A California Historic Park commemorates life in Allensworth, a Central Valley town founded after the Civil War where Black residents could prosper.
“Food grows where water flows” is a common phrase in California’s Central Valley, but it hits particularly close to home in Allensworth — the state’s first town founded, funded and governed by Black Americans.commemorates life in the unique community, which began whenwhere Black residents could prosper free from racist ideologies.
Off in the distance, beyond the gates of the park, dogs run free in a community without sidewalks, past a collection of trailers and rundown shacks that house the few remaining Black residents and farmhands who still call the area home. She imagines men swapping stories at the barbershop, women shopping for supplies in the drug store and families enjoying the town’s old-time tradition of chocolates on the weekends.
It’s a far cry from the thriving township that began under the colonel’s leadership. From today’s vantage point it’s hard to imagine that Black families once traversed the country to settle the area — lured by the utopian dream and welcomed with kinfolk-like hospitality. Today the rail station’s ticket booth sits at the entrance of the historic park, to provide visitors a visual representation of life in the 1900s.Briscoe and Dennis Hutson, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, tend to view it instead as a grim reminder of the forces that killed the growing agrarian community.
The final nail in the coffin was Col. Allensworth’s death in 1914 on a trip to Los Angeles to raise state support for his proposed college. He died when a motorcycle struck him as he was stepping off the curb to cross a Monrovia street.Without its inspirational leader, the prospect of a Black utopia began to fade and the town’s residents began to move away.Tides began to turn the next year, when the California State Parks restored several buildings and declared Allensworth a historic landmark.
She and park leaders hope the plan to develop a new visitors center and update campground facilities revitalize interest in the area. The youth, accompanied by seniors and longtime visitors, posted TikTok videos from park benches while attendees paid homage to ancestors. Poetry readings, drumming ceremonies and carriage rides around the park brought joy to the thousands who traveled from Oakland, Fresno and Los Angeles.
And then the Methodist minister heard a voice — “I know it was God,” he said — that challenged him. “An email from the U.S. Air Force, encouraging the former chaplain to pursue a master’s degree, led Hutson to an unconventional answer: that something would be rabbit farming. The state’s $40-million community revival commitment has paved a path for planning and designing the farm’s training program and incubator plots.
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