Mining Mother Lode's black history

Roughly 113 years before Dr. Martin Luther King marched for civil rights in Alabama, William Sugg made the trip from North Carolina to the Mother Lode, and not by choice.

While the nation commemorates King's life and work Monday, it's important to note that while he became the face of civil rights in 1960s America, the long and arduous process began long before he took the lead.

Sugg was among an association of California blacks who, in the 1850s, began campaigning for civil rights, said Sylvia Alden Roberts of Sonora, a historian and author. They developed a well-organized political machine that was instrumental in guaranteeing educational opportunities for black children even before the Civil War.

"It was an amazing network that reached into all parts of California," said Roberts, whose new book, "Mining for Freedom: Black History Meets the California Gold Rush," has gone to her publisher. "They organized three colored conventions, funded by people who mortgaged their homes and their businesses for this effort."

They staged a political rally featuring speakers, a banquet and a fancy dress ball in the boomtown of Columbia in 1859, Roberts said.

Sugg was brought to California as a slave in 1850, and was granted his freedom in Sonora four years later -- nine years before President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Sugg's deed of manumission -- in essence an ex-slave's pink slip of freedom -- is on file at the Tuolumne County recorder's office, Roberts said.

In fact, when it cost most slaves $1,000 or more for their freedom, someone paid $1 to emancipate Sugg in 1854 "as an act of benevolence," according to the document.

A year later, he married and began a family whose descendants remained in Sonora until at least 1982.

Sugg's story fascinated Roberts, who moved to Sonora in 1992 and began researching the history of African-Americans in the area.

She is among those looking to create the Sugg-McDonald Museum and Research Center Project in Sonora. She is working with the county's historical society, the Sierra NonProfit Support Center and others to make what ultimately could be a virtual museum, which would use digital technology in its displays, in what some might consider an unlikely place.

According to the 2000 census, blacks made up 2.1 percent of Tuolumne County's 54,000 residents -- only slightly less than Stanislaus County, according to that same census.

Understanding the Sonora area's demographics 140 or more years ago takes some research, because little about blacks is reflected in the history books. Roberts pored over census reports, real estate records -- because slaves were often treated as property -- and newspaper clippings.

She discovered there were more blacks there than you might expect.

"As many as 500 in Tuolumne County," she said, and maybe more. "The racial climate was such that Southerners didn't want to disclose how many slaves they had. California was supposed to be a free state. So some blacks avoided the census counts."

And, she said, the numbers never can be determined accurately.

"There were many light-skinned blacks who stepped on the color line," Roberts said. "The rape of slaves was so prevalent back then."

At the mercy of available records and newspaper clippings that bore the racial slurs common to the times, she learned of a black man -- or maybe not -- who lived in Sonora. In the 1870 census, he was listed as a mulatto (with one white and one black parent). Subsequent documents listed him as black, mulatto or Negro, and on the last one, white.