by Paul R. Spitzzeri
As the prior post in this series noted, an 1855 census of Black residents in the Golden State conducted by a committee of the California Colored Persons’ Convention, held that November in Sacramento, showed that there 60 African-Americans in Los Angeles and they had the second highest per capital level of assets of any county in the state.
That post also noted that, despite some entrepreneurship by Black men through newspaper advertisements and the freedom won by Biddy Mason, Hannah Embers and their children and grandchildren in an early 1856 habeus corpus case heard by the District Court, there was plenty of racism and animosity in the Angel City, as demonstrated by a terrible whipping, constituting a non-fatal lynching, of an unnamed Black man late in 1854.
African-American Angelenos, however, continued to work diligently to upbuild their community, which, by the 1860 census, numbered about 70 with another 20 or so in the outlying areas of the county. In the succeeding decade, media coverage continued to be rather sparse, but there are some notable references that concerned these efforts to improve the lot of Black residents in the city, even as hostility very much was in evidence, including during the Civil War.
A few prominent African-American business owners who advertised during the Sixties including barber Lewis G. Green, who has been highlighted previously in this blog, with an April 1864 notice in the Los Angeles Star featuring his “Colorado Shaving and Hair-Cutting Saloon,” situated on Main Street and reopened after a previous half-dozen years of operation. At the end of the decade, Green had the distinction of being the first Black male voter following the passage of the 15th Amendment to the Constitution and his successful legal filing to force the county clerk to allow him to register.
In its 9 November 1866 edition, the Los Angeles News briefly highlighted one of Green’s more interesting attributes, under the heading of “A Fine Piece of Work.” Green was, for years, in the United States Navy, which is how he got to California during the Mexican-American War (he was the sole Black member of a local veterans’ group pertaining to that conflict.) The paper recounted that the “Knight of the Razor and Soap” made a scaled-down version of a clipper ship nearly four feet long and added that it was raffled at the Bella Union Hotel. The winner owned the What Cheer House, another hostelry, and exhibited the ship there, with the News commenting,
as a complete work of art, [it] is worth seeing; the maker displayed rare artistic and mechanical skill in its construction.
In April 1868, the paper reported on the addition to the United States Hotel, owned by Louis Mesmer and also situated on Main Street, being a rival of the Bella Union and the Lafayette among visitors. Among the tenants in the expanded structure, which included a jeweler and watchmaker, three stores (clothing, fruit and a grocery), a basement saloon and billiard parlor, and the daguerreotype gallery of Leik and Messicomer, was Green’s tonsorial palace.
Robert Owens was the most successful of the African-Americans in Los Angeles prior to his death in 1865 and, four years earlier, in August 1861, he and John Hall, also of prominence in the community for much of the 19th century, opened a livery stable, including the boarding and sale of horses and the offering of baled hay, at the corner of Los Angeles and San Pedro streets.
This was likely the same location as George Smith’s Black Swan Corral mentioned in yesterday’s post and, Owens and Hall added that “a large stream of water passes directly through the corral,” this almost certainly being one of zanjas that delivered the precious fluid to residents and business owners, “so that horses can always be safely and easily watered.”
Owens also had important contracts to supply local Army units with wood, feed and other material, which greatly improved his financial position, and the 1860 census recorded him, his wife Winnie and their family located next to a military encampment. With regard to Winnie Owens, a notable piece in the News of 1 October 1867 concerned an accepted invitation to a dinner thrown by “our colored friend Aunt Winnie” and which included a state senator from San Francisco and local luminaries like Judge Murray Morrison, attorney E.J.C. Kewen, County Clerk Thomas D. Mott (who had to be sued by Green for his voting privileges), and Dr. John S. Griffin.
The paper remarked that,
Aunt Winnie knows how to get up and serve a good dinner and as might have been expected, her fine talent in that line was fully developed upon the occasion . . .
The viands were everything that could be wished for, and wit and pleasant humor ruled the hour, the health of Mrs. Owens was proposed and responded to by the guests present, and after a toast to the memory of the late Robert Owens, husband of aunt Winnie, the guests took their departure well satisfied with having been entertained by aunt Winnie.
Naturally, we cannot assume that his event was a reflection of any views of equality between Mrs. Owens and her white guests, as those named were all Southern-born, though this is a remarkable and rare mention of an African-American woman in this period. As for Hall, he later resided just outside town on today’s Pico Boulevard and he, his wife Mary and their descendants remained important members of Black Los Angeles.
Peter Biggs, who was featured in yesterday’s post, was a notable African-American resident of Los Angeles for many years and maintained a barbershop of long standing. During the Civil War, the Virginia native was known to be a staunch supporter of the Confederacy and a stalwart Democrat. It was reported that, when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865, just after the South’s surrender, Biggs ran through town celebrating.
Four years later, however, Biggs met his own violent end, as the News of 8 May 1869 briefly reported that “a negro named Peter Biggs, more familiarly known as ‘Nigger Pete,’ was stabbed and killed by one Victor, alias Sport, . . . in Baker’s Restaurant,” where Victor worked as a cook. The Star of the same day went into some more detail about who it said was the first barber in town, observing that, like Green,
We believe Pete came here in 1846 with the military command which arrived at that time, in the service of one of the officers. Pete was quite a character in his own way, was always on hand to do any errand [as his 1850s ads stated], but sometimes became noisy and troublesome.
There were a couple of other accounts of violence involving African-American residents of the city, including the trouble Manuel Peppers, who was frequently arrested for intoxication, maltreatment of his wife and other reasons and who, in June 1861, as reported by the News, tried to commit suicide “while laboring under a temporary fit of insanity,” though his wife, Ann, the daughter of Hannah Embers, stopped him. The next month, Peppers was involved in a fight involving four Black men at his Los Angeles street residence, resulting in a death and two injuries. Notably, however, these reports were straightforwardly factual with no racial comments made.
During the Civil War, though, some racist attacks were made verbally at the region’s African-American population. The Star of 27 February 1864 published a report from San Bernardino on a “contraband” wedding, meaning that between a Black man and a white woman, and, while that city was far outside of Los Angeles County, the sentiments were undoubtedly those that would have been shared locally, including in such Southern settlements as El Monte.
The unnamed correspondent wrote that “we the good people of San Bernardino, although we are the debris of Mormonism,” the town being established in 1851 as an outpost of the LDS Church before most residents were recalled by Brigham Young a half-dozen years later, “and living on the outskirts of civilization, surely have the right to make a big fuss over Sambo and Dinah, and hence this short epistle.”
The account snidely noted that “a smart sprinkling of the ‘white’ element was thar . . . to the great gratification of the people ob color” and gave some examples of the Court of Sessions (County) Judge, who presided, a local attorney, educators, and doctors as among the former. It then asserted that “these contraband festivities were brought to a close by singing the following Negro Hymn,” though it seems certain that this was a creation of the writer, as it denigratingly stated,
Old Abe [Lincoln] he lubs de nigger well
He knows de nigger by de smell . . .
He knows dere wants, and all ob dat,
He feeds their souls on possum fat;
And when de nigger baby cry,
Old Abe he gives dem possum pie.
When in de Tabernacle met,
Brack nigger by a white gal set,
And in de Christian chapel too
De nigger habs a good front pew.
Old Abe determined not to keep,
In different pews de colored sheep,
Has mixed de various colors up,
Like rum and [mo]lasses in a cup.
Speaking of El Monte, a denizen subscribed as “Cactus,” offered a piece called “Loyal Resolutions,” which the Star of 6 February 1864 published as yet another invective against Lincoln and the Union, including such portions as: “resolved, that we no rights possess / unless by Abe decreed / though white men suffer sore distress / the negroes shall be freed,” “resolved, that we despise our race / and love the darkies more / we hope that they will fill our place / and rule this country o’er,” and “resolved, that we the war will wage / till ev’ry nigger’s free / and ’til we drive, with Northern rage / the white men in the sea.”
Another one of the San Gabriel Valley town’s unidentified versifiers submitted doggerel about the war, Lincoln and reference to “Sambo,” which the Star, a rabid supporter of the Confederate cause and a virulent vilifier of the Union, published in its edition of 4 April 1863. Identified only as “Pete,” the would-be poet wrote the work as a response to S.B. Rockwell and his “farewell effusions” of some kind in the Los Angeles News, which supported the Union cause.
From summer 1862, Rockwell, residing at Rancho Cucamonga, El Monte and then Los Angeles, submitted poems to the News, including one in praise of the Union Navy. He also imported purebred horses, including one sold to F.P.F. Temple. In the 11 March 1863 edition of that paper, Rockwell’s “Farewell to Los Angeles County” appeared, including its verse about “in State is found the fossil Whig [the party replaced by the Republicans in 1856] / The shrewd and scheming Democrat / Republicans in gala rig / Secessionists “and ‘a that”.”
Apparently, this offended “Pete” whose bitter invective called on Rockwell to:
Return to New England, the slave of old Abe
And sacraments drink from the skull of a babe;
Let all your devotions with piety bud,
And pray for extortion, destruction and blood;
With Puritan armies, who sit in their pews,
Enlist, and there bravely the rebels abuse
Sing praises to Lincoln, the President clown . . .
Then, waking in the newness of life, you will find
Each saint in that Eden seeks out his own kind;
The angels of purity—leading in song—
The harp shall them finger, and mix with the throng;
Aside from that number, in shade of the thrones,
With Sambo I think you will play with the bones!
A prior post here examined the education of the Black children of Los Angeles, including the establishment around 1865 of a “colored school.” It is worth reiterating that the 1862 state election included the publication of a flyer attacking San Francisco’s John Swett, who ran for superintendent of schools as a Union (Republican), for purportedly being “in favor of the amalgamation of black and white children in our public schools” and reminding voters that it was up to them to determined “whether you will keep them in the proper spheres that nature intended them to be.”
The News of 3 September informed Angeleno voters that “when this lie was first circulated in the city of San Francisco, Mr. Swett denied its truth through the public prints, and we believe his word is undoubted.” The paper assumed that “this contemptible effort to injure him will have no effect,” and he did win the election over Col. Jonathan D. Stevenson, a garrison commander at Los Angeles after the 1847 seizure of Mexican California by American forces, and Oscar P. Fitzgerald, a Georgia-born Confederate supporter who ended up succeeding Swett in 1867.
The 15 April 1865 edition of the Wilmington Journal, which replaced the shuttered Star after its proprietor Henry Hamilton was arrested for his Confederate support and blasts against Lincoln and the Union, quoted from Swett’s report after visiting Los Angeles County schools and, after the superintendent praised the two “white” schools with some 160 students as a model for others to follow, he added,
There is a small school of 15 negro and colored children of all the shades arising from blending all the primary colors of Spanish, American, Indian and African parentage. They are engaged in the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, as their little room, 10×15 feet, has neither desks, blackboards, maps, charts, nor any kind of furniture except a line of rough board seats without banks, round the walls.
Yet, seeking education these students were and this was an early example of the upbuilding of the community that African-Americans worked hard on despite all the obstacles of a lack of funding and material support that was largely denied to them. Just as a dedicated school was vital, so, too, was an organized church and the First African Methodist Episcopal Church involved substantial effort and time by Black leaders, with challenges and issues that extended for years.
An early reference to its founding came in the 11 March 1869 edition of the News, which remarked, “we understand the colored people of this city have purchased a lot upon the Mott tract,” that name again being notable as was pointed out above and the site being the northwest corner of Grand Avenue and 4th Street, “with the design of building a church thereon.” The issue of 24 August briefly reported that, “the Rev. Bishop Ward (colored),” this being Thomas Marcus Decatur Ward, who settled in San Francisco in 1854 to be pastor of an AME church and was appointed as a bishop in 1868, “addressed the colored and a number of the white population of Los Angeles” at the Methodist Church on Spring Street. The News added that “we understand the colored people have in contemplation the erection of a church of their own.”
About a month later, the Star of 25 September, informed readers that an advertisement was in its columns for a “proposed festival . . . for the purpose of raising money to aid the colored people of the city in building a church.” The event, to be held at Stearns’ Hall at the southwest corner of Los Angeles and Aliso streets, just south of where US 101 runs through downtown now, was considered “a laudable one” and the paper expressed the hope that “our citizens will be as liberal on this as on all other occasions.”
The ad was taken out by the women of the AME Church and included Winnie Owens, Biddy Mason, Martha Hall, Amanda Ballard, Ann Peppers, Maria Green (the Latina wife of Lewis), while tickets could also be obtained from George Smith, Jeremiah Redding, John Ballard and other men in the congregation. The Kern brothers were to furnish music and supper to be held at 11 p.m. (the doors were to open at 8), with admission being $2.
The 9 April 1870 edition of the Star observed that “Professor J[ames].E.M. Gilliard will lecture, in the Court House [built a decade earlier by Jonathan Temple as a commercial building, but soon turned over to the city and county as the temple of justice and city hall] next Monday evening, or the benefit of the church fund of the colored people of this city.” The topic was “The Future of the Colored Race.”
The goal of a permanent church proved elusive for some years to come, but, in 1872, meetings were held in Biddy Mason’s home and the Church recently celebrated its 150th anniversary as an anchor for the African-American community of the Angel City. With regard to the 1870s, we will return soon with our next post looking at Black Los Angeles during this era, so be sure to check back for that.