Better Future: Oakland's Pioneering Black Historian,

Delilah Leontium Beasley

January 14, 2021

"Every life casts its shadow, my life plus others make a power to move the world. I, therefore, pledge my life to the living world of brotherhood and mutual understanding between the races."

- Delilah Leontium Beasley

CHAPTER II

DELILAH L. BEASLEY

Please be advised some of the primary source texts contain historic language and terms that are offensive. We do not support the use of this language or terms by any means. We hope that someday no words relating to race are used as a tool of violence.

As we grapple with the soon-to-be-former president capitalizing on white-supremacist ideologies and evangelizing his own fictitious reality to incite violence and cling on to power, we are inspired by an Oakland woman who wrote and spoke truth to real power: Delilah Leontium Beasley. While our research began in the summer, her words and actions are more prescient now than ever. Her writing contains multitudes, and more than we could ever aspire to describe so we absolutely encourage those interested to buy her book.

When we began looking into the Black history of the Bay Area, we came across Delilah Leontium Beasley (1871 -1934), a magnificent historian, journalist, and activist. Beasley was notably the first Black, female columnist in a major metropolitan newspaper in the United States. However, what captured us most was her relentless efforts to document the role of Black Americans in shaping California, less it be lost to history.

Not a woman of great means, she relied on the support of her friends as she dedicated nine years to researching and writing. She dove into the archives at the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, and traveled across California by train, buggy, and foot to interview Black Californian elders for her seminal book, Negro Trail Blazers of California, self-published in 1919. Through her determination and clarity of purpose, she shone a bright light on the narratives and contributions of Black Californians.

Her relentless curiosity and documentarian instincts are not limited to people - she also poetically describes the nuances of California’s many landscapes, describing their climates and evening breezes, and what fruit trees grow best.

"Few artists can paint a picture of spring in California and tell with the brush half of its inspiring beauty." (pg.18)
As she traveled the state researching for her book, Beasley was enchanted by the California landscape much like many artists at the time.

Oil Painting by John Marshall Gamble (1863-1957)

Oakland in Beasley's time. A bird's eye view from 1914.

As she was fascinated by the beauty of the California landscape, she also saw ugly realities of this ‘progressive’ state. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, she moved to Oakland in 1910 at the age of 39. At the time, the Black population in Oakland was around 3,000. While Beasley was inspired by the burgeoning Black-owned small businesses, churches, and social clubs, so different from Ohio, she also saw people of color written out of the news, ignored in California’s history, and the many ways that Jim Crow was informally practiced in the state of California. She made it the remainder of her life’s work to legitimize and make visible the importance of Black culture and people for California through her intensive research, writing, and advocacy.

Beasley’s warmth and generosity of spirit radiate from her writing. Every subject is described in great detail, down to their city of birth, club positions, children’s names, and even high school and college coursework.

Beyond her contemporary subject sketches, Beasley goes to great lengths to compile historical research documenting the presence of Black pioneers throughout California’s history, even though pioneer records don’t include them. She includes journal excerpts, court documents, and Freedom Papers, sharing record of early slavery practices in California, thought of by most to have always been a free state, as a way of demonstrating the state’s concealed reliance on Black labor from the outset.

Beasley’s writing is so intricately detailed, it reveals context that brings dimension and color to her subjects. By including every day details, she paints a picture that is deeply factual yet surprisingly evocative. In one sketch of her book, Beasley interviews Madame Sul-Te-Wan, and actress who grew up performing in her home state of Kentucky. She was a struggling single mother of three when she heard a director was hiring many Black actors for his film, Birth of a Nation (a film which even in 1915 when it was released, was controversial for its blatantly racist representations and is credited with reviving the Ku Klux Clan).

Beasley describes how Madame Sul-Te-Wan was so desperate for employment at the time she took the job, and even starred in scenes that were edited out, presumably for their depiction of her as a successful Black woman. Without those scenes, Madame Sul-Te-Wan was only acting in mob scenes and other objectionable portrayals contained in the film. From her firsthand interview, Beasley is able to describe the actress’s complex circumstances, down to how much she was paid and as readers, we are gifted with the perspective of this actress.

Fittingly, Delilah Leontium Beasley's middle name speaks to her spirit. Leontium was one of the first documented female philosophers of ancient Greece, who notably wrote dissenting responses to prominent philosophers of her day, and defied convention by never marrying. Leontium also attended the only philosopher’s school that allowed women and enslaved Greeks in her time. Beasley’s groundbreaking spirit and search for truth resonate with her namesake.

After the publication of her book, she began writing for a Black newspaper, the Oakland Sunshine and later for the Oakland Tribune. She shared stories of social events, notable visitors, women’s clubs, national politics and everyday life in the Bay Area in her column, “Activities Among Negroes”. An early feminist, she always dedicated a portion of the column to the advocacy of women of color. Striking across her columns, as well as her book, is that she does not discriminate under any circumstance. She gives equal and deserving attention to prominent figures and everyday people alike, mixing the commonplace and the extraordinary as a way of honoring everyone’s hard won contributions.

Oakland Tribune Tower (1910)

In a time when the Black community was maligned, undermined, or ignored by the dominant white culture, Beasley brought visibility and joy, celebrating their accomplishments, events, and creating a space for the community to be acknowledged. By sharing Black stories, her columns carved out not only a space in the newspaper, but also in history and Bay Area culture. While she wrote about boundary-breaking Black pioneers, she was one of them herself, and her power lives on through her visionary work.