Gold dust allowed thousands to gain freedom, influence

By Stephen Magagnini
Bee Staff Writer
Published Jan. 18, 1998

For thousands of African Americans, California gold was the great equalizer.

Some came as slaves and bought their freedom with gold dust. Others were freemen who used gold to free their families, fight discrimination and start newspapers, schools and churches.

"This is the best place for black folks on the globe," a miner at the Cosumnes diggings wrote to his wife in Missouri. "All a man has to do is work, and he will make money."

African Americans hit plenty of California pay dirt -- by 1863, they were collectively worth about $5 million (the equivalent of
$100 million today). But their real gains came outside the gold fields -- some of Gold Rush California's most influential, educated, daring pioneers were African Americans.

In 1851, shortly after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, the New Bedford, Mass.local newspapers urged its black readers to seek refuge in California. Among those who heeded the call was Jeremiah B. Sanderson, a minister from New Bedford. Sanderson came west expressly to teach black children, who had no schools. He opened the first black schools in
San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento and Stockton. In 1855, he opened a school for 30 black children in Sacramento, saying, "They must no longer be neglected, left to grow up in ignorance."

Soon after, the Sacramento school board capitulated and built a school for black children.

Sanderson didn't stop there. Backed by other prominent African Americans, he fought hard for the 1874 California law allowing children of all races to attend the same schools.

Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, a friend of Douglass', arrived in San Francisco in 1850 with 10 cents -- enough to buy a cigar -- and the following credo: "Fortune ... may sometimes smile on the inert, but she seldom fails to surrender to pluck, tenacity and perseverance."

Gibbs helped start the city's first shoe store, established California's first black newspaper in 1855, and became the first black judge in American history. His militant "Mirror of the Times" urged blacks to give up servile jobs and start their own ranches or businesses.