About the Author

Jan Batiste Adkins, an educator and lecturer, has spent the last five years researching and documenting the history of San Francisco's African American pioneers. Her master's thesis from San Jose State University documented the history of the African American community as reflected in black newspapers of the 1850s through the 1890s. This book is an expansion of that project, for which she has consulted area archives, museums, and libraries, including the California Historical Society, the San Francisco African American Historical Society, the African American Museum and Library at Oakland, San Francisco Public Library History Center, California State Public Library, church and organization archives, and family albums. She has managed to weave a photographic tapestry of the amazing stories and history that began during the early years of the Gold Rush and continue into the present era.