Orange County wanted and needed to avoid a lynching. In many ways, the case of Mose Gibson mirrored that of Francisco Torres. Torres was...

With Gibson's confession, Orange County authorities assured the locals that they had their man. Soon, the county was flooded with...

After his arrest, Gibson gave a confession to Sheriff Jackson of Orange County. Despite the inconsistencies in his statement, the...

Fullerton wanted justice. The white man story does not seem to have been followed up. After testing the flashlight found at the scene,...

Who killed Roy Trapp? Who committed the "Satanic midnight" murders? Mirroring the Torres case, at first, it was believed that the...

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...

When local newspapers mentioned black Americans, it was typically in regard to crime, the “negro problem,” or some news of a lynching or...

In the late nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth, Southern California experienced an expansion of transcontinental,...

Orange County has never had a substantial black population, but black people have always been a part of Orange County. Though they did...

For some reason, from the winter of 1892 to the spring of 1897, local papers dedicated several news cycles to covering the alleged...

With the migration of white southerners to the Southland in the wake of the Civil War, more black Americans arrived in Orange County,...

Whereas narratives of Los Angeles emphasize the continual presence of people of African descent in its history - from Spanish settlement...