A young girl was the last slave in California until a Sacramento Black church leader freed her
A full year after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, a Sacramento County farmer attempted to buy an enslaved girl who’d been trafficked to California. He kept her until a pioneering Black entrepreneur and church leader successfully sued for her freedom.
That 1863 tale of California’s last enslaved person is highlighted in a new investigation by the state’s reparations task force, which documented over 160 years of harm to Black communities caused by enslavement and discriminatory policies.
The nearly 500-page investigation details how racist policies affect health, education and wealth today as the task force members make a case for the state to provide different kinds of reparations.
It also shows the efforts of Black communities over time to push for their rights and fight injustices.
And that’s where Edith, the 13-year-old from Missouri who was sold into enslavement in California two years after the beginning of the Civil War comes in.
She was illegally purchased by a white man named Walter Gammon, and believed by witnesses to have been beaten and not cared for, according to Gold Chains: The Hidden History of Slavery in California, a research project by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.
A free Black man named Daniel Blue, who lived near Gammon, was one of the witnesses who noticed the inhumane conditions that Edith was being forced to live under.
Blue, a wealthy laundryman, also spent his time as an activist fighting for social justice and against enslavement. He sprang into action on Feb. 29, 1864 by filing a writ of habeas corpus in the county court.
When Gammon was forced to bring Edith in front of the judge, he said that the girl stayed with him freely, by choice.
The judge ruled that Gammon illegally held Edith hostage. Blue requested and was granted legal guardianship of Edith following his testimony, as well as testimonies of other Black residents.
This became the last known case of enslavement in California.
Blue was a leader in the Black community and founder of the first Black church in California, St. Andrews African Methodist Episcopal in downtown Sacramento.
He was formerly enslaved in Kentucky and traveled westward during the Gold Rush era. Blue became a wealthy entrepreneur from mining gold on the Sacramento River.
He opened a successful laundry business and bought a house next door to Peter Hardeman Burnett, California’s then-governor who was pro-enslavement.
In 1850, Blue established St. Andrews AME, which would become a center of community for Black and African-Americans at that time, whether free or enslaved.
The church, originally located in downtown Sacramento on 7th Street, between G and H Streets, became a home base for social justice activism such as gathering and discussing blueprints to push towards an anti-slavery society. The church now sits on 8th and V Street.
Blue and his wife, Lucinda, eventually opened a school to educate nonwhite children. When the state refused to fund Blue’s school, he gathered donations from his community and the public.
In an attempt to organize a convention to advance the rights of Black people and other nonwhite civilians, St. Andrews AME held the first gathering of the California Colored Citizens in November 1855, where he and other Black activists developed strategies to introduce legislation that provide people of color more rights.
Although California entered the Union as a free state in 1850, like many other states, it practiced and allowed slavery even after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. An estimated 1,500 enslaved people lived in California by 1852.
Abraham Lincoln effectively abolished slavery after he signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862. However it wasn’t until June 19, 1865 when enslaved persons in Texas were made aware of the proclamation and the end of fighting in the Civil War.
Many recognize and celebrate the date known as Juneteenth, as it marks the true end of slavery in the U.S.
The state investigation that referenced Blue’s campaign to bring Edith out of enslavement is known as the Reparation Task Force Committee’s interim report.
The committee has previously recommended that the state provide reparations to descendants of enslaved people and to families who can trace their ancestry to 19th Century Black Californians.
This story was originally published June 19, 2022 at 5:25 AM with the headline "A young girl was the last slave in California until a Sacramento Black church leader freed her."
