Negro Bar, a historic California park, could be renamed. Here’s why that sparked controversy
Words are a communication tool that most people utilize to convey messages.
These expressions have different meanings based on the context or tone in which they are used. Oftentimes, the interpretation of a term is based on the one delivering the message and how the next individual receives it.
The title “Negro” brings up a conversation about whether the epithet is offensive or socially acceptable in modern-day dialogue.
Residents of Folsom and visitors of Negro Bar, a historic area of Folsom Lake State Recreation Area, have long debated whether the name of the park should have the word “Negro” in its title.
Some feel that “Negro” is an offensive word because it’s deemed as replacement for the n-word.
Others disagree.
Despite the opposing views from those who believe the name adds historical context to the park, there has been a vote by a citizen group to change the name. The California Department of Parks and Recreation has final say on whether the name changes.
Michael Harris is a board member of the Sacramento Historical Society. He says that it’s not the word but instead the history behind it.
The origins of the park’s name go back to the Gold Rush days of California.
Free Black men in the eastern and northern parts of the United States were drawn to the promise of potential fortune, urged by Black and antislavery newspapers. And some Black men who had been brought to California as slaves in the preceding years were ultimately able to purchase their freedom with gold they had mined.
“This place is the last place that’s recognizable in the context of the Gold Rush era that [Black] people were here,” said Harris. “They want to feel good in the 21st century, and completely disrespect the legacy of people of African descent.”
History of Negro Bar in Folsom
A draft map from the mid-1850s by Theodore Judah of the city of Folsom includes small black squares along what was then the Old Road to Sacramento, denoting the settlements near Negro Bar. It’s now the location of the city’s solid waste plant, just off Folsom Boulevard.
That map, which also notes “Negro Bar” just under the river, would ultimately be submitted to a county recorder. But through the 1930s, the area was known and identified with the racist term in newspapers, a Sacramento Bee review shows. In at least one U.S. Geological Survey map from 1941, the area north of the American River now home to the state park was also identified with the n-word.
The name of the state park officially used the n-word, according to California State Parks, until a 1960 updated edition of a U.S. Geological Survey map. A few years later, the federal government ordered the U.S. Board on Geographic to automatically changed all occurrences of n-word to the word “negro” for parks and sites nationwide.
By 1850, Black miners had quickly established several mining camps along the southern bank of the American River just across where the current state park is located, according to historian Clarence Caesar in his paper “The Historical Demographics of Sacramento’s Black Community, 1848-1900.”
According to Caesar, who is also a former historian for the state’s park department, many of the mining communities along the river saw a “growing number of black prospectors, both slave and free.
“The historical name of Negro Bar, here in Folsom, I believe, is very important to keep the name because it is based on a township that existed in this area of Folsom, and the residents have a really a historical treasure,” said Angela DeShields, a Woodland resident and visitor of Negro Bar.
Calls for renaming
The debate on changing the park’s name has been brewing for years. An online petition that called for the state park’s moniker to be changed, created by Stockton resident Phaedra Jones in 2018, has since garnered more than 28,000 signatures from California residents.
Suggestions have floated around to rename the park after the original land owner or one of the Black pioneer miners of the area.
The area was originally owned by William Ledeisdorff, a biracial Black man, who allowed African Americans to first prospect the area to mine gold.
“My personal view is that it should be named after an African American who worked hard on his land, who did everything in their power to grow and build this land,” said Samuel Kinsey, Outreach Coordinator of the California Black Chamber of Commerce. “It’s no disrespect to any other race, but the context proves African Americans did build and produce this land.”
Conscious Cultural Connections, or C3, is a coalition of individuals that explore anti-Black racism beginning with petitioning to rename the park.
One of the founders, Jenn Johnson, says the name wouldn’t be offensive if the town was majority Black.
“This bar is called as Negro bar, it’s representative of the African American community, and while I can empathize with people not wanting to change the name, the African American community is not represented within this town,” said Johnson. “Therefore it’s not appropriate to have a term like ‘Negro’ spewed across the entire town.”
In the current-day area, the Black population in Folsom makes up 3% with 2,663 residents, compared to the white population that’s 70%.
The murder of George Floyd last year resparked conversations surrounding the state park’s controversy name. As protesters toppled monuments to Confederate soldiers, colonizers, slave owners, the Sacramento region was forced to reckon with its own symbols of racial injustice.
The popular ski resort near Lake Tahoe, formerly known as Squaw Valley, announced last summer that it had decided to drop the word “squaw” from its name. The term is a slur derogatory toward Native American women.
In places across the country, officials have begun to remove pejorative terms from the names of parks and nature sites.
A federal board earlier this month approved the renaming of 16 sites in Texas whose names include the word “Negro,” after the Texas legislature unanimously approved a bill urging that the names be changed.
In some cases, the new designations still refer to the original historical namesake.
In 2017, for example, the U.S. Board of Geographic Names approved the renaming of “Negro Bill Canyon” in southeast Utah to “William Grandstaff Canyon,” which honors the Black man who ran cattle in the area. The canyon had previously been referred to as “N-word Bill Canyon” through the 1940s.
This story was originally published June 24, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Negro Bar, a historic California park, could be renamed. Here’s why that sparked controversy."
