African Americans in California
According to 2019 United States Census Bureau estimates, those identified solely as African American or Black constituted 5.8% or 2,282,144 residents in California.
[5][6] As of 2021, California has the largest multiracial African American population by number in the United States.
[7] African Americans are the fourth largest ethnic group in California after Hispanics, Whites, and Asians.
[9][better source needed] California also has a growing Afro-Caribbean and African immigrant population to the United States.
[14] The earliest black residents were the first pioneers of Alta California and were Afro-Latino slaves (or mulatto) brought by the Spanish.
[19] Gentrification in California has caused some African Americans in California to become homeless and has pushed them out of historical urban centers like Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and into new cheaper suburban regions, like East Contra Costa, Inland Empire, and Central Valley.
[23] This has caused many blacks from California to move back to cities in the Southern United States, such as Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Birmingham, Memphis, San Antonio and Jackson.
[32] People of African descent first appeared in California from Mexico due to the Spanish conquest.
[37] Pío Pico was a Californio politician, ranchero, and entrepreneur of mixed-race with African ancestry, he had served as the last governor of Alta California under Mexican rule (from 1845 until 1846).
[41][42] Additionally, white Southerners brought black slaves into the California mines starting in 1849, and were primarily migrating from Texas, Mississippi, Missouri, and Arkansas.
At the conventions they had elected delegates from the various counties and would discuss topics like slavery, public education, and voting rights.
[51][52] Archy Lee had been formerly enslaved African American and he was part of a series of notable 19th-century court cases that helped defined civil rights in the state by 1858.
[63] Before World War II, African Americans totaled to less than one percent of California's population.
[64] Post-World War II, African Americans boosted their population enormously in California.
[65] Your Black Muslim Bakery was a chain of bakeries opened by Yusuf Bey in 1968 in Santa Barbara, and moved headquarters in 1971 to Oakland;[66] it had been a model of African American economic self-sufficiency but was later linked to physical and sexual abuse, welfare fraud, and murder which forced its closure on August 9, 2007.
[69][70][71] The Rodney King beating was caught on videotape, and after the police acquittal verdict the event was followed by the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
[73] Affirmative action is a set of laws, policies, guidelines, and administrative practices "intended to end and correct the effects of a specific form of discrimination".
[82][83][84][85] In 2020–2022, the COVID-19 deaths rose for African Americans in California, which had the lowest vaccination rates in the state.
While not particularly very rural but situated more in a suburban and countryside setting, Moreno Valley has a substantial Black population (20%).
[58] African American residents of California were first mentioned in 1919 by Black Californian historian Delilah Beasley, and later on Rudolph Lapp, others.
[93][94][95] Elizabeth Thorn Scott Flood was an early African American educator in Sacramento starting in 1854, and she later taught in Oakland.
[98] The funding and support for the Phoenixonian Institute initially came from the California State Convention of Colored Citizens and the African American community on the West Coast.
[101] Black Californians have the highest death rates from breast, cervical, colorectal, lung, and prostate cancer.
[113] According to a 2023 poll from the UC Berkeley, the majority of California voters oppose cash reparations as a form of compensation to residents of the state who are the descendants of enslaved African Americans.
[115] Kamala Harris is the first African American female Vice President, and she was born and raised in California.
[120][121] In 2021, the total number of hate crime events reported is the sixth-highest-ever-recorded, and the highest since the aftermath of September 11, 2001.
