African-Americans in Early California: the First Hundred Years

Wednesday, August 12th, 2020 at 6 pm with speaker Jesse Warr
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People of African descent figure in California history from its very name. This presentation will introduce: two Rosa Parks who successfully challenged racial discrimination in San Francisco public transit; The Presidio's Buffalo Soldiers; the young teen who nicknamed the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition (Palace of Fine Arts in The Marina); and other indomitable people who survived de facto Jim Crow and persistent efforts to marginalize and ridicule San Francisco's Black minority. California briefly took center stage in the long-standing national debate over slavery, and its admission to the Union helped precipitate the Civil War.

In the '70s Jesse interviewed 22 Black descendants of original settlers, for the San Francisco Public Library, and did his own research in primary sources about "Mammy" Pleasant, an unique and powerful woman who claims to have left San Francisco and gone to aid John Brown in planning a slave insurrection at Harper's Ferry: "John Brown's body lies a'mouldering in the grave [but] his Truth is marching on." Jesse will be happy to take questions.