By Rev. Dr. Martha C. Taylor

One of the most egregious laws enacted in the State of California was the denial of Black children having an equal opportunity for education.

Not many people think of California as having deep roots embedded in slavery, and practices of white supremacy. California was admitted as a free state on Sept. 9, 1850. Pioneer Blacks and those who came during the Great Migration, were in search of freedom, yet they were met with the same oppressive racism and hostility that existed in the South.

Blacks were aware that the key to upward mobility was education. It is important to note in Black history that, as the late Alice Childress, playwright, actress and novelist once said Blacks “are the only racial group within the United States ever forbidden by law to read and write.”

Though not as extreme as the anti-literacy laws of the South, one racist California law stated: “every school, unless otherwise provided by special law shall be open for white children…. On the other hand, “The education of children of African descent…shall be provided for in separate schools.”

Further, Black parents were forced to pay public school taxes for white students, while Black children attended separate schools that were not equal.

Many inequities were addressed through the Black Church, the institution described by C. Eric Lincoln as the social, cultural, political, location for the Black Community; it was their school, forum, political arena, social clubs, art gallery and much more.

Ministers and others formed four California Colored Conventions with a focus on racial uplift from 1855-1865, which provided Black Churches to address concerns about state laws.

In the Bay Area and other places, the Black Church became the educational institution for Black children.

St. Cyprian African Methodist was the first organized Black church in San Francisco (later renamed Bethel AME) in 1852. Two years later, on May 22, 1854, the church served as the first schoolhouse for 23 Black children in the basement of the church. Children from elementary to high school age shared the same room with no books.

In Oakland, the First African Methodist Episcopal Church (FAME) established in 1858, also was the first school for Black children.

Black women played key roles in the education of Black children.

Mrs. Elizabeth Thorn Scott-Flood opened a private school for colored children circa 1857 in the old carpenter schoolhouse that was abandoned by whites for being inadequate. Lydia Flood-Jackson, daughter of Elizabeth Flood, was a race woman who also fought tirelessly for education and women’s rights.

Lydia Floyd Jackson fought tirelessly for education and women’s rights. Wikipedia.org photo.

Ten years later, the first public colored school in Oakland was taught by Miss Mary J. Sanderson, near 10^th Avenue and E. 11^th Street in an area previously known as Brooklyn, an annex of Oakland. The school closed as Black families began to move out of the area and relocate where work was available.

Bits of history often fall between the cracks if not taught or discussed. Long before the 1954 landmark case involving 8-year-old Linda Brown vs. Board of Education, Topeka, where the Supreme Court struck down the 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson ‘separate but equal’ decision, there was a case in San Francisco that dates to 1874.

In Mary Frances Ward vs. Noah Flood, the 11-year-old was denied enrollment to Broadway Grammar School, a white school near her home strictly based on her race. The matter advanced to the California State Supreme Court which ruled that Ward’s rights were not violated because there was an all-Black school near her home.

But the next year, with the support of white citizens, the school system changed. According to historian Alfred Broussard “the segregated school was more expensive to operate on a per pupil basis than were the larger white institutions.”

Looking down the corridors of time, Black Lives have always mattered.

We honor our ancestors who struggled for equality when we continue the struggle; the fight has not been won.

Vivian Rodgers was the first Black female to graduate in 1909. Vivian Osborne, a local graduate from Berkeley High School, 1914 applied to U.C. Berkeley with excellent academic records but was required to take four entrance exams.

Ida Louise Jackson, a pioneering Black woman graduated in 1922 from U.C. Berkeley, becoming the first Black public school teacher in California.

As we honor women during this month, let us also remember men who struggled for achievement through education.

Alexander Dumas Jones of San Francisco was the first Black to enroll at UC Berkeley in 1881, followed by Charles Edward Carpenter as the first Black graduate in 1905.

There are so many more, some known, others unknown. As James Weldon Johnson wrote in his poem that became the “Black National Anthem,” ‘Let us march on til victory is won.’

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