The California gold rush and Black immigration

We have an interesting guest in our studio today. Mrs. Alina Albert and cheers and gauged our project which is most unusual I think. And and very fascinating. And she's gotten a grant to do it. Why don't you tell us what the project is and then I'm going to ask you how you became interested and involved in the first place the grant is to do a study of the life of the Negro in California from about 1840 six to eight hundred sixty three around the middle of the Civil War. This is a very interesting period right after the gold rush days when quite a number of Negroes came here were able to buy their own freedom. And then the gas to fight for their rights as citizens. Well now tell me what was your background that led you into this and how did you how did you get this. Job work which you obviously are enjoying enormously.

Well I've always been interested too finely. History of My People. There is not much written about Negroes in the way I asked and the history books I've read. The state there is only little passing mention the role of the negro. So before I even came here from the state of Washington I had heard of the negro miners and I had heard the fight of Negroes to have their school and their children in mid to public school and of course I had known the name of Mary Ellen because she is one Californian. Pioneer days who does have a national reputation. When I hear you and teacher know I had hoped to be a

concert I studied in New England for one year and I've always been interested in music. But I was ready to sing during the Depression so I didn't get very many engagements that I found I could get Church engagements doing Negro spirituals. Then I realized I wouldn't be able to sing negro music unless I knew more about history especially grow up in New England you know. I was born in Virginia but I've lived in North Dakota Montana Washington Alaska and now California for the last eight years. So that your interest in Negro History Week was not really a part of your profession as such but just something that you began to follow up on. Because of your own interest is there yes that's true. And when I came to

California then I found that there were two books. One was by a writer who lived right here she lived in Oakland. Her name was Delilah basely. She wrote a book called trailblazers in California. She did research about eight years talking to the pioneers. And so she has their story in their own words. This is the only history of the Negro in California. It's out of print. I have to hot for it in Bancroft Library in California Historical Society. But then that pointed me to documents the history of the convention of Colored People in California. And now I find this was a fascinating period.

And I could really spend I think the rest of my life just in this one period. Well now what are you in fact doing about it you. You have mentioned that you that you have a gravity is that going to give you the free time to to correlate all this material what are your plans for the material that you're that you're accumulating. Well tooth concrete things I will make take us which will run about 20 minutes each. That can be used in social studies classes in school. I had originally planned for them to be for eighth grade and senior high school. And now after a year of experimentation I believe I would do best to plan them for our own elementary school about fifth grade

at the SAC. Result I hope will be stories about Negroes in early California monograph and I hope that these will be used in many different ways schools and nowadays there's so much interest in special schools for our children during summer. I've had many requests for this material. It's not anywhere in any one book sell that. If I gather it up in a series of monographs it will be something that could be maybe a whole text book about the Negro in California. At this point this is way we must teach Negro history. Later I hope that art textbooks will have it integrated too. It shouldn't be this

way and I'm very disappointed when we have Negro History Week. We feel we have the supposed that that's not so. Well it sounds to me as if you're well on the way to a book whether you know it or not. My my to not to be a book. Well tell me something about the things that you are finding now. You mentioned the Civil War period. Is that the first record of negroes in any numbers coming into the state of California was at the time of the Civil War. About what. Give us some of the fascinating things that you're finding. Southerners brought their slaves to the California before. California became a state. While it was still part of Mexico. They believed that California. It would become a part of the United

States or that it might become a separate republic and that slavery would be extended here. So even before the discovery of gold there were people of African descent in California. Actually they were brought here by the Spanish. And after California became American those people who were citizen of Mexico had been promised by the treaty that they would keep their citizenship rights. However by amendments to the Constitution they were stripped of these. But the interesting. Here is a constitution. Yes although the state constitution had a proviso that slavery should not exist

here. Slavery did exist in California. Well is it not true that the that there was a big fight over that. Isn't that one of the first great fights in California history as to whether or not it should be slave or free. Yes that's true. At the convention I believe Senator Quinn I had believed that there was enough support for the southern view that slavery would be extended here. But the miners and the white men who had left slave states to get away from competition with slave holders were in the majority. And so we have this proviso. But immediately after the Constitution was adopted there were amendments not referring to slaves but referring to Negroes fugitives from labor male laterals and free persons of color

with restrictions which practically held them in slavery. For instance the Fugitive Slave Law was. Applicable here where slavery legally didn't exist. What was the year of the convention that stated this would be every state. Remember 1850 18 years. That's when the count so that was several years before the Civil War started and there were still the fugitive problem yes. Oh yes actually the Fugitive Slave Law applied here. Until until after the Civil War. In 1858 a great many negroes who lived in the state left California to migrate to California to Canada. Because they were fearful that they could still be picked if they didn't have their

manumission papers and taken back to lifelong slavery sense it applied U.S. increase. But before this period. When there were about 4000 negroes in California in 1855 they had some prosperity quite a number of them had earned their own freedom in the diggings. Many of them lived in Motherlode country but about sixteen hundred lived in San Francisco. They had to establish churches. They had started lodges and quite a number of businesses. So these young men many of them who had been born free in New Bedford New York and Philadelphia determined that they should.

Organize to get their rights as citizens. And I'm always thrilled when I read in the minutes of the proceedings of the conventions the summons. Men and brothers you are summoned to a convention to consider our rights as citizens. This gives you some idea of the language these young men were experience they had worked in the underground in the abolition movement before they came to San Francisco so they were well prepared to organize to plan and to execute. At the convention it was considered What was the most pressing problem to attack. And then it was decided that.

They need roll must have the right to testify in court. Before this there had been an amendment to the Constitution saying those incompetent to testify in court were idiots and children of Chinese and the girls. So if a Negro for instance had homesteaded on land he couldn't go into court to prove it and get title or if he had paid his master a thousand dollars for his freedom and then he was challenged and picked up to be sent out of the state and back to slavery. He had no way to protect himself because he could not go into the court to testify in a case that involved the white man either for

or against. What did they win any of these points as a result of this pressure. They gathered petitions with signatures for eight years from 1855 to 1863 before. In both houses of the legislature. The abandonment was passed and signed by Gov. Stanford into law. And this just gave it to gross Chinese and Indians were still excluded from testifying in court. Did they include journeys and others in their organization or was it the organization itself was exclusively negroes. The petitions only mention the restriction against Negroes. I've been very interested in that too to find any indication that

Rose felt they had a common problem with Chinese and only one or two instances of one time a delegate introduced a resolution saying we should send them. Man to fight with the Irish who were fighting them for their freedom the Finian movement. But one of the delegates said well if we wish to express sympathy which should do it to use people closer here are Chinese and Indians at one time in San Francisco the school board decided Chinese children and Negro children should attend the same segregated school. But the Chinese parents refused to send their children there. So I don't see any indication that we ever work together and I told her that time are automatically segregated. But were there schools forming rows of time. Yes. In about 1850 for. Negro

parents began to establish schools for their own children. At first they had to support them entirely themselves. The first one was in San Francisco in the basement of a church day school for children evening school for adults with an attendance of about. About 50 children and about 18 adults bath later on. The supervisors of San Francisco voted $50 a month support to the Negro school at one time there were two then negro parents decided they wouldn't send their children to segregated schools and the legislature passed a proviso that where there were 10 or more Negro children in a locality. A school might be established for them. So here in there there were some that had some support. But the interesting

school though which the negroes established ones in Santa say where there was a private school by an Episcopal priest reverend Cassie. The children who lived in Santa say could attend without paying anything. But those who lived out of Santa say and were in the boarding school paid 16 to 20 dollars a month. This school was operated for about eight years. But the colored people had a great doing for education they felt this was the prime need. So one of the delegates at the convention said let's have an Oberlin. We should aim for the very highest and best for our race. And another delegate said very sensibly why the white people don't even have an all girl and that isn't possible. But this group of them

incorporated so stock gave a name to the school they intended to have it was going to be the Livingston Institute for 10 years they raised money because they decided they would have a certain sum before they began to Bill. But in 1873 conditions had changed the laws admitted Negro children to public school. So they decided that it was necessary to build the college. So there's never been any Negro College here. The name of the school in Santa say was very interesting. Now that was the educational side were there barriers on the work level I mean about what was the population say by the end of the Civil War the Negro population in California have you any idea.

Well I know from the statistics collected for the convention that in 1850 8 there were about 6000. They were still living in the motherlode cum tree and the largest How was San Francisco. With about 16 and sadness they had 400 something like that. Sacramento I think about twelve hundred. The next problem after getting the right to testify in court was to vote. But. California. Never did get to give Negro males the right to vote. This came with the National 15th Amendment was there a big influx of of Negro migration

after the freeing of the of the slaves. Did a number of people from the South come to California. Or what about that period of time. Yes although in 1850 8 the legislature put through an Exclusion Act saying that Negroes lattice fugitives from call from servitude and then should servants should not be permitted to come to California. Those who had been here before the adoption of the Constitution were permitted to stay legally. Those who own property a but no master was to free his slaves here with the idea that the slaves would stay.

Now this was never in forest but in 1858 then a great many of the negroes left. Some of them went to cow to Canada because golden bidness covered on the Fraser River and they were invited to come there. They some of them prospered and became Canadian citizens. Others never liked the climate and after the end of the Civil War they came that the sentient Siskel that there were the carnies established for instance. Our lives were in the southern part of the state. I was a

colony established by a retired Army sergeant and a great many several hundred actually came there bought the land build their homes and had a growing community. Only now now only a few people live there now or fall or near Fresno is another place where they migrated. Now. Are you speaking now about the time after the Soviets after the Civil War. I believe our month's worth was established in 1919 foller 1915 but I don't have. Figures would show that. After 1865 there was a great migration. This is the time when they were coming and when they were being brought was

after gold rush them. Because they they felt that they could legally be free in California and that there was the opportunity. But the question you asked before to earn money here in the in the diggings. And in businesses storing Edward White wrote that. One time a white man saw a negro man in San Francisco. He said to him if you will come with me I will pay you for twenty five dollars a day to be my cook. But the negro man answered him If you will come with me I will pay you thirty five dollars. So some of the neighbors then you see did have businesses. They were prospering and so that is why a great many of them came both because they had been promised by

their masters their freedom after working a year. And because they were free and they came themselves over the plains around the bull. Through the Isthmus Mary Ellen pleasant was responsible for a great many people who escaped from slavery coming all the way off to San Francisco. She opened up businesses where they could go to work. When they tell us something about her there may be many people all around us. One of the writers said she was the western terminus of the Underground Railroad. Mary Ellen pleasant came here about 1850. She was a free woman when she came. She had money so that she was able to get her job and she was able later on to open up a boarding house. One time she had three laundries the boarding house and was a partner in the livery stable. She supported other

businesses. And the main thing that we remember her for the reason we call her the mother of civil rights in California is that she. Encourage people to come here she paid their passage out here and then she have to provide jobs after they came off. She was one of the first to bring a successful suit in San Francisco in those days. The railroad omnibus company didn't take negro passengers so she had herself arrested and brought suit against the company and the decision was in her favor that they should carry Niekro passengers. Later on she helped another young woman Charlotte brontë to bring suit for the same reason they refused to carry negro passengers Bramah LSL.

We say that she is the mother of civil rights in California. But what she wanted her to still she lived to be about 91 in the last few years of her life. She talked to a newspaper man. Whose name is Davis. She told him but she hadn't ever told anyone before. That in 1858 Negros in San Francisco had given her five hundred dollars in gold pieces that she had taken back a draft for thirty thousand dollars to John Browne because in the years out here she had heard that he had a plan to free the slaves. Documents have been brought out that show she met him in Canada. She conferred with him and probably gave him

advise and the money for the rifles. But of course he was caught and executed. She said that she had written a note to him and what she said. The axe is laid to the roof of the tree where this money came from. There is more but she only signed it with her initials so when it was found the law didn't know that it was a woman named pleasant and so she destroyed everything that connected her with John Brown came back to San Francisco and never told the story until she was in her 90s because she said she wanted her grave. The epitaph she was a friend of John. She's the only figure I know who really is written about nationally. She's buried at NAPA and many people

who travel a lot who go to her crib. The large really large influx of black people into this area didn't come until the century there. Correct I mean it was a fairly small minority in proportion to what it is now. Until was it. I don't know I haven't lived in California that long myself I know there were many black people who came here after during and after the Second World War. Was there also a large influx during the First World War. When did the because now there is quite a considerable Negro black population in California. Yeah and you're describing a fairly small minority in the late 19th century.

Yes but after. During World War One that's when large numbers began to come before that. Friends of mine who were born in California said in San Francisco you might walk around downtown all day and see only a few. Afro-American batt. Of course I haven't done as much reading that period. Delilah Bill sleeze book ends. With nineteen nineteen. She then tells about how large groups of people moving into Los Angeles and Oakland a great many lived here in Oakland they worked in San Francisco. So I think it is after World War II and then again the second wave of World War Two that I

knew that this familiarity with power and you intend to translate these stories and personalities and documents into a form where the schoolchildren both black and white can hear about these things is that yeah that's one of your genes there is that that is true. The story of the descendants of Africans in California it is unique. It's it's so wonderful to realize the. Handicaps under which they labored but the contributions they have made to the state and the fact that they have endured and that their history is one of which they need not be ashamed in any way.

And I think that all children will have their lives and reach to know about the other many of the families and lines of people that you can trace back that far. They are many of the families aware of how long and so and so that you can get the story of a family. Yes quite a number. One interesting family is in Yolo County. At our exhibit we showed the Atlas of Yolo County opened to a page with a picture of the homestead baseball Campbell. They saw Campbell one of the fly who brought his own freedom in 1850. Then he homesteaded and Yolo County two years ago.

I had the chance to talk to his grandson who showed us the and promissory notes and other documents from his grandfather up in York County in Cape a valley. There are many many Negro families who are. Grandchildren and great grandchildren of pioneers who homesteaded there. At one time in California. Negroes who homesteaded were not given the land they had improved. There are instances where they were driven off but it differed in different counties and evidently in Yolo County. From the very early days they did have the right to homestead on public lands and there. Are all I'm sure about 40

families who still live there on the same land. Their grandfathers and great grandfathers homes. Down here there are some interesting people one here in in Oakland. It's Mrs Francis whose father was Captain surety. Of course he was rather later in the time when San Francisco was the whaling capital. This negro sailed whaling ships for twenty five years from about eighteen eighty three to. 916 I think. I was so thrilled when the librarian at maritime museum showed me his last license for nineteen eighteen where it said he

was license to command a ship of any tonnage in the ocean or in the sea. I talked to his daughter who still lives here in Oakland in the Examiner the daily examiner for. 19 Wotton. There's an account of a trip he took far into the Arctic on this cruise. He took his wife and the baby and the reporter met his ship as it was coming to the Golden Gate. Most of the whalers had come back that year because of those terrible typhoons but he said that he and baby Victoria were able to navigate the ship safely. So he came back with the several hundreds of barrels of oil and the bones of the whales.

Yes there are a great many Californians here who. We are. Aware of the importance of keeping records and this is one of the pleasures of having the grant that I'm able to talk to these people and record their memoirs. Is there anything else you would like to tell us about the work that you're engaged on. This is number two. Well I am very pleased that I had the chance to talk to you here at KPFA because I feel that you are doing an invaluable important thing in recording this contemporary history the continuation of the story of black people in California. It's kind of interesting to me that in the early documents we referred to

ourselves sometimes as Anglo Africans. Afro Americans. And in one period as colored people. And I very struck that you said black people. I like that is there. I was sure. Sure you are a Negro and most of the younger people these days that one has an opportunity to speak to do use the term black. I happen to like it as a term but when other people use the term Negro I don't you know it's a there's a slight problem there. Well of course if I'm quoting I use whatever term. In the early newspapers there was one article once that was about the use of the word Negro. And this particular writer didn't like

it at that time. However the convention was called the convention of Colored People. So I think that I'm not too concerned about the term but. The last thing I would like to say is that. Some people feel that just reading about the past doesn't ever seem as if it were contemporary. But some of the quotations from these young men in the sixties sound a little bit like what you hear today. One of them that I rather enjoy telling is the stand of

young men who were considering a resolution whether they should go. The resolution was worded something like this that we love our country with all her faults we love her still and that we will offer our lives if she is invaded by an enemy. When this resolution was offered in the convention. Young Mr. Newby who afterward became editor of the first newspaper here the mayor of the Times said that he was opposed to the language of the best solution that we should lay down our lives. For. A country which has oppressed us. And

there was a lot of discussion about this resolution. It was finally passed. But in the discussion while the delegates said that if and if they invaded the country who promised him his liberty he would not fight for the country against the enemy with the enemy who promised him liberty. So things have not changed as much as one might imagine at times. That's true the Nagma today of it has changed yes that's true. But it seems we're still concerned with problems of schools education some of the land it's quite content. Well we'll look forward to hearing from you again when you have work more fully with the grant and have made some of your tapes and

experimented with some of the classroom applications of it. Thank you very much. I would really like to share this with Cape Fear. We'd like to have you.