A-Bakken-4851.qxd 1/18/2006 2:45 PM Page 1 A ACJACHEMEN a place where they could obtain employment. Most 19th-century black towns were agricultural communi- See JUANEÑOS ties, and their leaders often agreed with Booker T. Washington’s view that African Americans could progress if they “cast their buckets where they were” AFRICAN AMERICAN occupationally in separate social settings. COMMUNITIES IN CALIFORNIA Blacks sought California as a place of freedom and opportunity, but some associated that promise with From their time in slavery, African Americans have separate race communities. The earliest concentrations sought refuge and opportunity by migrating to places of African Americans were several experiments at populated solely by their race. Various towns have importing them as farm workers. Proposals to set up been labeled all-black towns. Scholars have tried to plantations with slaves before the Civil War never mate- distinguish areas that merit that label by establishing rialized, but at the end of the war, the idea was revived, definitions for a black town as “a separate community and at least one small colony was set up in Tulare containing a population at least 90 percent black in which County. The most ambitious effort coincided with the the residents attempted to determine their own politi- establishment of cotton growing in the Bakersfield area cal destiny.” While the earliest all-black towns were in the late 1880s. A cotton growers’ association imported set up during Reconstruction in the South, those in the a colony of African American workers from the South West began with the migration of blacks from that and set up cabins for them. But many workers soon region to Kansas in the 1870s. Other towns were found better jobs elsewhere and left the colony. Within efforts to secure remaining open land in the West, a short time, the whole plan had failed, as did a similar especially in Oklahoma in the late 1880s and 1890s. plan to import blacks to pick grapes around Fresno. Behind some settlements were race leaders who envi- Both of these were responses to the shortage of farm sioned all-black towns bringing political and eco- labor following the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. nomic independence and a chance for their race to With the arrival of Japanese and other immigrant farm prove its worth. In other cases, such “race men” were labor, interest among white farmers in importing blacks entrepreneurial promoters who used the desire for ended for the rest of the century. social equality for personal profit. In yet other cases, Efforts by African Americans to establish black the main promoters were white men who often sold settlements were also largely in agricultural areas, blacks marginal land. Finally, some communities that especially the San Joaquin Valley. Black farmers set were in fact nearly all black became so without up a colony in Fowler in 1890, and by the early 1900s, design, usually from black workers concentrating in that town had between 30 and 40 black families. Most 1 A-Bakken-4851.qxd 1/18/2006 2:45 PM Page 2 2———African American Communities in California were landowners and prospered into the 20th century. of converting desert into profitable cropland. Other Four miles away was the small town of Bowles, where blacks were attracted to the colony through the 1910s a “colored settlement” was established in the early by appeals from race newspapers to seize the oppor- 1900s. In the early 1920s, it was one of four California tunity for free land and ads from black realtors. Their towns cited as “populated and governed entirely or numbers sustained chapters of both the National almost entirely by Negroes.” Substantial numbers of Association for the Advancement of Colored People black farmers also resided in Visalia, Hanford, and (NAACP) and the Garveyite United Negro Improvement other valley cities. While none of these could be called Association (UNIA) into the early 1920s. By the end a black town, their residents established churches, of that decade, the distinct black colony had ended, social clubs, even a black baseball team in Visalia. and blacks simply became a portion of the population A different type of black community lived in Wasco, of Victorville. where white landowners formed a colony of black Each of the other agricultural communities also farm workers in 1907. That colony continued at least became a black enclave within a predominantly non- through the 1930s. In Yolo County, west of Sacramento, black community. In none of them did African a group of blacks made one of the first uses of state American settlers establish a framework of government homestead land, following the repeal of the restriction or economy uniquely their own. Such informal black of such grants to white citizens. The area came to be towns thus stand in contrast to the more long-lived known as “Nigger Hill,” and it attracted black ranchers effort to establish a formal all-black agricultural town: from other parts of northern California. It eventually Allensworth. This colony was the vision of Colonel disappeared as a community, though it would be con- Allen Allensworth, an army chaplain who believed that sidered—and ultimately rejected—as the site of a state inculcating moral values and economic self-sufficiency historic park in the 1970s. in black troops would lead to racial progress. When he While conditions in most of these towns were retired in 1906, he envisioned establishing an agricul- primitive in terms of technology, black newspapers tural colony that would be “a model colored commu- emphasized the progress and prosperity of the “ener- nity” and a “center for moral and civic education.” getic class” of farmers who lived there and held them These ideals reflected those of Booker T. Washington, up as an example of the promise of rural life and land a friend of the colonel, and the colony was envisioned ownership. Isolated black rural settlements were also as a Tuskegee of the West. These goals took tangible set up in the early 1900s in Paso Robles and the north- form in 1908 when Allensworth, along with William ern California community of Weed. The latter was a Payne and other prominent blacks in Los Angeles, company lumber town established in 1907, and in formed the California Colony and Home Promoting 1916 the company offered to ship black workers there. Association. Its purpose was to acquire land for an By 1920, Weed had 447 blacks; by 1930, 541, nearly all-black colony, which would demonstrate blacks’ all clustered in one part of the town with separate abilities at self-sufficiency and government and refute businesses and social institutions that they set up. then widespread views of innate inferiority. Southern California was also the site of all-black Colonel Allensworth and associates were unable communities. In the early 1900s, the black Los to acquire land for their visions until a company run Angeles Forum learned that the federal government by white land speculators, Pacific Farming Company, had opened homesteads in Sidewinder Valley, near entered the scene. This firm had already established the community of Victorville. A substantial colony, the town of Alpaugh, in Tulare County, and offered including prominent Los Angeles residents and Southern 4,000 acres nearby at $100 per acre (triple what it had migrants, moved to the area, setting up farms and charged whites for Alpaugh) on terms of $5 per month. homes. By 1914, they had claimed 20,000 acres and The site, renamed Allensworth, was arid, windswept, were filing claims for more in nearby Victor Valley. and alkaline in places. But it straddled a main rail line, But by 1920, many of the original settlers had left, raising hopes that it would be a center of local com- discouraged by the shortage of water and the difficulty merce. Initially, the colony association promoted the A-Bakken-4851.qxd 1/18/2006 2:45 PM Page 3 African American Communities in California———3 land, but when it procured few buyers, Pacific hotel, grain warehouses, and storage bins, and a variety Farming took over. It solicited black veterans with the of artisans pursued their trades. These impressions of idea of a home for themselves and their families. Two prosperity were reinforced in 1916, when Allensworth other white-run companies linked to Pacific Farming products nearly swept the prizes for both home and farm promised to develop water resources. By 1912, Colonel exhibits at the county fair. The school employed two Allensworth hailed the officials of Pacific Farming for black teachers—among the few hired anywhere in the rescuing the colony when it seemed it might fail. But state—and offered classes into high school. such praise soon turned sour, as these companies Beneath appearances of prosperity, however, failed to provide water equipment, invited the Santa Allensworth had serious economic problems. Its pop- Fe railroad to build a line through Alpaugh that left ulation never grew to the critical mass needed to sus- Allensworth a mere whistle-stop, and tried to end tain an economic community. As a result, owning and sales of local land to blacks. After 1913, these compa- managing personal farms became a secondary occu- nies faded from the scene. pation for many. They gained their main income from Allensworth by the early 1910s had developed from an working in white-owned enterprises, often as farm experimental colony to an apparently prosperous all-black laborers. Professionals and artisans found insufficient town. Its legal status was recognized by Tulare County in work in Allensworth and were obliged to join the 1910, when it helped settlers set up a public school. By ranks of the laborers.