The Search Continues: A Preliminary Study of West Indians in California’s Bay Area, 1841–1916

Nineteenth Century California was a desirable location for Black migrants looking to build a life outside of the violent racism that marred their experiences in the American North and South.Life in California was pitched as “western wilds... where the ploughshare of prejudice has as yet been unable to penetrate the soil.” These offers for freedom and possibility drew African Americans, as well as Caribbean immigrants who were also in search of a better life on the racial frontier. Best represented by the arrival of Danish West Indian Captain William A. Leidsdorff in 1841, West Indians were pioneer Black settlers in California as business owners, political leaders, and community organizers. This paper offers preliminary comments on the West Indian community in Oakland and San Francisco through an examination of the West Indian Benevolent Association founded in 1867, its members, and the surrounding Caribbean community that energized its half century of activity. Using newspaper articles and editorials, advertisements, city directories, and maps, I trace the continued presence of West Indians in the Bay, their community development practices, and organizational strategies in institutions, mutual aid, and social gathering as an addition to the Bay Area’s early Black social and ethnic history. Further, West Indians’ established institutions and long-term settlement in California expands the geographies of nineteenth century Caribbean migration historiography. West Indians in the Bay reveals the breadth and scope of the Caribbean migration experience as some arrived after decades of labor migration through Central America’s fruit plantations, railroad construction, and sugar plantations. And, others arrived from spending some years on the US East Coast. From their differing locations and entries to California’s new markets, they plotted a combination of routes which included overland movement from the East Coast and aboard steamers and wind-propelled boats, ships, and schooners through Panama’s Isthmus Canal.