by Paul R. Spitzzeri
As has been observed here previously, finding substantial information about African-Americans in 19th century greater Los Angeles can be a significant challenge as sources can be very difficult to find. Prior posts in this series have looked at census records and newspaper references to provide some perspectives on the demographics of the community, along with such specific elements as education for Black children, the commemoration of the Fifteenth Amendment allowing African-American to vote, and others.
Now, we turn our attention to general newspaper references that are broader and represent varied aspects of those few times when Black Angelenos were mentioned in the press. A notable early source is in the 15 December 1855 edition of the Los Angeles Star, which reprinted a table of population statistics provided Jonas Townsend, chair of a committee at the inaugural California Colored Citizens’ Convention, convened in Sacramento over four days in November, and charged with putting together information on the African-American population and their assets by county.
Fourteen counties were listed, with the largest number of persons residing and the greatest amount of wealth, not surprisingly, being in San Francisco, the totals being 1,500 people and $750,000. Next was the gold regions within El Dorado County (dorado meaning gold in Spanish) where 1,000 Black people lived and their assets amounted to $350,000.
Other gold mining sections in Yuba and Nevada counties, as well as around the state capital, had populations in the several hundreds, while Los Angeles was 10th of the 14 counties in numbers of African-American residents at 60 with their wealth being $70,000. Per capita, however, Angeleno African-Americans possessed $1,166.66 of such assets, with only Shasta County being higher at $1,500 per person, while Alameda was third at $1,000 each. Though the largest and wealthiest county was San Francisco, Black residents there averaged just $500 of assets per person.
Whether these statistics reflected more latitude for African-Americans in Los Angeles because of a relative measure of greater tolerance for them in pursuing economic opportunities, is an intriguing question. It is worth adding that assets for Black residents in the gold country were substantially less per capita, perhaps showing that there was a major challenge for African-American miners to make a living—maybe because of being restricted to certain areas with less likelihood for finding the precious metal.
In Los Angeles, there were some Black men who could advertise their business and have a chance of making a living that would provide them assets at the level shown in the table. For example, George Smith, at the end of the decade, advertised his four horse-drawn wagon, the Black Swan, for freight hauling and jobbing with his vehicle kept in the corral of the same name at the corner of Main and San Pedro streets (these are now parallel, but did come to a point in those days).
One of the most prominent African-Americans in this period was Peter Biggs, who came to Los Angeles from Missouri, where he was known as Reuben Middleton, and embarked on a sort of reinvention. Biggs long ran barber shops in the Angel City and a series of advertisements in the last half of the Fifties referred to his operating in the “most fashionable Southern and New Orleans style,” sometimes offering a saloon, express delivery service, boot blacking and bathing room in conjunction with his establishment.
The aforementioned population and wealth report was published just as the remarkable legal matter involving a habeus corpus proceeding, regarding unlawful detention, for Biddy Mason, a woman named Hannah and a dozen children, was developing under the jurisdiction of District Court Judge Benjamin I. Hayes. Mason and the others were brought to San Bernardino, then still part of Los Angeles County and within the District Court’s field of operations after San Bernardino County was established in 1852, by a Mormon slaveholder, Robert M. Smith, but, when he decided to leave for Texas, an effort was made to establish freedom for the group because California was legally (if not always in actual practice) a free state.
The 2 February 1856 edition of the Star published a remarkable summary of the case, penned by the judge, who frequently did this in legal matters in which he was involved, and explaining in great detail the circumstances involved with Smith’s attempt to leave the area, the group’s detention “by warrant” under the custody of Sheriff David W. Alexander (a close friend of the Workman and Temple family), and the proceedings under Judge Hayes.
The jurist asserted that the history of American slavery was not always “the dark picture painted by fanaticism” and added that “there is no reason to dispute the kindness of the defendant” Smith in his treatment, which Hayes wrote meant that, when it came to owner and slaves, “their accounts may be deemed fairly balanced.” Moreover, he propounded the idea that, if Smith and the African-Americans with him “were going to continue his residence in California,” then he’d likely remain as “the guardian of those under 21 years of age,” the reasoning being that Biddy and Hannah, as adults, could choose to remain with Smith or leave.
Hayes added that, keeping these minors, Smith could “receive unmolested the fruits of their labor, as others are doing with Indians, and, occasionally, with persons of color,” though what the judge meant by the latter was not explained. Latinos were legally defined as white people and, those in California before its seizure by American forces during the Mexican-American War several years prior automatically became citizens under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. The only other large bloc of “persons of color” at the time were Chinese who came for the Gold Rush, but it would be notable to know who was meant in this remark.
On the other hand, the jurist continued, the state guardianship law “has been liberally construed” in the southern part of California and Smith had no absolute right to his claims, while “the mothers of these minors would be entitled to their guardianship” so long as they were deemed “competent to manage their own business, and not otherwise unsuitable.” In short, Hayes commented, “there must be strong reasons to disregard the claim of nature, even with persons of the class [their Blackness?] to which the petitioners belong.”
Countering Smith’s claim that Biddy and Hannah wanted to go with him to Texas, Hayes pondered that this argument “is not consistent with our knowledge of human nature” and he observed that “their condition must invoke the tenderest consideration of those who have to administer the laws” and also “invites the sympathy of all generous men.” The judge also carefully reviewed statutes regarding kidnapping, including that of African-Americans, while noting that adults could choose their status “in the absence of force or fraud.” Moreover, even if Biddy and Hannah elected to remain with Smith, this decision did not apply to their children and grandchildren as Hayes exclaimed that “LIBERTY IS INALIENABLE.”
The judge was also deeply disturbed by the sudden resignation of the unnamed attorney representing Biddy and Hannah, but who stated in a deposition that he was threatened and who also requested an extra $100 in addition to that amount already paid to him. Hayes frowned upon this dereliction of the lawyer’s duty to his clients. He also noted that Smith acknowledged that Biddy and her three children were clear in their desire to leave his household, but this was not the case with Hannah and her family.
Adding that the prominent merchant and landowner, Abel Stearns, as well as Dr. James B. Winston, were present for Biddy’s testimony, Hayes noted that she feared for her return to Texas and construed that this could only have been because of her concern in being returned to slavery and wondered whether this was actively discussed in the Smith household. Yet, Smith insisted that the African-Americans who had been his slaves would be as free in Texas as they were in California—though, again, there is the vital distinction between the law and actual practice.
As for Hannah’s reluctance to leave the Smiths, the jurist commented that “nothing else—except force—can account rationally” for this” and, after noting that she was light-skinned, as were all her children including an eight-year old who “can not easily be distinguished from the white race,” Hayes also observed that Hannah’s daughter Ann, who had a young daughter, asked, apart from Biddy, “Will I be as free in Texas as here?” and concluded that there was pressure applied on Hannah and Ann, not to mention “false promises” and “misrepresentations.”
The judge decried the notion of “this pleasant prospect of freedom in Texas” propagated by a “flattering illusion” offered by Smith to Hannah and it appeared clear from her hesitant and “cold replies” she she did testify that Smith’s coercions worked. But, when Hayes talked to her away from that pressure, he related, “she is entitled to be listened to when breathing freer” because “she declares that she never wished to leave, and prays for protection.” Otherwise, attempts to force her to go with Smith constituted “a detestable crime.”
The jurist also observed that the habeus corpus law “furnishes ample remedies in the discretion which it confers” to judges and Hayes continued,
To these principles resort was had on the judgment rendered and the orders and process consequent thereon; which there is every solid reason for adhering to until the petitioners can become settled and go to work for themselves—in peace and without fear!
The judge also speculated that Smith’s real motive was to return to his home state of Mississippi, adding that some of the petitioners (he likely meant Biddy and Hannah, though this was not actually so) were from there, but that the laws of the Magnolia State did not allow for the importation, while Texas did not permit free Blacks to be brought within its borders.
Given to frequent emotive expressions, Hayes thundered, “How hazardous to tamper with liberty!” while he also cautioned Smith that “time will pass, and bring its varied changes in the cherished circle around him; and sad reverses may baffle his purest plans.” Beyond the individuals involved, however, the judge pondered broader implications wondering “how long before stern necessities of the white race, unto the end of self-preservation, shall have forged heavier chains for the bondsmen [slaves] of our country.” Hayes and others dealing with this case, though, could not foresee the incipient Supreme Court’s notorious Dred Scott decision.
This remarkable disquisition from Hayes concluded with the observation that “the lawful liberty of the humblest dweller on our soil, is a thing too precious to be left to the sport of every contingency in human affairs.” Regardless of the “political and social controversies of the day,” what mattered was that no reasonable person and certainly no constituted juridical authority “will consent to the evasion and violation of the Constitution of his State” and, finally, “all should have pride enough to wish to keep unimpaired the integrity of our own Institutions—until, if so be, we can adopt better.
Despite the justly celebrated decision rendered by Hayes for Biddy, Hannah and the children, 1850s Los Angeles was a place in a time in which African-Americans had to tread carefully amid open hostility, especially if there was a perception that any of them did not remain “in their place” and crossed boundaries, haphazard or indiscriminate as they could be, that some white people demanded be rigorously maintained. Violence against Black Angelenos was not frequently reported on in the press, excepting occasional articles dealing with conflicts within the small, closely-knit community. This is not to say that whites did not often commit such acts, but they were rarely noted in newspapers.
One particularly shocking incident was published in the Southern Californian, a short-lived, but colorful sheet that generally affected a breezy and irreverent style, in great contrast to its competitor, the Star. In this case, the article from 14 December 1854, during a time of significant violence in a city wracked with stunning levels of homicide and less than a month away from a legal execution and lynching that further exposed the lawlessness than ran rampant in the Angel City, is especially loathsome for its insouciant tone:
A case of moralizing a “nigger” came off last Sunday at “Nigger Alley” [the Calle de los Negros, later an extension of Los Angeles Street, just southeast of the Plaza, where saloons were abundant and crime all-too-common]. Sambo [no actual name known or provided] went to the Bella Union [Hotel, on Main Street to the southwest of the Calle], and was disgorging himself of some very expressive language. He very emphatically delivered himself to the effect that niggers were better than white men, at which the landlord took umbrage, and made some pugilistic demonstrations, when Sambo, taking the hint, left the field of battle uncontested, disgusted with the audacity of white men in interrupting him in his enjoyment of the inalienable rights guaranteed him by the constitution [that is, of free speech in the First Amendment].
The account continued that the African-American man left and went to a saloon, “regaling his exhausted energies on the elixir of life,” that is, whiskey, when the Bella Union proprietor arrived with a “posse comitatus,” the general term for lynching party, “to his disgust and astonishment.”
Apparently thinking this incident to be a proper subject for humor, the Southern Californian went on by blithely remarking that the Bella Union party,
envelopes Sambo’s neck with the beautiful folds of a reata [the rope used by Spanish-speaking Californios in rounding up livestock] and very politely lead him to a post of destruction, and after disrobing him of his tattered paraphanalia [sic], proceeded to place distinguished marks [by whipping] upon his person, to which he respectfully begged leave to demur, without avail. When Sambo had received about one hundred stripes, his African blood cooled down, and he knocked under, declaring that the declaration of rights was a humbug, and at the same time promising in future to be more select in the use of the English language.
Aside from the fact that the paper obviously felt that the terrible punishment inflicted on the unnamed Black man was justified, it is notable that there was apparently no effort made by the city marshal or county sheriff to at least investigate what transpired in what was very much like the kind of incident that would happen in the Southern states.
Such reports were undoubtedly blatant and overt reminders to African-American Angelenos that any perceived slight felt by white people could, without recrimination and with full impunity, be dealt with in such a barbaric manner by a people who called themselves superior. In an era when Asians were targeted by law and violence in the gold field and towns and cities of Gold Rush California and Latinos were subjected to legislation by xenophobic Know-Nothings (the American Party) such as the so-called “Greaser Law,” white supremacy was a blunt, public, normalized and codified as it could be. This lynching was a cruel and clear message.
Despite such horrors, the Black population of Los Angeles continued to grow, albeit modestly, but it also persevered and community building marked its advancement. We’ll return tomorrow with a post taking this topic into the 1860s, so be sure to join us then.