Pacific Appeal was an African-American newspaper based in San Francisco, California, and published from April 1862 to June 1880. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Pacific Appeal was an African-American newspaper based in San Francisco, California, and published from April 1862 to June 1880. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Pacific Appeal was co-founded by Philip Alexander Bell, an African-American civil rights and antislavery activist who had established Weekly Advocate (edited by Samuel Cornish) and worked for William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator, [4] and Peter Anderson, a San Francisco civil rights activist and delegate at the California Colored Citizens Convention. [5] It was the successor to the Mirror of the Times , another San Francisco-based African-American newspaper that had been established in 1855, [3] with the change of name occurring along with a change of proprietor from Judge Mifflin W. Gibbs [6] : 76 [7] : 8 to William H. Carter. [6] : 91 Its contemporaries at the time included the Anglo-African, and it was regarded as the official organ of African-Americans on the Pacific slope. [6] : 91
The paper’s motto was “He who would be free, himself must strike the blow.” [6] : 92 [3] It began publishing in April 1862. [1] [2]
Later, Bell and Anderson would split, with Bell accusing Anderson of becoming less antislavery and more accommodationist. [3]
The coverage of antislavery and civil rights issues in the first few years has been covered by historians and chroniclers of black abolitionism of the era, including in The Afro-American Press and Its Editors . [6] : 92 [8] [3]
The inaugural 1862 volume contained eight antislavery poems, including four poems by San Francisco poet James Madison Bell, writing under the initials JMB. [3]
Pacific Appeal also published some 250 proclamations by Emperor Norton, self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States, including his proposals for what would later become the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and the Transbay Tube. [9] [10] [11] [12]
The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, known locally as the Bay Bridge, is a complex of bridges spanning San Francisco Bay in California. As part of Interstate 80 and the direct road between San Francisco and Oakland, it carries about 260,000 vehicles a day on its two decks. It has one of the longest spans in the United States.
Black History Month is an annual observance originating in the United States, where it is also known as African-American History Month. It has received official recognition from governments in the United States and Canada, and more recently has been observed in Ireland and the United Kingdom. It began as a way of remembering important people and events in the history of the African diaspora. It is celebrated in February in the United States and Canada, while in Ireland and the United Kingdom it is observed in October.
Abraham Lincoln's position on slavery in the United States is one of the most discussed aspects of his life. Lincoln frequently expressed his moral opposition to slavery in public and private. "I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong," he stated. "I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel." However, the question of what to do about it and how to end it, given that it was so firmly embedded in the nation's constitutional framework and in the economy of much of the country, was complex and politically challenging. In addition, there was the unanswered question, which Lincoln had to deal with, of what would become of the four million slaves if liberated: how they would earn a living in a society that had almost always rejected them or looked down on their very presence.
The Transbay Tube is an underwater rail tunnel that carries Bay Area Rapid Transit's four transbay lines under San Francisco Bay between the cities of San Francisco and Oakland in California. The tube is 3.6 miles (5.8 km) long, and attaches to twin bored tunnels. The underground section of rail between the nearest stations totals 6 miles (10 km) in length. The tube has a maximum depth of 135 feet (41 m) below sea level.
The San Francisco Transbay Terminal was a transportation complex in San Francisco, California, United States, roughly in the center of the rectangle bounded north–south by Mission Street and Howard Street, and east–west by Beale Street and 2nd Street in the South of Market area of the city. It opened on January 14, 1939 as a train station and was converted into a bus depot in 1959. The terminal mainly served San Francisco's downtown and Financial District, as transportation from surrounding communities of the Bay Area terminated there such as: Golden Gate Transit buses from Marin County, AC Transit buses from the East Bay, and SamTrans buses from San Mateo County. Long-distance buses from beyond the Bay Area such as Greyhound and Amtrak also served the terminal. Several bus lines of the San Francisco Municipal Railway connected with the terminal.
Joshua Abraham Norton, known as Emperor Norton, was a resident of San Francisco, California who in 1859 proclaimed himself "'Norton I., Emperor of the United States". In 1863, after Napoleon III invaded Mexico, he took the secondary title of "Protector of Mexico".
Sue Bailey Thurman was an American author, lecturer, historian and civil rights activist. She was the first non-white student to earn a bachelor's degree in music from Oberlin College, Ohio. She briefly taught at the Hampton Institute in Virginia, before becoming involved in international work with the YWCA in 1930. During a six-month trip through Asia in the mid-1930s, Thurman became the first African-American woman to have an audience with Mahatma Gandhi. The meeting with Gandhi inspired Thurman and her husband, theologian Howard Thurman, to promote non-violent resistance as a means of creating social change, bringing it to the attention of a young preacher, Martin Luther King Jr. While she did not actively protest during the Civil Rights Movement, she served as spiritual counselors to many on the front lines, and helped establish the first interracial, non-denominational church in the United States.
African-American newspapers are news publications in the United States serving African-American communities. Samuel Cornish and John Brown Russwurm started the first African-American periodical called Freedom's Journal in 1827. During the antebellum South, other African-American newspapers sprang forth, such as The North Star founded in 1847 by Frederick Douglass.
John Henry Murphy Sr. was an African-American newspaper publisher based in Baltimore, Maryland. Born into slavery, he is best known as the founder of the Baltimore Afro-American, published by the AFRO-American Newspaper Company of Baltimore, Inc. This newspaper is one of the oldest operating black family-owned newspapers in the U.S.A.
The Western Pacific Railroad (1862-1870) was formed in 1862 to build a railroad from Sacramento, California, to the San Francisco Bay, the westernmost portion of the First transcontinental railroad. After the completion of the railroad from Sacramento to Alameda Terminal on September 6, 1869, and then the Oakland Pier on November 8, 1869, which was the Pacific coast terminus of the transcontinental railroad, the Western Pacific Railroad was absorbed in 1870 into the Central Pacific Railroad.
Afro-Chileans are Chilean people of African descent. They may be descendants of slaves who were brought to the Chile via the trans-Atlantic slave trade, or recent migrants from other parts of Latin America, the Caribbean or Africa.
The Emperor Norton Trust is a nonprofit whose mission is to honor the life and advance the legacy of Joshua Abraham Norton (1818–1880), better known as the 19th-century San Francisco eccentric, Emperor Norton.
James Madison Bell was an African-American poet, orator, and political activist who was involved in the abolitionist movement against slavery. He was the first native African-American poet in Ohio and was called the "Bard of the Maumee," of Maumee River. According to Joan R. Sherman: "As poet and public speaker, Bell was one of the nineteenth century's most dedicated propagandists for African-American freedom and civil rights."
Charlotte L. Brown (1839–?) was an American educator and civil rights activist who was one of the first to legally challenge racial segregation in the United States when she filed a successful lawsuit against a streetcar company in San Francisco in the 1860s after she was forcibly removed from a segregated streetcar. Brown's legal action and the precedent it created led to additional challenges to segregation in San Francisco and within 30 years, California enacted legislation to make such segregation on streetcars illegal statewide.
Philip Alexander Bell (1808–1889) was a 19th-century American newspaper editor and abolitionist. Born in New York City, he was educated at the African Free School and became politically active at the 1832 Colored Convention. He began his newspaper career with for William Lloyd Garrison's anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator and became an outspoken voice on a variety of social and political of issues of the day including abolition, suffrage, and the protection of fugitive slaves.
African Americans in San Francisco, California, comprised just under 6% of the city's total population as of 2019 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, down from 13.4% in 1970. There are about 55,000 people of full or partial black ancestry living within the city. The community began with workers and entrepreneurs of the California Gold Rush in the 19th century, and in the early-to-mid 20th century, grew to include migrant workers with origins in the Southern United States, who worked as railroad workers or service people at shipyards. In the mid-20th century, the African American community in the Fillmore District earned the neighborhood the nickname the "Harlem of the West," referring to New York City's Harlem neighborhood, which is associated with African American culture.
Peter Anderson was an African American rights activist who actively participated in California Colored Conventions Movements during the 1800s. Anderson was also the author of a newspaper called The Pacific Appeal which advocated black rights and helped activists network. Anderson and his coeditor Philip Alexander Bell argued often and eventually these disagreements led Bell to split off and create his own paper called The Elevator while Peterson continued with The Pacific Appeal.
The Elevator was a newspaper published in San Francisco, California, United States from 1869 to 1874, to express the perspective of the black community. A major focus of the articles were the Fourth of July celebrations that were non-segregated as that was occasionally set aside on Independence day. The newspaper was first published under the slogan "Equality Before the Law" by Philip Alexander Bell.
The Mirror of the Times was an African American weekly newspaper in San Francisco, California. It was published during the mid-1850s, though its exact foundation and dissolution dates are not known. It was the first African American newspaper in the state – and possibly in the entirety of the West Coast, and it advocated against racial segregation and for Black civic engagement.
The California State Convention of Colored Citizens (CSCCC) was a series of colored convention events active from 1855 to 1902. The convention was one of several social movement conventions that took place in the mid-19th century in many states across the United States.