Early Negro Education in the Pacific Coast States

Abstract

The problem of establishing educational facilities for Negroes in the Pacific Coast States was indeed unique for there were only a few Negroes in any of these states. One would have expected them to be absorbed in the school population and taught in the schools with all the other racial elements in the communities and cities where they were located. To understand this condition one has only to observe the part of the United States from which these pioneers came. The largest part of the population of the Pacific states came from the South Atlantic States, Virginia, Georgia, and Florida. They brought with them their attitudes toward Negroes and education which they made a part of their policy in the West. When the pioneers settled first in this far off country they did not concern themselves about schools for they had more pressing problems, providing for subsistence. When they were settled in their new homes, schools became important lest their children grow up in ignorance. They wished to keep alive also the culture they had brought from their former homes. This concern over the establishing of schools did not include the Negro and other foreign elements in these states. These Western states solved this problem in their own peculiar ways. The first state which came into the Union from the territory secured from the Mexican war or the Oregon acquisition was California in 1850. In less than a year after California came in as a state it was faced with the problem of providing educational facilities. A law was passed by the Legislature making provision for apportioning the school funds among the several towns, cities and villages in proportion to the number of children residing in the state, between the ages of five and eighteen years. This law in all probability meant all the children regardless of race. There were at the time whites, Negroes, Mexicans and Indians.