A Murder, A Mob, and Mose Gibson: Death in the Time of Jim Crow - Part 6: The Execution
Orange County wanted and needed to avoid a lynching. In many ways, the case of Mose Gibson mirrored that of Francisco Torres. Torres was...
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A Murder, A Mob, and Mose Gibson: Death in the Time of Jim Crow - Part 5: The Concerns
With Gibson's confession, Orange County authorities assured the locals that they had their man. Soon, the county was flooded with...
A Murder, A Mob, and Mose Gibson: Death in the time of Jim Crow - Part 4: The Confession
After his arrest, Gibson gave a confession to Sheriff Jackson of Orange County. Despite the inconsistencies in his statement, the...
A Murder, A Mob, and Mose Gibson: Death in the time of Jim Crow - Part 3: The Capture and The Escape
Fullerton wanted justice. The white man story does not seem to have been followed up. After testing the flashlight found at the scene,...
A Murder, A Mob, and Mose Gibson: Death in the time of Jim Crow - Part 2: The Suspects
Who killed Roy Trapp? Who committed the "Satanic midnight" murders? Mirroring the Torres case, at first, it was believed that the...
A Murder, A Mob, and Mose Gibson: Death in the time of Jim Crow - Part 1: The Crime
July 15, 1920 Shortly after midnight, chaos ensued at the home of wealthy Fullerton rancher Roy G. Trapp. At the time, Roy's ranch sat on...
Uncle Walt Embraces Aunt Jemima
Walt Disney believed in Thomas Jefferson’s empire of liberty, and like Jefferson, normalized the institution of slavery in that vision. ...
From Funtown to Main Street, USA: Recreation and Segregation
Why does this matter? What do representations of black Americans have to do with Disneyland? Having spent most of his youth in Missouri,...
1893 World's Fair: The Birth of a Nation, an Industry, and Aunt Jemima
The 1893 World’s Fair symbolized the United States’ ascendancy among the great powers of the world by celebrating its achievements,...
Celebrating Black Excellence: Charles Clifford "Cliff" Berkley
When local newspapers mentioned black Americans, it was typically in regard to crime, the “negro problem,” or some news of a lynching or...
Railroads, Hoboes, and Jim Crow: Black Vagrancy
In the late nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth, Southern California experienced an expansion of transcontinental,...
Woman's Work and Jim Crow
Orange County has never had a substantial black population, but black people have always been a part of Orange County. Though they did...
Social Networks in Early Orange County
For some reason, from the winter of 1892 to the spring of 1897, local papers dedicated several news cycles to covering the alleged...
The Professor is In: Dr. John H.T. Dean of Anaheim
With the migration of white southerners to the Southland in the wake of the Civil War, more black Americans arrived in Orange County,...
Welcome to the OC
The story of Orange County is typically seen as a story of post-war suburbanization. After World War II, new migrants - many veterans who...
"Red" Rogers: Anaheim Pioneer
Whereas narratives of Los Angeles emphasize the continual presence of people of African descent in its history - from Spanish settlement...