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Bridget
"Biddy "Mason, the slave of a Mormon settler, arrived in southern California in 1851 as part of a 150-wagon caravan. Along the trail she had met Charles and Elizabeth Flake Rowan, free blacks who encouraged her to sue for freedom. In 1855 Mason petitioned the Los Angeles District Court for freedom for herself and her family. After three days of hearings the following January, the judge ruled the family would be "free forever." Mason found work as a
midwife, and in 1866 she became one of the first African-American women to own
property in the city when she purchased a residential lot between Spring Street
and Broadway for $250. Eighteen years later, she sold part of the property for
$1,500. Mason founded and operated the first nursery for orphans in Los Angeles
and established the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, the oldest black
church in the city. In the mid-1880s, she sold additional land to provide
material assistance to families who had become homeless after a rash of
seasonal floods. Today a commercial complex stands downtown on the site of her
original homestead. A monument in its courtyard recalls her role in Los Angeles
history. Half a continent away,
Missouri slaves sought freedom in another Western sanctuary, Kansas,settling in
the territory's anti-slavery center, Lawrence. Opportunities for migration
increased after the start of the Civil War. With the help of abolitionists,
thousands made their way from Missouri, Arkansas, and the Indian Territory to
Kansas. Henry Clay Bruce, the brother of the Reconstruction-era Mississippi
senator Blanche K.Bruce, was one of those refugees. Years later, Henry Bruce
recalled in his autobiography how in 1863 he and his fiancée had escaped
from Missouri to Kansas. Bruce had strapped around his waist "pair of
Colt's revolvers and plenty of ammunition" for the run to the Western
border. "We voided the main road and made the entire trip ...without
meeting anyone.... We crossed the Missouri River on a ferry boat to Fort
Levenworth, Kansas. I then felt myself a free man." When the Civil War ended,
thousands of blacks relocated to areas that were free of restrictions. In the
mid-1870s Benjamin "Pap "Singleton, a Nashville cabinetmaker, led an
exodus out of Tennessee. Recognizing both the limits of Reconstruction-era
reform in the South and the unfulfilled desires of many freed slaves to become
landowners, Singleton, in 1874, distributed a circular encouraging settlement
in Kansas entitled "The Advantage of Living in a Free State." Roughly
10,000 African-Americans made the trek from the South to Kansas between 1874
and 1890. News of opportunity in the
West spurred blacks to establish their own communities in Nicodemus, Kansas;
Langston City and Boley, Oklahoma; Allensworth, California; and
Dearfield,Colorado. Nicodemus was founded in 1877 by W.R.Hill, a white
developer, and six African-American men who had come to Kansas in search of
inexpensive, federally owned land. Together,they organized a company, laid
their claim, and named their proposed community after a legendary African slave
prince who had purchased his own freedom.
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