ABSTRACT
“SECURING SATISFACTION”: AFRICAN AMERICAN
COMMUNITY BUILDING IN FOWLER,
CALIFORNIA FROM 1890-1930
In 1908, the Fowler Ensign published Reverend L.V. Harrison’s comments
on an enterprising group of African Americans in Fowler, California. His
statement alluded to this community’s “good citizenship,” and religious devotion,
along with their financial contributions to the local economy. This group and their
presence in California’s Central Valley has been overlooked topic within African
American migration studies and within twentieth century US history. Recently,
local historians have started to collect information about these enclaves of African
American communities from 1890 to 1930. Fowler was a multi-ethnic community
where many southern black migrants established businesses and churches. Their
domestic and religious buildings indicated a sense of home and a real possibility
of stability denied to them in the South. By focusing on these communities,
townships, and neighborhoods one can glean a more nuanced understanding of
African American migration during this period and comprehend the economic and
social possibilities Western areas provided for disadvantaged individuals and
families. This work is a community study of these residents that focuses on their
migration and subsequent actions within this Central Valley town. Government
documents, census materials, local and national newspapers, and photographs are
used to present this unacknowledged group within Fowler’s diverse history.
Anna Moreno Keithley
August 2015
“SECURING SATISFACTION”: AFRICAN AMERICAN
COMMUNITY BUILDING IN FOWLER,
CALIFORNIA FROM 1890-1930
by
Anna Moreno Keithley
A thesis
submitted in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts in History
in the College of Social Sciences
California State University, Fresno
August 2015
APPROVED
For the Department of History:
We, the undersigned, certify that the thesis of the following student
meets the required standards of scholarship, format, and style of the
university and the student's graduate degree program for the
awarding of the master's degree.
Anna Moreno Keithley
Thesis Author
Daniel Cady (Chair)
History
De Anna J Reese
History
Blain Roberts
History
For the University Graduate Committee:
Dean, Division of Graduate Studies
AUTHORIZATION FOR REPRODUCTION
OF MASTER’S THESIS
X
I grant permission for the reproduction of this thesis in part or in
its entirety without further authorization from me, on the
condition that the person or agency requesting reproduction
absorbs the cost and provides proper acknowledgment of
authorship.
Permission to reproduce this thesis in part or in its entirety must
be obtained from me.
Signature of thesis author:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank everyone who has helped me with the creation of this
work. Academically, I want to thank everyone in California State University,
Fresno’s History Department for their patience and support. Also, I want to thank
my family and husband for their emotional support and for their encouragement to
keep thinking and writing. Finally, I would like to thank William “Bill” Cowings,
Ollie B. White, Cleanie Miller, Jr, and everyone who allowed me to listen to their
story. If there are any discrepancies it is solely on my shoulders. This work is
dedicated to Fowler’s past and future residents. I hope that this community history
answers any question for curious residents.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................. vi
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................ 1
Historiography – Turn of the Century African American Migration ............... 6
CHAPTER 2: RURAL CALIFORNIA: FRESNO COUNTY ............................... 16
Economic and Social “Pull” Factors ............................................................... 16
CHAPTER 3: FOWLER, CALIFORNIA; AN EXAMPLE OF AFRICAN
AMERICAN COMMUNITY BUILDING ................................................. 23
Fowler’s Establishment and Early Economic Development .......................... 23
Local Voices: Individual and Familial Case Studies ...................................... 27
Published Discrimination: Racial Displays in the Fowler Ensign .................. 41
CHAPTER 4: CURRENT ISSUES AND CONCLUSIONS ................................. 51
Second Wave Migrants ................................................................................... 51
Future Considerations: Rebirth or Gentrification? ......................................... 54
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................. 58
LIST OF FIGURES
Page
Figure 1. A contemporary map of Fowler, California. The cross streets and
railroad line is still the same as it was in the early 1900s. ...................... 23
Figure 2. Julia Bell, date of photo unknown. Bell was a long time resident of
Fowler, California. Courtesy of the Fresno Historical Society. ............. 29
Figure 3. African American family posing in front of home in Fowler,
California. Date Unknown. Courtesy of Fresno History Society. .......... 33
Figure 4. St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church, Fowler California.
Date Unknown. Courtesy of the Fresno Historical Society. ................... 38
Figure 5. Selma Steam Laundry Advertisement. March 13, 1909. Fowler
Ensign. .................................................................................................... 46
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
The California Central Valley community of Fowler is undergoing a
transformation. New corporate, big chain restaurants and hotels have made their
presence. These businesses are located next to the highway. The highway once
marked the outer edge of town, but new housing developments have sprung along
its western side expanding housing complexes into the surrounding vineyards and
orchards. With all of the community’s development and growth, the small town
still has old buildings and edifices scattered throughout its city blocks. Turn of the
century homes situate next to newer buildings almost without much thought. This
almost flippant arrangement caught my attention growing up in this rural
community, especially when no one seemed to have a proper answer regarding the
community’s past.
If any two buildings stand to represent this issue it is the Second Baptist
Church and Starbucks. Placed alongside one another, these two buildings stand as
Fowler’s unknown or unacknowledged historical past and its future economic
identity. When the Starbucks was constructed in the mid-2000s many within the
community welcomed the new business as a symbol of the town’s prosperous
future and growth. This business was also meant to “recover” an area of town that
was deemed in need of improvement.
Unknowingly, the placement of this coffee chain encroached upon Fowler’s
past. It is a past in which the town’s previous economic basis was exclusively tied
to agriculture, not a complex consumer economy. This past included families,
whole ethnic groups who made this town their home. Like the community today, it
consisted of a multi-ethnic residential population which prided itself with its
Christian and civic identity. Comparatively, Fowler’s economic and social past is
2
not a complete anomaly to its current economic and social present. The town
continues to welcome new occupants with varied backgrounds and still is a
location for immigrants to call home. However, the key difference is in the
cultural understandings of what a community is and what type of foundation is
needed to make a community. The Second Baptist Church stands as a marker for
one of these definitions, while the newer corporate chains indicate a newer
interpretation.
In order to understand this, one has to look at Fowler’s past, specifically
during its crucial developmental decades from 1890 to 1930. This period marks a
dynamic era when individuals and whole families poured into Central California
communities like Fowler aiming to establish themselves within a new space.
Motives at times varied, but the intent was similar – Fowler had the potential to
become their home. During this period immigrant and migrants groups were
especially noted in this phenomenon. Fowler’s cosmopolitan population ranged
from Japanese and Chinese immigrants, Latino migrant workers, Armenian
refugees, and African American migrants. This movement of people into Fowler
was not unique – many were migrating into the West aiming to settling in these
residential towns and cities. African Americans were one racial group that
participated in this movement. Their experience positions itself within a unique
vision of what a community is and the purpose behind establishing one.
Studies looking at African American westward migration have focused on
the different towns, religious institutions, communities, and enclaves they
established. Yet, what is significant about Fowler’s African American migrant
group is in how they established themselves within this particular town site. The
purpose behind this work is to illustrate this community’s establishment and
religious participation from the period of 1890 to 1930. This analysis is paramount
3
when one considers the deterrents that African Americans focused during this
period within the United States. While there have been many similar studies
regarding African Americans community’s religious participation and
assimilation, there has been little attention or focus given to this within a
developing, rural agricultural economy within a multi-ethnic population. The
geographical, economic, and social context of Fowler’s African American
community is what marks them as distinctive.
The Central Valley’s economic development during this period was tied to
a global, fruit and vegetable market. Growers, business leaders, ranch owners, and
farm labors were in the forefront of this economy. This industry’s development
played a significant role in this multi-ethnic population, especially in the way they
shaped their social environments and in how they interacted with one another.
Many migrant and immigrant groups settled into this town site seeking a sense of
financial security and social peace. What is noteworthy about Fowler’s African
American community is that their settlement provides a new focus of study to this
phenomenon. By specifically focusing on Fowler’s African American families,
their inner community dialogue, along with religious and civic participation we
understand a new chapter of Western settlement.
The main focus of this study is the first wave of migrants who settled into
Fowler and its surrounding area. The foundational primary sources are
predominantly news periodicals. The main source of information used to
understand Fowler’s African American migrant and community building derives
from the town newspaper, the Fowler Ensign. This local periodical is key in
understanding not only local events and news, but also in seeing the public tone
and opinion regarding various issues. Advertisements, the local “Church News”
section, and specific national news stories were also published on a weekly
4
schedule. Other local newspapers and national black newspapers are also used.
Ultimately the use of news periodicals is paramount in reading the local message.
Newspapers were a means of expressing and shaping the public tone in political,
local social life, and in expressing cultural values. This study would serve at a
disadvantage without the extensive use of these periodicals due to their
significance as the only local news source.
For this study, government and public records are accessed not only to
understand the town’s population figures, but to also understand where families
and individuals are placed in this community. The small references to familial
summaries in local newspapers and small biographical sketches are aligned with
census records. These primary sources make the foundation of this research since
they not only show where these people lived but also indicate their continued
settlement in rural Fresno County. Conversely, local families who live in the town
today are often third or fourth generation members of the original migrants. These
government and public records are important when they are juxtaposed within the
local record to see civic and religious participation. Finally, the local historical
narrative is also used to display the lack of attention or acknowledgment of this
community.
Published in 1972, Jon R. McFarland’s Village on the Prairie: The Story of
Fowler’s First 100 Years, made slight references to Fowler’s early black residents.
While McFarland made a point to focus on the early white founders, he makes no
real dedication in explaining the significance of how African Americans
established their own homes and churches. By focusing on this group’s
community building, there is an inclusion of this group’s efforts in Fowler’s local
historical narrative. While many immigrants settled into this town, the choice of
focusing on African Americans is based on their citizenship status and cultural
5
familiarity that they possessed. Unlike Chinese, Japanese, and American
immigrants, African American migrants did not face language barriers or complete
alienation from American culture. However, this still does not deter from the
unique challenges that this racial group faced during this period. Such challenges
often impeded economic, social advances and even their physical safety.
It is important to note one conceptual issue: this study is not concerned
whether this local African American group was “successful” or “unsuccessful.”
Such considerations have no role in this type of analysis since it denotes these
individuals’ actions and sense of purpose. Also, this type of thinking falls into the
binary that there are only “winners and losers” in history, which denies the
complex nature behind individuals choices and actions. Rather, this study’s
purpose is to examine a specific example of African American community
building, one that is infused within a challenging and changing socio-economic
environment that at times complemented their vision and sense of community.
The study’s mythology begins by looking at African American migration
out of Southern states from the Reconstruction era to the early twentieth century.
Some of the communities and neighborhoods that migrants established in
Midwestern and Western sites are reviewed. Works that have looked at African
American outward migration and California settlements are noted in regard to the
motives for relocation as well as how these individuals established their
communities. Thereafter the focus looks at the appeal rural California offered for
immigrants and migrants especially for blacks. Here, Fowler will be analyzed in
this regard. Specifically, what drew or drove individuals like Julia Bell, David
Jennings, William S. Cowings, and various others to settle into Fowler? Also, did
their efforts in participating in the local social and economic environment
encourage or deter community and familial building efforts? Was there any
6
discrimination, social, or economic challenge that this community specifically
face? Finally, the study will conclude by looking at current issues regarding this
topic as well as future considerations.
The purpose behind this work is to study this group’s community building.
Specifically this study attempts to understand this group’s possible motivations for
moving westward, and in understanding their hopes as they settled into Fowler.
Most importantly this work aims at emphasizing this phenomenon in a local, rural
region. The setting of Fowler, California from 1890 to 1930 illustrates how a
migrant group of African Americans settled into a developing economic area and
established homes, businesses, farms, and churches without harsh local harassment
or restraint. One factor that made this possible was the economic conditions of the
Central Valley. The Central Valley’s economic environment was tied to a
specialty fruit industry, one that was not seen in other parts of the nation. This
economic environment paralleled this area’s residents’ sense of social and cultural
uniqueness as they built their homes, towns, and religious institutions. Fowler’s
African American population is a prime example of this movement and their
efforts highlight these trends in a more nuanced manner. Ultimately the
contribution of this study is tied the analysis’s geographical context -- a context
that is beginning to garner its rightful attention.
Historiography – Turn of the Century African
American Migration
Historians have cited the numerous social and economic challenges that
African Americans endured in the nineteenth century. Even prior to the Civil War
many African Americans made the decision to leave the South to outlying areas.
Once the Civil War ended and black male enfranchisement was established, many
African Americans still made the choice to move outwards from the South. The
7
rise of lynchings and the institutionalization of Jim Crow laws have been cited as
the prime indicators of southern blacks’ disenfranchisement during the postReconstruction era. The massive movement of African American individuals and
families occurred throughout the nineteenth century and well into the midtwentieth century. For many, the movement out of these southern areas meant a
possibility of landownership, economic stability, social acceptance, and possible
protection from violent terror. By studying the areas where African Americans
relocated and community’s they established we can understanding the hope for
better living situation and future.
For these migrants, the promises that a Western site like California offered
seemed to be a better alternative to the various obstacles they faced in their
Southern homes. Historians and social scientists have noted that many African
Americans suffered relentless oppression, grinding poverty, and distressingly
narrow opportunities for improving their circumstances during the ‘Jim Crow’
era.”1 Within rural Southern areas there was an increase in demand for cheap black
labor. Before the Great Depression, cotton was “the least mechanized type of
American agriculture” and required extensive labor.2 Thus the expansion of the
black tenant farming system (especially in the form of sharecropping) had
increased to eight million by 1930.3 Additionally in the late nineteenth century,
African Americans basic political rights were systematically stripped throughout
various parts of the nation. This was also coupled with the growing rise of violent
intimidation that was used against many African Americans from fulfilling their
1 Mark S. Foster, “In the Face of ‘Jim Crow’: Prosperous Blacks and Vacations, Travel and
Outdoor Leisure, 1890-1945.” The Journal of Negro History, 84, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 130.
2 Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How it Changed
America. (New York: Random House, 1991): 10.
3 Ibid., 11.
8
basic right to vote and in obtaining a decent education. Any sense of legal justice
was often undermined by local law enforcement. If such violent acts occurred,
prosecution of these individuals and groups proved to be useless because Southern
“judges and lawyers” often “exonerated the offenders.”4 Thus, many made the
choice to leave and find new areas to call home. Areas of settlement and relocation
were found throughout the nation. One area that black relocation and settlement
occurred was in California.
African American Western Migration
Within the last thirty years historians like Carole Marks have extensively
studied outward black migration from southern states. The consensus is that the
“Great Migration” out of the South occurred from 1916-1930.5 Many other studies
have aligned with this time frame, specifically regarding the relocation area of
northern, urban cities.6 Carole Marks’s 1989 monograph Farewell—We’re Good
and Gone: The Great Black Migration, asserts that many southern blacks who
migrated northward to cities did so searching for industrial occupations; their
search was so specific because many of these individuals were urban,
nonagricultural laborers from the South.7 Marks’s argument is that the majority of
the northbound migrants searched for job occupations they were already familiar
with. Yet, what about the migrants who decided to migrate to rural outposts?
4 Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction, the first major
migration to the North of ex-slaves. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1986): 21
5 Carole Marks, Farewell, We’re Good and Gone: The Great Black Migration (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1989): 1.
6 Another major work to consider in regards to outward black migration, Nicholas Lemann’s The
Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How it Changed America (Klamath River: Living Gold
Press, 1998). Lemann’s argument looks at a social reasoning for outward migration, and extensively
focuses on a broad, national influence that this movement held.
7 Marks, 3.
9
While Marks does not explicitly address this, she does emphasize a common
explanation in relation to the numerous economic and social forces that
contributed to the relocation that millions of southern blacks undertook to leave
the South.
Marks contends that the “Great Migration” was brought on by the “changes
in the political economy,” one that had placed the South as a “full-fledged colony
of the North,” and making many in the bottom of this economy “expendable and
superfluous.”8 Ultimately, Marks’s study expands the assumption that the outward
migration as merely an individualized choice, but that for many the Southern
economy prior to World War I was dismal and had left them vulnerable. Stewart
E. Tolney’s own work complements Marks assertion by highlighting the
significance this migration had in reshaping the demographic environment of the
United States, specifically in the redistribution of the African American
population.9
One major contribution of Marks’s work is how it looks into the economic
context of the southern economy, especially in the areas where there was a large
outward movement of blacks. While illuminating, Marks’s study tends to focus
excessively on the southern economic reasons for outward migration, along with
the northern social and political struggle that many blacks faced in urban sites.
One of the most interesting components of Marks’s analysis is the emphasis of
social assimilation within the first generation of migrants: “Newcomers,
sometimes gradually, sometimes rapidly, depending on their similarity to the
8 Marks, 13-14.
9 Steward E. Tolnay, “The African American ‘Great Migration’ and Beyond.” Annual Review of
Sociology 29, (2003): 210.
10
exiting population, were said to melt into the fabric of society.”10 This raises a key
question: was this migrant generation concerned about assimilating into their new
social environment? While Marks expands the field by presenting an industrial,
economic standpoint of this phenomenon, there is a lack of acknowledgement
given to spiritual and religious aims in migration.
Sarah-Jane Mathieu stresses the larger phenomena of black migration
throughout North America. She discusses the massive movement of migrants
towards northern, western and overseas destinations. Yet, like Marks, Mathieu
asserts that “black migrants overwhelmingly headed to cities where an insatiable
demand for labor in sectors like coal, steal, meatpacking, railroading, and war
industries paid handsomely.”11 However, what of the religious and spiritual
aspects of these communities? While northern urban sites did provided economic
possibilities that the south could not, one has to look at other major motivators like
political rights, religious freedom, and familial reunification. By looking first at
Mid-Western settlements, the motivations of southern black migration is
understood. This is also extended when one looks at California migration.
Mid-Western Migration: Kansas
Kansas was one early location of settlement. This movement is often cited
as the Kansas Fever of the 1870s. After the end of Reconstruction, many former
slaves made the choice to leave the South altogether. Various pockets of African
American communities made the exodus from the South and relocated to all black
Midwestern communities. An example of this group came from Louisiana. Many
10 Marks, 153.
11 Sarah-Jane (Saje) Mathieu, “The African American Great Migration Reconsidered.” OAH
Magazine of History 23, no. 4 (Oct. 2009): 20.
11
prominent African Americans fled the state due to threats of violence after their
political rights had been denied after the 1878 state elections.12
Thousands of African Americans from Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas
made the move to Kansas in the hopes that this new state would provide them with
the opportunity to achieve their political rights with no fear of violent
repercussions. Ultimately, for many of these migrants it was “political terrorism”
that was the immediate cause of movement. Kansas was an advertised location of
salvation; it was a place where landownership and political freedom was possible
for blacks.13 Benjamin Singleton’s real estate company Edgefield Real Estate
advertised on this promise in many black newspapers.14 The basis of this was tied
to the federal Homestead Act of 1862 which stated that any settler that paid a
filling fee and completed five years of continuous residence on a lot of 160 acres
of public land would receive full ownership of it.15 For Deep South migrants, the
promise of Kansas seemed attractive since it fulfilled a possibility of living in an
agrarian utopia.16
The first wave of migrants traveled upwards the Mississippi River toward
the city of St. Louis as their starting point of their migration. Thereafter, other
waves of “Exodusters” arrived to the city to collect supplies before making the
overland journey to Kansas. They were aided by organizations which pooled
money and funds to aid in travel expenses and providing supplies needed. African
12 Nell Irvin Painter, 108.
13 Ibid., 170 & 183.
14 Ibid., 191.
15 “Statues at Large, 37th Congress, 2nd Session: A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S.
Congressional Documents,” accessed March 29, 2015, http://memory.loc.gov/cgibin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=012/llsl012.db&recNum=423/.
16 Nell Irvin Painter, 207.
12
Americans settled in thriving black townships where they were able to “self-rule.”
Meaning African Americans were able to assert “full control over local
governments, [obtained] the right to an education, free enterprise, and freedom of
religious.”17 These basic beliefs are a reoccurring theme in black internal
migration. Whether the relocation site is an all-black midwestern community, a
northern urban city, or a small multi-ethnic California township, the aim of
asserting a sense of education, landownership, and religious freedom are
paramount in understanding the motivations behind migration.
California Migration and Settlement
California was the most Western internal outpost of African American
settlement. The anthology Seeking El Dorado contains numerous articles that
study black migration into California and community building throughout the
state. Two of the editors, Lawrence B. de Graaf and Quintard Taylor, contend that
one of the major themes in the lives of black Californians is their sense of
community.18 This sense of community was tied to the establishment of churches.
As the black population grew in California, there was a “proliferation” of churches
throughout the state: “By 1906, there were 63 black churches in the state; ten years
later, 95; by 1926, 192.”19 The religious denominations varied between Baptist
congregations, to various Methodist Episcopal Churches. The major site of a
growing African American population was Southern California, especially within
Los Angeles. Here, there was a creation of religious and civic organizations that
17 Nell Irvin Painter, Exoduses: Black Migration to Kansas After Reconstruction (New York:
W.W. Norton & Company, 1992): 114.
18 Lawrence B. de Graaf and Quintard Taylor, “Introduction: African Americans in California
History, California in African American History,” in Seeking El Dorado: African Americans in California
(Los Angeles: Autry Museum of Western Heritage, 2001): 3.
19 Ibid., 20.
13
“defined and defended the community.”20 In this urban area, the African
Methodist Episcopal Church facilitated local social activism that aligned with
larger, national trends.21 Most importantly, de Graaf and Taylor assert that these
organizations and religious institutions incorporated new residents into “the local
community” and challenged, “white Angelenos who chose to discriminate” against
African American residents.22 Here, these organizations served a specific function
within an expanding urban population. Other articles detail this in various
California cities like San Francisco and Oakland. There are a few articles that look
into this phenomenon in rural areas of California. One such community that has
garnered much attention was the all black town of Allensworth.
One article that explores African American participation in California’s
agri-economy during this period is Delores Nason McBroome’s “Harvests of
Gold: African American Boosterism, Agriculture, and Investment in Allensworth
and Little Liberia.” McBroome stresses that while many black Californians were
actively participating in the agricultural economy, they were never a “conspicuous
or significant element.”23 Many African American boosters aimed at changing this
by promoting agricultural ventures like the Allensworth community. These all20 de Graaf and Taylor, 19.
21 Further information regarding Los Angeles’ Gilded Age African American population and its
active role in community building, Lonnie G. Bunch’s article “ ‘The Greatest State for the Negro”:
Jefferson L. Edmonds, Black Propagandist of the California Dream” in Seeking El Dorado: African
Americans in California (Los Angeles: Autry Museum of Western Heritage, 2001). Bunch looks at a local
newspaperman, Jefferson L. Edmond and how he used the black newspaper, The Liberator, as a means to
promote and ensure that Los Angles remain a “haven” for African American residents.
22 de Graaf and Taylor, 20.
23 Delores Nason McBroome’s “Harvests of Gold: African American Boosterism, Agriculture,
and Investment in Allensworth and Little Liberia” in Seeking El Dorado: African Americans in California
(Los Angeles: Autry Museum of Western Heritage, 2001): 151. An interesting counterpoint came later in
the century when J.G. Boswell actively relocated blacks in the Central Valley, hoping to use them as a
cheap source of labor. For more on this movement of African Americans to California, read Mark Arax and
Rick Wartzman’s The King of California: J.G. Boswell and the Making of A Secret American Empire (New
York: Public Affairs, 2003).
14
black communities required the “recruitment of people willing to migrate and
invest” in these projects.24
The Allensworth endeavor was based on an ideal that California is where
African Americans could “cultivate and reap the rewards” the virtues of “industry
and thrift.”25 McBroome’s article discusses how many African Americans
believed in the importance of farmland ownership. While McBroome’s article is
illuminating, it lightly touches upon the role that religious institutions played in
the Allensworth community. McBroome summarizes the reasons why Allensworth
eventually died away – capital fell through and accessibility to water became
difficult to obtain in this farming community. Many of Allensworth’s residents left
this area and relocated to other parts of the state. Mr. and Mrs. Lee Crane
originally came from Texas to live in Allensworth, California. However, as the
community began to decline they relocated to Fowler, where they were able to
establish a successful truck gardening enterprise.26 Ultimately, the Crane’s
relocation is an indication of the economic viability of Fresno County.
With the exception of the Allensworth community, many of Seeking El
Dorado’s articles do not contextualize the presence of African American farmers
in Fresno County prior to World War I. Many of these studies emphasize
overarching trends regarding black migration and resettlement. Yet, when one
places Fowler’s African American farming class in this model, we can see how
these trends are complemented and challenged on different fronts. If outward
migration from the south was predominately undertaken by black industrial
24 McBroome, 154.
25 Ibid., 155.
26 Deliliah Beasley, The Negro Trailblazers of California (New York: Negro Universities Press,
1969): 153.
15
workers seeking to relocate to northern industrial cities, then what of their rural
compatriots who decided to relocate to western areas?
Many major works that have looked at rural histories have tended to focus
on the role that technology, political organizations, and market economy have
played. However, as historians Nancy Grey Osterud and Lu Ann Jones have
highlighted in their oral histories of rural women, historians also need to “embrace
matters of labor, kinship, and community.”27 While many of these studies have
mentioned the spiritual fulfillment that black churches provided for various
African American communities, they have lacked specific attention to how
religious institutions were used to assimilate into local economies. This research
aims to not only expand the existing scholarship of black migration and
community building in rural areas, but also to look at how a black community
attempted to incorporate themselves within a multi-ethnic community.
27 Nancy Grey Osterud and Lu Ann Jones, “ ‘If I Must Say So Myself’: Oral Histories of Rural
Women.” The Oral History Review 17, no. 2 (Autumn, 1989): 1-23. Accessed July 24, 2014.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3675147.
CHAPTER 2: RURAL CALIFORNIA: FRESNO COUNTY
Economic and Social “Pull” Factors
California’s emergence as a global agricultural site attracted residents from
throughout the world. Immigration and migration into California was something
that had been growing since the discovery of gold in the mid-nineteenth century.
As California’s population rose during the mid-century, there was a growing
consumer population that lived a relatively isolated area with the nearest outpost
being the Atlantic Coast or the Mississippi Valley.1 Climate conditions,
landownership opportunities, and ideological promises attracted different groups
of individuals to California. In the Central Valley, the earliest ventures were in
wheat production. Agricultural production later shifted to fruit and vegetable
cultivation once storage warehouses and rail transportation industries were
established to ship products to international markets.2 As many historians have
highlighted, the Central Valley’s growing rise in agriculture and the various
communities that this boom created is tied directly with an understanding that
central California “offered a wide variety of local climates and soils” which make
agricultural enterprises potentially profitable for investors.3 Various industries
related to this agriculture – transportation, storage – all clustered around rail
depots. Fowler, along with other Central California communities, grew around its
rail depot, marking it an important local hub of economic and social activity.
McFarland states that the reason why Fowler (along with various other
nearby rural communities) was undergoing a period of prosperity was due to the
1 Paul W. Rodman, “The Beginnings of Agriculture in California: Innovation vs. Continuity,”
California Historical Quarterly 52, no. 1 (Spring 1973): 18.
2 Ibid., 20.
3 Ibid., 24.
17
“low land prices, which coupled with cheap Southern Pacific rail fares, brought
many settles to the Fowler region.”4 The potential for land ownership, not only in
Fowler but throughout the Central Valley, was one of the main incentives for
thousands of individuals to make the journey to the state’s interior. The state and
local government understood the need for residents and laborers. As the fruit
industry continued to boom in the first ten years of the 1900s, promoters began to
advertise the demand for laborers, not only locally but also in nationwide black
newspapers.
Locally, the Fowler Ensign reported in June 1907 that the California
Promotion Committee was actively aiding immigrants from throughout the
country to relocate into the Central Valley.5 The article notes that any farmer or
individual with farm labor experience would “solve the industrial question of
sufficient labor supply for the agricultural district.”6 Sally M. Miller notes that the
development of the Central Valley’s “agricultural economy” could not have
“occurred so spectacularly without the labor supplied by a constant stream of
incoming workers…”7 It is important to note that this mass movement and
settlement into rural Fresno County was not undertaken just by African
Americans, but also by various other ethnic groups. The efforts of actively
promoting and attracting individuals through the use of newspapers and boosters
indicates that laborers and their families were especially needed for California’s
agricultural industry. The massive development of Fresno County into a major
4 Jon R. McFarland, Village on the Prairie: The Story of Fowler’s First 100 Years (Fowler: The
Ensign Publishing Company, 1972): 24.
5 Fowler Ensign, June 8, 1907.
6 Ibid.
7 Sally M. Miller, “Changing Faces of the Central Valley: The Ethnic Presence.” California
History 74, no. 2 (Summer 1995): 175.
18
agri-economical player came into full swing during the first decade of the
twentieth century.8 Unlike many Southern areas, African Americans in Fresno
County were able to purchase their own farmland without any social or legal
restrictions. Miller notes that despite certain legal limitations for alien residents,
landownership in Valley was not an entirely impossible task. If anything all of
these numerous groups “filled a vital gap and provided the essential ingredient of
farm labor that permitted the system of large-scale intensive agriculture to
develop.”9 Fresno County, and much of the interior of California, was the ideal
location for this large-scale intensive agriculture to develop. As historian David
Vaught presents, California is one of the few places in North American with such
a superior geographic and climatic assets, such so that by the late-nineteenthcentury no other industry enjoyed the “agriculture supply-side advantages.”10 The
Fowler Ensign echoed the growing vitality of the local fruit economy in their daily
reports regarding the growing local demand for cans: “The California Fruit
Canners’ Association has placed an order with a Pittsburg firm for 300,000,000
cans in which to put up our luscious California fruits.”11 Fowler and various other
rural communities was undergoing a period of economic growth, yet there was a
short supply of needed farm laborers and general laborers to meet the growing
demands of towns and small cities.
8 For further general information regarding the development of Fresno Counties economy during
this period and the role that the United States government played in this read Howard Seftel’s article
“Government Regulation and the Rise of the California Fruit Industry: The Entrepreneurial Attack on Fruit
Pests, 1880-1920.” The Business History Review 59, no. 3 (Autumn 1985): 369-402.
9 Miller, 188.
10 David Vaught, Cultivating California: Growers, Specialty Crops, and Labor, 1875-1920.
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999): 15.
11 Fowler Ensign, January 11, 1907.
19
Nationally, source evidence indicates that among various black newspapers
California’s promotional efforts were extended to African Americans through the
predominate lure of landownership. Various newspapers began advertising and
writing about the Central Valley’s economic opportunities. Landownership was
the major feature that was emphasized in black newspapers. Weekly
advertisements concerning fruit acreage, price per acre, accessibility to water, rail
fare to California, and farmers’ testimonials aimed at convincing potential African
American farmers to migrate. One such advertisement was seen in the Cleveland
Gazette in February 26, 1910. Buried with various other advertisements, the
opening lines of the piece exclaimed “$125,000 net from 1200 acres grapes.
$15,000 from 22 acres peaches. $3,200 from 20 acres raisins, in the San Joaquin
Valley, California.”12 The advertisement goes on to include a testimonial of
Carson Reed of Reedley, California who states that from his twenty-acre crop of
Sultana raisins he was able net a profit of $3,200.13 A key feature of this
advertisement is that these colonization agents would facilitate the process of
accessing this land and physical relocation to California. As mentioned earlier,
many of these colonization efforts were seen in southern California locations like
in Los Angles and Allensworth. However, these advertisements aimed at drawing
potential farmers and farm laborers throughout rural California regions.
California advertisements were not the only type of material used to attract
potential migrants. Numerous articles described the geographical features of the
area and the “way of life” as a tactic to draw attention and interest in these
ventures. In the Savannah Tribune, the erection of a “gigantic wine cast” was
announced with its amazing capability to hold “no less than 79,000 gallons” of
12 Cleveland Gazette, February 26, 1910.
13 Ibid.
20
wine.14 Another such news piece portrayed how the fruit cultivation industry
extended beyond selling of produce. In the Broad Ax, it was announced that the
“fruit packers of Fresno, California” were installing a distillery to make brandy.15
The news writer of this brief piece emphasized that even the peelings of soft fruits,
which were previously considered waste, proved to be another source of revenue
for ranchers.16 The emphasis that these news stories gave to the image of
California as a budding agricultural area also included an emphasis of California’s
social benefits.
One of the major projects to utilize these potential agri-ventures and social
benefits was through establishing colonies. “Colonization” – meaning an
economic and social enterprise of establishing communities – was a small
phenomenon that some African American groups undertook during this period in
California. Articles and promoters of these ventures would underscore an
ideological view of agrarian life. In A. J.W.’s article “The Western Way: Not
Organizations and Leagues but Money and Land,” there is a contrast created
between eastern and southern states’ social and economic environment with that of
California’s socio-economic environment. The author contends that while in the
eastern and southern states African Americans “are being agitated over the
discriminative or class laws,” blacks in California are changing their social and
economic issues by forming their own all black farm enterprises and
communities.17 The rest of the news article goes on to detail the environmental
14 “California’s Great Wine Tun,” Savannah Tribune, May 23, 1896. Originally published in the
San Francisco Call.
15 Broad Ax, Salt Lake City, Utah: September 18, 1897.
16 Ibid.
17 “The Western Way: Not Organizations and Leagues but Money and Land,” Plaindealer,
Cleveland, Ohio: November 20, 1891.
21
aspects and the type of fruit products that can be grown. Ultimately, the main goal
of this social and economic venture was to give African Americans the
opportunity to “have a home where his rights as a man can be appreciated.”18
Black boosters and newspaper advertisements promotion of rural California as a
site of possibility did convince some African Americans to make the move to this
developing state. Yet, the most effective tool in convincing various individuals
and families to relocate from southern or mid-western areas was familial and
friendly letters. For some, word of mouth proved to be the most effective in
convincing individuals of relocating hundreds of miles to the Central Valley to
reunify with their families.
This concept of a new “Garden of Eden” appeals to various social groups
not only throughout the United States, but also from different parts of the world.
For African Americans this concept took on a more meaningful role in regards to
the various institutional social and political obstacles they faced in Southern states.
Historians and social scientists have noted the “masses of blacks who suffered
relentless oppression, grinding poverty, and distressingly narrow opportunities for
improving their circumstances during the ‘Jim Crow’ era.”19 Economically, within
rural Southern areas there was an increase in demand for cheap black labor. Before
the Depression, cotton was “the least mechanized type of American agriculture”
and required extensive labor.20 Thus the expansion of the black tenant farming
system (especially in the form of sharecropping) had increased to eight million by
18 Plaindealer, November 20, 1891.
19 Mark S. Foster, “In the Face of ‘Jim Crow’: Prosperous Blacks and Vacations, Travel and
Outdoor Leisure, 1890-1945.” The Journal of Negro History, 84, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 130.
20 Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How it Changed
America. (New York: Random House, 1991): 10.
22
1930.21 Additionally in the late nineteenth century, African Americans basic
political rights were systematically stripped throughout various parts of the nation.
This was also coupled with the growing rise of violent intimidation that was used
against many African Americans from fulfilling their basic right to vote, to obtain
a decent education, and in various prejudicial economic practices.
21 Lemann, 11.
CHAPTER 3: FOWLER, CALIFORNIA; AN EXAMPLE OF
AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY BUILDING
Fowler’s Establishment and Early Economic
Development
Fowler’s development as a town site is almost typical of any Fresno County
town. Jon R. McFarland’s Village on the Prairie: The Story of Fowler’s First 100
Years discusses the community’s early white residents and founding. The town
was name after Thomas Fowler who used the location originally as a rail depot.1
The town grew in size by the 1890s with various residents establishing ranches
and homes. It was during this period when wheat cultivation was replaced by
raisin cultivation.2
Figure 1. A contemporary map of Fowler, California. The cross streets and
railroad line is still the same as it was in the early 1900s.
1 Jon R. McFarland, Village on the Prairie: The Story of Fowler’s First 100 Years (Fowler: The
Ensign Publishing Company, 1972): 3
2 Ibid., 10.
24
The rise of population was coupled with the local fruit industry’s
profitability. Fresno County during the beginning of this period underwent a
population boom. In 1880 Fresno had a population of 9,478 and by 1890 it had a
population of 32,026 residents.3 By 1900 the U.S. Census reported 399 African
American residents in Fresno County.4 By 1910 Fowler had reached its peak
population of 5,873 residents, of which 675 lived in town.5 While the Census does
not break down the residents’ race by town site, it does provide a basis in looking
at how many residents actually lived and worked in these areas through this period
of 1890 to 1930. Ultimately, if there is a distinct connection to be made about the
rise of Fowler’s fruit industry it would be with the growing diverse population.
The town was a prime location for community building because it was the location
to ship crops to national and international markets.
In the 1890s, Fowler’s importance in the local fruit industry is indicated
with the establishment of a local raisin storage facility, the Fowler Fruit and Raisin
Packing Company.6 By the first decade of 1900, Fowler’s business leaders and
ranch owners were apart of the business association Sun-Maid.7 The goal of this
association was to pool resources together to facilitate profits and security during
bad harvests. The development of the vast array of ranches and farms was also
aided by local canal and water irrigation. Many local farmers pooled funds and
labor to build canals and switches from the Kings River. Chinese laborers were
3 United States. U.S. Bureau of the Census. Department of Commerce. Population of States and
Territories by Counties, At Each Census: 1790 to 1890.
4 United States. U.S. Bureau of the Census. Department of Commerce. Native and Foreign Born
and White and Colored Population, Classified by Sex, by Counties: 1900.
5 United States. U.S. Bureau of the Census. Department of Commerce. Population of Minor Civil
Divisions: 1910, 1900, and 1890.
6 McFarland, 11.
7 Ibid.
25
employed to construct these early canals and water ditches for ranchers. Such
water irrigation projects included the Fresno Canal, the Centerville Ditch, and the
Fowler Switch Canal.8 Chinese laborers were just one segment of the diverse labor
population.
Chinese laborers, Japanese immigrants, African American migrants, and
Armenian refugees were some of the groups that call Fowler home by in the
beginning of the twentieth century. White ranchers encouraged the immigration of
minority groups into the area due to their cheap labor. Anti-Chinese sentiment was
driven by the economic competition that Chinese immigrants brought with them.
The real contention lies that it was the local white leadership (the ranch owning
class) who oft preferred Chinese laborers not only for their cheap labor but
efficiency and reliability.9 Yet, for many white laborers, anti-Chinese sentiment
only intensified the passage of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion act, which curtailed
Asian immigration.10 While African Americans began to immigrate inwards to the
Central Valley, many found that during the lean years, farm labor wages were too
low. Many skilled African American laborers moved towards urban cities were
they found work within the domestic industry.11 Yet, some of Fowler’s black
migrants settled in the community with the hopes of establishing themselves
within an agrarian based economy.
While McFarland composed a local community history that focusing on the
town’s early economical development, social institutions, and cultural life, he
8 David Vaught, Cultivating California: Growers, Specialty Crops, and Labor, 1875-1920.
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999): 70.
9 Ibid., 71.
10 James J. Rawls and Walton Bean, California: An Interpretive History, 10th Edition (Boston,
MA: McGraw-Hill, 2012): 247.
11 Ibid.
26
failed to really display the rich ethnic diverse population. McFarland contends the
racial cosmopolitan character of this community has been consistent since the
inception of the town. However, his attention is solely given to the white leaders
and families of this town site. His first mention of the community’s racial diversity
is in the section discussing the various religious denominations throughout the
town site. Here he references the Catholic, Christian, and Buddhist religions in this
small community.12 Thereafter, McFarland makes a slight reference to the
multiracial residents. The issue with McFarland’s presentation is that while he
does acknowledge the town’s multiracial population, he fails to really present the
whole community. Ultimately, the problem with this study is its short sightedness.
As a social observer of this small town, McFarland’s claim falls short based on the
evidence he presented. The main focus of his work is tied to the white population
of the community and lacks to mention how the rest of this multi-ethnic
community displayed similar sentiments in regards to sense of purpose in Fowler.
Considering that McFarland’s account was sponsored by a local civic
organization, his history of the town is indicative of the image and memory the
town wants to remember. While the community does not deny or hide its multiethnic past, it seems to pride itself in it. Yet, it fails to show the African American
families that made the town its home and aided in the establishment of civic
organizations during its critical development years. By studying and giving a voice
Fowler’s early black community we can finally shed light on a forgotten part of its
history. To do this we have to look at the historical record and display these
individuals and families as well as cultural principles that these families and
individuals valued.
12 McFarland, 17.
27
Local Voices: Individual and Familial Case Studies
Julia Bell left behind an interesting trail of information regarding her life.
During the early twentieth century, Delilah Beasley traveled throughout California
collecting local biographical sketches of African American communities and
individuals. Beasley’s aim was to create a collection that recorded African
American history during California’s formative years during the mid-nineteenth
century onwards to the early twentieth century. As seen locally in Fowler, many
middle-class African Americans throughout the state were actively advocating
“black civic, cultural, and political life…” In 1919, Negro Trailblazers of
California was published and one biographical sketch was undertaken of Fowler’s
local African Americana community. Julia Bell makes an appearance and left an
impression upon Beasley, especially in regards to her landownership and local
community participation in civic and religious affairs.
In the 1880s, Julia Bell and her husband settled into rural Fresno County.13
Census material reveals that she was born in 1850 in South Carolina.14 Her
parents, Benna Jennings and David Jennings were both slaves who were separated
from their children during the onset of the Civil War. By the 1900 census, Julia
Bell was listed as a widow and was placed as the head of household. Her father,
mother, and two grandsons were listed as dependents.15 Her role as the property
owner of her ranch seems to enforce her economic independence in being able to
support her family members at the age of fifty. Further research in regards to her
location in 1920 proves to be empty. It is not known if she moved to another local
13 Deliliah Beasley, The Negro Trailblazers of California (New York: Negro Universities Press,
1969): 151. This is determined through Beasley’s work. While Beasley does list specific dates when she
conducted her various interviews, one can estimate from the year the work was published in 1919.
14 US Bureau of Census,1900 U.S. Census, accessed on September 8, 2014,
https://www.censusrecords.com/record?id=usc%2f1900%2f004118420%2f00271%2f006
15 Ibid.
28
community. Despite this we can see how a widowed African American woman
was able to pull a sense of financial independence to facilitate the reunification of
her family - a family that had been separated for over thirty years. Once unified
this family was able to relocate into California.
According to Beasley, Bell (see Figure 2) wrote to various family members
who still resided in South Carolina, and informed them of the “possibilities of
Fowler.”16 Her ownership of farmland and her active role in mending her family
together by providing financial assistance so they could join her in Fresno County
reveals her active role in facilitating outward migration from the South during the
last decade of the nineteenth century.17 Julia Bell was one of the founders of the
first all-black church in the area, the First Baptist Church. This church was erected
in April 1906, and she was named one of the key solicitors for the loan needed to
build the church.18 Her efforts, along with other early black residents, indicate a
need or value of establishing a church to possibility induce more black migrants.
Possibly, this may have been used to convince family members who still resided in
southern states.
Once established in Fowler, Bell began to collect funds to aid her family to
reunify. She first began by moving her mother to California. Thereafter she sent
for her brother. Jordan Young arrived to California on December 21, 1891,
initially leaving behind his family in Richland County, South Carolina near
Columbia.19 Once Young had secured enough funds by working as a farm laborer,
he sent back for his family to join him to live in their modest farm he had recently
16 Beasley, 152.
17 Ibid.
18 Fowler Ensign, March 24, 1906.
19 Beasley, 133.
29
Figure 2. Julia Bell, date of photo unknown. Bell was a long time resident of
Fowler, California. Courtesy of the Fresno Historical Society.
30
procured.20 Young at the age of 43, was able to relocate into the Township 4
(Fowler, California) and later send funds for his wife Lucretia Young to join
him.21 As indicated by 1910 U.S. Census one of his sons, Ben, joined him. Ben
Young was still under his father’s household at the age of twenty-six, and he is
also found in McFarland’s local history. During the first decade of the 1900s, Ben
Young attended the local school and participated in the local football team.22
Benjamin Young then went onto attend a university to study medicine.23 Other
Young family members graduated from the local high school throughout the first
few decades of the twentieth century. Patrick Jefferson young graduated from
Fowler High School in 1912, one of the class’s fifteen graduates.24
Jordan Young’s daughter Cornelia went onto to marry Reuben Wysinger in
1895. Cornelia and her husband indicated their value in education by sending their
three children to school as well as infusing an agrarian work ethnic allowing them
to “remain on the ranch and be independent.”25 As indicated by public records the
Bell/Young/Jennings family had interfused themselves within this community.
The importance of landownership is a reoccurring theme within the Bell/Young
family. Jordan Young informed Beasley that he “made a vow that none of his
children should marry until they owned a home.”26 Julia Bell’s name is placed
within the local public record to show her property value along with other
20 Beasley,152.
21 US Bureau of Census, 1900 U.S. Census, accessed on September 8, 2014,
https://www.censusrecords.com/record?id=usc%2f1900%2f004118420%2f00271%2f006
22 McFarland, 26.
23 Beasley, 133.
24 Fowler Ensign, June 8, 1912.
25 Beasley, 152.
26 Ibid., 133.
31
residents of Fowler. Bell was listed as the sole owner her property, which had a
total value of $372, and the total tax she paid to the community for the year of
1909 was $10.71.27 As this record indicates, Bell (now a widower) is not only
listed in the census records as the head of household, but also is acknowledged as
a landowner whose taxes contribute to the town’s financial budget. While Bell was
not the only female head of household in these public records, it is indicative of
the respectability she had received not only within her ethnic community, but also
within the larger community. Landownership and assuming the head role of family
only bolstered this role for Bell.
Julia Bell’s efforts within religious, civic, and familial connections are
indicative of the type of behavior that her local community approved of. Bell’s
familial reunification fits within a national trend of reconnection, especially
considering she was a part of the last generation born into slavery. Also, her status
as the head of household and landowner was widely known locally, while the
historical record indicates Bell movement to Fowler was one of choice. Yet for
some movement into Fowler was a refuge from a violent situation.
In 1893, William S. Cowings was forced to leave his home in Pikes
County, Georgia. According to a local Pikes County history, the week prior to his
forced exodus from Georgia, Cowings was an ardent supporter of the local allblack school in his community. Also he had publically out cried the recent
lynching of an African American resident in his writing to a local newspaper:
“The lynching that was committed at the Double Bridges, was a brutal outrage and
a shame upon the human generation…”28 He not only defended the school but
27 Fowler Ensign “Who are the Fowler Taxpayers?” March 5, 1910.
28 Jo Ann Whatley, “Pike County Blacks: The Spirit of Populist Revolt and White Tolerance
(1891-1986) as Depicted in the Pike County Journal and Other Related Sources” (thesis, Spelman
College1984): 187.
32
agitated the local residents with his admit support of black equality. Seventy years
lager William S. Cowings’ son, Abraham Lincoln Cowings, recounted this event
and that “in order to save his life he just moved to California.”29 Cowings made
his way to Fowler, California to join his brother who offered him a home and train
fare to make the cross-country journey. While Cowings migration out of Georgia
was forceful, the possibility that California offered to this individual especially
when one juxtaposes this with the violent reality that he faced indicates that for
many outward migrants, California was a conceptual site of escape, possibility,
and hope. The home that they made had the institutions they wanted to ensure
their value in education and in religious expression.
Education
The image of an unknown African American family is testament to the
importance of family and education. On the surface, gaining any type of
information on this family may seem difficult without any supporting details.
However, critically analyzing the families dress and how they position themselves
one can understand how this local black Fowler family wished to present
themselves. This reveals not only contemporary understandings of family life, but
also how race intersects within cultural norms. In a family portrait from the
Hutchinson Collection we glean a second understanding of who is this family30
29 Cowings, Abraham Lincoln. 1977. Interview by Vivian Jones, August 17. Interview transcript,
Fresno City and County Historical Society, Fowler, California.
30 The Hutchinson Collection originally came from a long time resident of the community of
Fowler. It is not known if Paul Hutchinson was the photographer of these photographs, but it is highly
doubted. The photographs were in the possession of the Hutchinson estate, which was later donated to the
Fresno Historical Society. It is not known if the photographer informed the unknown subjects ahead of time
of an upcoming photo-shoot, or if these are candid in nature. The specific date is not known and the names
of the subjects are unknown as well, with the exception of a few individuals – Julia Bell and David
Jennings. Despite the ambiguity of context, these photographs do offer a telling insight in the manner in
how these images are projected for the viewer.
33
(see Figure 3). In front of their home, a family six sits with the father positioned
reading a book, while the mother sits in a lowered position listening as she holds
the young child’s hand. The father is assuming a position of masculinity: the
dissemination of information to his attentive family. His suit and tie indicates the
proper attire for a late Victorian patriarch. The mother is facing towards the
direction of the young male child. The young male child is holding the carriage.
Interestingly, the positioning of the young girls is placed directly next to their
father, almost as though they are the primary recipients of this education. The
submissive position of the mother seems to counter the upstanding poise of the
young girls. For these young girls, listening to their father is not considered a
threat to notions of African American femininity and does not counter the
maternal positioning of the mother.
Figure 3. African American family posing in front of home in Fowler, California.
Date Unknown. Courtesy of Fresno History Society.
34
The positioning of the young girls listening to their father as he reads from
a book does not challenge existing norms regarding femininity. For many African
American women, especially those with a middle-class standing, primary
education and the pursuit of vocational education are not considered a threat to
their notion of femininity. Thus one can assume the value an education had for the
future of this community, even for young women. As historian Beverly GuySheftall highlights, after the Civil War there is an increasing demand for black
teachers throughout the nation. The federal government, private institutions like
African American churches and civic groups established many black-teaching
colleges throughout the county in the beginning of the twentieth century.31 Female
education, especially for many middle-class African Americans was considered
important. Education was a community effort since education was considered one
of the main institutions that would uplift their social, political, and economic
standing. This portrait shows not only a young family within Fowler, but also
displays ideals regarding children’s education. This was a sentiment many within
Fowler’s black community shared – education was a highly valued goal for these
migrants especially for their children. One family that indicates this trend is seen
within the Wysinger family.
The one issue that collectively gained the most attention from black
Californians concerned education. The Wysinger family not only is indicative of
this struggle, but their experience is indicative to the nineteenth century
environment of black Californians. The court case that drove this issue to the
forefront occurred thirty-five miles from Fowler, California. Arthur Wysinger, the
son of Edmond Wysinger, was denied admission the local public school. Arthur’s
31 Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Daughters of Sorrow: Attitudes Toward Black Women, 1800-1920
(Brooklyn, New York: Carlson Publishing Inc, 1990): 94.
35
father Edmond sued the local school master for his denial.32 In the opinion given
by Justice C. Belcher Foote, the ruling stated that since the city of Visalia did not
offer or maintain a school for black children, then the community had to admit
them to the local white school.33 Thus, the 1890 California Supreme Court case
Wysinger v. Crookshank ended the practice of denying black children a public
education.34 This case paved the way for the passage of state legislature that led to
the prohibition of “discrimination in public accommodations.”35 The assertion of
Edmond Wysinger in demanding that his son receive an education drove at the
heart of what many African Americans desired. An education was considered a
social and economic necessity in uplifting one’s community during this time
period. Wysinger’s other children were testament to this social ideal and the varied
paths they undertook throughout California reveal their lived experience.
If one where to look at the Wysinger family’s history one can see an
interesting example of African American migration and settlement in California.
The patriarch, Edmond, was born a slave in South Carolina in 1819.36 He made
his way to California with his owner and worked in the California gold mines with
the goal of buying his freedom.37 A firm believer in education, he pushed his
children to attend school. Edmond Wysinger died the year after the California
Supreme Court decision was made in 1891. Due to the publicity that this case
32 Wysinger v. Crookshank 82 Cal. 588 (1890).
33 Wysinger v. Crookshank 82 Cal. 588 (1890).
34 Lynn M. Hudson, “Entertaining Citizenship: Masculinity and Minstrelsy in Post-Emancipation
San Francisco.” The Journal of African American History 93, no. 2 (Spring 2008): 189
35 Ibid., 189.
36 Myra Wysinger, “Edmond Edward Wysinger.” (Created August 25, 2011)
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=75471433
37 Ibid.
36
brought the community of Visalia, the Wysinger family became widely known.
Possibly due to this attention many of the Wysinger children moved to Oakland in
1891.38 In the early 1920s, Jesse E. Wysinger became the editor of The Western
Outlook, a newspaper “devoted to the interests of the Negro on the Pacific
Coast.”39 His younger sister Bertha Allen Wysinger became an active member of
the local community. A member of the YWCA, and the Alameda County League
of Colored Women Voters, she pushed for African American women’s education
and occupational opportunities as nurses.40 Arthur Wysinger, the young boy
named in the case, moved to Los Angeles where he passed away in 1916. Yet it is
Edmond Wysinger’s oldest son Reuben Carl Wysinger that provides an example
of the possibilities of Fowler, California.
Reuben Wysinger was the only child to stay in the Central Valley.
Wysinger decided to relocate to Fowler, California. Deliliah L. Beasley notes in
The Negro Trail Blazers of California in the 1910s, Reuben Wysinger owned a
fifteen acre ranch where he grew raisin grapes and peaches, which provided for
him a nice income.41 Wysinger was greatly aided by his wife’s labor and
economic assistance. Cornelia Young Wysinger worked alongside her husband in
the cultivation of their vineyard and orchard to ensure a successful crop yield.42
Including education, the themes of independence and self-sufficiency are
38 Myra Wysinger, “Bertha Allen Wysinger.” (Created January 11, 2014).
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=123138396
39 Myra Wysinger, “Jesse E. Wysinger.” (Created Sept. 15, 2011)
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=76568644
40 Myra Wysinger, “Bertha Allen Wysinger” (Created Jan. 11, 2014)
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=123138396
41 Delilah L. Beasley, 153.
42 Myra Wysinger “Cornelia Young Wysinger” (Created May 6, 2009)
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=36813472. Cornelia Young Wysinger is the
daughter of Jordan Young, who will later be presented in this work.
37
paramount for Fowler’s African American community. Reuben and Cornelia
Wysinger’s experience and economic success serves as a counterpoint to the
experience that many southern blacks faced. For many southern blacks, the lack of
opportunities for land ownership, social equality, and real enfranchisement was
enough to focus their attention in finding new places to call home in order to fulfill
their hopes of real independence and self-sufficiency. These themes are also the
values that many African American migrants sought as they made their migration
to California.
Religious Participation
Two African American churches were also established during this time: the
St. Paul’s African Methodist Episcopal Church and the First Baptist Church.
Religious association was paramount for many residents in this community.
Christian association was connected to communal propriety. Yet, for African
Americans these churches represented not only spiritual support, but also
leadership possibilities. The presentation of congregational members standing
outside of the AME Church in Fowler, highlights not only the communal concepts
of religiosity (see Figure 4). Throughout the late nineteenth century and early
twentieth century, the African Methodist Episcopal Church also allowed women to
participating in various leadership roles. The manner in which African American
women dressed in church alluded to an ambitious use of clothing to “establish
themselves as legitimate public figures.”43
All church members of different ages and genders are standing in the
forefront of the AME Church building. Yet, the viewer’s eye eventually settles at
43 Pamela E. Klassen, “The Robes of Womanhood: Dress and Authenticity among African
American Methodist Women in the Nineteenth Century.” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of
Interpretation 14, no. 1 (Winter 2004): 39.
38
Figure 4. St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church, Fowler California. Date
Unknown. Courtesy of the Fresno Historical Society.
the church building. The building, which is still standing today, is comparable in
size to the larger community’s religious institutions. As noted by a local historian,
Fowler became a community that “would have more houses of worship than other
larger towns.”44 Christian religiosity and spiritual association was paramount to
the larger community’s sense of identity. In each weekly edition of the Fowler
Ensign, the local “Church Announcements,” highlighted the various Christian
denominations sermons, special events, and lecturers to a larger community. For
Fowler’s AME Church, it was especially important for their clergymen to utilize
this community forum to invite people from the larger community to participate.
44 McFarland, 18.
39
While Rev. Harrison and many other community leaders utilized the local
newspaper to invite local residents to participate within church affairs, this group
also used the newspaper to distance themselves from images and individuals they
deemed unrepresentative of their community and race. A notice was placed in the
Ensign on February 27, 1909 regarding an individual called Mr. Rousseau. The
local St. Paul M.E. Church placed this notice in the paper to warn the local “white
people of the community that some colored man,” had been “going around
collecting money under the guise of a missionary and sometimes posing as a
minister of our church.”45 The church goes on to indicate that this individual has
no connection to the church nor authority to collect funds under their name: “Mr.
Rousseau has never been sent out from us to solicit, nor does he belong to our
church.”46 Interestingly it is how this notice casts this individual as a noncommunity member and ridiculed him publically for his misrepresentation.
The most important aspect of this article is the value this community has in
its public representation of themselves. This is seen in the tone of the article and
the manner in which this notice portrays their propriety in relation to their
treatment of Mr. Rousseau. The notice has a collective tone in its address to the
larger community. The board of the church along with Rev. Harrison makes it a
point to indicate a collective or communal address, “our,” and “we.” Most
importantly, the community makes it a point to show that they attempted to take
Mr. Rousseau and his “4 or 5 children” into their community, under the
assumptions of Christian piety. The notice continues that the Rousseau family had
been living in a tent behind the church, and had been invited to attend Sunday
45 Fowler Ensign, “To the Public.” February, 27, 1909.
46 Ibid.
40
services.47 Most importantly is the emphasis that the Church had in having the
children attend “Sabbath school every week,” enforcing a sense of religious
acculturation into this community.48 Yet the community quickly states that despite
their efforts Mr. Rousseau and family only made empty promises, and has never
attended their Church. Here it is clear that Mr. Rousseau with his
misrepresentation in his solicitation of funds, intendance to Christian services, and
deceits is not a real member of their ethnic community. This is made explicitly
clear to the white community of Fowler.
Religious institutions played a larger role then just fulfilling the
community’s spiritual needs. They also functioned as a place to meet for civic and
educational purposes. However, as indicated by local back clergymen utilizing the
local newspaper, religious institutions also signified a community’s position
within the town site. By associating themselves as fellow Christians, Fowler’s
African American community aligned themselves with the manners and identity
expected from a good, Christian resident. Also, as historian Sandra L. Barnes
highlights, African American churches also connected this community to a larger
statewide network, one which provided support and modeling of how to integrate
themselves within a larger town site.49 Ultimately, for this community their
religion was not strictly spiritual, it was an integral part of their community
identity. Their religion was the basis to interact with their fellow Fowler residents,
and was a means to displaying their intention of calling the town their home.
47 Fowler Ensign, “To the Public.” February, 27, 1909.
48 Ibid.
49 Sandra L. Barnes. “Black Church Culture and Community Action.” Social Forces 84, no. 2
(Dec. 2005): 968.
41
Published Discrimination: Racial Displays in the
Fowler Ensign
In 1908 the Fowler Ensign has published an issue that highlighted the rural
city’s brief history and local residents. The article accounts how Jennings and Julia
Bell’s mother were former slaves. It begins by discussing Jennings birth year of
1817 in New Orleans, Louisiana.50 Thereafter, Jennings married and had five
children who all lived together in a plantation in South Carolina prior to the
outbreak of the Civil War. Before the start of the Civil War, Jennings’ wife and
children “were sold to a cotton planter and taken south,” and he then became the
property of Wade Hampton.51 Jennings was then forced to follow Hampton
through the battles of Bull Run, Manassas Junction, and Gettysburg. Jennings after
emancipation lived in Columbia, South Carolina working as an employee of a
general store.52 By the late 1880s, Bell was able to find her father after twenty
years of separation through the use of letters and family connections. Once she
was able to communicate with him, Bell sent enough funds in 1892 for his train
fare to California. Once in Fowler, he worked as an independent tailor and farm
laborer when needed. While Jennings life was interestingly chronicled in this
article, it is the manner that this biography is given. Purposely, it is portrays a
specific image of race in a problematic manner. In this section, the focus is in how
race is presented in the local newspapers to highlight racist tropes.
The most interesting component of Jennings biography is his portrayal as a
faithful slave and then as an Uncle Remus. The use of the “faithful slave” is seen
when Jennings describes his contempt when “the remainder of the servants” ran
50 Fowler Ensign, “Was Hampton’s Slave: David Jennings Near Century Mark – Has an
Interesting History.” December 26, 1908.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid.
42
away and hid when “the bullets rained the thickest” during the battle of Bull
Run.53 This faithful slave image was then connected to a Gilded Age black
stereotype when he was described as a “patriarchal colored man, one of the class
of colored ‘uncles’ made famous by Joel Chandler Harris…”54 There are a few
instances where Jennings is called “Uncle David” in the article. The reference of a
faithful slave image, explicitly one that is tied to Uncle Remus presents a complex
understanding African American life after the Civil War. Referencing historian
Jason Sperb, the reason why the Uncle Remus is a controversial image is because
the figure is one which “suggests that [while] blacks lived in extreme poverty,
[they] were nonetheless happy and content alongside their former owners, still
faithfully serving the rich whites and their children during the Reconstruction in
the American South.”55 As David Blight has noted, the specific use of Uncle
Remus was tied to a period when Americans were becoming “more endeared to
the South as their source of nostalgia.”56 The use of a faithful slave and Uncle
Remus image is, as Blight argues, utilized to propagate the idea that the Civil War
had “little to do with race.”57 Thus, the use of this reference in a Western rural
community takes on tone of attempting to appease the wider audience of the
Fowler Ensign readership.
53 Fowler Ensign, December 26, 1908.
54 Ibid.
55 Frank J. Wetta and Martin A. Novelli, The Long Reconstruction: The Post-Civil War South in
History, Film, and Memory. (New York: Routledge, 2014): 66-67. Quote from Jason Sperb was taken from
the chapter titled, “Sunshine Headin’ My Way: Memories of Reconstruction in Black and White.” This
monograph is a good source to understand how films and popular culture has remembered Reconstruction
and the significance these portrayals play for Americans in understanding the Civil War and slavery.
56 David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2001): 229.
57 Ibid.
43
The African American community also hosted public events to show their
assimilation efforts. One such event occurred on the first Friday of 1909 when
Emancipation Day was celebrated at Fowler Hall.58 Local African American
clergymen from Fowler, Bowles and Fresno gave speeches. Those noted were
Jordan Young (Julia Bell’s brother), A.I. Bell, and the event’s person of honor,
David Jennings. The nature of the speeches describes the value that this
community gives to the ideal of racial progress, specifically a sense of social and
economic progress to fulfill a sense of American citizenship. These assorted
speeches were titled “The Negro as a farmer,” “The Negro as a Soldier,” “the
Negro as a Pioneer and Rancher,” “The Negro as a Business Man,” “Our Women
as missionaries,” “The Negro Minister,” and “The Negro as a Professional
Man.”59 All meant to emphasize specific movements of economic and selfsufficiency; one that it is assumed would draw the attention of the local
newspaper. However, when the Fowler Ensign did not note the event on the
subsequent edition, various African Americans complained that they were
slighted. The opening paragraph of the Fowler Ensign’s article begins with an
apology, stating that the newspaper had no intention of purposely ignoring their
celebration. To emphasize this, the editors stated: “We have a number of plausible
and we think justifiable excuses which we could offer in extenuation of this act of
omission, but we won’t submit them.”60 Yet, this slight did not deter clergyman
Rev. L. V. Harrison from continuing to publish the various services that the local
AME Church was to conduct to an open public.
58 Fowler Ensign, “Emancipation Day: Colored People of Fowler Celebrated with Excellent
Program.” January 9, 1909.
59 Ibid.
60 Ibid.
44
Despite their attempts of inclusiveness with to the general public, this
community still faced legal challenges and racism at a local level. One such
incident was recorded when A.I. Bell was imprisoned when he failed to pay a local
business license fee in the first weeks of 1909.61 This occurred within weeks after
the Emancipation Day celebration, of which he was the orator of the day.
According to the article A.I. Bell promised the local court that he would raise the
money needed to pay the fee, however he failed to appear to court the following
date with the needed money.62 Yet, what is interesting about this article is Bell’s
resistance in having to pay the fine. Bell was only given a week to procure the
original fee of $1.50, thereafter he was given an extra few days to raise the
funds.63 Yet, it was on January 11 when Bell asked the local Recorder to continue
his case to the local court magistrate, possibly in the hopes of pleading a proper
case of poverty or unfairness in the fees emplaced upon his establishment.
However, Recorder Brown refused this request “on the ground that he, Bell, had
already pleaded guilty, by admitting that he had refused to pay his license.”64 It is
possible to read Bell’s refusal of paying these various fees as a means of
resistance. No other individual who was unable to pay the fine was mentioned, nor
was anyone else subjected to such coverage for his or her incarceration. Thus, as
A.I. Bell’s incarceration indicates, there was possible room for contention between
the local government and local African American residents.
61 Fowler Ensign, “Bell without Bail: Colored Shoemaker, Refuses to Pay His License Except
Under Protest and is Sent to Jail.” January 16, 1909. It is important to note that the local historical record
does not indicate if A.I. Bell is any relation to Julia Bell. What few sources have been found indicate that
these two individuals did not live in the same household. It is questionable if they were married.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid.
64 Ibid.
45
Another problematic presentation of race is tied to the “mammy” image and
how it was used to highlight local fear of economic competition. The role of black
women as a laborer was culturally understood as “contradictory to the American
ideal of domestic womanhood.”65 The public sphere was an area of influence for
men.66 While this concept is altering and changing during the Progressive Era, the
intersection of racist attitudes and sexist tropes had an influence in the portrayal of
African American women in this region (see Figure 5). Locally, in Fowler, this is
seen as an economic and social challenge for many middle-class residents.
Connotations of vice and filth are contributed to working African American
laundresses and housekeepers. As seen in the advertisement, maternity, the central
theme of gender propriety, is disrupted with the labor of the African American
laundress: the child is left on the floor, dirty, and abandoned by his mother due to
her attention to her labor. Notice that this advertisement is from a nearby town’s
business. The economic competition that African American domestic workers
played for this local company suggests the motive behind the commission and
publication of this advertisement in the local newspaper. Here, it alludes to not
only a hygienic fear, but also plays upon the notion that social and gender roles are
violated if local consumers employ female black workers.
Sensationalized reports regarding African American male transgressions
were also produced to catch the local public’s attention. News accounts of sexual
abnormal behavior and menacing reports of transient African Americans during
this time period were reported within this rural environment. The historical
background of such controlling images has their cultural roots from the
65 Guy-Sheftall, 93.
66 Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” American Quarterly 18, no. 2
(Summer, 1966): 151-152.
46
Figure 5. Selma Steam Laundry Advertisement. March 13, 1909. Fowler Ensign.
previous century. Nineteenth century racial caricatures of African American men
were tied to social notions of racial inferiority which, many whites argued in the
early 1900s, made blacks ‘hedonistic children, irresponsible, and left to their own
plans, destined for idleness or worse.”67 Nonetheless, one has to look at the
implication of these stereotypes in other parts of the nation in regards to the rise of
African American lynchings during this time frame. Such news stories had a local
dynamic in the Valley. While African Americans did make up a small segment of
the general population locally and statewide during his period the role that these
news stories of rape, domestic abuse, and murder played upon a black trope. The
rise of lynchings throughout the country was “justified as a way of controlling
67 David Pilgrim, “The Coon Caricature,” Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia: Using
Objects of Intolerance to Teach Tolerance and Promote Social Justice. (October 2000):
http://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/coon/.
47
save sexual attacks against white women” and was a means of “terrorizing Black
communities through tyrannizing” African American men.68
Locally, black male representation is seen in sensationalized news stories.
Locally in Fowler, small incidences were reported in these weekly features.
Ranging from a few sentences to full articles, these stories were meant to inform
the local population of crime reports, incidences, and social events. As mentioned
earlier, A.I. Bell’s challenge and subsequent arrest for his failure in paying a local
business tax was reported as full article. Yet, there are other instances throughout
the Fowler Ensign in which similar tones. Identified as a “colored man,” Henry
Robinson’s arrest was publicized in the local news section. The quip indicated that
Robinson was arrested for “drunkenness” on a Sunday, which Judge Brown later
fined him $20.69 Comparatively to other local news stories, this story stands out in
how it connects race with “crime.” While this instance occurred within the Fowler,
other nearby communities had similar stories concerning the connection of race,
gender, and crime.
In November 1911, Hattie Sullivan was sexually assaulted and found
wondering around Modesto, California.70 Sullivan identified her assailant as a
“negro male,” sending local law enforcement in Stanislaus County in a manhunt
for the individual.71 The local community established a reward of $1,000 to find
the offender. Later in December, local authors arrested J.E. Dickson and identified
him as the “Negro suspect” to this crime. However, once Sullivan was brought to
68 Fath Davis Ruffins, “ ‘Lifting as We Climb’: Black Women and the Preservation of African
American History and Culture.” Gender & History 6, no. 3 (Nov., 1994): 378-379.
69 The Fowler Ensign, April 2, 1910.
70 San Francisco Call, 111, no. 11, Dec. 11, 1911.
71 Ibid., 110, no. 117, November 24, 1911.
48
the local county jail to identify him in person she was unable to do so twice.72
Thereafter, news about the crime dropped off from many periodicals, yet, this case
brings forward many questions in regards to the threat that many local residents
had to the notion that a black man sexually assaulted a white woman. These types
of sentiments were continually used to justify mob murders of African American
men throughout the rest of the nation. It is not know what happened to J.E.
Dickson, he seems to disappear from the local narrative and his fate is unknown.
However, the reaction that the local community reveals the perceived social,
sexual, and physical threat that black men had for the local, white community.
Another example of the representation of black manhood revolves the
domestic abuse and murder. Philip Cowings (a relative of William Cowings) was
arrested and charged with murder in the October 1931 for the death of his brotherin-law Harry Terry, a resident of Modesto. Cowings’ sister, Clara Terry, claimed
in during the murder trial that her husband had been physically abusive in their
marriage and had often accused her of infidelity.73 In the Modest News-Herald,
Clara Terry’s account highlights the treatment she suffered: “[He] locked every
door in the house and again retired for the evening, keeping the house key in his
possession. However, with my brother present, he did not molest me on this
occasion.”74 Paying a visit to his sister’s house, Cowings confronted Terry for his
treatment of his sister. A fight ensued thereafter as Cowings went to defend his
sister, resulting a knife fight that ended Terry’s life. The news article then goes on
state how local Fowler residents went to Cowings defense. Such residents included
Justice of the Peace Horace N. Coldwell, local business owners, J.S. Manley and
72 Ibid., Dec. 11, 1911.
73 Modesto News-Herald, March 10, 1932
74 Ibid., March 11, 1932
49
Fred and Bertha Fields. All stating that Cowings was known in the community as
an upstanding resident, while Terry was known locally to have a “bad
reputation.”75 The specifics of the verdict is unknown, but Philip Cowings does
come up again in the 1940 census as living in Fresno with his wife Marie Cowings
and his thirteen year old son Richard.76
The interesting aspect of this story is aligned with the presentations of
African American men. Here, the trial labels Terry as violent and one whose
nature reflects his course language: “Terry turned and said gruffly: ‘So this is your
game, is it? It is none of your damn business and if you done stay out I’ll cut your
---- throat.’”77 The violence he asserted not only towards his wife, but those
around him seemed to justify his murder. Yet, these connotations do not fall upon
Philip Cowings. Originally, the District Attorney R.R. Fowler had asserted that
Cowings has premeditated the murder, and thus should possibly face the death
penalty.78 However, since Cowings character was defended by some white leaders
of his hometown his life seemed to assert the image that he was simply defending
his sister’s life and by extent her virtue as a faithful wife. This local murder trial
reveals local perceptions that news periodicals perpetrated. The sensationalized
murder of Harry Terry and the sexual assault of Hattie Sullivan allude to various
stereotypes regarding black men during the early part of the twentieth century.
Mainstream cultural representations of race and gender are seen throughout
the nation in popular newspapers, magazines, advertisements, and various other
75 Modesto News-Herald, March 11, 1932
76 US Bureau of Census, 1940 U.S. Census, accessed on September 8, 2014,
https://www.censusrecords.com/record?id=usc%2f1940%2f1481469585
77 Modesto News-Herald, March 11, 1932
78 Ibid., October 26, 1931
50
forms of media consumption. These images created a manifestation of a “double
consciousness.” The scholar Eurie Dahn indicates that this double consciousness
addressed a sense of “racial shame,” with a sense of “racial pride.”79 Ultimately,
this response was varied and depended on not only the location of the community
but also in the local communities’ sense of economic and political standing.
Locally in the Central Valley white and non-white residents also understood these
cultural representations during this Late-Victorian and Progressive era. Yet a
response or counter presentation to these stereotypes reveals another image that
has a purposeful intersection of family, race, gender, and class. As the photographs
and notifications written in the local newspaper indicate, middle-class propriety
and the Christian representation of piety and dignity is tied distinctly to race and
community. Fowler’s local black population, specifically those with established
property holdings and community social standing, felt aligned not only with the
town’s “proper” image, but also indicate a strong sense of their right to fully
participate within local affairs – a true indication of their civic and religious
participation.
79 Eurie Dahn, “ ‘Unashamedly Black”: Jim Crow Aesthetics and the Visual Logic of Shame.”
Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S. 39, no. 2 (Summer 2014): 94.
CHAPTER 4: CURRENT ISSUES AND CONCLUSIONS
Second Wave Migrants
There was more than one wave of African American migrants. The
“second” wave came during World War II and often repeated similar patterns of
migration. Many social and economic historians have analyzed a second mass
wave of African American migration that occurred during the mid-twentieth
century. Spurred by the growing demand for laborers in industrial factories in
Western shipping docks, there was swell of migrants moving to California port
cities like Los Angles, Oakland, Richmond, and San Diego.
Mrs. Clara Mellon made the migration during the early 1940s to these
plants with her young family. Originally, her husband had found work in a war
production factory in Seattle, Washington. By 1944, Clara and her family moved
to California to join her father who had relocated from Kansas to Fowler.1 Her
family’s relocation in Fowler placed her within an already established African
American neighborhood within the vicinity of local jobs for mechanics, a job that
her husband was able to find quickly. The motivation to relocate into Fowler was
not always motivated by economic reasons, but also by a desire to reconnect with
her family.2 Ollie B. White expressed a similar sentiment when describing her
family’s decision to migrate from Oklahoma to Fowler in 1944. They wanted to
reunify with her father who had migrated to California in 1943.3 Familial
reunification, a common theme with earlier migrants, seems to be a dominant
motivator for migration.
1 Mellon, Clara. 2014. Interview by Anna Moreno Keithley. March 13, 2014 in Selma, California.
2 Ibid.
3 White, Ollie B. and Clennie Miller. Interview by Anna Moreno Keithley. March 4, 2014 in
Fowler, California.
52
The Miller family provides an interesting example of direct migration to the
Central Valley during the mid-twentieth century. The family migrated from
Oklahoma because “jobs were very scarce.”4 Originally, the family found work in
Kingsburg, California but later settled in Fowler. One major difference the family
noticed in regards to the agricultural development of California compared to
Oklahoma was the use of tractors. Clennie Miller recalls this as a “different kind
of farming,” one were the integration of tractors and other mechanical tools was
different from the “mules and horse” that he was accustomed to in Oklahoma.5
Yet farming was not the only job opportunity that was seen in the Central Valley,
truck driving and service level jobs were also available.
Second wave migrants were able to enter into an industrial and farming
laboring class rather than a land owning class. This makes sense considering that
by this time many big corporations were beginning to consolidate their
landownership through the Central Valley. Thus, there was also a demand placed
on truck drivers, factory laborers, and people within the service industry to serve
these sectors. Clara Mellon’s first husband found work as a truck driver locally
and was also unionized.6 The Central Valley was not unique in its development in
agri-industrial work. Throughout the nation industrial plants and stockyards were
booming for war production.7 For African Americans and women this provided
4 White, Ollie B. and Clennie Miller. Interview by Anna Moreno Keithley. March 4, 2014 in
Fowler, California.
5 Ibid.
6 Mellon, Clara. 2014. Interview by Anna Moreno Keithley. March 13, 2014 in Selma, California.
7Nicholas Lemann’s The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How it Changed
America (Klamath River: Living Gold Press, 1998): 63.
53
the opportunity to work at a decent wage, something that for many had previously
been denied.8
There was also a focus on community participation within the local
neighborhood. Ollie B. White commented on the active role that her mother
undertook during this period in youth community participation. Irene Miller lead
the local Second Baptist Church’s choir group, and was one of the original
members who helped establish the church in its current building on 10th street.9
Her children Ollie B. White and Clennie Miller emphasized the important
community work that their mother undertook, especially when it came to the youth
in their neighborhood and wider community. Within their family, Irene
emphasized the importance of education and labor. Clennie Miller recollects the
value his mother held for education: “My mother made sure that we stayed in
school as long as we could.”10 Miller was later honored at the California
legislature for her community work within the small community.
By the 1960s the planned development of new highway changed the
composition of not only the Central Valley but this neighborhood as well. Ollie B.
White later comments on how the construction of the “new” California Highway
99 tore right through Fowler’s black neighborhood and local farmland owned by
African Americans. The neighborhood currently is half the size of its original size.
Also, more recent business developments have placed the neighborhood’s future
in question. The recent construction of a hotel and chain restaurants has caused
Ollie White and her family to place for sale their family properties on 10th Street
8 Lemann, 63.
9 White, Ollie B. and Clennie Miller. Interview by Anna Moreno Keithley. March 4, 2014 in
Fowler, California.
10 Ibid.
54
as of 2014. Considering the direction that the local city government is taking in
regards to the future of the town’s development, it is important to see how the
town will consider its history and past as it allows major corporations to build
businesses.
Future Considerations: Rebirth or Gentrification?
As historian Stewart E. Tolnay notes, it is important to approach “the study
of African American migration and mobility in the twentieth century” as an
examples of how individuals seek to “maximize their social, and especially
economic, well-being.”11 The resident black community of Fowler is a key
example of understanding how families and individuals sought to maximize their
social and economic condition. It is important in comprehending how they
envisioned this well-being implemented. The first generation of African
Americans born out of slavery faced various social and legal barriers. Jim Crow
laws had taken their institutionalized root throughout many southern states.
Scholars like Eric Arnesen have noted that most southern blacks remained as rural
agricultural workers.12 They were delegated into a farming system of
sharecropping in which rich, white southerners retained “control of the land,
sources of credit, supplies.”13 These unfair regulations were not as permeated
within rural California.
As mentioned earlier, the dominant narrative concerning the outward
movement of people, now termed the First Great Migration, often sites the “push”
11 Stewart E. Tolnay, “The African American ‘Great Migration’ and Beyond.” Annual Review of
Sociology 29, (2003): 228.
12 Eric Arnesen, Black Protest and the Great Migration: A Brief History with Documents
(Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003): 2.
13 Ibid.
55
factors. These “push” factors mainly concern Jim Crow Laws, the rise of black
lynching, and lack of economic opportunities for African Americans in the South.
Thereafter the historical narrative asserts that World War I had created a growing
abundance of industrial jobs which “pulled” many African Americans to northern
urban locations. While many did undertake this journey in this manner, many had
begun to leave the South prior to the outbreak of World War I. Many individuals
and families traveled and settled in areas that were further away from the south –
specifically in Western territories and states. In California, there has been an
important component that the historiography has given little to no attention to: the
viability that the interior of the state provided as an alternative or more lucrative
social and economic venture for African Americans.
It is well known in the historic record of Fresno County’s economic
develop in the fruit industry just prior to World War I. Various individuals from a
composite ethnic identity were able to own homes, businesses, and agri-property.
There were also many individuals who did not own property, but nonetheless
participated within this local economy. While this is not a newly studied
development, it is an important social environment to study in relation to the rest
of rural America. Especially in how quickly and open it was to success. In relation
to the focus to the study of black migration and settlement, it is important to note
African Americans were among a varied group of people – Asian, Armenian,
Latino, and Eastern European –all of who aimed for a sense of financial and social
security. This serves as an example of how an African American community
interacted and operated within such a diverse social populace within a rural based
society – one that was experiencing a moderate prosperous period.
Future considerations would continue to look at this development
throughout the rest of the twentieth century. This would especially be important
56
considering the larger economic and social change within the region during the
mid-century. By the 1930s, the Central Valley was undergoing another shift its
local agrarian identity. Small farmers were beginning to see the dramatic rise of
larger farms and their consolidation of landowning locally. Also there was a
growing (unacknowledged) dependence that this sector had with the federal
government. By the 1930s there was growing predominance of the US federal
presence within California. The demand for an efficient aqueduct system to aid
during dramatic periods of drought and for major ecological disasters pressured
not only farmers to see the need for the federal protection, but also highlighted the
economic importance that this California region had in both national and
international trade.14
Fowler’s black community was not unique in their development. The ideal
of self-sufficiency, based on an agrarian model with a Christian faith base was
their core vision. African Americans were among many who came into the area
seeking to work and substance within the farm-based economy. In terms of their
religious faith, many African Americans were attempting to align themselves
within the predominantly Christian based groups seen throughout Fresno County.
Yet the importance of looking at Fowler’s black community is that it provides a
key narrative in black migrant studies and community building. A narrative in
which shows a bold attempt in assimilating and asserting their communal identity
within a larger, diverse group.
Ultimately the emphasis of this study is how a marginalized group of
people facilitated their own movement to an unknown, developing area in the
14 Kendrick A. Clements discusses this in his article “Managing a National Crisis: The 1924 Footand-Mouth Disease Outbreak in California,” California History 84, no. 3 (Spring 2007): 23-42. In this
article, Clements elaborates on how a bovine and swine epidemic had dramatic implications to the
California economy and highlights the US Federal response as indicative of the economic value that
California’s agricultural industry had nationally and internationally.
57
hopes of improving their economic and social conditions. The desire for this was
based on the need to fulfill the sense of belonging and citizenship - not just in
voting, but also in active participation within one’s community. While black
migration studies have given an insight into California settlement, it has not given
enough attention to this Southern and Midwestern group of migrants in rural
California. Explicitly through these migrants powerful acts of reunifying their
families, property ownership, and establishing religious institutions within a newly
established town.
By looking at this group and understanding the message they left behind we
can understand a cross section of race, gender, and citizenship. Conceptually by
looking at Fowler’s black community we can learn about America’s social and
cultural complexities. As historian Lois E. Myers states, by looking at rural
African Americans, people who tend to be left out of the historical record, we are
including a “formerly neglected people in the story” that also breaks apart
previous social and cultural myths, as well as contemporary ones.15 By doing this,
we could potentially shed light to Fowler’s varied past in light of its corporate
future. If Fowler hopes to move forward with its current gentrification they should
do so understanding they are destroying a neighborhood with a historical past. A
past that aligns itself with Fowler’s current understanding of itself: a small town
with hard working citizens. If Fowler wants to continue with this current course,
one would hope that they acknowledge the past they are so quickly forgetting
15 Myers, Lois E. “’Like Water to the Body’: Women and the African American Rural Church.”
Sound Historian 10, (2007): 37.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Monographs
Arnesen, Eric. Black Protest and the Great Migration: A Brief History with
Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003.
Beasley, Delilah L. The Negro trail blazers of California; a compilation of records
from the California archives in the Bancroft Library at the University of
California, in Berkeley; and from the diaries, old papers, and conversations
of old pioneers in the State of California. New York: Negro Universities
Press, 1969.
Berlin, Ira. Slaves No More: Three Essays on Emancipation and the Civil War.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
ed. Cunnigen, Donald, Ruthledge M. Dennis, and Myrtle Gonza Glascoe. The
Racial Politics of Booker T. Washington. Oxford: Elsevier JAI, 2006.
Collins, Keith E. Black Los Angeles: The Maturing of the Ghetto, 1940-1950.
Saratoga, Calif.: Century Twenty One Publishers, 1980.
ed. De Graaf, Lawrence B., Kevin Mulroy, and Quintard Taylor. Seeking El
Dorado: African Americans in California. Los Angeles: Autry Museum of
Western Heritage, 2001.
Dodson, Jualynne E. Engendering Church: Women, Power, and the AME Church.
Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002.
Guy-Sheftall, Beverly. Daughters of Sorrow: Attitudes Toward Black Women,
1880-1920. Brooklyn, New York: Carlson Publishing Inc., 1990.
Hunter, Tera W. To ‘Joy my Freedom’: Southern Black Women’s Lives and
Labors After the Civil War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Lemke-Santangelo, Gretchen. Abiding Courage: African American Migrant
Women and the East Bay Community. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1996.
Little, Lawrence S. Disciples of Liberty: the African Methodist Episcopal Church
in the Age of Imperialism, 1884-1916. Knoxville: University of Tennessee
Press, 2000.
60
Marks, Carole. Farewell, We’re Good and Gone: the Great Black Migration.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.
Printer, Nell Irvin, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas After Reconstruction.
New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992.
ed. Rawls, James J. and Walton Bean, California: An Interpretive History, 10th
Edition. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2012.
Smock, Raymond. Booker T. Washington: Black Leadership in the Age of Jim
Crow. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2009.
ed. Taylor, Quintard, and Shirley Ann Wilson Moore. African American Women
Confront the West: 1600-2000. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
2003.
ed. Trotter, Joe W. and Earl Lewis. African Americans in the Industrial Age: A
Documentary History, 1915-1945. Boston: Northeastern University Press,
1996.
ed. Trotter, Joe W. with Earl Lewis and Tera W. Hunter. African American Urban
Expereince: Perspectives from the Colonial Period to the Present. New
York: Palgrace Macmillan, 2004.
ed. Trotter, Joe William, Jr. The Great Migration in Historical Perspective: New
Dimensions of Race, Class, and Gender. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1991.
ed. West, Cornel, Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. African American Religious Thought: An
Anthology. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003.
ed. Wright, Kai. The African-American Experience: Black History and Culture
through Speeches, Letters, Editorials, Poems, Songs, and Stories. New York:
Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2009.
Academic Journal Articles
Bokovoy, Matthew F. “Inventing Agriculture in Southern California.” The
Journal of San Diego History Quarterly 45, no. 3 (Summer 1999): no page
numbers.
Larkin, Jack. “Review of Portraits of a People, Young America: Childhood in 19th
Century Art and Culture, and My Likeness Taken: Daguerrian Portraits in
America.” Journal of the Early Republic (Summer 2007): 362-365.
61
Cable, Sherry and Tamara L. Mix. “Economic Imperatives and Race Relations:
The Rise and Fall of the American Apartheid System.” Journal of Black
Studies 34, no. 2 (Nov., 2003): 183-203. Accessed March 26, 2014.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3180903.
Carlson, Shirley J. “Black Ideals of Womanhood in Late Victorian Era.” The
Journal of Negro History 77, no. 2 (Spring 1992): 61-73. Accessed July 24,
2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3031483.
Carpenter, Delores C. “Black Women in Religious Institutions: A Historical
Summary from Slavery to the 1960s.” The Journal of Religious Thought
(2001): 7-27.
Christian, Mark. “Marcus Garvey and African Unity: Lessons for the Future from
the Past.” Journal of Black Studies 39, no. 2 (Nov., 2008): 316-331.
Accessed March 25, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40282562.
Clements, Kendrick A. “Managing a National Crisis: The 1924 Foot-and-Mouth
Disease Outbreak in California.” California History 84, no. 3 (Spring 2007):
23-42. Accessed March 27, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25161893.
Colman, Patty R. “John Ballard and the African American Community in Los
Angeles, 1850-1905.” Southern California Quarterly 94, no. 2 (Summer
2012): 193-229. Accessed March 25, 2014.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/scq.2012.94.2.193
Morgan, Jo-Ann. “African-American women in Nineteenth Century Visual
Culture.” ProQuestion Dissertations and Theses. (1997) University of
California: Los Angeles.
Fehn, Bruce. “African-American Women and the Struggle for Equality in the
Meatpacking Industry, 1940-1960.” Journal of Women’s History 10, no. 1
(Spring 1998): 45-69.
Frank, Dana. “Symposium on Tera Hunter: To Joy my Freedom. The Labor
Historian’s New Clothes.” Labor History 39, no. 2 (1998): 169-171.
Gregory, James N. “The Southern Diaspora and the Urban Dispossessed:
Demonstrating the Census Public Use Microdata Samples.” The Journal of
American History 82, no. 1 (Jun., 1995): 111-134. Accessed October 27,
2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2081917.
62
Hansen, Woodrow J. “Robert Semple: Pioneer, Promoter, Politician.” California
Historical Society Quarterly 41, no. 3 (Sep., 1962): 223-235. Accessed
March 25, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25155491.
Horton, Loren N. “Interpreting the Image: How to Understand Historical
Photographs.” The Palimpsest 71, no. 2 (1990): 90-93.
Kahrl, William L. “The Politics of California Water: Owens Valley and the Los
Angeles Aqueduct, 1900-1927.” California Historical Quarterly 55, no. 1
(Spring 1976): 2-25. Accessed March 27, 2014.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25157605.
Klassen, Pamela E. “The Robes of Womanhood: Dress and Authenticity among
African American Methodist Women in the Nineteenth Century.” Religion
and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 14, no. 1 (Winter 2004):
39-82. Accessed July 24, 2014.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/rac/2004/14/1/39.
Laing, Bonnie Young. “The Universal Negro Improvement Association, Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, and Black Panther Party: Lessons for
Understanding African American Culture-Based Organizing.” Journal of
Black Studies 39, no. 4 (March 2009): 635-656. Accessed March 24, 2014.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40282586.
Lemer, Loren. “William Norman’s Portrait Photographs of Wealthy Englishspeaking Girls of Montreal: Representations of Informal Female Education in
Relation to John Ruskin’s ‘Of Queens’ Gardens’ and Writings by and for
Canadians from the 1850s to 1890s.” Historical Studies in Education 21, no.
2 (2009): 65-87.
Mann, Regis. “Theorizing ‘What Could Have Been’: Black Feminism, Historical
Memory, and the Politics of Reclamation.” Women’s Studies 40, no. 5
(2011): 575-599.
Miller, Sally M. “Changing Faces of the Central Valley: The Ethnic Presence.”
California History 74, no. 2 (Summer 1995): 174-189. Accessed March 27,
2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25177491.
Millward, Jessica. “ ‘The Relics of Slavery’: Interracial Sex and Manumission in
the American South.” Frontier 31, no. 3 (2010): 22-30.
Murphy, Larry G. “The Church and Black Californians: A Mid-NineteenthCentury Struggle for Civil Justice.” Foundations 18, no. 2 (1975): 165-183.
63
Myers, Lois E. “ ‘Like Water to the Body’: Women and the African American
Rural Church.” Sound Historian 10 (2007): 1077-2979.
Osterud, Nancy Grey and Lu Ann Jones. “ ‘If I Must Say So Myself’: Oral
Histories of Rural Women.” The Oral History Review 17, no. 2 (Autumn,
1989): 1-23. Accessed July 24, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3675147.
Parsons, James J. “A Geographer Looks at the San Joaquin Valley.” Geographical
Review 76, no. 4 (Oct., 1986): 371-389. Accessed October 27, 2013.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/214912.
Paul, Rodman W. “The Beginnings of Agriculture in California: Innovation vs.
Continuity.” California Historical Quarterly 52, no.1 (Spring 1973): 16-27.
Accessed March 27, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25157414.
Peterson, James S. “Buckskin, Beads, and Blankets: Early Photographic Portraits
of Colorado’s American Indians.” Colorado Heritage (Autumn, 2006): 2-11.
Ruffins, Fath Davis. “ ‘Lifting as We Climb’: Black Women and the Preservation
of African American History and Culture.” Gender & History 6, no. 3 (Nov.,
1994): 376-396.
Sackman, Douglas Cazaux. “ ‘By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them’: ‘Nature
Cross Culture Hybridization’ and the California Citrus Industry, 1893-1939.”
California History 74, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 82-99. Accessed March 27, 2014.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25177472.
Seftel, Howard. “Government Regulation and the Rise of the California Fruit
Industry: The Entrepreneurial Attack on Fruit Pests, 1880-1920.” The
Business History Review 59, no. 3 (Autumn, 1985): 369-402. Accessed
March 27, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3114004.
Sitton, Tom. “Albert L. Bancroft and the ‘Ten Block System for Numbering
Country Houses.’” California History 65, no. 3 (Sep., 1986): 172-181.
Accessed March 27, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25158387.
Stauffer, John. “Interspatialism in the Nineteenth-century South: The Natchez of
Henry Norman.” Slavery and Abolition 29, no. 2 (June 2008): 247-263.
Vaught, David. “Factories in the Field Revisited.” Pacific Historical Review 66,
no. 2 (May 1997): 149-184. Accessed March 27, 2014.
http://www.jstory.org/stable/3640626.
64
Wagner, Venise. “ ‘Activities Among Negroes’: Race Pride and a Call for
Interracial Dialogue in California’s East Bay Region, 1920-31.” Journalism
History 35, no. 2 (Summer 2009): 82-90. Accessed July 23, 2014.
Worgs, Donn C. “ ‘Beware of the Frustrated…’: The Fantasy and Reality of
African American Violent Revolt.” Journal of Black Studies 37, no. 1 (Sep.,
2006): 20-45. Accessed March 25, 2014.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40034371.
Fresno State
Non-Exclusive Distribution License
(to archive your thesis/dissertation electronically via the library’s eCollections database)
By submitting this license, you (the author or copyright holder) grant to Fresno State Digital
Scholar the non-exclusive right to reproduce, translate (as defined in the next paragraph), and/or
distribute your submission (including the abstract) worldwide in print and electronic format and
in any medium, including but not limited to audio or video.
You agree that Fresno State may, without changing the content, translate the submission to any
medium or format for the purpose of preservation.
You also agree that the submission is your original work, and that you have the right to grant the
rights contained in this license. You also represent that your submission does not, to the best of
your knowledge, infringe upon anyone’s copyright.
If the submission reproduces material for which you do not hold copyright and that would not be
considered fair use outside the copyright law, you represent that you have obtained the
unrestricted permission of the copyright owner to grant Fresno State the rights required by this
license, and that such third-party material is clearly identified and acknowledged within the text
or content of the submission.
If the submission is based upon work that has been sponsored or supported by an agency or
organization other than Fresno State, you represent that you have fulfilled any right of review or
other obligations required by such contract or agreement.
Fresno State will clearly identify your name as the author or owner of the submission and will not
make any alteration, other than as allowed by this license, to your submission. By typing your
name and date in the fields below, you indicate your agreement to the terms of this
distribution license.
Embargo options (fill box with an X).
X
Make my thesis or dissertation available to eCollections immediately upon
submission.
Embargo my thesis or dissertation for a period of 2 years from date of graduation.
Embargo my thesis or dissertation for a period of 5 years from date of graduation.
Anna Moreno Keithley
Type full name as it appears on submission
May 14, 2014
Date