Delilah L. Beasley

The Negro Trail Blazers of California Delilah L. Beasley

The research work, covering years, has included the careful examination of many records of interest to the Negro contained in the California Archives and the Bancroft Library at the University of California in Berkeley; interviewing old pioneers of the Negro Eace in every section of the State wherever a railroad or horse and buggy could go; carefully examining all old newspapers contained in the Bancroft Library from the first one published in 1848 to the late nineties and every Negro weekly paper published in the State from the first one in 1848 to the present date; examining the files and records of county hospitals and poor farms, and many old papers in the hands of pioneer families, and sending letters of inquiry to every board of supervisors in every county in the great State of California seeking data concerning old pioneer Negroes, the property holdings, business and other questions of vital interest to the history of the Negro Race in California. The author will state that the boards in Los Angeles and Marysville were the only ones who knew or took the trouble to send any reply of value; the others usually dismissed the sxib-ject by stating "They knew nothing concerning the condition or history of the Negroes in that county"...