“Never Rest Contented”: African American Equal Rights Campaigns in Late 19th-Century California

Following the first session of the state legislature in 1850, California's Black leaders organized to repeal the draconian state law that excluded their testimony in court. Once the law was overturned during the height of the Civil War in the 1863 legislative session, African Americans utilized their ability to testify in court as a tool in myriad campaigns around the state from San Diego to Sacramento against racial discrimination on streetcars, in housing, public accommodations, and more. Such campaigns were carried out by ad hoc civil rights organizations in a transition period between the Colored Convention movement and the establishment of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). This paper explores the anti-discrimination lawsuit brought by Edward and Mary Anderson against the Fisher Opera House in San Diego in 1897 after the Opera House refused to seat the couple in the seats for which they had purchased tickets, and instead tried to force them into the balcony. Edward Anderson was a well-established businessman in San Diego, whose prosperity increased during the 20th century, along with his social activism. His case was part of a barrage of lawsuits expressing the civic aspirations of Black Californians from 1863 and the repeal of the state exclusionary court testimony law to the passage of California's first civil rights act, the Dibble Act of 1897.