by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Heading home yesterday from Yosemite National Park, a stop was made in the late afternoon at Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park, which comprises the remnants of an African-American colony established in 1908 in the southwest corner of Tulare County. Its namesake and key founder, Lieutenant Colonel Allen Allensworth (1842-1914), was recently profiled in a post here and, after a two-decade career as an Army chaplain with the highest rank of any Black soldier, settled in Los Angeles, where he became a pillar of the African-American community.
After considering a site southeast of Temecula in portions of Riverside and San Diego counties, Allensworth and his compatriots, including educator William A. Payne, selected the Tulare County location, involving thousands of acres, and implemented the townsite plan. As noted at the end of the aforementioned post, however, Allensworth was killed on 14 September 1914 after being struck by a car as he headed toward a church, where he was to speak, in the San Gabriel Valley foothill town of Monrovia.
Driving west from Highway 99, it was observed that there were many orchards and a few vineyards that are beneficiaries of modern methods of delivering water that, of course, were not available close to 120 years ago. Among other factors, the lack of reliable supplies of the life-giving fluid was a paramount challenge to the Allensworth colonists as they worked diligently and determinedly for self-sufficiency in this remote locale.
Despite the founder’s shocking death, efforts continued to develop his namesake town and the California Eagle, a longstanding Black-owned paper in Los Angeles which had an official agent in the colony, ran a lengthy feature just a couple of weeks after Allensworth’s death, pronouncing in the headline, “Allensworth Colony Makes Great Showing.” The account began by asserting that, “there are many things that may be said to the credit of Allensworth which might have a tendency to promote more interest on the part of the Negro race . . . [and] that the establishment of it is the one step that is proving one of the chief factors in solving the Negro question by leaps and bounds.”
It was further posited that “those of this race who are home lovers” were sure to appreciate that the colony provided “a purer atmosphere, in which to reside and to raise a healthier, happier and freer posterity.” It was reported that the five-year-old community “is the home of about two hundred happy and contented Negro souls” and that its “location is ideal, its climate is conducive to the best of health, and its water is without doubt the dominion of the San Joaquin valley.”
Aspects of Allensworth that were cited as evidence of progress and prosperity was the post office, Frank Milner’s barbershop, the Hindsman store and the Allensworth Hotel. As for water, it was reported that a system was to soon be constructed that would provide enough to irrigate some 900 acres of farmland. Soon to be built was a Baptist church, a realty office, a depot for the Santa Fe railroad line running to the east and a couple of houses. It was also stated that a meeting was to be held to establish a monument to Allensworth in small park.
The Allensworth Realty Company, of which Payne was secretary and Oscar Overr was president, informed Eagle readers that “to further verify the statement that Allensworth has never before been on such a firm basis . . . there is not at this time a single white person having anything to do with the affairs of the colony at all.” As for the pair of principals, the piece propounded that,
These men have worked very diligently to get Allensworth on a firm basis and after long years of toil and convincing arguments, have convinced the owners of these lands that a Negro community with a white man at the money end was not nor never would be a success, for there are so many things that can’t be understood by them that may be so readily understood by Negroes thereby alleviating many of the knotty problems that would inevitably arise, through the former method of cross dealing.
The efforts of Overr, Payne and other leaders of the town after Allensworth’s death were heavily promoted in the Eagle in the year or so after that tragedy, but a marked change in coverage soon ensued with many fewer references in the African-American newspaper in succeeding years. In the 2 January 1915 edition of the Eagle, San Diego-based Baptist minister and Socialist, George W. Woodbey, wrote that, in summer 1904 at Chicago, he met Allensworth, who said “he had in mind the founding of a colony of our people,” but did not have any specifics, though he considered going to California to see the possibilities.
The two crossed paths again as the colonel “was busy working up the now successful town and colony” and Woodbey visited it just before Christmas.” He informed the paper that “everybody seems [to be] trying to outdo themselves in their effort to make me welcome” and added “I don’t know when I have felt more at home among strange people.” He met Payne and the educator’s assistant, Margaret Prince, as they were preparing pupils for a holiday program.
It was added that the soil was said to be as good as anywhere else in the San Joaquin Valley and could yield a wide array of produce, so Woodbey concluded that, as “it is plain to me that there are many of our people around the larger places that are merely eking out a mere living” and “who might do much better at Allensworth”:
There is no reason that persons of the proper grit may not succeed there much better than depending upon days’ work around many of the larger towns, until these days of competition and strife are at an end. It is my opinion that more persons should purchase land and cast in their lot with that enterprise.
There was, however, a major push for Allensworth to be the home of an industrial school, undoubtedly to be modeled on Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. The Los Angeles Tribune of 5 January 1915 reported that the institution was to be in a location that “is the home of several hundred colored colonists who have made a success of farming and who have demonstrated their enterprise.” With up to 60,000 black residents in California, it was argued that, because there was no industrial school for African-Americans west of Oklahoma, these and 40,000 others in the western states would provide the pool of pupils.
The Los Angeles Times of the 11th added that Assembly member Fred C. Scott, of Visalia, was sponsoring a bill for the school’s establishment and that he told the press “that more could be accomplished for the Negroes of the State in an educational way by segregation than by the present public school” and that Black residents in his district “were strongly in favor of such an institution.”
The 23 January edition of the Eagle included Payne’s response to critics of the proposed school, including from the white-owned press and misrepresentations about the project, remarking that “when it reports something adverse to you and yours there is always an allowance made for reportorial effervescence.” The educator added “Allensworth girds herself and returns to the fray for civic justice and racial development” and that “we are against segregation because to be legalized it puts the stamp of inferiority on the person segregated.” He continued,
We are told we can’t win. That’s an old story to us. In 1908 we were told we could get no large tract of land to colonize. We got it. We then were told we could not get Negroes to purchase and colonize. They did and are doing it. We were told they could not make a community, succeed in it and get County recognition. We are succeeding. We were told we were foolish to fight for our contract rights for water. We would lose. We won out. We believe we are going to win in this venture.
Payne concluded with a call for Black unity, observing that “if the Negro Ship of State reaches land it will be because of a united pull” that allowed for factions to have differences, but still find enough common ground for success, including for the industrial school concept.
The 24 April issue of the Eagle, however, noted that the “Allensworth Poly Institute” bill was readied for a hearing before the Assembly’s ways and means committee, though when Scott was asked about its prospects, he replied, “it will not pass; the state can’t spare the money.” The legislation, therefore, was expected to “die” in committee.
One bit of good news for the colony was that, earlier in the month, reported the Eagle, the 7th was celebrated as Allensworth Day, it being the birthdate of the founder. The paper remarked that the Allensworth “left as a legacy a community in which the ambitions of his race might assemble and work out [its] own destiny” and it was added that this holiday might lead to others for Black leaders. One outgrowth of the event was a song “Allensworth, My Allensworth,” of which here is a lyric sample:
We sing the praises of thy name
Allensworth, My Allensworth
And bear afar thy wondrous fame
Allensworth, My Allensworth
Thy growing crops, thy waving grain
Thy boundless fields and rolling plains
Bespeak a land of plenteous gain
Allensworth, My Allensworth . . .
Long may our daughters thy prestige feel
Allensworth, My Allensworth
To freedom’s shrine our sons ere kneel
Allensworth, My Allensworth
May here begin for worthy men
Careers that only time will end
And through the ages we will sing
Allensworth, My Allensworth
Little of substance about the colony could be found in the local press for most of 1916, though a booth at the Tulare County Fair at Visalia led the Eagle of 23 December to print a report from the colony that “much praise is being given Allensworth by the papers of the County and Valley for its part played in the fair.” The booth was deemed “a model of neatness and industry” including the event colors of green and orange with the American flag amid portraits of Allensworth, Washington, poet Paul Laurence Dunbar “and other race heroes.”
Among the items shown were such agricultural products as alfalfa, barley, beets, citron, cream, eggs, potatoes and onions, while home-made items included canned fruit, needlework, pastries, pillows, quilts and rugs and the colony school produced booklets, drawings, maps and posters. The exhibiting of 40 books by Black writers, sheet music from African-American composers and, courtesy of a Pasadena man, a copy of most of the Black-owned newspapers in the country was such that the paper favorably remarked that the booth was “viewed and commented upon by vast throngs.”
The Eagle went on to note that “perhaps the crowning compliment paid Allensworth was the invitation by the Fair Committee to the Girls’ Glee Club of the Public School to render a program” and a crowd at the city auditorium rendered “vociferous applause” after each number, which included a chorus, a quartet and a pair of solos that “showed the audience was not disappointed.” It was concluded that the performance “is but the beginning of a splendid career for this aggregation of youthful singers.”
The piece concluded that “Allensworth was not satisfied with the above showing but insisted on prizes,” including a special merit award for the school, first prizes for alfalfa and rice and runners-up for barley and citron. The Los Angeles Rural World of 20 January 1917 commented that the display “was the envy of many sections” and that Allensworth’s denizens “realize that true success comes from industry, application and thinking while they work” because “the exhibits of this community received more comment than that of any other exhibit at the fair.”
With the dawn of 1917 came the promise of improved water supply for the colony, as a local correspondent informed the Times that a mass meeting “adopted a preliminary plan for the formation of the Allensworth irrigation district” for the township, of which 90% of the population was Black. The paper added that “the plan in general contemplates a system of deep wells with which to develop water sufficient for irrigation of a tract of approximately 7000 acres.” Overr, the first African-American justice of the peace in California, was among the five trustees, including Sarah Hindsman, who owned a store with husband Zebedee.
In late April, the United States entered the First World War and a massive mobilization took place for the American Expeditionary Force sent to the battlefields of France. The 27 November edition of the Times published a short account from the local correspondent that “Negroes of the Allensworth colony . . . are anxious to do their bit for the Red Cross” as Overr’s wife, Cora, submitted an application for a Tulare chapter auxiliary comprised mainly of women. She added that “ample funds have been pledged with which to carry on the work.”
The New Year’s Day 1918 edition of the paper reported on the formation of the auxiliary and the election of officers including chair Lillian Wells, secretary and treasurer Louise Dotson and directors Mary Gross, J.N. Coleman and J.A. Hackett. The first report of the new organization included note that “ample financial support to furnish materials for the workrooms of the negro organization has been provided.”
The 13 September edition of the Times noted that Overr, who was an Army veteran of the Spanish-American War as a first sergeant and then second lieutenant of the 23rd Kansas Infantry, was assigned to go to France for the Y.M.C.A. as a secretary. The war ended not quite two months later, but he was still expected to travel to Europe at the conclusion of the year as part of the organization’s National War Work Council and under a three-year contract, though this journey was cancelled.
Another notable event in 1918 was the May visit to Allensworth of Charlotta and Joseph Bass, owners and editors of the Eagle, who told her readers that, as she disembarked from the train coming from Corcoran after a visit to Visalia, Overr was boarding to head for Pasadena to look in on an ill brother. After checking in at the Allensworth Hotel and having breakfast, the couple visited the town library, the post office and three stores, as well as attending the meeting of the woman’s club, with Josephine Allensworth one of those participating.
A trip to the school led Charlotta Bass to remark that the work of Payne and Prince in raising the institution “to the highest degree of efficiency” and it was noted that “we could hear of nothing but praise throughout the county for the school.” The visitors were treated to singing and “had the pleasure of addressing the body of pupils and they in turn seemed to make it mutual.” Leaving the colony for points south, Bass commented,
in a reminiscent moode [sic] we thought that after all these people had made real history on the Pacific Coast, and like the real pioneers, they became discouraged not but kept on, and who knows but that with the promised relief in the water situation that proud Allensworth at last will not [fail to?] scale the heights and do even more than its most enthusiastic supporters had hoped.
We’ll return with part two and carry this account of some of the history of the Allensworth colony forward into the 1920s, so check back for that.