2019 MAAFA Proclamation ~ Recovering our
California Pan African Heritage
Whereas,
from the Awash River Basin of Ancient Kush Civilization, the oldest documented
human beings with the brain case of modern women and man walked the
earth. From throughout the entire global Pan African Diaspora we
continue to discover amazing ancient “hidden figures” who have advanced
civilization, contributing to the forward flow of humanity, and whereas
We
remember the Arabic Sea and Indian Ocean Slave Trade of human cargo that began
in the 9th century with military conquest leading to the buying
and selling of men, women and children to serve as chattel enslaved
humans. In the 15th century Spanish and Portuguese
military exploration expanded slavery along the entire West African coastline
exporting human cargo to the Caribbean Basin and South America. In
August 1619, two small pirate ships hijacked on open sea and enslaved Africans
off a larger ship along the coast near Veracruz, Mexico. These
enslaved human beings were sold along the King James Colony of Virginia
beginning the British entrance into one of the most horrific events in world
history, that cost Africa 75 -100 million lives, many enduring ungodly inhuman
conditions, and whereas
Earlier in 1535, Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés first colonized Baja, California, utilizing 300 enslaved Pan Africans and later in 1770, Monterey, California was made Spanish Capitol of Alta California with the establishment of the Presidio at Monterey and Mission in Carmel. In 1776, Yerba Buena, today’s San Francisco followed suit with the Presidio at San Francisco and Mission Delores. African-Latinos migrated by force and free into Alta California and by 1790 made up nearly 20 percent of the population, or one in five residents, according to the 1790 Spanish Census, and whereas
In the disputed free state, California the “institution of slavery [would not] come to an end until 1872, [7 years after the end of the Civil War].” Delilah Leontium Beasley (Sept. 9, 1867 to Aug. 18, 1934), American historian and human rights activist, states in her essay published in January 1919, “Slavery in California.” We revisit this document on its centennial and the 400 Years of African American History Commission Act, federal legislation which acknowledges the institution of slavery’s beginnings in the British colony at Old Point Comfort, now Fort Monroe National Monument, Hampton, VA, even though Spain’s entrance into the slave trade on the west coast predates this by 82 years, and whereas
Earlier in 1535, Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés first colonized Baja, California, utilizing 300 enslaved Pan Africans and later in 1770, Monterey, California was made Spanish Capitol of Alta California with the establishment of the Presidio at Monterey and Mission in Carmel. In 1776, Yerba Buena, today’s San Francisco followed suit with the Presidio at San Francisco and Mission Delores. African-Latinos migrated by force and free into Alta California and by 1790 made up nearly 20 percent of the population, or one in five residents, according to the 1790 Spanish Census, and whereas
In the disputed free state, California the “institution of slavery [would not] come to an end until 1872, [7 years after the end of the Civil War].” Delilah Leontium Beasley (Sept. 9, 1867 to Aug. 18, 1934), American historian and human rights activist, states in her essay published in January 1919, “Slavery in California.” We revisit this document on its centennial and the 400 Years of African American History Commission Act, federal legislation which acknowledges the institution of slavery’s beginnings in the British colony at Old Point Comfort, now Fort Monroe National Monument, Hampton, VA, even though Spain’s entrance into the slave trade on the west coast predates this by 82 years, and whereas
In
1810, Miguel Hidalgo led the Mexican War of Independence with Spain and on
September 27, 1821, the “Cry of Delores” ended Spanish rule and called for
redistribution of the land and racial equality. Revolutionary
Mexican General and later 2nd President of Mexico, Vicente
Guerrero ended slavery in Mexico in 1829, and was executed in February 14, 1831,
and whereas
Pan
Africans from throughout the Diaspora settled in Alta California, Mexico
yearning for a greater measure of freedom and many becoming very wealthy, and
serving in all aspects of the Mexican society. In 1846, the
California Bear Flag Revolt included at least 7 men of African ancestry who
reported to the US Vice Consul in Mexico at the Port of San Francisco, William
Alexander Leidesdorff, Jr., “the African Founding Father of
California.” The Pan African Mexican Governor of California Pio Pico
and many other African-Latinos lost all legal redress after the Mexican
American War, the California Constitutional Convention in October 1849 and
California Statehood in 1850, and whereas
On January 1, 1863, President
Abraham Lincoln during the US Civil War’s Executive Order known as the
Emancipation Proclamation became law, authorizing the arming of US Colored
Troops, women and men, to save the Union and earn freedom on the way to the end
of the US Civil War. In 1866, US Colored Troops (9th and
10th and the 24th and 25th Infantries) became
members of the Regular US Army and became known as Buffalo
Soldiers. Over 400
Buffalo Soldiers are buried at the SF Presidio
and reflect an unbroken continuity of distinguished
service worthy of acknowledgement and greater recognition.
In fact, in 1903, Captain Charles Young
(1864-1922), “served as 9th Cavalry Company commander at the
Presidio of San Francisco. His duties that year included leading an escort of
troops for President Theodore Roosevelt
and six days later serving as the Acting Superintendent of Sequoia National Park
and “the smaller adjacent General Grant National Park (later renamed Kings
Canyon).”
“Though the U.S. Cavalry had provided troops to manage and protect California's national parks each summer since 1891, with the prior movement of Troops K and L to Yosemite National Park, and now the movement of Troops I and M to Sequoia National Park, 1903 was the first time African American soldiers were given the responsibility of park patrol for an entire summer season. Previously in 1899, the 24th Infantry patrolled Yosemite.”
“The 9th Cavalry also constructed, repaired, and improved the parks' roads and trails. Beginning in June, the first African American Superintendent Young put his men hard to work. Progress was rapid despite the rough and rocky terrain. In a job that required both skill and hard labor, forty to fifty men and up to twelve horses labored through the season to construct more miles of road than in the past three seasons combined (https://www.nps.gov/prsf/learn/historyculture/ patrolling-sequoia-national-park.htm).
Over one hundred years later the road that Col. Young's men helped build is still used as a Sequoia National Park hiking trail. The son of formerly enslaved Africans Gabriel Young and Arminta Bruen of Mays Lick, Kentucky, Col. Young’s life, work and sacrifice for this nation is testament to the great faith and fortitude that guides African American people despite the horrors experienced post-slavery in the various institutions that held and continue to hold segregationist values.
When WWI erupted Young, the highest ranking African American in the US Army was found unsuitable for service by military doctors after a southern born soldier complained that he could not take orders from an African American commander. Young returned to Wilberforce University to teach and then after the semester ended rode from Xenia to Washington, D.C. – over 500 miles to show he was in good shape. He was promoted to full colonel Nov. 6, 1918 and called to active duty; however, the Armistice was signed 5 days later. https://www.nps.gov/prsf/learn/historyculture/charles-young-on-foreign-shores.htm
Col. Young, found solace in his home at Wilberforce, Ohio, with his wife Ada Mills, whom he married February 18, 1904 in Oakland, California, and lifelong friends, Paul Lawrence Dunbar and W.E.B Dubois. A mentor to Brigadier General Benjamin O. Davis and to other African American soldiers as commander and teacher, the MIT graduate’s life demonstrates how difficult it was to serve a nation founded on racial difference, and whereas
The same Delilah L. Beasley, long time Oakland resident’s seminal work Negro Trail-Blazers (1919), is in its centennial year and serves as consultant for most of the content of this document, is also the first African-American woman to be published regularly in a major metropolitan newspaper, the Oakland Tribune (1925–1934), and whereas
We pause to note the names of other prominent African freedom loving citizens of this great state such as:
James “Jim” Pierson Beckwourth (April 26, 1798 or 1800 – October 29, 1866 or 1867) “was an American mountain man, fur trader, and explorer. He was mixed-race and born into slavery in Virginia. He was freed by his white father (and master), and apprenticed to a blacksmith so that he could learn a trade. As a young man, Beckwourth moved to the American West, first making connections with fur traders in St. Louis, Missouri. As a fur trapper, he lived with the Crow Nation for years. He is credited with the discovery of Beckwourth Pass (a California historic landmark), through the Sierra Nevada (U.S.) Mountains, between present-day Reno, Nevada, and Portola, California, during the California Gold Rush years. He improved the Beckwourth Trail, which thousands of settlers followed to central California” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Beckwourth#Legacy_and_honors)
Mary Ellen Pleasant (Aug. 19, 1817-Jan. 4, 1904), San Francisco civic leader and entrepreneur, is known as the Mother of California’s early Civil Rights Movement. She was a conductor of the Underground Railroad and she financially supported John Brown, 1857-59 (http://mepleasant.com/story.html).
Bridget “Biddy” Mason (Aug. 15, 1818-Jan. 15, 1891) walked with a caravan from Mississippi to Utah to Southern California. When her owner wanted to move his “property” to Texas, a slaveholding state, the mother of three girls petitioned the California court for her freedom after being illegally held in bondage for five (5) years. Her petition for her own freedom and that of others in her group was granted. The African-American nurse and a Californian real estate entrepreneur and philanthropist founded of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, California (https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/mason-bridget-biddy-1818-1891/).
Colonel Allen Allensworth, April 7, 1842, Louisville, KY- September 14, 1914, Monrovia, CA, who founded with educator William Payne, former miner John W. Palmer, minister William H. Peck, and Harry A. Mitchell, a real estate agent, the first and only independent township in California governed in 1908 by formerly enslaved African Americans. “Complete with its own school, a church, and a bank, the town of Allensworth offered a safe haven for over 300 families of free blacks that had continued to be oppressed and controlled under a Southern sharecropping system that was designed to keep blacks on the same plantations that they were working before the war.” When Col. Allensworth was killed in a traffic accident in 1914, a culmination of events: the Pacific Farming Company’s, the land development firm that handled the original purchase, refusal to supply adequate irrigation water, and the Sante Fe train stop circumvented, meant residents could no longer support themselves after 1925 – the town’s peak to 1960 when “the town existed, but did not thrive.”
By the time the judicial system ruled in the town’s favor re: water, the town was already dead. However, Allensworth’s legacy lives on thanks to the vision of Cornelius “Ed” Pope, landscape architect for California State Parks and former Allensworth resident, and Eugene and Ruth Lasartemay, founders of the East Bay Negro Historical Society, who realized in 1969 that if they didn’t take action all reminders of Allensworth would be lost. They started campaigning for preservation of the town to honor those who had founded it, a town that set an example that African-Americans could make their own way. In 1973 the state acquired the property and the California Department of Parks and Recreation approved plans to develop it. The Allen Allensworth State Historic Park was dedicated on Oct 6, 1976, and whereas
What has become known as the Black Holocaust or Maafa, a Kiswahili term that means “great calamity or terrible occurrence,” remains a blight on this nation that has yet to be removed, a blight that continues to affect both the psyche and emotional well-being of descendants of the formally enslaved African men, women and children as well as every American citizen to this date, and whereas
“Though the U.S. Cavalry had provided troops to manage and protect California's national parks each summer since 1891, with the prior movement of Troops K and L to Yosemite National Park, and now the movement of Troops I and M to Sequoia National Park, 1903 was the first time African American soldiers were given the responsibility of park patrol for an entire summer season. Previously in 1899, the 24th Infantry patrolled Yosemite.”
“The 9th Cavalry also constructed, repaired, and improved the parks' roads and trails. Beginning in June, the first African American Superintendent Young put his men hard to work. Progress was rapid despite the rough and rocky terrain. In a job that required both skill and hard labor, forty to fifty men and up to twelve horses labored through the season to construct more miles of road than in the past three seasons combined (https://www.nps.gov/prsf/learn/historyculture/ patrolling-sequoia-national-park.htm).
Over one hundred years later the road that Col. Young's men helped build is still used as a Sequoia National Park hiking trail. The son of formerly enslaved Africans Gabriel Young and Arminta Bruen of Mays Lick, Kentucky, Col. Young’s life, work and sacrifice for this nation is testament to the great faith and fortitude that guides African American people despite the horrors experienced post-slavery in the various institutions that held and continue to hold segregationist values.
When WWI erupted Young, the highest ranking African American in the US Army was found unsuitable for service by military doctors after a southern born soldier complained that he could not take orders from an African American commander. Young returned to Wilberforce University to teach and then after the semester ended rode from Xenia to Washington, D.C. – over 500 miles to show he was in good shape. He was promoted to full colonel Nov. 6, 1918 and called to active duty; however, the Armistice was signed 5 days later. https://www.nps.gov/prsf/learn/historyculture/charles-young-on-foreign-shores.htm
Col. Young, found solace in his home at Wilberforce, Ohio, with his wife Ada Mills, whom he married February 18, 1904 in Oakland, California, and lifelong friends, Paul Lawrence Dunbar and W.E.B Dubois. A mentor to Brigadier General Benjamin O. Davis and to other African American soldiers as commander and teacher, the MIT graduate’s life demonstrates how difficult it was to serve a nation founded on racial difference, and whereas
The same Delilah L. Beasley, long time Oakland resident’s seminal work Negro Trail-Blazers (1919), is in its centennial year and serves as consultant for most of the content of this document, is also the first African-American woman to be published regularly in a major metropolitan newspaper, the Oakland Tribune (1925–1934), and whereas
We pause to note the names of other prominent African freedom loving citizens of this great state such as:
James “Jim” Pierson Beckwourth (April 26, 1798 or 1800 – October 29, 1866 or 1867) “was an American mountain man, fur trader, and explorer. He was mixed-race and born into slavery in Virginia. He was freed by his white father (and master), and apprenticed to a blacksmith so that he could learn a trade. As a young man, Beckwourth moved to the American West, first making connections with fur traders in St. Louis, Missouri. As a fur trapper, he lived with the Crow Nation for years. He is credited with the discovery of Beckwourth Pass (a California historic landmark), through the Sierra Nevada (U.S.) Mountains, between present-day Reno, Nevada, and Portola, California, during the California Gold Rush years. He improved the Beckwourth Trail, which thousands of settlers followed to central California” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Beckwourth#Legacy_and_honors)
Mary Ellen Pleasant (Aug. 19, 1817-Jan. 4, 1904), San Francisco civic leader and entrepreneur, is known as the Mother of California’s early Civil Rights Movement. She was a conductor of the Underground Railroad and she financially supported John Brown, 1857-59 (http://mepleasant.com/story.html).
Bridget “Biddy” Mason (Aug. 15, 1818-Jan. 15, 1891) walked with a caravan from Mississippi to Utah to Southern California. When her owner wanted to move his “property” to Texas, a slaveholding state, the mother of three girls petitioned the California court for her freedom after being illegally held in bondage for five (5) years. Her petition for her own freedom and that of others in her group was granted. The African-American nurse and a Californian real estate entrepreneur and philanthropist founded of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, California (https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/mason-bridget-biddy-1818-1891/).
Colonel Allen Allensworth, April 7, 1842, Louisville, KY- September 14, 1914, Monrovia, CA, who founded with educator William Payne, former miner John W. Palmer, minister William H. Peck, and Harry A. Mitchell, a real estate agent, the first and only independent township in California governed in 1908 by formerly enslaved African Americans. “Complete with its own school, a church, and a bank, the town of Allensworth offered a safe haven for over 300 families of free blacks that had continued to be oppressed and controlled under a Southern sharecropping system that was designed to keep blacks on the same plantations that they were working before the war.” When Col. Allensworth was killed in a traffic accident in 1914, a culmination of events: the Pacific Farming Company’s, the land development firm that handled the original purchase, refusal to supply adequate irrigation water, and the Sante Fe train stop circumvented, meant residents could no longer support themselves after 1925 – the town’s peak to 1960 when “the town existed, but did not thrive.”
By the time the judicial system ruled in the town’s favor re: water, the town was already dead. However, Allensworth’s legacy lives on thanks to the vision of Cornelius “Ed” Pope, landscape architect for California State Parks and former Allensworth resident, and Eugene and Ruth Lasartemay, founders of the East Bay Negro Historical Society, who realized in 1969 that if they didn’t take action all reminders of Allensworth would be lost. They started campaigning for preservation of the town to honor those who had founded it, a town that set an example that African-Americans could make their own way. In 1973 the state acquired the property and the California Department of Parks and Recreation approved plans to develop it. The Allen Allensworth State Historic Park was dedicated on Oct 6, 1976, and whereas
What has become known as the Black Holocaust or Maafa, a Kiswahili term that means “great calamity or terrible occurrence,” remains a blight on this nation that has yet to be removed, a blight that continues to affect both the psyche and emotional well-being of descendants of the formally enslaved African men, women and children as well as every American citizen to this date, and whereas
The
Civil Rights Act of 1965 and subsequent laws, while addressing some of the
legal inequities that directly impact African Americans, has not touched
the psychological and legal inequities of this great calamity or Maafa on the
Pan Africans whose ancestors paid the price in blood for us to become American
citizens here in the United States of America, and whereas
This
24th year, our Maafa Commemoration Committee, San Francisco Bay
Area, has hosted a healing ritual at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, to address
the post-traumatic slave syndrome linked to the horrific events of enslavement
and ongoing affliction caused by the lingering aspects of systemic institutional
racism on society today,
Be
it resolved that Sunday, October 13, 2019, the 170th Anniversary
of the signing of the California State Constitution, we reflect upon our 24th Commemoration
of the MAAFA as a time when civic and educational institutions are encouraged
to look more carefully into one of the more shameful times in American history
and ask California residents to lead the way toward healing the hurt of Pan
African in America who still suffer based solely on race, class, and gender.
