MIFFLIN W. GIBBS IN CALIFORNIA

I immediately went out, and after many attempts to seek employment of any kind, I approached a house in course of construction and applied to the contractor for work. He replied he did not need help. I asked the price of wages. Ten dollars a day... He said that if I choose to come for nine dollars a day I might. It is unnecessary for me to add that I chose to come... I was not allowed to long pursue carpentering. White employees finding me at work on the same building would "strike." On one occasion the contractor came to me and said, I expect you will have to stop, for this house must be finished in the time specified; but if you can get six or eight equally good workmen, I will let these fellows go. Not that I have any special liking for your people. I am giving these men all the wages they demand, and I am not willing to submit to the tyrany [sic] of their dictation if I can help it... I could not find the men he wanted or subsequent employment of that kind.. All classes of labor were highly remunerative, blacking boots not excepted. I after engaged in this...

Saving my earnings, I joined a firm already established in the clothing business. After a year or so engaged, I became a partner in the firm of Lester & Gibbs, importers of fine books and shoes... Our establishment on Clay Street known as the "Emporium for fine books and shoes, imported form Philadelphia, London and Paris," having a reputation for keeping the best and finest in the State, was well patronized, our patrons extending to Oregon and lower California. The business, wholesale and retail, was profitable and maintained for a number of years. Mr. Lester, my partner, being a practical bookmaker, his step to a merchant in that line was easy and lucrative.

Thanks to the evolution of events and march of liberal ideas the colored men in California have now a recognized citizenship, and equality before the law. It was not so at the period of which I write. With thrift and a wise circumspection financially, their opportunities were good from every other point of view they were ostracized, assaulted without redress, disfranchised and denied their oath in a court of justice.

One occasion will be typical of the condition. One of two mutual friends (both our customers) came in looking over and admiring a display of newly arrived stock, tried on a pair of books, was pleased with them, but said he did not think he needed them then; lay them aside and he would think about it. A short time after, his friend came in, was shown the pair the former had admired... He tried on several and then asked to try on his friend's selection; they only suited, and he insisted on taking them; we objected, but he had them on, and said we need not have fear, he would clear us of blame, and walked out. Knowing they were close friends we were content. Possibly, in a humorous mood, he went straight to his friend, for shortly they both came back, the first asking for his boots; he would receive no explanation (while the cause of the trouble stood mute), and while vile epithets, using a heavy came, again and again assaulted my partner, who was compelled tamely to submit, for had he raised his hand he would have been shot, and no redress...
Source: Mifflin W. Gibbs, Shadow and Light: An Autobiography, (Washington, D.C., 1902), pp. 40-46.

THE VICTORIA EXODUS, 1858
The precarious citizenship of black Californians, as described by Mifflin Gibbs in the previous vignette, prompted an only partially successful civil rights campaign. Because the situation for free blacks in the state, and nation, seemed increasingly dismal, some California blacks began to explore the possibly of a mass emigration to Sonora, Mexico or British Columbia. Eventually they fixed their attention on the British Colony to the north. By 1858 approximately four hundred blacks comprising about ten percent of the state's African American population, left San Francisco bound for Victoria, British Columbia and freedom. Mifflin Gibbs and Peter Lester were among those who migrated. The poem below, written by one of the emigrants captures the mood of the times.
A Voice From the Oppressed to the Friends of Humanity

Composed by one of the suffering class.

Mrs. Priscilla Stewart
Look and behold our sad despair

Our hopes and prospects fled;

The tyrant slavery entered here,

And laid us all for dead.

If the tyrant says that we must go

The love of gain the reason,

And if humanity dare say "No".

Then they are tried for treason.
God bless the Queen's majesty,

Her scepter and her throne,

She looked on us with sympathy

And offered us a home.

Where all are free and well,

Than live in slavery's atmosphere

And wear the chains of hell.

We must wave the parting hand,

Never to see thee any more,

But seek a foreign land.

Who've suffered dungeon and death.

Who have a claim upon our gratitude

Whilst God shall lend us breath.

A Marion raise your hands;

Never desert your principles

Until you've redeemed your land.

The freedman's association in the east will be but temporary and of little avail, except they adopt some practical plan to guide them in the way that they may obtain some of the waste land in the West. As a large number will be thrown on their own resources, it will be best to encourage them to do just like other men: by putting up with hardships until they make themselves homes.

It will be fatal to their interest and progress for our leading men in the east to...encourage them to stay in the larger cities--Philadelphia, New York and Boston. The responsibilities of their failure in this sphere of freedom would be a stigma and reproach on the free colored people of the North, as also on our white friends who have been battling in the cause of human freedom.

Hence we of the Pacific States should not be hasty in connecting ourselves with any movement that has not a practical bearing upon our welfare. While the Government is disposed to aid and give encouragement by enrolling and enlisting large numbers of our race in the army and navy, there will rest a great responsibility on the free colored people of the North in shaping their movements in a direction that will induce many of these freedmen to take up lands in the West. Our friends in the East should form these land associations forthwith.

We would abolish caste, not class, we would teach the serf that he is by nature created equal to his lord, the slave to his master, the Pariah to the Brahmin; but we would also teach them that something more than natural equality is required to elevate them to a conventional equality with the ruling classes.

We know this is a work which will take ages to accomplish, generations must pass away before an end so glorious can be attained, but we will labor on in our humble way, and lend our feeble aid to the noble band who are battling for "God and truth and suffering man."

OUR MOTTO.--We claim full "Equality before the Law," we desire nothing more, well will be satisfied with nothing less. Social equality is a bug-bear, a hideous phantom raised by political necromancers to frighten the people from their duty. Laws cannot govern our social relations--custom, stronger than law regulates them, and despite of law or any rules which may be laid down social equality will always find its level. We do not expect, because we trade with a merchant, to visit his house, and mingle with his family; nor do we invite him to our house, and make him a welcome guest; neither can worshiping in the same church, riding in the same car, or voting at the same ballot box, make men associates. We shall strive for "Equality before the law," and let our social relations arrange themselves.

* * *

The negroes are not coming. They are here. They will stay here. They are American born. They have been here for more than two hundred and fifty years. They are not going back to Africa. They are not going to South America. They are not going to other parts of our own land. They are going to stay where they are. They are not able to emigrate if they would. We are not able to send them away if we wished. Even if we would and they would, the thing is not possible. It is not possible for eight millions of people to be transported from the land in which they were born, to some land across the seas, or some continent far away. They are to remain, and they are to increase. They are with us and with us to stay. They are to be our neighbors, whatever we may think about it, whatever we may do about it. It is not for us to say whether they shall be our neighbors or not. That has been settled by the providence that has placed them among us. It is only for us to say what sort of neighbors they shall be, and whether we will fulfill our neighborly obligations.

Our owner did not want us to leave him and used every persuasive means possible to prevent it. He gave every grown person a free pass, and agreed to give me fifteen dollars per month, with board and clothing, if I would remain with him on the farm, an offer which I had accepted to take effect January 1, 1864. But by March of that year, I saw that it could not be carried out, and concluded to go to Kansas... I made the agreement in good faith, but when I saw that it could not be fulfilled I had not the courage to tell him that I was going to leave him.

I was engaged to marry a girl belonging to a man named Allen Farmer, who was opposed to it on the ground, as I was afterwards informed, that he did not want a Negro to visit his farm who could read, because he would spoil his slaves. After it was know that I was courting the girl, he would not allow me to visit his farm nor any of his slaves to visit ours, but they did notwithstanding this order, nearly every Sunday. The girl's aunt was our mutual friend and made all arrangements for our meetings. At one of our secret meetings we decided to elope and fixed March 30, 1864, at nine o'clock, p.m., sharp, as the date for starting.

She met me at the appointed time and place with her entire worldly effects tied up in a handkerchief, and I took her up on the horse behind me. Then in great haste we started for Laclede, about thirty miles north of Brunswick, and the nearest point reached by the Hannibal and St. Joe Railroad. This town was occupied by a squad of Union Troops. Having traveled over the country so often, I had acquired an almost perfect knowledge of it, even of the by-paths. We avoided the main road, and made the entire trip without touching the traveled road an any point and without meeting any one and reached Laclede in safety, were we took the train for St. Joe, thence to Weston, where we crossed the Missouri River on a ferry boat to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. I then felt myself a free man.

I am satisfied, even now, that I was braver that night than I have ever been since. I was a good shot and knew it, and intended to commence shooting as soon as my pursuers showed up; but it was a Godsend to all concerned, and especially to myself and bride, soon to be, that we were not overtaken: for I was determined to fight it out on that line, as surrender meant death to me. I had buckled around my waist a pair of Colt's revolvers and plenty of ammunition, but I feel now that I could not have held out long before a crowd of such men, and while I might have hit one or two of them, they would in the end have killed me.... They expected to overtake us on the mail road, where they would have killed me, taken the girl back and given her a severe flogging, but they were badly fooled, for we traveled east, nearly on a straight line for six miles, then turned north, the correct course of our destination.
Source: Henry Clay Bruce, The New Man, Twenty-Nine Years a Slave, Twenty-Nine Years a Free Man: Recollections of H.C. Bruce (York Pa., 1895), pp. 107-110.

THE FREEDMEN AND EDUCATION
In the vignette below Kansas abolitionist Richard Cordley explains the initial attempts by Lawrence residents to educate the new Kansas freedmen.
They came in by scores and hundreds, and for a time it seemed as if they would overwhelm us with their numbers and their needs. But they were strong and industrious, and by a little effort work was found for them, and very few, if any of them, became objects of charity.. They were willing to work and they were able to live on little, and the whole community of freed slaves was soon able to take care of itself.

But it was soon evident that they needed help in other directions than of securing a livelihood. They were mostly ignorant, only now and then one being able to read. In slavery no one was permitted to learn, it being a crime to teach a slave to read. We could not think of having this multitude with us, and not do something to teach and elevate them. They were very anxious to learn. They had got the impression that there was a connection between liberty and learning. Our public schools would soon provide for the children. but the grown people had no time to attend the public schools, and there was no provision for them in these schools if they had been able to attend them.

Mr. S.N. Simpson...conceived of the idea of applying the Sunday-school methods to this problem. He proposed a night school where these people could have free instruction. There was no money to pay teachers, and he proposed that citizens volunteer to teach each evening for a couple of hours. He secured a room and organized a corps of volunteer teachers, mostly ladies, and commenced the school. About a hundred men and women, eager to learn, came to it.... The teachers were naturally from among the best people of the town... It brought them in contact with these newcomers, and the interest did not cease with the closing of the session. Many of the colored people got a start in this school which enabled them to learn to read... Besides teaching the lessons, lectures were given on their new duties and their new relations to society....

They had to begin, like little children, with the alphabet. But they earnestness with which they learn is exceedingly interesting. They seem to be straining forward with all their might, as if they could not learn fast enough. One young man who had been to the school only five nights, and began with the alphabet, now spells in words of two syllables. Another, in the same time, has progressed so that he could read, quite rapidly, the simple lessons given in the spelling-book. The scholars were of all ages. Here is a class of little girls, eager and restless; there is a class of grown men, solemn and earnest. A class of maidens in their teens contrasts with another of elderly women. But all alike showed their same intentness of application... Some who began when the school opened, can now read with some fluency, and were ready to commence with figures.