigned to teach Black students, and the assignments were regular teaching appointments. Given the obvious benefits of regular teaching appointments, the city's elementary and high school districts attracted the state's most talented teachers. Despite the inadequacies of facilities at the two Black schools, their curriculum and instructional staff were superior. Teachers who held regular appointments in El Centro achieved at least the formal requirements for employment in other districts in the state that had predominantly Black schools. Holmes Avenue in Los Angeles was the first school in that city where Black teachers who had the requisite teaching experience could secure an appointment. Erected in 1910 adjacent to the Furlong Tract, a Black settlement established on a subdivided tract, it was the first school in Los Angeles specifically built for a Black neighborhood. For many years, the staff at Holmes Avenue was totally White. When the district finally did hire Black staff members, most had received their training in El Centro. A History of Black Americans in California: The California Legislature not only disenfranchised its Black citizens, but also enacted a fugitive slave law that jeopardized the status of free persons of color. Evidence derived from various court cases, manumission records, pioneers' personal documents, and legislative proceedings show that conditions of servitude existed for many Black Californians between 1848 and 1863. The conditions prevailed despite a constitutional provision which stipulated that "neither slavery or involuntary servitude, unless for the punishment of a crime shall ever be tolerated in the State." Even though the constitution prohibited the peculiar institution, it should be noted that an 1852 law provided for seizure of any person alleged to be a fugitive brought to the state before its admission to the Union. On proof to the satisfaction of a magistrate of the court, the accused could be removed from the state. Under no circumstances could testimony of the alleged fugitive be admitted as evidence. Official records indicate that this law was used to veil the intent of persons unlawfully holding others in involuntary servitude. The experience of Biddy Mason and Stephen Spencer Hill are two cases in point. Despite their political disenfranchisement, Black people contributed to the development of three California industries before World War II: mining, lumber, and agriculture. Black miners could be found throughout the mining frontier -- in the Mother Lode Country and in Southern California's gold mines. Historic place names in the gold region such as Negro Bar, Negro Flat, and Nigger Ravine are reminders of Black miners' presence and the racist behavior their presence evoked. Pejorative epithets such as these, commonly used in gold region place names, portray the hostile environment within which Black miners worked to secure their claims, protect their liberty, and guard against bodily harm. Without the right to testify against Whites, these miners had only their genius, brawn, and comrades to protect them from White miners' encroachments. Individual Blacks, free and slave, worked alongside Whites, while others worked in company with fellow Black miners. Kentucky Ridge Mine, near Bidney Springs in Nevada County, operated for two years (1851 and 1852) by a large number of slaves, has acquired virtual legendary status. A colony of Black men and women settled along Deer Creek in 1851 to work the Kentucky Ridge Mine. These Afro-Americans came to Nevada County from Georgia as the slaves of Colonel William F. English. English reportedly was a Georgia planter who sold his plantation in 1850, then journeyed to Philadelphia, where he purchased a ship to transport machinery and workers to California to establish a mining enterprise. Organized mining companies formed by Afro-Americans operated some profitable mining claims. A Black concern owned Horncut Mine, a prosperous quartz claim in Brown's Valley, the town near Marysville in Yuba County that became prominent for its rich surface diggings and extensive quartz mines. Another Black mining concern, the Rare Ripe Gold and Silver Mining Company, also located in Brown's Valley was, according to an article in the San Francisco Elevator, 1868, a "first class" company (a noteworthy comment, since quartz mining required heavy machinery, and few men had the investment capital to properly outfit that kind of mining operation). Outside Stockton, San Joaquin County, Mose Rodgers, in company with other Black men, owned several successful mining companies. Rodgers best-known mine, and one for which he was a stockholding superintendent, was the Washington Mine, established in 1869. In certain years, more than half a million dollars in gold was taken out of the Washington Mine. A mining tycoon and technical genius, Rodgers was constantly sought after for his knowledge of mining technology. Gold was discovered in San Diego County in 1869 by a Black man, Frederick Coleman. Coleman made the discovery near Julian, in a creek that now bears his name. Thousands swarmed to the area as news of the discovery spread, radically changing the quiet settlement that had originally been established by Blacks and Indians. A town government was installed, and the place was renamed to commemorate the Julian brothers, Mike and Webb, former Confederate soldiers. The ethnic character of the new town changed after the discovery of gold, but its Black population continued to increase. In fact, Julian continued to have the highest percentage of Black residents of any town in the county until 1900, and Black people continued to be represented in the commercial sector as the new town began to grow. Prominent among the entrepreneurs were Albert and Margaret Robinson, who operated a restaurant in the 1870s and later expanded it to include a hotel. The Robinson Hotel, operated under family management until 1921, is now the town's only hotel. Black mill workers from the old South were a principal labor force in the wood products industry in at least three counties between 1920 and 1960. Experienced Black mill workers recruited directly from the South are known to have migrated to lumber towns in Plumas and Siskiyou counties in the 1920s, and in Placer County in the 1940s. Weed and Foresthill are two lumber towns that serve as examples of Afro-Americans' critical participation in the industry. McCloud and a number of other towns share a similar history. Further examination of this facet of the lumber industry could contribute a great deal toward an understanding of a significant pattern of labor history. Black settlements were established in Quincy and Weed during the 1920s by Louisiana-based sawmill companies that purchased existing California mills and recruited experienced workers from communities adjacent to the parent company's home operation. Transportation costs were advanced, and housing was guaranteed for those willing to relocate. In the 1920s, when Southern Black mill workers entered the California lumber industry's labor force, racial discrimination was flagrant throughout the industry. The employment structure limited Black men to non-supervisory positions. Although they were indispensable to the mills' operation, their compensation and status were never commensurate to their work. Their responsibilities ranged from highly skilled operations to the most dangerous, and some mills were manned by virtually all Black crews that performed all but supervisory functions. It was not until quite recently that Black men have been elevated to the position of foreman. A History of Black Americans in California: Americans who established farms in the San Joaquin and Imperial Valleys toward the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century recruited Southern Blacks, a plentiful source of cheap labor, to introduce their experimental crops. Consequently, Afro-Americans were among the earliest contract laborers recruited from outside the state to develop California agriculture. Fresno County is one early example of the recruitment of Afro- American farm laborers. At the end of the nineteenth century, the agricultural industry in Fresno County began to shift from cultivation of cereals to deciduous fruits and grapes. This more labor-intensive production heightened the demand for field laborers. Formal labor recruitment was directed at Southern Black communities. Oral testimony taken from descendants of these pioneer toilers states that "a train load" of Black people from North Carolina reached Fresno County in 1888 under work contracts that obligated them for several years. Shortly thereafter, another immigrant group arrived by train from Canada. While the actual number of immigrants in these groups is not known, Fresno County's Black population did increase notably from 40 in 1880 to 485 by 1890, but did not increase substantially thereafter. Until around 1905, the Imperial Valley was a vast, dreary desert region, part of the Colorado Desert. After 1905, growers began to transform it into an agricultural center with a great need for labor. Its name was changed to Imperial Valley, and a 70-mile canal was put through Mexican territory to water its fertile but arid terrain, making it attractive to settlers. Cotton, experimentally introduced in Imperial County in about 1913, was a labor-intensive crop that required a large labor force. Growers recruited agricultural workers directly from the South and Mexico to work the fields. By the middle of the second decade, Black people had begun to relocate to the Imperial Valley. Many settled in El Centro where a number of notable Black institutions developed. On arrival in El Centro, Black people met racism not unlike that which characterized the communities from which they had emigrated. Their organized resistance to the Jim Crow system probably contributed to the group becoming less desirable as field workers than Mexican nationals. Although Black people were among the first contract farm laborers, they never became a major work group in the agricultural industry. Direct Southern recruitment, obviously inimical to Southern planters' interests, encountered local resistance, especially after thousands of workers walked off the plantations during the 1870s to homestead land in the Kansas Territory. Furthermore, growers soon found that persons recruited during the 1880s and 1890s would not accept the status of field laborers when other occupational opportunities existed. The nineteenth-century growers' recruitment efforts, aided by the African Episcopal Zion Church, attracted educated and skilled laborers from Southern cities. African Methodist Zion ministers began the colonization program in the 1880s to expand African Methodist Zionism in California. Hundreds of emigrants assembled in North Carolina cities for transportation to California. However, many emigrants considered contract labor to be a means to relocate and become established, and sought to be come entrepreneurs, skilled workers, and yeoman farmers when their contracts terminated. California growers, who had long resisted the Afro-Americans' efforts to achieve a competitive edge, found Black workers unsuitable, and turned their attention to a foreign labor source. Other non-White foreign workers could be recruited in a less competitive labor market, and growers resolved to use them. Land-based economic development in agricultural settlements was promoted at various times after the turn of the century in Yolo, San Bernardino, Tulare, and Fresno counties. The Yolo County settlement in 1900 was perhaps the first group attempt to build an agricultural base on homesteaded land. Settlement by Blacks could not have occurred earlier, since California's homestead laws had previously required a homesteader to be a White citizen. In California, like other regions, Black homesteaders had to settle for the least desirable land. The land Black families successfully homesteaded overlooking the town of Guinda in Yolo County had earlier been given over to bandits. High above the valley, at a considerable distance from the county seat and transportation points, the area was remote and relatively inaccessible. For years, maps showed the settlement as Nigger Hill, the pejorative place name used by locals. The nomenclature reflected local racial conditions. Despite social and environmental adversities, Black ranchers moved in from Northern California and the Bay Area, and raised cattle and experimented with orchards and other agricultural products. On what was once the main road leading to the summit stands a sandstone boulder, "Owl Rock," on which residents over the years have etched their names. Owl Rock represents the last physical evidence of the early settlement. At least two different efforts at colonization occurred in San Bernardino County between 1900 and 1910. The Forum, a Los Angeles civic club organized in 1903, solicited families to homestead government land in the Sidewinder Valley, desert land near Victorville. The first homesteader took up 640 acres at a site where ground water could be easily lifted, but water, although critical to subsequent development, was never available in ample supply. Little is known about the actual number of families who relocated to Sidewinder Valley during the Forum's promotional effort. However, in a newspaper account in 1914, the Forum reported that more than 20,000 acres had been homesteaded by Blacks. Lucerne, an adjacent town situated in the arid Sidewinder Valley, has been singled out by pioneers in Sidewinder Valley as an originally Black settlement. Another highly publicized colonization effort in San Bernardino County occurred in 1904. The African Society, a group based in the town of San Bernardino and capitalized at $10,000, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, had been created to colonize the Southern California area. The Tulare County agricultural settlement was the town of AlIensworth. Established in 1908 by a group of promoters, Allensworth was more than an agricultural settlement. It was designed to be a self-governed Black town. The promoters attracted more than 200 settlers to the town in the first few years. For nearly a decade, Allensworth's pioneers struggled to create a viable town in the arid San Joaquin Valley. Artesian water, initially abundant, soon stopped flowing at the volume required to meet domestic and agricultural demand. Although various plans were implemented to acquire adequate water, this town, like other agricultural settlements, be came another dream deferred. A History of Black Americans in California: Black people engaged in the full range of contemporary businesses for at least three decades after statehood. Interest in business pursuits attracted many early Black immigrants to settle in towns where they could provide goods and services for the swarms of people who came during the Gold Rush years. San Francisco, in the nineteenth century, was the city where most Black business activities were centered. Black entrepreneurs, like their contemporaries, entered businesses they believed the White majority would patronize. As long as the population was growing, and need for goods and services exceeded supply, Black entrepreneurs could enter most business areas with relatively little difficulty. Toward the close of the century, however, Black entrepreneurs found their business pursuits restricted to a narrow range of services as Whites, emigrating from mining districts and other jurisdictions and seeking a competitive edge, began a campaign to intensify the prevailing racial prejudice. Before long, the few areas where a Black entrepreneur could reasonably expect sufficient White patronage to develop a prosperous concern were limited to service-related enterprises such as tonsorial, boot black, livery, restaurant/ catering, and drayage businesses. Institutionalized racism began to emerge in the latter decade of the nineteenth century, and by 1920, even displaced Black barbers from the prosperous luxury shops operated for White businessmen in choice down town locations. For more than 50 years prior to that, Black men enjoyed a near monopoly on this trade. Residences owned by these nineteenth-century settlers stood on lots along city blocks in the downtown districts where they worked. Frequently, though, they clustered three or four families in a city block, often in certain wards or districts. This scattered residential pattern began to change as institutional racism began to encroach further upon California Black life. Restrictive city ordinances, real estate covenants, and other racially discriminatory measures that came into practice at the turn of the century and continued in effect for more than six decades, dramatically limited access by Black people to local resources such as housing, employment, education, and public accommodations. Housing restrictions gradually limited the size of Black residential areas and thereby created overcrowded neighborhoods and depressed economic growth. Real estate interests refused to make mortgage money available for property in certain "red-lined" areas and thus turned many Black neighborhoods, especially those with older housing, into slums. Urban renewal programs during the 1960s targeted ethnic neighborhoods in downtown districts, wiping out most nineteenth-century neighborhoods in or near downtown business districts. Around the periphery of various cities' business districts, an occasional structure representing these early neighborhoods survives. Nineteenth-century commercial structures were more likely to survive the 1960s urban renewal blitz than were residential properties. This was particularly true in the Gold Rush districts where Black settlement antedated the period of racially restrictive land use patterns. As a rule, nineteenth-century Black-owned businesses were scattered through out downtown business districts. One Northern California town where several nineteenth- and early twentieth-century commercial properties have been identified in the original business district is Red Bluff in Tehama County. San Diego, in the southern region, also has nineteenth-century business properties in the original downtown business district, known historically as the Horton Addition. Black business districts were developed after the turn of the century to provide services for Black communities in cities like Oakland and Los Angeles where populations were substantial and growing. These businesses soon found their economic opportunities constricted by the same city ordinances and covenants that precipitated residential neighborhood deterioration. Business development trends in Los Angeles during the first decades of the twentieth century were not only a microcosm of the racial discrimination practices that emerged in California after the turn of the century, but also reflected the evolution of Black businesses created to serve neighborhood clienteles. Black businesses established after the turn of the century were initially located in downtown Los Angeles near the original Black settlement. As industry began to encroach on the old settlement, businesses and residents were forced to move further south. Central Avenue then became the major Black business section. In 1929, when Dr. J. A. Summerville built the town's first major Black hotel, Hotel Summerville (now known as the Dunbar), the central business district coalesced around the hotel. The A. J. Roberts Funeral Home was among the first businesses established during this era. Andrew J. Roberts, who for years had operated a successful drayage concern, Los Angeles Van, Truck and Storage Company, sold the business sometime after 1905 to establish a mortuary. When the establishment opened, it was the town's first Black mortuary. The Roberts Funeral Home conducted an apprenticeship program to train persons for the profession, and also provided technical services to other mortuaries. At one period, the staff performed most embalming services for Los Angeles's Japanese morticians. Insurance companies, with few exceptions, denied Black people insurance coverage. Those companies that did write policies for Blacks did so at discriminatory premium rates. Golden State Guarantee Fund Insurance Company of Los Angeles, a company expressly created to provide life insurance coverage for Black people, received its charter July 23, 1925. Entering a non-competitive market, the company soon established branch offices in various California cities and even in other states. Responding to the Black community's need for quality medical care, three Black doctors established the Dunbar Hospital in 1923. Shortly thereafter, two other medical facilities were opened. Two pharmacists affiliated with the Dunbar Hospital opened the first pharmacy in the state owned and operated by Black women. White institutions at that time denied Black patients full medical service and equal accommodations, and barred Black doctors from affiliation. Private medical offices began to appear in the 1920s. The earliest was opened jointly by a medical doctor and a dentist in the Hudson-Ledell Building, designed by Paul Williams. The use pattern of this building reflects the economic changes that occurred over a 40-year period in the Central Avenue business district. Professional offices were located in the building until World War II. During World War II, Central Avenue became a major entertainment hub, and a nightclub known as the Club Memo occupied the building. When the Club Memo closed, the Hudson-Ledell Building was again converted to professional offices. Since 1963, the building has been the field office for Los Angeles City Councilman Gilbert Lindsay. The area is now undergoing revitalization. A major break in the pervasive occupational racism that restricted workers, both educated and uneducated, to low-paying menial jobs came through the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. The brotherhood was created August 25, 1925, as a union for Pullman porters and maids. It was the first Afro-American labor organization to receive a charter in the American Federation of Labor. The union was an advocate for Black men and women employed by the Pullman Company. A History of Black Americans in California: Voluntary associations have traditionally welcomed and provided assistance to individuals and groups newly arrived in a strange city. However, Black migrants coming to California's cities after 1920 found conventional social service organizations like the Red Cross, Salvation Army, YMCA, and YWCA closed to them. Housing and employment assistance, as well as care for the orphaned and infirm, which these facilities provided (usually at no cost), had to be financed directly by the Black community. Black club women were prime movers in filling the void. The California Association of Colored Women's Clubs was formed in 1905 as an affiliate of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs. At its inception, the association recognized the need for social services and encouraged local efforts to meet that need. Homes for Black working girls and women was one program that received statewide support. Clubs throughout California purchased residential structures and established homes with wholesome surroundings for women and girls who worked in cities where there were no suitable public accommodations. Houses to serve this purpose still exist in Sacramento, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Homes for orphaned children and child care services for working mothers were other social services provided in the community. A number of facilities offering these services were created by various providers. The East Bay club women became affiliated with the Northern Section of California Association of Colored Women's Clubs through a consolidated effort on April 30, 1918, and established the Fannie Wall Children's Home and Day Nursery. At the Oakland home, a staff of professional women administered resident care for orphans and day care for children of working mothers. Care for adolescent orphans was provided through private training schools where orphans could earn their fees through regular on-the-job training. The Duval School, organized in Beulah Heights (Oakland) in 1914, is but one private institution that accepted adolescent orphan girls and trained them for domestic work. Aged Black people were also provided responsible care in a congenial environment. The Home for the Aged and Infirm Colored People, built in 1897 in Oakland, was the first such institution in the state. Black club women originated the idea and formed the Old Peoples Home Association in 1892 to develop a facility. Within five years, the association had approximately 100 members and a three-story home, which in 1897 cost $4,000. Several founders served on the Board of Directors until the home was closed in 1938. The Black Southern California Baptist Church opened a similar facility in Los Angeles in 1919. The Southern California homes were the Abilia Home for the Aged and the Linden Home for the Aged. Another facility for aged Black people, the Dunigan, was a private rest home founded in Ontario in San Bernardino County. A number of additional private rest homes were created as the need arose. Black men and women in the military during the First World War could not get assistance in finding housing, employment, or other needed services from general social service agencies like the Red Cross, YMCA, and YWCA. Even the military, then a segregated service, offered little assistance to its Black members and their families. The Booker T. Washington Community Services Center, Inc. was established in 1919 by Black club women in San Francisco who were concerned about the lack of social services made available to Black military personnel and their families. These women raised funds to establish and operate the Booker T. Washington Center. After World War I, when the need that created the center had passed, its board of directors changed the function. Since then, it has offered a broad range of services for both youth and adults in the Western Addition area of San Francisco. A History of Black Americans in California: These social processes produced individuals whose attainments would have made them national figures except for their color. Foremost among this group was James P. Beckwourth, a shrewd and enterprising explorer, fur trader, and speculator. Beckwourth contributed much that has not been appropriately recognized to the history of the West. Yet this Black man's White contemporaries, like Kit Carson and Jim Bridger, have been so widely acclaimed that they are now legendary figures. Other notable individuals include Edward P. Duplex, who was elected mayor of Wheatland in Yuba County in 1888; John Scott, a member of John Fremont's second western expedition; J. Goodman Bray, manager of tourmaline mines in Mesa Grande and founder of the tourmaline mining industry of San Diego County; Biddy Mason, a slave emancipated in Los Angeles by a United States District Court of Appeals judge, who be came a wealthy philanthropist; and Mary Ellen (Mammy) Pleasant, perhaps now the most widely recognized among the early notables. A prosperous and influential San Francisco businesswoman, Pleasant supported, and at times helped finance, the fight to end slavery and to gain citizenship in the free states. This struggle, in its various phases, engaged Black Americans throughout the nineteenth century. Pleasant was associated with both the citizenship movement in California and abolition activities in the eastern United States. Structures designed by architects and builders also express the Afro-American presence in California. During the nineteenth century, it was commonplace for a master carpenter or brickmason to both design and construct buildings, a practice which continued into the twentieth century. These early builder-architects created much of the environment that now represents the state's architectural history. Included in this group were Black men. However, Black builder-architects, like their White contemporaries, have remained virtually anonymous, save for recollections and eyewitness accounts recorded in people's memories. Amos Brown (1900-1965) and Paul R. Williams (1897-1980) were important professional Black architects. Brown, of the San Francisco Bay Area, designed residential structures, while Williams, a prominent Los Angeles architect, received considerable acclaim for both commercial and residential structures. In the 1920s, as a young architect, Williams received a number of commissions from the Black business community to build commercial structures. Several of these buildings have been listed as historic resources, albeit for their historical rather than their architectural merit. Architecturally distinctive designs created by this architect have been recognized through peer review. The Music Corporation of America building in Beverly Hills won the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal Award in 1960 for the most outstanding building in Southern California. Numerous professional builders, both master carpenters and brick- masons, gained reputations constructing residential properties. John Barber, John Coleman, Lemuel Grant, and Robert Booker were known to have constructed commercial buildings as well. Only two of the commercial buildings associated with these men are extant. One is Redding's Lorenz Hotel (1904), and the other is the old administration building at Fresno City College (1915). Booker's Black contemporaries credit him with the Lorenz building's construction, although no documents have been found to corroborate this testimony. Black people, witnesses to construction of the old administration building, say that the Grant brothers (Los Angeles-based Black brickmasons) were retained to complete the detailed masonry around the building's windows and archways. Their White contemporaries, however, dispute the validity of this claim. For neither building have any documents been located to verify the builder's name. A History of Black Americans in California: Abajian, James.Blacks and Their Contributions to the American West. Boston: C. K. Hall, 1974. Adams, Dorothy. "Life in the Mining Camps of the Yuba River Valley." M.A. Thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1931. Adams, Russell.Great Negroes Past and Present. Chicago: Afro-American Press, 1964. American Association of University Women.Heritage Fresno - Homesand People. Fresno: Pioneer Publishing Co., 1975. Aptheker, Herbert.A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States. New York: Citadel, 1951. Bean, Edwin.Bean's History and Directory of Nevada County. Nevada: Daily Gazette, 1867. Beasley, Delilah.The Negro Trail Blazers of California. Los Angeles: Times Printing and Binding House, 1919. Belous, Russell.America's Black Heritage. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, 1969. Benson, J. J. "San Bernardino, California." Alexander's Magazine, Vol. 3, Dec. 1906, pp. 111-113. Berwanger, Eugene.The Frontier Against Slavery. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967. Bond, Max.The Negro in Los Angeles. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Southern California, 1936. Bonner, T. D.The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth. New York: Arno Press, 1969. Bontemps, Arna and Jack Conroy.Anyplace But Here. New York: Hilland Wang, 1966. Bowers, George. "Will Imperial Valley Become a Land of Opportunity for Negro Citizens." Southern Workman, Vol. 59, July 1930, pp. 305-313. Carter, Kate.The Negro Pioneer. Salt Lake City, 1965. Cartland, Earl. "A Study of the Negroes Living in Pasadena." M.A. Thesis, Whittier College, 1948. de Graaf, Lawrence. "Recognition, Racism and Reflections on the Writing of Western Black History." Pacific Historical Review, Vol. XLIV, 1975, pp. 23-51. Delay, Peter.History of Yuba and Sutter Counties. Los Angeles: Historic Record Co., 1924. Derrick, John. "Booker T. Washington Orphanage of California." Colored American Magazine, Vol. 10, March 1906, pp. 171-172. Drothning, Philip.Black Heroes in Our Nation's History. New York: Cowles, 1969. Durham, Philip and Everett Jones.The Negro Cowboys. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1965. Du Bois, W.E.B. "Colored California." Crisis, Vol. 6, Aug. 1913, pp.182-183. Fahey, John. "Casa de Light and Freeman." Manuscript, Old Town San Diego State Historic Park, 1973. Fisher, James.A History of the Political and Social Development of the Black Community in California, 1850-1950. Ph.D. Thesis, State University of New York, 1971. Forbes, Jack.Afro-Americans in the Far West. Berkeley: Far West Laboratory, 1966. Foster, Stephen. "Los Angeles Pioneers of 1836." Historical Society of Southern California Journal, Vol. 6, 1903, pp. 80-81. Franklin, John.From Slavery to Freedom. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1967. Franklin, William. "The Archy Case: The California Supreme Court Refuses to Free a Slave." Pacific Historical Review, Vol. XXXII, 1963. Goode, Kenneth.California's Black Pioneers. Santa Barbara: McNally and Laughlin, 1974. Jackson, Inez.History of Black Americans in San Jose. San Jose: Garden City Women's Club, 1978. Katz, William Loren.The Black West. New York: Doubleday and Co., 1971. Lapp, Rudolph.Blacks in Gold Rush California. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977. Lewis, Frank. "Original Town of Weed." The Siskiyou Pioneer and Yearbook, Vol. 3, 1967, pp. 5-10. Mason, William and James Anderson. "Los Angeles Black Heritage." Museum Alliance Quarterly, Vol. 8, Winter, 1969, pp. 4-9. McGroarty, John.Los Angeles, From the Mountains to the Sea. Chicago: American Historical Society, 1921. McPherson, James.The Negro's Civil War. New York: Pantheon Books, 1956. Montesano, Phil. "The Black Churches of San Francisco in the Early 1860s: Their Political Activities." Manuscript, California Historical Society Library, San Francisco, 1971. O'Donnell, Haldredge.Mammy Pleasant. New York: Putman Co., 1953 Parker, Elizabeth and James Abajian.A Walking Tour of the Black Presence in San Francisco During the Nineteenth Century. San Francisco: Afro-American Historical and Cultural Society, 1974. Proceedings of the State Convention of Colored Citizens of the State of California, Sacramento, 1855, 1856, 1865. San Francisco: R & E Research Associates, 1969. Savage, W. Sherman.Blacks in the West. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1976. Siracusa, Ernest. "The Negro in Gold Rush California." Journal of Negro History, Vol. XLIX, April 1964, pp. 81-98. Thurman, Sue Bailey.Pioneers of Negro Origin in California. San Francisco: Acme Publishing, 1952. Thurman, Odell. "The Negro in California Before 1890." Pacific Historian, Vol. 20, 1976, pp. 52-66. NEWSPAPERS: Fresno Bee, December 1969, 6/3. Marysville Daily Appeal, June 7, 1900, 1/2. San Francisco Chronicle, October 11, 1903, 5/1. Southwest Contractor and Manufacturer, November 1912, 21.  |