COLOMA, California – In a small town where the California Gold Rush began, black families seek restitution of land that was taken from their ancestors to make way for a state park now frequented by fourth-graders learning about the state’s history.
Their efforts in Coloma, a town of about 300 people located about 35 miles northeast of Sacramento, are one of the latest examples of Black Americans urging the government to atone for practices that kept them from prospering long after slavery. was abolished.
Debates over reparations for African Americans often come back to earth. This was at the heart of a promise originally made – and later broken – by the US government to formerly enslaved black people in the mid-19th century: to give them up to 40 acres (16 hectares) of land as restitution for the time they spent enslaved. For some, the promise of reparations is nothing more than fool’s gold, exemplified by a bill in Congress that has been stalled since it was first introduced in the 1980s, even though it is intended to study reparations and is named of the original promise.
The fight in Coloma takes place in a state where the governor signed the country’s first law to study reparations. But advocates are pushing for the state to go further.
Gold was found near Coloma in 1848 by James W. Marshall, a white carpenter, sparking the California Gold Rush that saw hundreds of thousands of people from across the country and outside the U.S. come – or be brought – to the state. Those who migrated included free and enslaved whites, Asians, and blacks.
Decades later, black and white families had their land taken by the government in the city before being transformed into the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park, opened in 1942. The park today houses a museum, churches and cemeteries where residents were buried. A nearly 40-foot-tall monument to Marshall stands on its grounds.
But the history of the black families who settled in Coloma has only recently begun to receive greater recognition. California State Parks launched an initiative in 2020 to reexamine its past and tell “a fuller, more inclusive and complete story” of California, department spokeswoman Adeline Yee said in an email to The Associated Press. The secretariat created a page with information about black family properties in Coloma park.
Elmer Fonza, a retiree who worked at a brewery in California before moving to Nevada, said he is the third great-grandson of Nelson Bell, a formerly enslaved black man from Virginia who became a property owner in Coloma.
After Bell’s death in 1869, a judge ruled he had no heirs in the state, and his estate was sold at auction, according to a probate document shared by the El Dorado County Historical Museum.
It’s unclear what happened to Bell’s property in the years that followed, Fonza said, adding that the land should be returned to his family.
“We rightfully believe that we have been denied the generational wealth that our family could have been entitled to if we were given our rightful inheritance – the land that belonged to Nelson Bell,” he said at the final meeting of a meeting. nation’s first state reparations task force.
Nancy Gooch, a black woman, was brought to Coloma from the South in 1849 by a white man who enslaved her and her husband. Gooch was soon freed when California became a state and worked as a cook and cleaned clothes for miners. She later brought her son, Andrew Monroe, from Missouri to join them in town. The Monroe-Gooch family would become one of the most prosperous black landowners in California.
“We have to reveal the truth, because this is reconciliation,” said Jonathan Burgess, a Sacramento resident who co-owns a barbecue catering company and who also claims land in Coloma that belongs to his descendants. “And then once we reveal the truth, which I have been saying all along, we have to fix this.”
Doing the right thing would mean compensating families for land that can’t be returned or returning property whenever possible, Burgess said in an interview at the park. He said he is a descendant of Rufus Morgan Burgess, a black writer who was brought to Coloma with his father, who was enslaved.
Jonathan Burgess also said his family is descended from Bell, but the Fonza and Burgess families say they are not related. The discrepancy highlights the difficult work that Black residents could face if California passes reparations legislation that requires families to document their lineage.
Cheryl Austin, a retiree who lives in Sacramento, said she is the heiress of John A. Wilson and Phoebe Wilson, a free, married black couple who came to Coloma in the late 1850s. After John and Phoebe Wilson died, their estate was sold through probate, Austin said. The state must somehow repair the damage done to families whose properties were confiscated, she said.
The fight over restitution in California comes as lawmakers consider reparations proposals in the state Legislature. This includes a bill to create the California Bureau of American Freedmen’s Affairs, which would help black residents research their family lineage. Another proposal would give all families whose land was unfairly confiscated by the government for racially discriminatory reasons the right to return the property or compensation.
The legislation, expected to be voted on this summer, reflects a growing push for restitution by Black families, targeting the misuse of a practice known as eminent domain, where the government must pay people fairly for properties it plans to make available for public use. . The issue drew statewide attention when local officials in Los Angeles County I returned a beachfront property in 2022 for a black couple, nearly a century after being taken from their ancestors by the government.
Earlier this month, California marked a milestone when Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom included $12 million in the 2024 state budget to spend on reparations legislation. But the budget does not specify what the money will be used for, and state estimates say the bills could cost millions of dollars annually.
State Senator Steven Bradford, a Democrat from the Los Angeles area, author the proposalssaid they will help the State atone for confiscated land, adding that land ownership is critical to building overall wealth.
“Reparations were never a question of a check,” Bradford said. “It was about land.”
___
Associated Press photographer Godofredo A. Vásquez contributed to this report.
___
Austin is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report to America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to cover undercovered issues. Follow Austin on X: @sophieadanna
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
