by Paul R. Spitzzeri
A post from earlier this month discussed some of the history of the so-called “Colored School” operated in Los Angeles and concerning the decade from 1865 to 1875. As noted, there was a standard “separate but equal” justification for having the Angel City’s African-American students segregated from Anglo and Latino pupils at the school, which was located in four locations during that period.
The first was a structure on First Street just west of Hill Street. The second was located in the city’s first school house, constructed in the mid-1850s, at Second and Spring streets. The third was situated in Leck’s Hall, built by merchant Lorenzo Leck and on Main Street between Second and Third streets. Finally, the First African Methodist Episcopal Church at the end of Third Street at Bunker Hill housed the school. While there was a plan to build a new schoolhouse for Black children, that was never realized.
This was likely because the first regional growth boom, which began about 1868, resulted in the inevitable bust in 1875-1876. Not only did the economic downturn mean less tax revenue to support schools, but there was a decline in population, including among African-Americans, in subsequent years. Moreover, it wasn’t just that a school house for Black children went unrealized, but having a separate school for them—it appears to have remained at the AME Church in the last half of the Seventies—was ended.
Notably, an editorial in the Los Angeles Herald of 3 June 1874 commented:
The persistent demand of the negro to be just as white as anybody in the public schools, will not tend to strengthen the doctrine advocated by himself and many white people that he is just as intelligent as the more favored race. Under the law, the negro is entitled to the same educational advantages that are enjoyed by other citizens of the Republic, and we believe no one is disposed to deprive him of those rights; but it is doubtful if many people can be found who really favor the promiscuous mingling of white and black children in the public schools . . . There is one important principle in the struggle the negro has overlooked, which is this: Equality before the law does not necessarily enforce equality in society . . . It is the social, not the legal, objections that must be overcome before the equality the colored race demand can be established. We do not believe the admittance into the public schools will do more in this direction than would the admittance at the public ball [dance].
Despite this sentiment, it was decided by the Board of Education in early December 1880. The report from a board meeting in the issue of the 5th in the Herald was terse: “on motion, it was ordered that the colored school be discontinued after the end of this term.”
There was no explanation as to why, but, nearly two decades later, the Los Angeles Times of 20 October 1898 covered a meeting of the Young Men’s Afro-American League in which the candidacy of Republican local attorney Henry T. Gage for California governor was promoted. League member Jacob Soares introduced Gage and, among the reasons why the candidate was considered “a true friend to the negroes of Los Angeles and of California generally” concerned the “colored school.” The account recorded:
[Soares] reviewed the circumstances of some twelve [eighteen] years ago, when the colored children of Los Angeles, regardless of the part of the city in which they lived, had to attend the Black school, as it was referred to, inconveniently situated, and the only one of the kind in the vicinity of Los Angeles. Negroes, in these days, were not admitted as pupils in the regular public schools. Through the efforts of Henry T. Gage . . . this “black school” was closed, and colored children were taken into the schools previously attended solely by white children.
Nothing could be found in local papers in 1880 about Gage’s work on this issue. Ironically, one of the outgrowths of the integration of African-American pupils in the schools located in the neighborhood in which they lived is that, for the remaining two decades of the 19th century, their anonymity became almost total. During the years when the “colored school” operated, there were a few references to students and their work, as well as the efforts of their teachers, but this changed after its closure.
The 5 April 1888 edition of the Herald reported on a Board of Education meeting during which it was noted that “the matter of organizing a separate school for colored children being introduced,” one member told her colleagues that she’d been tasked with determining the number of Black pupils. The article continued that there were 72 children in school, “but as they lived in different parts of the city the plan appeared very impractical.” Moreover, when school visits were undertaken, it was observed that
After making inquiry of the different teachers it was found the negro children were well-behaved, studios, and, in every way, desirable pupils. The matter was by common consent tabled.
Through the end of the century, there were no other known instances of a segregated school raised with the Los Angeles school board. While references to specific African-American students or the work of Black pupils generally are basically non-existent during this period, it is interesting to note one example of general commentary of the educational environment for African-Americans at the time.
The Los Angeles Times of 7 September 1893 published a commentary called “A Question That Is Being Settled” and that addressed the educational conditions of African-Americans in the thirty years since the Emancipation Proclamation. The piece began with the note that, while “the war gave freedom to the black man,” there were those observing the environment since who felt “that as a race he has not made the most of his opportunities.” The response from the paper was that it had been just one generation after “long centuries of slavery.”
What followed was the comment that “the report of the national association for the education of the colored youth the country affords statistical evidence of the advance which the colored people have made . . . and with what enthusiastic energy they have seized upon their opportunities for education.” Being a Republican paper, the Times went on that the G.O.P. “made no mistake when it freed the black man from the shackles that bound him, and made him equal before the law with his former oppressors.”
That report cited that more than 1.3 million African-Americans were being educated nationwide and, with private schools added, the total was probably 200,000 more. There were nearly 12,000 pupils in high schools, another 31,500 in institutions of higher learning. Moreover, since 1863, more than 2 million Black persons were educated, comprising more than a quarter of that population and it was asserted that “if this same ratio is continued, the colored people of America will have a smaller rate of illiterates than has the white race.”
It was added that “there is a showing that is remarkably hopeful for a race only thirty years out of bondage, and still fighting against unreasoning prejudices of the white people, who remember that they were once regarded as chattels.” The article ended with the comment that whites had hundreds of years of civilization and the resulting motivations for advancement, whereas “behind the black man but a generation of freedom’s opportunities.” Yet, it was added, “surely, the black man is proving himself worthy of the privileges which the [Civil] war gave to his enfranchised race, and he is rapidly settling the question of his ability to meet the white man upon the platform of equal citizenship.”
Obviously, the statements made in the piece were very general and not acknowledging the dire reality for most African-Americans when it came to purported progress at the time, though there certainly were advances that were made. It is too bad that we don’t have more information on the status of Black students in Los Angeles schools during the time to compare to what the paper asserted.
With regard to “statistical evidence,” the best material we have from the local press are the annual reports of the school census taken each spring within the city as well as the county, though these not only varied as to specificity, but were also subject to the same types of inconsistencies that mark the federal census. On the first point, while most years between 1877 and 1900 listed the number of African-American boys and girls, there were some years when the numbers are not available at all or are combined, while there was also a distinction between those of school age (5-17 years) and those below that and these weren’t always delineated clearly.
As to the quality of the enumerations, the 5 June 1887 edition of the Herald, coming during the great Boom of the Eighties and a significant spike in population observed that “there is always room for doubt about census statistics” as these were “under than over the true figures.” In Los Angeles, it was pointed out, “homes are spread over a very wide extent of territory, and where new people are coming in so rapidly that they may be almost said to form new encampments on the trail of the census taker.”
Just over a week later, the paper reported that the school superintendent called “into question the accuracy the returns of the School Census Marshal” and posited that there were 800 more children in school and 1,100 of school age in the city than recorded in the census—this would have been a 15% discrepancy and of significance for several reasons, including the apportionment of tax monies for schools.
The Times of 29 June 1888 suggested that spring was not a good time to conduct a census because “over one-third of the resident children and the families to which they belong are absent from the city,” though why this was went unstated. What the paper did assert was that “when winter comes a horde of children return to the city,” so this may refer to those families that did agricultural labor. What transpired, however, was that, when this influx took place “no provision has been made to receive them” in the public schools. Consequently, it was suggested that the school census be conducted in January.
The Herald of 10 July reported a school board discussion over discrepancies in the enumeration, with it stated that there were duplicate listings, a case where a person married four years had five children, and that the city’s orphan asylum was left out of the count. The result was that a special census taker was appointed to correct the report. The Los Angeles Express of 26 December posited that “our school census this year was better than it was in previous years,” though it did not explain why. In January 1890, Downey resident Nelson Carr wrote to the Express to complain that marshals issued false reports amplifying the number of children counted to allow districts to get more money, with one unnamed one cited as doing this for several years, having “fraudulently appropriated several thousand dollars of the people’s money.”
Given the likelihood of chronic undercounts, not to mention fundamental problems of reporting people of color who were almost certainly more transient because of socio-economic conditions, including itinerant labor, the following shows the results of returns for the number of African-American children counted in Los Angeles for most of a quarter-century from 1877 to 1900:
1876: N/A
1877: 17
1878: N/A
1879: 9
1880: 43
1881: 28
1882: 9
1883: 29
1884: 21
1885: 33
1886: 50
1887: 62
1888: 72
1889: 186
1890: 244
1891: 219
1892: 225 (including Chinese, who likely numbered just a few)
1893: 252
1894: N/A
1895: 300
1896: 350
1897: figures under 5 only (133)
1898: 397
1899: 414
1900: 588
Even allowing for the aforementioned, the increase in Black school-age children is broadly reflective of that broadly for the city. Data showed that in 1876 there were 2,649 children ages 5-17 in the city, with 3,202 four years later, then 10,786 in 1889 and 36,000 in 1900.
While there is a glaring lack of information about specific students or the broader group of African-American pupils after the segregated school closed in 1880, we are able to glean some useful material from press accounts, even for a segment of the community that was generally relegated to the margins in late 19th century Los Angeles.