Wells Fargo is sponsoring an exhibit from January 24 to April 30 on "Slavery in New York City" at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco. The exhibit displays freedom papers from the Solano County and Santa Clara County archives.

The exhibit is very relevant to California. The Gold Rush drew hundreds of thousands of people, and a number of Southern fortune seekers brought slaves. The black population amounted to a few thousand, yet noted historian Rudolph Lapp estimates 600 endured servitude here.

How can this be when the 1849 state constitution declared that California was a free state? The dominant Democratic Party believed in white supremacy—the California Supreme Court even ruled in 1852, without any laws passed, that the 'free state' clause "stands, inert and inoperative." Not until 1858 did the court declare logically that the constitutional provision actually meant free—"by its own force accomplished the end aimed at."

Furthermore, blacks understood what U. S. Chief Justice Roger Taney meant when he ruled in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) that blacks "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." The California legislature in 1850 and 1851 declared in criminal and civil suits, "No black or mulatto person, or Indian, shall be permitted to give evidence in favor of, or against, any white person."

The privilege to give testimony in the courts of justice gave persons knowledge they would be heard; it provided a standing among equals and it meant access to a societal mechanism that adjusted grievances. With this ban on testimony, California offered little more than freedom.

Men and women of good will fought this prohibition. Louis McLane, Wells Fargo’s General Manager, signed a petition in 1857 asking for this measure of justice. It was the last such formal request until the Civil War brought a political revolution to California. In 1863, Republicans, who fought for equality under the law, allowed black men and women access to the courts.