Black History

The Way West: Reparations Task Force Looks at Black Migration to California

During its third meeting, California’s Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans looked at reasons formerly enslaved Black people migrated to the Golden State — and detailed setbacks they faced after arriving.

Published

5 years ago

October 13, 2021

Christy Price

"Scott and Violet Arthur arrive with their family at Chicago's Polk Street Depot on Aug. 30, 1920, two months after their two sons were lynched in Paris, Texas. The picture has become an iconic symbol of the Great Migration. (Chicago History Museum)"[1]/ Wikimedia Commons

I was leaving the South

to fling myself into the unknown…

I was taking a part of the South

to transplant in alien soil,

to see if it could grow differently,

if it could drink of new and cool rains,

bend in strange winds,

respond to the warmth of other suns

and, perhaps, to bloom.

- Richard Wright, the author of Black Boy, 1945

During the period historians dub the “Great Migration”– which lasted from the early 1900s through the 1970s – approximately 6 million Black Americans relocated from Deep South states to Northern, Midwestern, Eastern and Western states. Significant numbers ended up in California, escaping Jim Crow laws and racial violence and seeking economic opportunity.

Isabel Wilkerson, author of “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, “described the movement as “a redistribution of Black people.”

“It was the only time in America’s history that American citizens had to flee the land of their birth just to be recognized as the citizens that they had always been,” Wilkerson said, pointing out that no other group of Americans has been displaced under similar conditions.

After President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, the Reconstruction era began. It was a period of prosperity as some Blacks in different places began to establish businesses and communities; contest for (and win) political office; establish schools, and more.

But it was short-lived because of white backlash, Wilkerson said.

By the early 1900s, racist white Southerners began to terrorize freed Black people with cross burnings, and racial violence — and discriminate against them by instituting Jim Crow laws.

There was a spike in lynchings, and a sharecropping system that mirrored the conditions of slavery began to take form in the 11 former slaveholding states.

Under those policies, opportunities for Blacks were almost nonexistent.

After World War World I began in Europe in 1914, there was a shortage of labor. Factories started luring Black people North to fill vacancies. By 1919, an estimated 1 million Southern Blacks had departed for the North.

By the 1930s, the Great Depression had slowed Black migration. But the revival of the exodus from the South, a period historians call the “Second Great Migration,” started around 1939.

This time around, California was a major destination.

As Black people left the South, Wilkerson said, they “followed three, beautifully predictable streams — pathways to freedom.” The first two led to Eastern and Midwestern states. The “West Coast stream,” Wilkerson told the task force, “carried people from Louisiana and Texas out to California and the entire West Coast.”

World War II created an expansion of the country’s defense industry, according to the Southern California public television network,. During this time, more jobs were available to African Americans. California cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland began to see an influx of Black people.

According to KCET, a Southern California public television network, the Black population in Los Angeles grew from 63,700 in the 1940s to 763,000 in 1970. The migration was largely fueled by job openings in industries manufacturing automobiles, rubber, and steel. The presence of Blacks became evident along Central Avenue between 8th and 20th streets in California’s largest city.

“(Black southerners) were recruited to the North and West to fill labor shortages in the steel mills, factories and shipyards,” Wilkerson said. “It turned out that they wanted the labor but did not want the people.”

The response to the Great Migration was “structural barriers of exclusion,” Wilkerson said. Restrictive covenants required white property owners to agree not to sell to Black people and many areas in large and mid-range cities were redlined to deny services to Blacks.

“By law and by policies, parents, grandparents or great-grandparents of almost every African American alive today (were denied) the greatest source of wealth in this country: homeownership, the American Dream itself,” Wilkerson said.

“With all the testimony I’ve heard, I don’t see how any person of conscience, character and civility could not understand that the facts have been given,” said Task Force vice-chair, the Rev. Amos Brown, pastor of Third Baptist Church in San Francisco and president of that city’s NAACP branch.

The purpose of the nine-member task force is to study and develop reparation proposals for African Americans and recommend appropriate ways to educate the Californians about the task force’s findings.

Sanctioned from 1619 to 1865, legalized slavery in the United States deprived more than 4 million Africans and their descendants of citizenship rights and economic opportunity. After it was abolished, government institutions at the federal, state, and local levels perpetuated, condoned, and often profited from practices that disadvantaged African Americans and excluded them from participation in society.

“On those sugar, rice, and tobacco fields (in the deep south) were opera singers, jazz musicians, novelists, surgeons, attorneys, professors, accountants, and legislators,” Wilkerson said. “How do we know that? Because that is what they and their children, grandchildren and now great-grandchildren have often chosen to become.”

Wilkerson first gained national attention in 1994, when she became the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 1994, while employed as Chicago Bureau Chief of The New York Times.

Wilkerson’s parents are both from Southern states, but they stayed in Wash., D.C., where she was born, after meeting at Howard University. It was her parents’ migration northward, she says, that inspired her research on an era that helped to shape the country’s current demographics.

“Slavery has lasted so long that it will not be until next year, 2022, that the United States would have been a free and independent nation for as long as slavery lasted on this soil,” she said.

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Activism

Diabetes in Black California: Turning the Tide from Crisis to Control

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data, nearly 17.9% of Black adults in California have been diagnosed with diabetes — above the national Black adult average of 16.8%, and nearly five points higher than California’s overall adult rate of 12.6% across all races. California ranks 24th out of 39 states with available data for Black adult diabetes rates.

Published

5 days ago

July 5, 2026

Oakland Post

Dr. Khadijah Lang is a family physician with a clinic in Los Angeles who specializes in several family medical practices, including prenatal care. Lang believes in family medicine. She says it is important to treat all members of a family. Thursday, June 5, 2026. Photo by Solomon O. Smith/California Black Media.

By Charlene Muhammad, California Black Media

Crystal Lambert knew something was terribly wrong with her three-year-old granddaughter as she sped down the street trying to get her to the hospital.

“I thought she got a hold of some poison,” Lambert recalled.

Doctors found Lambert’s granddaughter had a blood sugar level over 800, diagnosing her with Diabetic Ketoacidosis(DKA), a state in which the body, starved of insulin, begins to shut down.

Lambert said she was born with a pancreas that was not fully functioning — it lacked the specialized cells required to produce insulin.

Her granddaughter survived and is five years old today. Now, she gives herself insulin shots, asks endless questions about her condition, and runs like the spirited child she is. But the terror of that night transformed Lambert — and ultimately inspired her to launch the We Fight Back Organization, a mobile health and food access initiative serving underserved communities across California. Lambert is the executive director.

The Crisis by the Numbers

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data, nearly 17.9% of Black adults in California have been diagnosed with diabetes — above the national Black adult average of 16.8%, and nearly five points higher than California’s overall adult rate of 12.6% across all races. California ranks 24th out of 39 states with available data for Black adult diabetes rates.

Nationally, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Black Americans were 24% more likely than the overall U.S. population to have diabetes in 2024. They also died from diabetes 78% more often than the general population in 2022. Black Americans are also more than twice as likely as the overall population to develop kidney failure caused by diabetes.

According to the California Health Care Foundation’s 2024 Health Disparities Almanac, Black Californians have the shortest life expectancy in the state at just 74.6 years — due in part to chronic conditions like diabetes and its devastating complications.

Leon Rock, co-founder of the African American Diabetes Association, believes statistics, though revealing, only tell part of the story.

“There are a whole bunch of Black folks that don’t tell you that they have diabetes — or don’t know,” he said.

And the disease itself, Rock is careful to note, is not what kills. “They die from the complications. That’s heart attack, that’s stroke, that’s amputations of legs, of feet. Going blind. All those complications are inherent in a system that has impacted Black folks with diabetes in California and across America.”

Crystal Lambert, creator and executive director of We Fight Back. She started the organization out of a need to learn more about diabetes on behalf of her granddaughter. Now she is looking to spread the impact of her organization to the valley. Friday, June 6, 2026. Photo by Solomon O. Smith/California Black Media.

Crystal Lambert, creator and executive director of the We Fight Back Organization, started out of a need to learn more about diabetes on behalf of her granddaughter. Now she is looking to spread her organization to the valley, on Friday, June 6, 2026 Photo by Solomon O. Smith/ California Black Media

An Information Gap Fuels the Crisis

For Rock, part of the solution is diagnosis. He says the medical and public health systems are failing Black Californians by the absence of information designed for them.

“That is the bottom line. We need good information. Information that is culturally specific,” said Rock.

Telling people to eat healthy or exercise, he added, falls short when culturally specific alternatives are not provided, and when many residents of urban communities do not feel safe exercising in some neighborhoods – or outside at night.

Dr. Khadijah Lang, a family medicine physician and president of the Golden State Medical Association, agrees that the roots of the crisis run deeper than individual behavior — and blaming patients misses the point.

“We are not genetically predisposed to diabetes,” Lang said. “But the system under which we live increases the likelihood that we will develop it.”

What the Body Needs — What Communities Are Denied

Type 2 diabetes, which accounts for 90 to 95% of all diabetes cases, according to the CDC, develops when the body can no longer use insulin effectively to regulate blood sugar. Left unmanaged, it damages nerves, kidneys, eyes, and the cardiovascular system. The hemoglobin A1C test is a blood draw that reveals how the body has processed sugar over the previous three months — not just at the moment of the test. It is the standard tool for both diagnosis and ongoing monitoring.

That distinction matters, Lang emphasized, because patients cannot manipulate three months of blood sugar history the way they might fast for a day before a single blood draw.

“The pill is not meant to undo or control a sugar level that’s being constantly stressed,” Lang said. “It’s meant to work in conjunction with a low-carbohydrate diet and exercise.” She recommended at minimum 30 minutes of physical activity five days a week — breakable into 10-minute sessions for those who need it.

Lang stressed that education must be delivered in language people recognize and can relate to. The goal is to inform them of the choices that serve their health best, she said.

But for many Black Californians, even those informed choices remain out of reach, Lambert said.

“They need access to healthy foods and medication, too” she said.

California has made some critical policy advances. The state has expanded access to the Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM), which has transformed diabetes care for state residents. Assembly Bill 365, introduced in 2024, proposed requiring Medi-Cal to cover the costs of CGM and other related medical equipment but it failed in the State Senate. Since then, the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) reports that the core Medi-Cal CGM benefit now available to eligible patients was solidified through previous budget actions and pharmacy policy updates.

These measures, while meaningful, have not closed the gap for the communities most at risk, according to advocates.

Control Through Community

Health care advocates conclude that the solution must be communal, culturally grounded, and sustained — not a fad, not a celebrity moment, not a single clinic visit. For example, observed Lang, lifestyle shaped by shared values and collective accountability can move the needle where individual prescriptions have not.

Rock is building infrastructure to match the urgency, establishing local chapters of the African American Diabetes Association across the country, with California next.

“We have to do for self, period,” he said. “Health is wealth. We have to eat to live.”

And Lambert, whose granddaughter unknowingly started all of this for her, keeps showing up.

“Diabetes advocacy is about dignity, education, prevention, and hope,” she said.

Video: Diabetes Disparity Exposed in California

This article is supported by the California Health Care Foundation

(CHCF). Visit www.chcf.org

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Oakland Post: Week of July 1 – 7, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of July 1 – 7, 2026

Published

5 days ago

July 5, 2026

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

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Arts and Culture

Prescott Circus Theatre Presents Free Summer Performance Series

Now in its 41st year, the Prescott Circus Theatre is a nationally recognized performing arts education program for Oakland youth. The circus offers safe environments that challenge Oakland youth, through circus arts training, to develop the skills and confidence to thrive on stage, in school, and in life.

Published

2 weeks ago

June 26, 2026

Oakland Post

Prescott Circus showcase pathways pyramid. Photo courtesy of Prescott Circus.

By Post Staff

The Prescott Circus, Oakland’s longest-running youth circus, is returning this summer with its free shows. Join the Prescott Circus’s young stars as they share their joys and talents through stilt-dancing, tumbling, juggling, and more.

At the heart of this one-hour show, which demonstrates teamwork, pride, and joy, are Oakland Unified School District students ages 8 – 17 from more than 10 different schools

This is accomplished through no-cost school and community programs for more than 300 Oakland youth each year. Performing company members from Prescott, where the program began, perform and make appearances at as many as 40 Bay Area events each year.

The summer program is funded in part by Oakland Fund for Children and Youth, California Arts Council, Port of Oakland, and the West Davis & Bergard Foundation.

Performances will be held Tuesday, July 14, 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. (ASL interpreted) and Wednesday, July 15, 11 a.m., at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St., Oakland. For free reservations go to

https://PrescottCircusSummerShows.eventbrite.com

For group reservations for camps, childcare centers, senior centers, go to www.prescottcircus.org

A community show will be held Saturday, July 18, 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., at DeFremery Park,1651 Adeline St., Oakland.