[1][2] He moved to California as a young man, during the Gold Rush, and was an early black pioneer in San Francisco.

Gibbs became the first black person elected to public office in British Columbia on November 16, 1866, upon winning a seat on the Victoria City Council.

[8] He was also involved in the Philomathean Society of Philadelphia, a literary organization which included Douglass, Charles Burleigh Purvis, William Whipper, and Izaiah Weir.

[6] Philadelphia had long had a flourishing free black community, as people had found work there even before the revolution and slavery was abolished after the American Revolutionary War.

Like tens of thousands of other men, Gibbs joined the California Gold Rush,[8] having arrived in San Francisco in late 1850.

[9][10][4] In Gibbs's autobiography, "Shadow and Light" (1902), he mentions that, while living in San Francisco, he and Lester were successful in business but dealt with community ostracization and assaults.

[4] In 1851, he and Jonas H. Townsend, W. H. Newby, and William H. Hall, published the Alta California,[6] "the state's only African-American newspaper.

[11] He was active in statewide conventions of black people in 1854, 1855, and 1857, and, together with Lester, stood against poll taxes in San Francisco.

[12] Angered by these developments, Gibbs and two other African-American men went to British Columbia to meet with Sir James Douglas, governor of the province, to learn about the treatment of blacks in Canada.

[17] In 1868, Gibbs was the Salt Spring Island delegate to the Yale Convention, an important step toward British Columbia's decision to join Canada in the confederation.

[7] In 1876, he was elected president of the National Convention of Colored Men at Nashville, Tennessee, and, in June of that year, he was appointed register of the United States Land Office at Little Rock.

Gibbs was married and had two daughters with his wife, the former Maria Ann Alexander, during the decade in which they lived in British Columbia.

[16][17] Ida met and became friends with William Henry Hunt, whom Mifflin Gibbs hired as his aide in Tamatave, Madagascar.