Santa Barbara’s Black History in Brief

‘Historic Context Statement’ Provides Thumbnail Sketch of S.B. over the Centuries

St. Paul's AME, circa 1940. | Credit: Black Gold Cooperative Library System

Few times in American history have the whipsaws of change induced such violent whiplash — politically and culturally — as the five-year span between the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, and now. What passes for political debate has careened from “defund the police” to today’s bare-fanged clash of cultures in which diversity, equity, and inclusion have become four-letter words to be fled from by the educational exemplars running, among many others, the UC system.

In this embroiled context, the nation and Santa Barbara prepare to celebrate, to observe, or perhaps even — in some circles — to bemoan this year’s Juneteenth, the Fourth of July for slaves — as well as their descendants and people anywhere horrified by slavery — emancipated in various dribs and drabs after the end of the American Civil War. The push to declare Juneteenth an official national holiday goes back many years, but it was undeniably Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police officers that pushed that effort over the finish line in 2021, when then-president Joe Biden declared Juneteenth a national holiday.

In Santa Barbara, activists with Healing Justice Santa Barbara seized the historic moment to push for the creation of police review commission and an architectural inventory of sorts to help better save spaces and places that reflect the realities of Black lives lived here in Santa Barbara from then to now.

Among the fruits of this effort was the 166-page “Santa Barbara African American and Black Historic Context Statement.” Released in August 2022, it provides an extensive thumbnail sketch of Santa Barbara back from when it was still a twinkle in the eye of its Spanish colonizers to 1980. In many ways, it reads like any other historical Santa Barbara highlight reel, but only with Black people very intentionally included and not merely glossed over.

18th-century painting of Spanish castas, demonstrating the diversity of people, including individuals of Black or mixed ancestry, who composed Spanish society in the Americas | Credit: Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Tepotzotlán, Mexico

Those who think they know most of it already might be in for some surprises. The rest of us most definitely are. From 1589 to 1670, 100,000 enslaved Africans were reportedly taken to Mexico. Some of them and their descendants made it to Santa Barbara. There was at least one Black person on the ship with Juan Cabrillo in 1542 when he “discovered” Santa Barbara, though that name would not be bestowed upon the area until 1602. There were Black people on the Portolá expedition of 1769 to find a passage from Mexico to California. And in 1772, there were several Black people on the journey that brought Father Junípero Serra from present-day Mexico to Santa Barbara, including mixed-race enslaved man Ignacio Ramirez, who’d later purchase his own freedom.

The report, put together by the private consultants Page & Turnbull working in partnership with Healing Justice and Nicole Hernandez, historian with the City of Santa Barbara, stated that by 1785, fully 19 percent of the city’s population consisted of Black and mixed-race people. The report identified Luis Manuel Quintero — the city’s first tailor — and his wife, Marja Rocha Rubio, as descendants of enslaved Africans. One of their descendants, Josef Rafael Gonzales, would serve as the town’s alcalde — or mayor — in 1829. Another of their descendants, Leandro Gonzales, would become a major landholder and serve as majordomo for the Mission.

City of S.B.’s African American and Black Population, 1860-1980

The Spanish were not blind when it came to race, the report notes, but neither were they so fixated upon it as their Yankee successors. In 1849, the state’s constitutional convention voted to strip all Indians and Africans — and their descendants — of the right to vote. The next year, the state military would bar anyone but “free white males” from service. When Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law, the Anti-Homestead Law, and the Anti-Testimony Law, Black individuals were denied privileges and rights they enjoyed under Spanish and Mexican rule. No longer could they testify in court or attend private schools. And those who arrived in California before it became a state in 1850 could still be detained and deported to slave-holding states.

In 1874, records reflect the presence of Jerry Forney, a Black man who settled in Santa Barbara in 1874 after having escaped from slavery for purposes of mining gold. During the 1880s, Forney worked as a “bootblack” at the Occidental hotel, shining shoes. According to news accounts of the time, Forney arranged to bring residents of his hometown in North Carolina to Santa Barbara, though it’s not clear how many. He would settle near Haley Street on the city’s Eastside between Quarantina and Milpas streets.

Mount Olive Baptist Church (Second Baptist Church), circa 1915. | Credit: California Eagle, 27 November 1915

Black people wouldn’t start moving to Santa Barbara in larger numbers until 1920, when the Census reported that 186 lived here, and 1930, when the number jumped to 525. Even so, there were enough that in 1903, efforts got underway to build what would later become St. Paul’s AME Church by Haley and Olive streets. And by 1910, there were enough to support the formation of a predecessor to what became the Second Baptist Church on 26 East Gutierrez Street. Of the two, only St. Paul’s remains open and active, but for many years Second Baptist provided not just spiritual sustenance and a key center of gravity for many community activities, but also rooms for rent in a market defined by Jim Crow racial restrictions and prohibitions.

By the turn of the century, developers of the Oak Park subdivision would be touting its “Whites only” restrictions. During the early 20th-century, most Black people moved into Eastside neighborhoods, along with Italians, Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, and Chumash. That’s where the town dump was. As Black people migrated out of the South in even larger numbers from the 1930s to the 1950s, they migrated to Eastside neighborhoods below where the freeway now is. Because covenant restrictions barred Black people from buying real estate, there are few properties left that bear the architectural, cultural, political, or commercial imprints of their time. When the freeway was built, many homes were demolished.

According to the context report, Lincoln Elementary School — which opened in 1922 at the site of the former farmers’ market — was not segregated. Semi-pro baseball at the time was integrated as well. But in 1923, the Ku Klux Klan had a sufficiently robust presence in Santa Barbara to caravan 2,000 people in 120 cars down State Street for a rally.

Lincoln School second grade students, 1936. | Credit: Santa Barbara Unified School District

Shortly after Prohibition was lifted, there was a Black-owned nightclub on Haley Street catering to both Black and white patrons looking for jazz and a good time. But when the city’s then-mayor, Edmond O. Hanson, got into a fist fight there with another patron — both white — over remarks made about the woman the mayor was keeping company with, the nightclub got shut down.

In 1939, a Black student at the Santa Barbara State College would sue Elmer’s Café because a waiter there refused him service. He won. The year before, a college football team from Texas refused to play a scheduled game against Santa Barbara State College because two of Santa Barbara’s players were Black. All this made the news coverage of the time.

What really changed Santa Barbara was World War II. It got bigger, more Black, more diverse. Black servicemen were less inclined to accept the old ways, and more white people were inclined to question them too. By 1950, the Census numbers for Black residents had doubled, from 605 to 1,154. In 1970, they would double again, from 1,503 to 2,294. It has not been remotely so high since.

In 1951, the NAACP took on the Santa Barbara School District, charging that the district was segregating its Black students and punishing them more. In response, the district agreed to hire its first Black teacher, then a demand of civil rights activists. In 1955, Dr. Horace and Jessie McMillan moved to town. He would become one of Santa Barbara’s first Black doctors, and she would become one of its first Black social workers. In 1958, Texas-born Dr. McMillan would partner with three other doctors — one Japanese, one Latino, and one white — to build a downtown clinic. He would later become one of the founders of Goleta Valley Hospital.

Dr. Horace McMillan. | Source: UC Santa Barbara Library, Special Collections, CEMA
Dr. Horace McMillan’s Family Medical Center at 101 West Arrellaga Street completed in 1959 in the Midcentury Modern style
338 Cooper Road Former Home of Dr. Horace and Jessie McMillan | Credit: Mayson Canley Historic Landmarks Commission
Franklin Neighborhood Center| Credit: Historic Landmarks Commission

In between, Dr. McMillan — and the NAACP — fueled a sustained, consistent attack on race-based discrimination in housing and employment. They had serious impact. In response to his constant pressure for a community-based clinic and social service center, the City Council authorized the creation of the Franklin Neighborhood Community Center back in 1974.

For the McMillans, their politics were personal. They’d tried to buy a house of their own in a neighborhood they wanted and found their way blocked. Ultimately, they had to buy through a White go-between.

As Santa Barbara observes Juneteenth this year, it’s worth pondering the context report. Of the 20 buildings the report’s authors recommended for designation as historically significant — in terms of style, importance, architectural integrity, and who the occupants were — only two have been so designated. (Owners have to voluntarily agree, and such historical designations can carry regulatory restrictions.) One was St. Paul’s AME Church, which is still going strong. The other was the Second Baptist Church on East Gutierrez, which later moved to Mason Street where it collapsed under the weight of some construction loans taken out coupled with an aging and dwindling congregation. But no historical designations are affixed to any of the properties that Horace and Jessie McMillan touched. Yet.