On this day in 1908 Colonel Allensworth's vision of California's first town founded, funded, and governed by African Americans begun to materialize.
The California Colony and Home Promoting Association filed the township site plan for Allensworth on August 8, 1908. Filing of the site plan on August 8, 1908 signaled the official beginning of Allensworth, California.
Colonel Allensworth, William Payne, Dr. William Peck, J. W. Palmer and Harvey Mitchell incorporated the California Colony and Home Promoting Association and purchased a nine hundred acre tract of land at a Santa Fe railroad stop, about forty miles north of Bakersfield. On this tract of land rose a schoolhouse to nourish the mind, homes to nourish the body and a church to nourish the soul.
On this day, take five minutes to imagine the courage it took for those first families to take a bare piece of land and turn it into a town of independent self-respecting African Americans. A town with a school, hotel, library, drugstore, barbershop, church and two general stores, all owned and run by African Americans.
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