California’s place in enslaved people’s struggle for freedom

In one version of U.S. history, California is a place where slavery was prohibited from the founding, in the 1849 state constitution, and where that ban was reaffirmed by the state’s ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865. In another telling, it was a place that had ended the practice some 30 years earlier — when it was part of Mexico.

Despite being on the periphery of the Spanish empire and Mexico before becoming part of the United States, California had an important place in the larger struggle by enslaved people for their freedom. California connects Mexican and U.S. history while also serving as a reminder that there are few corners of the Western Hemisphere that are untouched by the legacy of slavery.

The story of the rise and fall of African enslavement is often presented as a national story in the United States — and a mostly Southern one — rather than as the hemispheric phenomenon that it was. Enslaved Africans could be found as far south as Chile and Argentina all the way up to Canada. Likewise, the end of slavery was not solely brought about by the Civil War in the U.S., but also by centuries of resistance through rebellions, wars, sabotage and self-emancipation, across the entire Americas. This, too, was part of California’s story.

After the Spanish toppled the Mexica empire in 1521, they wasted little time bringing captive Africans to the place they called New Spain — a vast territory that would later expand to the north to include New Mexico and California. By the 1530s there were reports of conspiracies to revolt, as well as the establishment of colonies by escapees from slavery. The leader of one such community, Gaspar Yanga, forced Spanish authorities to recognize its autonomy, after troops failed to vanquish him in 1608. This land outside of Veracruz became the first free Black town in Mexico, today known as Yanga. It was a significant victory at a time when an estimated 130,000 Africans were brought to New Spain, resulting in one of the highest African slave populations in the 17th century Americas.

However, by the 18th century the center of enslavement had shifted farther north, toward the sugar plantations of the Caribbean, and the numbers dropped in Mexico. In addition, there was still Indigenous labor in Mexico, which was often exploited. This was also the case in the lands that would become California, as well as New Mexico, where indentured and often “detribalized” Indigenous people, known as genízaros, were often forced into a servitude that often bore more than a passing resemblance to slavery.

In 1829, president of a now-independent Mexico, Vicente Guerrero, who was of partial African descent, abolished slavery. This triggered an immediate outcry in the Texas territory, which was largely populated by slave-owning immigrants from the U.S. By 1836 Texas was independent, and slavery in Mexico was officially finished the following year. Now Mexico became a land of possible refuge for people fleeing enslavement in Texas or nearby places such as Louisiana. It was far closer than the Underground Railroad leading to the northern states or Canada. Historian Alice Baumgartner has estimated that between 3,000 and 5,000 enslaved people escaped to Mexico from the U.S.

However, this potential zone of freedom was significantly reduced by the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. In the aftermath of that conflict, 51% of Mexico was ceded to the United States. This included New Mexico, which had been part of Spain’s empire since the early 1600s, and California, which was colonized in 1769. Ultimately, the entire territory would form the states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and parts of Colorado and Wyoming.

People in the lands ceded from Mexico were forced to confront the issue of slavery anew as part of the U.S. Gold miners were racing to California, and some were from the South, bringing enslaved people to work on their claims. By the time of statehood in 1850, according to one estimate, there had been around 500 to 1,500 enslaved people brought to California, their status obscured even after the state constitution was enacted. Although the shadow of Southern slavery stalked California, some people managed to find freedom in those early years. However, in 1852, California enacted a Fugitive Slave Law, which applied to people who were brought before statehood and led to many being sent back to the plantations of the South. The Utah and New Mexico territories — which would not become states until 1896 and 1912 — passed slave codes, which permitted slavery and were meant to regulate the treatment of people in servitude or bondage, both Black and Native Americans.

Farther south, however, most of the new republics of Spanish America had ended their involvement with the slave trade and implemented gradual emancipation measures as early as 1811, and with final abolition in place by the mid-1850s. Had California remained part of Mexico, it would have been in this larger, earlier wave of abolition, rather than seeing the continuation or return of enslavement.

Slavery shaped the Americas for four centuries, blighting the entire hemisphere. The long struggle to dismantle it did not happen only in the U.S. or only in the South; in fact, in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Brazil it continued for decades after the U.S. Civil War. Simple narratives such as “California banned slavery at its founding” and “slavery ended in 1865” obscure much of its connection to this larger story. What happened to California illuminates the unevenness of abolition and the many false promises of freedom. It also serves as a reminder of the need for a wider lens when thinking about enslavement and freedom throughout the Americas today.

Carrie Gibson is the author of the forthcoming “The Great Resistance: The 400-Year Fight to End Slavery in the Americas” and of “El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America.”