by Devorah Major

A Land of Opportunity

When a black ship captain named William Leidesdorff sailed his schooner into San Francisco Bay in 1841, he did not know that in a few years the city would be home to a booming black community. At the time, very few blacks lived in San Francisco. Leidesdorff bought many pieces of land, started one of the city's first hotels, and brought San Francisco its first steamship. The Gold Rush was just beginning in 1848 while Leidesdorff was dying of a brain fever. Waves of people poured into California cities, and blacks were one cresting wave. Some blacks came from the southern states, but many more came from the Northeast. There were those, too, from the West Indies, France, Canada, the Sandwich Islands, Chile, and Africa. California, however, did not roll out a welcome mat. The blacks who went there could not vote, testify in court, or attend the public schools. It was also difficult for them to own land.

Blacks in the Cities Go to Work

Blacks did find many job opportunities open to them when they moved to California. They became cooks, bakers, waiters, barbers, tailors, dressmakers, shoe- and bootmakers, teachers, and newspaper editors. In 1860, Sacramento had two black doctors. San Francisco had a black man who owned a furniture store, another who owned a livery business where he fed and cared for people's horses, and another who opened one of the first soap factories. There were also blacks who ran boardinghouses, and blacks who worked in real estate, buying, renting, and selling property.

Mifflin Gibbs and Peter Lester

Mifflin Gibbs and Peter Lester were two important businessmen at the time. It is said that Gibbs came to California in 1850 with only one dime in his pocket. He tried to work as a carpenter, but white carpenters said they would strike if they had to work with a black man. Instead, he took up bootblacking (shining shoes and boots). In 1853, he formed a partnership with Peter Lester, a skilled shoe- and bootmaker. Together they opened a store: Lester and Gibbs: Boots and Shoes. The business made both gentlemen rich.

Gibbs moved to Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, in 1858 because California kept passing laws that made it difficult for blacks to receive fair treatment. Peter Lester left San Francisco for Victoria the following year. There he opened another store with Mifflin Gibbs. This one was called "Lester and Gibbs, Dealers in Groceries, Provisions, Boots, and Shoes, &c." Lester stayed in Victoria, but Gibbs returned to the United States in 1870. He moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, where he became an attorney and then an elected municipal judge. He ended his brilliant career as United States consul to the island of Madagascar.

Other Cities

During the Gold Rush years, most black people lived in northern California. Southern California was not considered safe for blacks because large numbers of former slave owners lived there. In 1860, there were more than 4,000 black people in California. Only 77 of them, however, lived in Los Angeles. One of them was Biddy Mason.

Biddy Mason was born into slavery in 1818. Years later, her slave master forced her to walk from Mississippi to Utah. In 1856, he forced Biddy and her children to walk across the hot, dry desert that took them from Utah to San Bernardino, California. Then, he planned to move to Texas. Activists at the time filed a petition for freedom with a California judge. After the judge ruled that she was a free woman, Biddy Mason took her children and settled in Los Angeles. There she worked as a midwife and nurse.

Biddy Mason saved her money and, in ten years, was able to buy property. She continued to invest her money and buy more property. She used her own house as a home for the first black church in Los Angeles. Mason became known as a person who gave money to the poor, fought for blacks to go to school, and worked to win fair treatment for blacks under the laws of California. She was part of a small, but important, black population in the Los Angeles area.

Blacks as a Force for Change

Many of the blacks who came to California fought for black rights. Peter Lester and Mifflin Gibbs were involved in the antislavery movement and both joined the Colored Conventions in California. Few California blacks, however, have as exciting a tale as Mary Ellen Pleasant.

Born into slavery around 1814, Mary Ellen Pleasant was sold at age 7 to a man who placed her in a convent school. When he died, she was sent to Boston, where she worked as a servant and learned to be a tailor's assistant. In 1841, she married James Smith, a successful businessman and leader in the Underground Railroad, and moved to Virginia. Smith died in 1844, leaving Pleasant $45,000 and a plantation in Virginia. Around 1851, it became dangerous for her to continue living in Virginia. Aware that she had helped hundreds of slaves escape to freedom, southern slave owners wanted to stop her.

Considering it best to leave the area, Mary Ellen Pleasant moved to San Francisco. She bought property there, invested funds, and became even richer. She found jobs for blacks in hotels, restaurants, and rooming houses. She donated money to black freedom causes, including, so it is said, several thousand dollars to John Brown to help him in his fight to free slaves. She also fought for laws that would give blacks the right to testify in court. When she was thrown off a trolley car because she was black, she sued the company and won her case. Mary Ellen Pleasant died in 1903. Her tombstone reads, "Mother of Civil Rights in California, Friend of John Brown."

Culture in the Cities

Life was not all work and politics, just as Lester and Gibbs were not just good businessmen. The black community were also important supporters of culture and the founders of a social club called the San Francisco Athenaeum. This group had a library and reading room, and sponsored poetry and play readings, inspirational speakers, and music recitals. The programs helped to raise money for churches and the Negro press.

The Hyers Sisters: The First Black Opera Singers

While blacks in San Francisco were supporting the arts, the Sacramento black community was preparing America's first black opera singers for the stage. Samuel B. Hyers had come to California in 1856 with his family. Like so many others who had come during the Gold Rush years, he, too, hoped to prosper. Eleven years later, his daughters, Anna Madah and Emma Louise, made their professional singing debut at Sacramento's Metropolitan Theater. The following year, their mother brought them to San Francisco. Soon, the 11- and 13-year-old girls were giving concerts, entertaining at civic ceremonies, and singing at parties. When the two girls grew to adulthood, they moved to New York. There they performed as the "Hyers Sisters of California." After six successful years on the East Coast, they returned to San Francisco and performed their musical drama, In and Out of Bondage. They then returned to New York and, according to some sources, traveled to Europe, where they continued to sing.

While many blacks returned to the East after the Gold Rush years in California, most chose to make the state their permanent home. Today, Biddy Mason Day is still celebrated in Los Angeles. If you go to San Francisco, you can find Leidesdorff Street in the financial district. A plaque hangs near Mary Ellen Pleasant's former home in San Francisco. The Bethel A.M.E. Church and the Third Baptist Church, which were founded in 1852, continue to grow and thrive with youth training programs, child care services, a music academy, and a credit union. The Sun Reporter keeps the legacy of the state's first black newspapers alive. From the Gold Rush to today, black Californians continue to build dreams in the shadows of their ancestors.

Devorah Major is the author of An Open Weave, Street Smarts, and Traveling Women, and has had numerous poems, short stories, and essays published in anthologies and periodicals. She teaches writing workshops to children and adults in schools, museums, and other community institutions.