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

COLOMA, Calif. — In a tiny town where the California gold rush began, Black families seek restitution for land that was taken from their ancestors to make way for a state park.

Their efforts in Coloma, a town of about 300 people northeast of Sacramento, are one of the latest examples of Black Americans urging the government to atone for practices that kept them from thriving long after slavery was abolished.

Debates over reparations for African Americans often come back to land. That was at the center of a promise originally made — and later broken — by the U.S. government to formerly enslaved Black people in the mid-1800s: Give them up to 40 acres of land as restitution for their time enslaved.

For some, the promise of reparations has been nothing more than Fool’s gold, epitomized by a bill in Congress that’s stalled since it was first introduced in the 1980s, even though it’s aimed at studying reparations and named after the original promise.

The fight in Coloma is taking place in a state where the governor signed a first-in-the-nation law to study reparations. Advocates are pushing for the state to go further.

Gold was found near Coloma in 1848 by James W. Marshall, a white carpenter, setting off the California gold rush that saw hundreds of thousands of people come — or be brought — to the state. Those included white, Asian and free and enslaved Black people.

Decades later, the government took land from Black and white families that was turned into the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park, which opened in 1942. The park today is home to a museum, churches and cemeteries where residents were buried. A nearly 42-foot monument of Marshall stands on its grounds.

But the history of Black families who settled in Coloma only recently started getting increased recognition.

California State Parks launched an initiative in 2020 to reexamine its past and to tell “a more thorough, inclusive, and complete history” of California, department spokesperson Adeline Yee said in an email to The Associated Press. The department created a webpage with information about properties owned by Black families at the park.

Elmer Fonza, a retiree who worked at a brewery in California before relocating to Nevada, said he is the third-great grandson of Nelson Bell, a formerly enslaved Black man from Virginia who became a property owner in Coloma.

After Bell’s death in 1869, a judge determined he had no heirs in the state, and his estate was sold at an auction, according to a probate document shared by the El Dorado County Historical Museum.

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

“We rightfully believe that we have been denied the generational wealth that our family may have been entitled to if given our rightful inheritance — the land once owned by Nelson Bell,” he said at the final meeting of a first-in-the-nation state reparations task force.

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

“We have to bring forth the truth, because that’s reconciliation,” said Jonathan Burgess, a Sacramento resident who co-owns a barbecue catering business, and who also claims land in Coloma was that of his ancestors. “And then once we bring forth the truth, which I’ve been doing in speaking the whole time, we’ve got to make it right.”

Making it right 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 father, who was enslaved.

Jonathan Burgess also said his family is descended from Bell, but the Fonza and Burgess families say they are not related to each other. The discrepancy highlights the difficult work that could be ahead for Black residents if California passes reparations legislation requiring families to document their lineage.

Cheryl Austin, a retiree living in Sacramento, said she is an heir of John A. Wilson and Phoebe Wilson, a free, married Black couple who came to Coloma in the late 1850s. After they died, their property was sold through probate, Austin said. The state must somehow repair harm done to families whose property was seized, she said.

The restitution fight in California comes as lawmakers weigh 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 make any families whose land was seized unjustly by the government due to racially discriminatory motives entitled to the return of the property or compensation.

The legislation, which is expected to be voted on this summer, reflects a growing push for restitution by Black families targeting the misuse of eminent domain, where the government must pay people fairly for property it plans to make available for public use. The issue garnered attention across the state when local officials in Los Angeles County returned a beachfront property in 2022 to a Black couple, nearly a century after it was taken by the government from their ancestors.

This month, California marked a milestone when Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom included $12 million in the state’s 2024 budget to spend on reparations legislation.