by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Under the heading of “Negroes Who Have Won Place or Fortune in Los Angeles and Pasadena,” the next page of the special section in the Los Angeles Times of 12 February 1909, the centennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, on African-Americans in the region, the paper turned to those who were a success in business and the “Colored Brothers Who Have Gained Property.” The paper began this essay by informing readers,
To show that the colored race has demonstrated business ability with the opportunities afforded in the Land of Sunshine, The Times mentions some of the negroes of Los Angeles and vicinity who have accumulated property and built up businesses.
It should be noted that the paper clearly emphasized both the talent of those Black Angelenos who did well in their vocations with a distinguishing feature of greater Los Angeles in being a place of greater opportunity. Moreover, The Great Migration, during which several million Black persons left the Southern states for other parts of the country, including the Angel City, is generally acknowledged to have occurred from 1910 to 1970, so this article was on the cusp of that era.
Significantly, the first person mentioned in the article was Robert C. Owens (1859-1932), one of two sons of Ellen Mason (later, Huddleston), daughter of Biddy Mason, and Charles P. Owens, son of Robert and Winnie Owens. As prior posts here have noted, the Owens and Mason families were among the earliest African-Americans to reside in Los Angeles, dating back to the 1850s.
After Charles Owens died in 1882, he left his livery stable and other holdings, to Robert and his brother Henry, and, when Biddy Mason died in 1891, she left her substantial property, though subjected to lawsuits due to infighting, to them, as well. Henry Owens died in 1894 and Robert managed the combined estates and was the richest Black person in western America. He married Anne Dugged and the couple had two daughters, Gladys (1895-1995) and Manila (1898-1930).
He was not just widely known for his fortune, but for his involvement in civic affairs and politics, including as a preeminent Black figure in the Republican Party in Los Angeles and statewide, while he was a dedicated supporter of Booker T. Washington and his Tuskegee Institute. With a shift in generational leadership among Black Americans, embodied in the “New Negro” concept discussed during this post, Owens became less influential, but still maintained a significant stature in the African-American community in Los Angeles.
The Times article recorded that Robert “was trained in his youth in manual labor” (some sources suggest he was educated at a school for Black children in Oakland, though this was not mentioned in the article) and, in the early 1870s worked for Jonathan S. Slauson, a prominent landowner and banker, on a Downey-area ranch, while he also sold charcoal to ironworking firms owned by Henry D. Barrows, Ozro W. Childs and William C. Furrey. Other work including street sprinkling for the City of Los Angeles and at the Port of Los Angeles.
In 1885, the piece continued, the Owens brothers opened up a stable on Biddy Mason’s property on the east side of Spring Street below 3rd Street—this is where the Biddy Mason Memorial Park is located today behind the Broadway-Spring Center. It was added that Mason was brought to the region as a slave and “held in a state of semi-slavery” until she was freed in an early 1856 habeus corpus case in Los Angeles.
With the deaths of Biddy Mason and Henry Owens, Robert became sole administrator of the estate and “has been a liberal contributor to Christian and educational institutions, having given many scholarships to Booker T. Washington students” while he “has helped his own people in this community in many ways.” While it was stated that Robert “has not unburdened himself unduly in politics, preferring business always” he was, as noted above, involved in Republican Party politics.
An example of his business acumen was cited by the Times in which, in 1890 during a bust that followed the Boom of the 1880s, Owens read in the Times of the sale of a property on Hill Street between 7th and 8th streets and, with his mother, purchased it. Fifteen years later, it was sold for more than ten times the amount, though it was added that, in the four years since, it was worth a quarter million dollars.
He also owned a hotel building on 4th Street and Ruth (now Stanford) Avenue and a lot at Figueroa and 23rd streets in a prime area not far from the University of Southern California. This sketch concluded by remarking that Owens “is a very careful investor, devoted to the interest of his people by whom he is honored and respected for what he has done.”
As he aged, however, financial and personal problems ensued, including a lawsuit filed against Robert by his daughter Gladys concerning his management of the family estate. This led to a division of property including a Long Beach home left to Manila, who shortly afterward died of tuberculosis, and then to Gladys, with whom Anna lived as the marriage with Robert splintered. Robert received and lived in in a Historic South-Central Los Angeles apartment house , but foreclosure proceedings were instituted and the place attached.
On a Saturday in mid-February 1932, as the Great Depression worsened and beset with these troubles, Robert visited the office of the Black-owned California Eagle and, stated its proprietor, Charlotta Bass, “asked to see home back files of the paper.” It was added that “after looking at them, he seemed to hesitate to leave and finally asked the manager how he looked” and after she told him he looked well, he noted that he was past 70 years of age and then left.
The next day, Owens traveled to Long Beach to visit his estranged wife, daughter, Gladys, her second husband, Frederick Harrison, and Gladys’ son from her first marriage. According to the Long Beach Sun, Gladys stated that her father “paced back and forth, went in and out of the house and indicated his nervousness” during the visit. After a couple of hours or so, Gladys, Frederick and Owens went to the kitchen to get Robert a glass of water and, suddenly, he pulled out a gun.
The first shot was fired at Frederick Harrison, who fell dead, while Gladys threw the water in her father’s face and ran out a back door to summon help. When Anna approached the kitchen from the living room, she was shot and instantly killed. Owens then walked into an adjoining den or library, sat on a couch, and, as his grandson witnessed after hearing the gunshots, turned the pistol on himself and committed suicide.
The terrible tragedy shook the Black community of Los Angeles, as reflected in the Eagle, which commented, “the stark tragedy all but whipes [sic] out perhaps the real pioneer and historic family of Los Angeles” and added “friends of [Owens] are convinced that his mind snapped under the weight of happenings and it is admitted his daughter’s marriage [Harrison was white] had an effect on his mind.” It also observed that “behind the tragedy lie a series of conflicting and contradictory motives and suppositions, any of which might account for the slayings.”
Bass’ “On The Sidewalk” column observed that “last week Mr. Owens fully cognizant of what was going on about him started making preparations for the last journey” and painted a picture of the elderly man going through scenes his life as he journeyed to Long Beach, while also mentioning that Owens wrote letters to an undertaker, reprinted in the Eagle, and friends ahead of time. The terrible events that followed entailed “closing the chapter on the last direct [male] descendent of Biddy Mason, grand old lady of Los Angeles” and the piece closed with a question, “glib tongues tell wild stories of love, romance and disappointments in the life of Robert Owens, but who knows?”
In his “Spreading Joy” column in the Eagle, John Fowler reprinted a letter he received from Owens on New Year’s Day, letting the columnist know what he meant to him in terms of spreading “joy and happiness.” He noted his age and added that, over about a half-century, “my efforts to bring sunshine into the life of suffering humanity have not failed.” Fowler referred to Owens as an older brother figure and wrote “he came from a long line of pioneers who by the sweat of their brows and good judgement built up a splendid fortune and an unblemished name.”
The columnist continued that Owens’ father, Charles “was known all over the country as a man of his word,” that Biddy Mason “will always live in the annals of California history,” and that Ellen Huddleston was remembered for her charity and financial help to churches. Owens, too, was known for his good works and “did not parade his acts of charity” including anonymous supplies of food to poor people. Moreover, he was known for his sociable personality and hosting of such dignitaries as Mayor Meredith P. Snyder, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois.
Fowler concluded that Owens saw so much slipping away and, as he brooded over misfortune, “something snapped” and he “became another man, a lonely traveler going down that lonesome road all alone.” The writer asserted that Owens “made the supreme sacrifice, in defense of home and all that he held dear and and [sic] has earned a right to be classed with the other immortals who gave all for a principle.” At the funeral, he heard Gladys say “God bless you, papa, leading Fowler to ask readers “let’s bury any unkind thought about any of those concerned” in recognition of a profound family tragedy.
The next figure highlighted in the article was Richard H. Dunston (1856-1930), “proprietor of the Los Angeles Van, Storage and Truck Company, one of the largest business enterprises conducted by any colored man in the city.” The Virginia native, born into slavery, lived in Ohio was “engaged in his present line of business in this city for twenty-two years,” starting with a wagon and horse, but expanding to twenty-five animals and up to twenty employees, while he had a 12,000-square foot, two-story brick building. Dunston was summarized as “a business man of much enterprise and ability.”
Plumber W.J. Thompson, a native of Tennesee, who resided in Sacramento before migrating to Los Angeles earlier in the decade, “is a strenuous advocate for industrial education for the colored people” and headed an effort to establish a Los Angeles Industrial School, which, with help from churches and women missionary societies, was “likely to be carried speedily to a successful completion.” The project, however, was not to be.
In identifying seven individuals and firms engaged in real estate, said to be “a profitable opening for colored citizens,” the Times remarked that “the largest business of this kind conducted by colored men is the California Colony and Home Promoting Association,” with Lieutenant Colonel Allen Allensworth (the first African-American to achieve that rank in the United States Army) as president, with J.W. Palmer as financial agent, W.A. Payne serving as secretary and Harry Mitchell working as superintendent.
It was added that “these men are projecting the Allensworth City Colony, at Salita, on the Santa Fé Railroad, in Tulare county,” and, while the colony ultimately declined, the site is now a California State Park. Allensworth resided on West 30th Street where what is now University of Southern California housing exists today. In September 1914, he took a streetcar to Monrovia to give a speech at a church there when he was struck and killed by a motorcycle. He left a widow and two daughters, one of whom was married to the prominent Los Angeles figure, Louis M. Blodgett.
James M. Vena (1859-1932), who hailed from Xenia, Ohio, where his father, Cyrus, a builder and contract served on the city council and was a trustee at Wilberforce University. After the Vena family came to Los Angeles in the late 1880s, Cyrus became a janitor at the Court House and worked there until his death in 1918. James, meanwhile, taught and was a principal at a school in St. Louis and then migrated to the Angel City in 1894, ran the New Searchlight newspaper from 1897 to 1900 and was later a deputy city and county tax collector and deputy county auditor and assessor, as well as post-office clerk.
Julius B. Loving (1863-1938) was born in Washington, D.C. and settled in Los Angeles in 1891, running a restaurant, coal and wood yard and trash hauling businesses over the years, and, in 1899, was appointed by Sheriff William A. Hammel as a deputy, becoming the first African-American to hold this position. While he was removed by a succeeding sheriff, he later worked as a county jail employee and then as an inspector, retiring just before his death as what sheriff’s department historian John J. Stanley says was “the first black executive in the history of the department.
The article briefly discussed twenty-five other individuals and companies in the Angel City, including Theodore W. Troy, who wrote an essay discussed earlier in this blog, and then turned attention to the fact that “the negroes of Pasadena are progressive and industrious and in many instances have made accumulations during their stay in the western country.”
William Prince (1869-1942) was born in Tennessee, roughly between Nashville and Memphis, and settled in the Crown City with his father and two brothers in 1885, being the second Black family in the San Gabriel Valley town. He spent most of his years in Pasadena as a bank janitor, porter and messenger and was ordained a minister in the First African Methodist Episcopal Church there. The article noted that he’d been in Pasadena for 23 years “and has proved himself a careful investor” with property in four locations in town as well as in Huntington Beach.
Henderson Boone (1850-1914) was born in Virginia and spent much of his early life in Marion, Ohio, north of Columbus, where he followed his father’s occupation as a blacksmith. On settling in Pasadena, he established his shop and residence on South Fair Oaks Avenue about where Huntington Memorial Hospital is now. The essay observed that Boone built a three-story business building at the corner of Fair Oaks and Congress, now site of the Pasadena Medical Plaza, and he owned another Crown City holding.
Nearby, the firm of Walker-McAdoo operated the only Black-owned grocery store in Pasadena and eleven persons were listed as owning property and more than fifty others as owners of their residences. Speaking of which, the accompanying illustrations comprised eight residences owned by Black Angelenos with a caption reading “prosperous negroes’ homes in Los Angeles, showing good taste and refinement.” Half of these dwellings, two of them west of the University of Southern California, one on Venice Boulevard just west of the Convention Center and the last in Montecito Heights, are still with us.
We’ll return soon with part five, so be sure to check back for that.
At the beginning of this post, it was emphasized that Los Angeles was a place of opportunity, and opportunity was one of the key reasons African Americans were able to develop and showcase their talents here in the early 20th century. This point intrigued me deeply, because I believe that opportunities alone are far from enough; they are meaningful only to those who are prepared to seize them.
In the early 1990s, when China’s market was just opening up, I was busy helping many foreign-invested companies establish their manufacturing bases there. Many new expatriates – coming from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, the U.S., and other countries – lacked real managerial experience in their home countries, yet carried themselves with arrogance and a sense of superiority. I often advised them that they were “wearing an oversized hat to wait for their heads to grow to fit it.” (戴著帽子等頭大）They had been given opportunities, but they were not ready to meet them.
In contrast, among the thousands of local factory workers and foremen, I saw many talented individuals and many college graduates, who were eager and capable. I often recommended to the top management of those foreign companies give more opportunities to good local workers, and they were many. And time and again, when those doors were opened, these local talents proved themselves, often outperforming their expatriate supervisors. The reason was simple: they were ready and waiting for nothing but opportunity.
The same principle applies to today’s society. Few would deny that the doors to opportunity are far wider open now than they were in the early 20th century. Yet, unfortunately, many young people choose the wrong path instead, turning to crime. The harsh truth remains: without preparation, opportunity itself cannot help.