California's role in enslavement

IN ONE VERSION of U.S. history, California is a place where slavery was prohibited from the founding, in the 1849 state constitution, and where that ban was reaffirmed by the state’s ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865.

- CARRIE GIBSON GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

JEAN BAPTISTE DEBRET Hulton Archive via Getty Images

AN ENSLAVED COUPLE'S wedding in Brazil in 1839. The tug-of-war in California shows the uneven abolition in the Americas.

In another telling, it was a place that had ended the practice some 30 years earlier — when it was part of Mexico.

Despite being on the periphery of the Spanish empire and Mexico before becoming part of the United States, California had an important place in the larger struggle by enslaved people for their freedom. California connects Mexican and U.S. history while also serving as a reminder that there are few corners of the Western Hemisphere that are untouched by the legacy of slavery.

The story of the rise and fall of African enslavement is often presented as a national story in the United States — and a mostly Southern one — rather than as the hemispheric phenomenon that it was. Enslaved Africans could be found as far south as Chile and Argentina all the way up to Canada. Likewise, the end of slavery was not solely brought about by the Civil War in the U.S., but also by centuries of resistance through rebellions, wars, sabotage and self-emancipation, across the entire Americas. This, too, was part of California’s story.