32 chapters of primary source material on Californians of African descent from the earliest conquistadors with Cortes through the Mexican era to the Gold Rush and the frontier era.
ABSTRACT:
The origin of the word California is the allegorical epic of a group of black women warriors. Our Roots Run Deep presents the translation of that account and also explores the significance of the exclusion of that information from most histories of the state. It then presents peer-reviewed research from top historians such as Dr. Jack Forbes, Rudolph Lapp and William Loren Katz outlining the centrality of the black experience in the Spanish era, when blacks were at least 40 percent of the pobladores in the missions; the Mexican era when blacks controlled two million acres of land grants; the transition from Mexican province to American state with black figures on both sides of the conflict; the state's role in the abolition movement and the frontier period.
