1
Introduction

Neither words nor yet the most detailed painting can evoke a moment of vanished time so powerfully and so completely as a good photograph.
Beaumont Newhall

The writings of nineteenth-century antislavery people, humanitarians, and reformers are part of the intellectual heritage that emphasizes the ways in which society mangles Afro-Americans, turning them into drones or rebels. Black social scientists of the present day—Dr. Kenneth B. Clark, for example—and many liberal historians are heirs to this tradition. They wish to arouse the nation's reformers by calling attention to the injustices of American racism, industrialization, and urbanization. This point of view finds expression in literature and autobiographies, as well as in scholarly works. Richard Wright, particularly in Black Boy and Native Son, and The Autobiography of Malcolm X focuses on the humiliation, degradation, and oppression of Afro-Americans in the rural south and the urban north.

Richard Wright stated the assumptions underlying this emphasis in Twelve Million Black Voices: "This text assumes that those few Negroes who have lifted themselves, through personal strength, talent, or luck, above the lives of their fellow-blacks—like single fishes that leap and flash for a split second above the surface of the sea—are but fleeting exceptions to that vast, tragic school that swims below in the depths, against the current, silently and heavily, struggling against the waves of vicissitudes that spell a common fate."^[1] The problem with this particular perspective is that it robs Blacks of those qualities which enable them to survive, despite and in defiance of the system. It reduces them to pitiable creatures, if not to

things. Wright refers to them as the "countless black millions," "teeming black millions," "legions of nameless blacks," and "terrified black folk."^[2] Like the abstractions of social scientists—"dehumanization," "depersonalization," "tangle of pathology," "disorganization"—Wright's terms show nothing if not the distance of the observers and their difficulty in regarding Afro-Americans as humans like themselves. Portraits of ghetto life-of dilapidated housing, broken families, streetcorner men, matriarchal women, and deserted children-accomplish similar objectives by depicting Afro-Americans as blues people with little chance of changing their condition.

A second tradition comes out of the slave narratives and histories written by Afro-Americans after the Civil War and in the early twentieth century. It emphasizes the heroic aspects of Black life, and the successes of the people who, like "single fishes," leap out of the sea of suffering;^[3] it can be found in popular versions of Negro history, and in Ebony, Jet, and other contemporary sources. The authors write of unknown and unheralded Negro inventors, scientists, cowboys, soldiers, race leaders, and of proud and distinguished politicians, lawyers, teachers, and ministers. Unlike Richard Wright, these writers do not view the success tales as exceptions, but either as the rule or as representations of the potential of Black folk.

To many observers, this kind of history is a self-inflation or glorification of a few successes that overlooks the impoverished and oppressed conditions characteristic of Afro-American life. Meanwhile, the critics of the ghetto pathology school maintain that the social scientists and social workers overlook the pleasanter aspects of life and the strengths of Black folk.

I find both criticisms worthy of serious reflection. The vitality of Afro-Americans and their culture is all the more impressive when we appreciate the unceasing attempts to control, modify, and destroy Black culture and its creators. Focusing on their documents and struggles emphasizes Negroes as actors; it also permits us to consider the point of view of Afro-Americans themselves, whose thoughts and analyses are far more important than those of outsiders-census-takers, social workers, and well-meaning reformers and scholars. The problem with the alternative, as exemplified by Richard Wright and many others, is that it sees Afro-Americans as mere reactors to vast impersonal forces—like Bigger Thomas.

These different perspectives affect policy. We know that such concerns played a greater role in motivating nineteenth-century reformers than did any consideration for the human being. Abolitionists, antislavery people, and politicians were concerned with abstractions: democracy, free soil, free labor, the union; and it was for these reasons that they denounced slavery or the south. In the twentieth century, reformers and politicians

care more about the reputation of the nation as a leader of the free world than they do about the oppression of Afro-Americans, and so once again the "Negro revolution" or "movement" is a means to another end. They believe they need only to tinker with their system by passing civil rights laws or "preparing" Negroes for integration to make all right with their world.

Those who stress Black pride and accomplishments are rarely more critical of the system. They emphasize the importance of individual efforts, rather than questioning the basic nature of American society. While giving Afro-Americans a measure of humanity and the ability to improve their condition, they ultimately blame the citizen rather than the system for his failings. Like Booker T. Washington and today's conservatives, they hold the victim responsible for his poverty, if not for the crimes of his oppressors.

These thoughts resulted from a look at the early urban experiences of Blacks in San Francisco. Along with other assumptions, I began research convinced that the documents of Negroes need to be consulted and given priority over government reports, census data, court testimony, and the records of bureaucrats. In addition, while I believe that written documents of the Afro-Americans should be used when available, scholars must tap the most appropriate sources, which are not always recorded on paper or even preserved in archives. Oral, musical, and photographic records are as significant in Black history as the traditional kinds of written documents. I have tried to give primary consideration to Afro-San Franciscans' views of themselves. Politicians, proscriptive legislation, and race relations, which have all figured largely in a number of Black history works, are tangential. Only after careful consideration of Afro-American life, culture, and views can we undertake comparisons of ethnic groups and formulation of social policy.

Rather than treat the destructive impact of the city, or merely glorify the accomplishments of the pioneers, I tried to relate the pioneers' experiences to the central theme of Black American history. The remoteness of San Francisco, and the racism of capitalists, of unions, and of its citizenry, prevented many Afro-Americans from migrating west. White westerners, through deliberate actions or as a result of apathy, aided those individuals and institutions who sought to keep Afro-Americans in the south, shackled to the plantation system during slavery and to sharecropping and tenant farming after emancipation. The successful efforts of a few thousand Blacks to reach the city, to find jobs, to combat discrimination, to form their own institutions, and to create images of themselves represent the creative and heroic aspects of Black history. The successes of early Negro Bay Area residents gain in significance when we realize the enormity of the obstacles they faced.

Thinking on these matters and on Black urban history is hindered by

two factors. Given the lack of research on the topic, one must be very speculative or willing to generalize from data based entirely on northern and some southern cities, mainly after 1900. Our lack of understanding of the history of the Black urban dweller also results from scholars' preoccupation with notions of ghetto pathology used to describe changes wrought by the Great Migration of World War I. While northeastern and midwestern cities have received attention, southern and particularly western cities have been neglected. An accurate portrait of Black urban life is lacking for other reasons. Scholars have focused on the present century, often ignoring the nineteenth-century Black urban experience. Also, there are few studies of the small town life of Afro-Americans. Those that exist—for example, Hortense Powdermaker's After Freedom: A Cultural Study in the Deep South —are anthropological or sociological, not historical. Consequently, scholars lack a comparative dimension to clarify the quality of Black urban life.

Until quite recently, studies based on exhaustive and sympathetic examinations of Black city dwellers were poorly received because of an unwillingness or an inability to appreciate the humanity of Black folk, and because of the tendency to view the urban existence of Negroes as chaotic and pathetic. W. E. B. Du Bois's Philadelphia Negro and St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton's Black Metropolis were overlooked until the 1960s. Both studies are particularly insightful because the authors immersed themselves in the communities, conducted interviews, and analyzed social activities and family life as participant observers. Using written records as well, these Black scholars provided an important human dimension to citizens who were usually regarded as unworthy of attention except as objects of social policy. Recent historical studies of Herbert Gutman and Nathan Huggins also offer a much-needed humanism. They represent departures in that they regard Afro-Americans as actors instead of subjects. But their works are not specifically urban histories. Richard Wade's Slavery in the Cities illuminates our perceptions of the peculiar institution, and does analyze the essence of Black city life. Along with John Blassingame's Black New Orleans, it constitutes one of the few studies of the urban history of Black southerners.

Regrettably, historians of Afro-America have not been alone in neglecting urban developments in the northwest, far west, and southwest. Historical monographs on Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Oakland, and Los Angeles are rare. Emphasis on different ethnic groups or a history of one of them in a specific city is still more rare. An analysis of Black city life in a far western city inevitably suffers because of the lack of work on the topic. Studies of different cities in various areas of the United States must sooner or later shed light on regional differences and create an accurate

national perspective. For Blacks in the nineteenth century, the Pacific slope was far different from the south, where most Afro-Americans resided. West-coast Negroes invariably inhabited cities or towns, whereas until quite recently most southerners lived in rural areas. Also, the far west lacked a heritage of entrenched slavery, so the entire society was not committed to placing onerous burdens and humiliating restrictions on Afro-Americans. Of course, its citizens' barbaric treatment of colored people, Chinese, Japanese, native Americans, and Mexicans, means the Bay Area does not deserve its reputation for being free of the race problems of southern and northern cities.

Proud and resourceful Black pioneers inhabited San Francisco as early as the Gold Rush. At home in the city, they had a basis for self-esteem and pride that is rarely associated with Black urban dwellers. They survived in a competitive metropolis at a time when most of the nation's whites and Blacks avoided that setting. Their experience as pioneer city dwellers also invalidates the common notion that whites were the first and only significant urbanites in the United States. As city dwellers, the Black pioneers mastered elements of the new urban technology. Their literary records and a number of family photograph albums indicate the degree to which they, like all urbanites, depended on two popular forms of communication—print and photography.

I had to develop strategies suitable for my sources: methods for the traditional written sources, others for oral evidence, and others for visual material. My need for several approaches resulted from the evidence in the various kinds of records—not from any preconceived ideas; sources and methods both reflected the unique history of Blacks in San Francisco.

I began with the traditional documents because of their ready availability and my familiarity with the necessary approaches. These included the unpublished Manuscript Censuses from 1860 to 1900, published censuses, and the City Directories . Another primary source, the Black newspapers, offered Negro San Franciscans' own views of themselves, their work, the issues that concerned them, and the social and cultural events that figured in their lives.

I began interviewing aged Black residents of the Bay Area one year after I started collecting written evidence. Informants' names were offered by knowledgeable individuals, local historical societies, and eventually by respondents themselves. I questioned residents about their lives and knowledge of the Bay Area and its Black population. Some responded as if they had been waiting years for someone to record their impressions and insights. I appreciated the opportunity to see them where they were most comfortable, in their own homes.

The historical consciousness of the residents needs to be researched and

analyzed in some depth before the contours of Black urban life on the entire Pacific slope can be presented and before comparisons can be made among Afro-Americans and with other ethnic groups. Aside from a WPA project in the 1930s, there has been little use of oral history techniques—especially by historians—among Negroes. This is particularly unfortunate given the strength and vitality of the Afro-American oral tradition. Oral history is especially appropriate for Black urbanites, because most moved to cities in this century, and many migrants survive today, waiting for scholars to record their testimony.^[4]

Because of the bias of white-dominated newspapers and the paucity of written records from representative Black sources, oral history is particularly important for revealing the identities and concerns of anonymous Negroes. It also permits a Black citizen to have a role in interpreting history. However, it is more than simply a matter of asking questions and recording testimony, because San Franciscans-like other people-did not always carry their ideas through. Moreover, they presented a highly developed sense of protocol. Their concern with appearances should be evaluated in its own right, instead of being viewed as a barrier to understanding.

While my knowledge of the history of the area and of the leading personalities facilitated my entrance into San Francisco's Black world, this rapport was even more readily established with photographs. After conventional documents and interviews, this medium was the third stage in my analysis of the Black pioneers' social history. When I began, I could never have anticipated I would find many photographs because of the dearth of written records in the libraries and in informants' households. After four years of research, I discovered that the Black urbanities were more likely to possess photographs than traditional written records.

Karen Becker Ohrn, a professor of journalism, is aware of the value of these visual documents. She observes, "The family photograph collection serves as an 'archives' of family life-a way of remembering the way people and events used to be, and also a way of passing on these memories to other members of the family."^[5] Eventually I realized the worth of these records for aiding a failing memory, for checking the accuracy of someone's recollections, or for simply starting a conversation. More than twenty years ago, John Collier, a photographer trained in anthropology, found photographs to be valuable for interviewing and conducting research: "Photographic probes sharpened [the informant's] . . . memory, reduced the area of misunderstanding, and compelled him to stick to the truth." They not only stimulate, but "help to overcome the fatigue and repetition often encountered in verbal interviews." They also "opened doors of memory and released emotions about forgotten circumstances, which allowed a second interview to be as rewarding as the first." Particularly

important for people whose verbal abilities vary, when used as a research aid, photographs "function as a language bridge." I did not realize this at first, nor did I encounter Collier's work until recently. I had to depend on my intuition as I groped for a way to deal with these fresh sources.^[6]

Eventually I understood the importance of photographs for both families and historical research. For old and young alike, "the memories that are sustained by looking through the old pictures are the memories of earlier selves." A family collection provides "a concrete link with past lives, and going over the collection is a way of communicating with the past" for both the informants and the scholar. Among old-timers, photographs "seem to provide a continuous thread with . . . [their] own past." For younger generations, "the pictures provide a way to discover the past and link . . . oneself to it."^[7]

Photographs are especially appropriate for a people who grew up in an urban area during a period of unprecedented technological change. Affected by popular photography, pioneer urbanites were image- or photo-conscious, in that they valued pictures and relied on them to present their best selves to the world. In a period of rapid change, they sought to stop time. Many photographs were also published as illustrations in newspapers and on handbills. The photographs dramatically contradicted the cruel stereotypes of the popular press. To me, a historian and interpreter of Black culture, it was as if they left the photographic documents so that the world could assess their prosperity and note their pride.

The images of poised, well-dressed nineteenth-century urbanites were unlike what I usually encountered in published accounts of the metropolitan ghetto experience. Recent histories of New York's Harlem and Chicago's South Side used photographs and other records to portray wretched conditions and broken lives. The contrast with my findings suggested different conditions in the north and the far west, and reflected the simple fact that it is easy to find evidence of oppression among Afro-Americans, particularly when that is the main interest. What is significant from my research is that despite social and job discrimination, the pioneers managed to find a basis for self respect. Their photographs are evidence of this proud and unique heritage.^[8]

While historians have used literary documents to depict Blacks as helpless subjects, photographs allow us to see many of them as confident human beings. Occupation, income, education, and similar variables are important for assessing accomplishments and status, but I would also emphasize the public image or self-image that is presented. Scholars can use photographs to study historically "inarticulate" segments of our population. Since most ordinary Americans leave few, if any, written records-diaries, autobiographical memoirs, or letters-historians and

others must start taking seriously such seemingly inconsequential material as family photographs, snapshots, and albums. Nearly every family keeps such mementoes as part of its own historical record. For understanding the self-image of Blacks, photographs are especially useful when they are portraits approved by the subjects because they find the likenesses flattering.

For the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, photographs are at least as appropriate as written records for documenting the social history of ordinary citizens. This popular medium touches more lives, in a more personal manner, than written literature. Uneducated urban dwellers were extremely literate, in terms of their ability to read and appreciate photographs, and historically sophisticated, considering their successful preservation of these documents. Photographs of Black pioneers are significant as images with the power and vitality to stir the imagination and to give the subjects an immortality they rarely achieved through written records.

It is important to note possible objections at this point. One has to be careful not to read too much into stylized studio portraits. Photographers often furnished subjects with clothing and asked them to pose in a particular way. This does not diminish the value of the photographs, but it means we must analyze the relationship between photographers and their clientele. As Richard Chalfen notes, "photographic events include interactions between people using cameras and people on camera."^[9]

Along these same lines, we can view the photographs as cultural artifacts like letters, works of art, or other objects. "Interactions between people looking at pictures and the content of the pictures per se " should also be our interest. Scholars can ask informants what they see in photographs and study how they use them—in albums, in wall displays, and to accompany letters to distant families and friends.^[10]

By interviewing and photographing the aged, we can assess their vision of the past, compare it to information gleaned from traditional sources, and understand connections between past and present. Elderly people, I came to see, embody specific historical traditions that can be analyzed, comprehended, and some day compared to other accounts. This realization was especially important for a young historian trained to view history as an academic discipline and an impersonal abstraction. Oral history and photography taught me to view the pioneer urbanites through their own eyes, by their own standards, and as a result of their own words and the visual images by which they wished to be remembered. None of them expressed the ideas or myths of Negro pathology presented by scholars. Then too, the personal quality imparted to history by my

approach suggests its usefulness in making the discipline meaningful to laymen.

Amateur and professional resarchers can benefit from the use of visual images. In "Photography and Sociology," Howard S. Becker argued that scholars should continuously refine "not only their concepts and measures, but also their basic imagery, relying on that refinement more than they have to clear up theoretical and technical muddles." The photographs of the Black San Franciscans enabled me to visualize individuals' dress, posture, and bearing, and to compare these images with the stereotypes found in popular and scholarly literature, in cartoons, and in their written records.^[11]

Tools like the printing press and the camera allowed Blacks to participate in urban life when labor unions and discrimination excluded them. The Black pioneers fashioned their own likenesses to record, to learn, and to project their history, their identity, and their visions and dreams of modern urban life. The Black pioneers reminded me of contemporary city dwellers of various ethnic and racial groups who similarly depend upon newspapers, magazines, pocket cameras, and lavish color photographs. By focusing upon these nineteenth-century predecessors we might better understand the uses of popular technology and, ultimately, ourselves.

It might be said that, just as we are approaching a true understanding of Black history, I am claiming that we actually know very little about the history and needs of Afro-America. But considering the three centuries of conscious and unconscious efforts to deny the history and humanity of the Black race, it seems natural and inevitable that, today, we are just making a beginning.