Collection: Directories and Documents > Tanis Thorne Glenbrook Park & Lake Olympia Collection

About This Item:

Title: Black Life in the Sacramento Valley (1919-1934) Collection Type: Directories and Documents Collection Name: Tanis Thorne Glenbrook Park & Lake Olympia Collection Author: Thomas C. Fleming Source(s): Sacramento Public Library # of Pages: 36 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2024-01-08 13:14:08 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 03:11:48 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 03:11:48

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

Page: of 36  

Black Life in the Sacramento Valley Page 6 of 37 informed me that it was her bed, and to keep on one side, which I did. Mama was a very decent person. She never took anything that didn't belong to her, and she always gave you a straight answer. She would keep her mouth shut and not say anything, rather than tell a lie. She had the greatest influence on me, to be honest in your relationships with other people in the world. She was the most wonderful person I have ever known. 2. ONE FAMILY'S STORY The story of my family's migration to California from the Deep South was a typical one. My mother's maiden name was Jackson, and her family came originally from Montgomery, Alabama. Thomas M. Jackson, one of my mother's older brothers, volunteered in the Spanish-American War in 1898, probably as a way to get out of Montgomery. They shipped him to the Philippines, and he fought in one of the all-black infantry units. After the Americans defeated the Spanish forces, the U.S. Army stayed over there for occupation purposes for a while, and my uncle came back around 1901. San Francisco was a point of embarkation, and after the war, like a number of black soldiers, he decided to stay. He got a job as a clerk in the post office right away, and made San Francisco his home. This pattern would be repeated on a bigger scale following World War II. The next to arrive in California was my step-grandmother, Annie Powers, who always regarded us as family, even though she wasn't blood kin. She was my maternal grandfather's last wife, who had married Grandpa Jackson while my mother was still a little girl. She stayed with him until he died. Annie became a maid for a wealthy white family in Montgomery, and when they went on a trip to New York, they took her along. She had never been out of the South before. She went with them on a cross-country trip by train to San Francisco, then to Hawaii. When they returned to San Francisco, Granny met with Uncle Tom, and he told her she'd be a fool to go back to Alabama. So she left the white family and stayed behind. In San Francisco, she met a black man named Peter Powers, who was much older than her. He owned quite a bit of land in Chico and was looking for a wife. So she married him and moved up there. When my mother got divorced in Florida, Granny invited her to come to Chico, and sent her a train ticket, because my mother had no money. Like almost every black woman in Chico, Mama worked as a domestic for a white family. It was very tiring, because she had to keep the house clean, do the laundry and cook the meals. She worked 10 hours a day, easily. Domestics received such low wages. I don't think Mama ever earned over $45 a month. Moses Mosley, Mama's second husband, was a nephew of Granny Powers. By the time I came out, Kate was calling him Papa, because she didn't get to know her real father. Moses seemed to be genuinely fond of her, but he looked at me with suspicious eyes, because I called him Mr. Mosley. Or we both would look directly at one another and just start talking. It was a strange thing. I couldn't call him Dad, because I had just left my father in New York. Our relationship was always wary toward one another. We had a sort of truce between us. He would tell my mother if he wanted me to do something; he wouldn't tell me directly. He handled me very gingerly, http://www.cmonline.com/boson/freebies/blackhistory/fleming2.html 12/28/04