In a California gold rush town, some Black families are fighting for land taken from their ancestors

COLOMA, California — In a small town where California’s Gold Rush began, black families are demanding restitution for land taken from their ancestors to make way for a state park. Today, fourth-graders often visit the park to learn about the state’s history.

Their efforts in Coloma, a town of about 300 people about 36 miles northeast of Sacramento, are among the latest examples of black Americans calling on the government to atone for practices that kept them from prospering long after slavery was abolished.

Debates over reparations for African Americans often return to land. That was at the heart of a promise originally made—and later broken—by the U.S. government to former slaves in the mid-1800s: grant them up to 40 acres (16 hectares) of land as restitution for their time as slaves. To some, the promise of reparations is nothing more than fool’s gold, embodied by a bill in Congress that has been stalled since it was first introduced in the 1980s, even though it is dedicated to studying reparations and named after the original promise.

The fight in Coloma comes in a state where the governor signed a nation-first law to study reparations. But advocates are pushing for the state to go further.

Gold was discovered in 1848 at Coloma by James W. Marshall, a white carpenter, and that was the beginning of the California Gold Rush, which brought—or brought—hundreds of thousands of people from all over the country and from outside the U.S. to the state. Migrators included whites, Asians, and free and enslaved blacks.

Decades later, the land was confiscated from black and white families by the city’s government before being turned into Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park, which opened in 1942. The park now houses a museum, churches, and cemeteries where residents were buried. A 43-foot (13 m) monument to Marshall stands on the grounds.

But the history of Black families settling in Coloma has only recently begun to receive more recognition. California State Parks launched an initiative in 2020 to reexamine its past and tell “a more thorough, inclusive and complete story” of California, department spokeswoman Adeline Yee told The Associated Press in an email. The department created a webpage with information about Black-owned properties in the Coloma park.

Elmer Fonza, a retiree who worked in a California brewery and eventually moved to Nevada, said he is the great-grandson of Nelson Bell, a former black slave from Virginia who became a landowner in Coloma.

After Bell’s death in 1869, a judge ruled that he had no heirs in the state. His estate was subsequently auctioned off, according to a will released by the El Dorado County Historical Museum.

It is unclear what happened to Bell’s property in the years since, Fonza said, adding that the land should be returned to his family.

“We rightly believe that we have been denied the generational wealth that our family would have been entitled to if we had been given our rightful inheritance – the land once owned by Nelson Bell,” he said at the last meeting of a first task force for state restoration in the country.

Nancy Gooch, a black woman, was brought from the south to Coloma in 1849 by a white man who enslaved her and her husband. Gooch was soon freed when California became a state and worked as a cook and laundry for miners. She later brought her son, Andrew Monroe, from Missouri to join them in the town. The Monroe-Gooch family would become some of the most prosperous black landowners in California.

“We need to get the truth out there, because that’s reconciliation,” said Jonathan Burgess, a Sacramento resident who co-owns a barbecue catering business and also claims land in Coloma that belonged to his descendants. “And when we get the truth out there, which I’ve been doing all along by speaking out, we need to set it right.”

Making amends would mean compensating families for land that can’t be returned or returning property where possible, Burgess said in an interview at the park. He said he is descended from Rufus Morgan Burgess, a black writer who was brought to Coloma with his enslaved father.

Jonathan Burgess also said his family is descended from Bell, but the Fonza and Burgess families say they are not related. The discrepancy underscores the difficult work that black residents will face if California ever passes reparations legislation that requires families to document their ancestry.

Cheryl Austin, a retiree who lives in Sacramento, said she is an heir to John A. Wilson and Phoebe Wilson, a free, married black couple who came to Coloma in the late 1850s. After John and Phoebe Wilson died, their property was sold in an estate plan, Austin said. The state must somehow repair the damage done to families whose property was seized, she said.

The fight over restitution in California comes as lawmakers are considering reparations proposals in the state Legislature. That includes a bill to create the California American Freedmen Affairs Agency, which would help black residents research their family lineage. Another proposal would give all families whose land was wrongfully seized by the government for racially discriminatory reasons the right to return the property or compensation.

The legislation, expected to be voted on this summer, reflects a growing push for restitution by Black families focused on the abuse of a practice known as eminent domain, in which the government must pay people fairly for property it wants to make available for public use. The issue drew statewide attention when local officials in Los Angeles County a beach house returned in 2022 to a black couple, nearly a century after it was taken from their ancestors by the government.

Earlier this month, California reached a milestone when Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom included $12 million in the 2024 state budget to spend on legislation on reparationsBut the budget does not specify what the money would be used for, and state estimates say the bills could cost millions of dollars annually.

Senator Steven Bradford, a Los Angeles-area Democrat who proposalssaid they will help the state compensate for the confiscated land, adding that land ownership is crucial for building overall prosperity.

“Repairs were never about a check,” Bradford said. “It was about land.”

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Associated Press photographer Godofredo A. Vásquez contributed to this report.

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Austin is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. Follow Austin on X: @sophieadanna