California by Andrew Rolle & Arthur C. Verge

Author:Andrew Rolle & Arthur C. Verge [Rolle, Andrew & Verge, Arthur C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781118701140
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2014-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

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California Culture, 1870–1918

By 1870, the pioneer phase of California’s history had ended. At San Francisco, the state’s premier metropolis, wealthy patrons set about to foster the arts and education. Other towns also began to establish museums, opera houses, and even symphony orchestras.

Among those who contributed significantly to the new culture were women. A popular author, Helen Hunt Jackson began her career as a writer of children’s stories. Later, she raised public consciousness over the mistreatment of Indians. She was also concerned with neglect of California’s Hispanic past. Indeed, her articles in Century Magazine and her book, A Century of Dishonor (1881), stirred up national indignation over the plight of California’s abused Natives. However, her novel Ramona (1884) failed to achieve the same effect. Readers, instead, were entranced by Jackson’s romantic portrayal of the love affair between an Indian brave and a Latina maiden. This was taken as a true reflection of California’s idyllic mission era. Such an Arcadian stereotyping would later be dramatized by local actors in the town of Hemet, which still stages an annual “Ramona Pageant.”

There were other talented women of Jackson’s era. Among them was Helena Modjeska, a Polish actress who in 1876 established a short-lived utopian colony near Anaheim. The flamboyant dancer Isadora Duncan, a San Franciscan, went on to world fame. A quite different, yet remarkable, woman was a former Georgia slave named Biddy Mason. In order to reach California, Mason crossed the Great Plains in 1851 with three daughters, driving along a herd of sheep. In Los Angeles she found work as a nurse at a wage of $2.50 per day. Yet, Mason managed to save enough money to buy several parcels of land. By 1887, property she had bought for $250 had soared in value to $200,000 (then a substantial sum of money) during the state’s first real estate boom. She used her hard-earned wealth to found a nursery school. Mason also frequently visited the city jail in order to cheer up inmates that she knew. She paid the delinquent taxes for her church and provided a rest home for indigent African Americans. Mason died in 1891 as one of the most affluent property owners in California.

Another former slave who achieved prominence was Mary Ellen “Mammy” Pleasant, the operator of a San Francisco boarding house in the 1850s. While she has been remembered as a procuress and a blackmailer, as well as a financial backer of John Brown’s famous raid, more important were her efforts to help her fellow African Americans. By lending other blacks money at reasonable rates of interest, Pleasant amassed a fortune, which she used to gain blacks the right of testimony in the California courts. That victory was achieved in 1863 through an act of the legislature. That same year, Pleasant successfully sued two San Francisco streetcar companies that barred blacks from riding their cars. Less well known is Charlotta Bass. At a time when female African American literary figures were rare, Bass became the editor of the California Eagle, southern California’s first black newspaper.

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