February is Black History Month

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE VALLEY:

To celebrate Black History Month in February, the Historical Society Archives selected these images from our collections relating to the African American experience in the Central Valley.

Also, we’ve included a description of a wonderful partnership with a class of young historians who are researching an important African American pioneer in Fresno County – Gabriel Moore!

Up from Slavery:  The Life of Gabriel Bibbard Moore

Four months ago, a class of history students from Valley Prep Charter School in Fresno, California, discovered the broken and battered tombstone of Gabriel Bibbard Moore in the Akers Cemetery near Centerville, California. The young historians are going to correct an injustice by placing a marker beside his vandalized tombstone that will tell folks who he was.

Beneath this broken tombstone lies Gabriel Bibbard Moore
Born a slave in Alabama, July 2, 1812
Drowned in the Kings River, May 25, 1880, A FREE MAN!

In cooperation with the Fresno Historical Society, a ceremony will be conducted by the 15 teenage historians who will be joined by the entire student body of Valley Prep Charter School and many local dignitaries Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 10AM, Akers Cemetery, Centerville, California.

How the project came about:
The launching of Fresno County’s Sesquicentennial celebration in April 2006 included a wagon train trek, which began in Firebaugh and ended in Fresno. This unique community effort drew over 300 young pioneer 5th graders out of their classrooms and onto the trail to help ring the bell for Fresno County’s 150th birthday.

In the course of that journey, the wagons happened by the Akers Cemetery on Trimmer Springs Road in Centerville. As the mules and kids took a breather, Bill Coate, educator and coordinator of the educational project, walked over to the old graveyard. He stepped through the gate and immediately to his left he spied an old, broken tombstone. The top portion carrying the name had been knocked off and taken away, but the remaining inscription told that whoever was resting beneath that marker had died on May 25, 1880 and was 67 years, 10 months, and 23 days in age.

Bill immediately realized that he was standing at the grave of Gabriel Moore, and ex-slave and Fresno County’s first and most successful African-American cattleman. This positive identification was made possible from research completed by June English forty years earlier and recorded in an issue of The Ash Tree Echo.

Account of Gabriel Moore’s life according to Ms. June English:
In 1965, Ms. English had stood precisely where Bill Coate was standing in 2006. She had gone to the Akers Cemetery to record the names of the pioneers buried there. When she came to Gabe Moore’s tombstone, it had already been vandalized; however, the broken off portion containing his name was lying on the ground, allowing her to record the complete inscription.

Mr. Coate had read Ms. English’s Ash Tree Echo article on Gabe Moore in the California Room of the Fresno County Library. She told a compelling story in a very short space.

Moore had been the slave of the Glenn family in Arkansas. He was brought to California by Richard and William Glenn in 1853 with the Akers wagon train. After settling in freedom on the Kings River, Gabe proceeded to make himself into a wealthy free man—first by farming and then by cattle raising. By 1860, just seven years out of slavery, Gabe had accumulated $3,000 in personal property.

An account from the Fresno Expositor dated January 4, 1871 told of a county clerk refusing to allow Gabe to vote, even though the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution had given black men the right to vote nearly a year earlier, although his name shows up on the Fresno County voter registration list in 1872.  According to Ms. English, Gabe Moore was drowned in 1880 while attempting to drive his cattle across the King’s River. He left a wife, a son, 4 adopted children and a $15,000 estate.

Valley Prep students consider the project:
In August 2007, Mr. Coate met his new class at Valley Prep Charter School. They were a bright, ambitious group, and after pondering what little they had been told of Gabe Moore, they decided to create a class project and link it with the Fresno Historical Society.

These young sleuths developed a plan. With the help of the Fresno Historical Society, they would comb the primary and secondary sources in search of the pieces of Gabe Moore’s life that lay scattered through the various local archives. They would fit those pieces together and construct a documented chronology of Moore’s life, then they would write his story.

At the end of the school year they will present their findings and tell Gabe’s story. 

This month, in honor of Black History Month, there will be a ceremony of remembrance at Gabe Moore’s grave and an unveiling of the new grave marker next to Gabe’s original marker—one which would rescue Gabriel Bibbard Moore from the abyss of historical amnesia.

Fresno Historical Society partnership:
The class has met and formed a partnership with Jill Moffat, Executive Director of the Fresno Historical Society, and Sharon Hiigel, the Society’s Curator of Collections and Education, for the purpose of completing this project. Students visited the Society’s archives and retrieved and examined the United States Census reports, 19th Century Newspaper archives (the Expositor and Republican); 1882 History of Fresno County by Wallace Elliot, Fresno County tax records, voter registration lists, grantor/grantee land records and probate records.

The students are communicating with Crawford County, Arkansas, in an attempt to search the county records there, including the 1850 Slave Schedule, via the internet.

“He early saw the possibilities of this region and settled down here to make it his home. He deserves the plaudits
of this people . . ."

Fresno Expositor editorial, 1897.