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The Enduring Impact of African Americans in the Central Valley

Updated: 4 days ago

Photo courtesy of the Fresno City & County Historical Society and the Pop Laval Foundation. All rights reserved. Julia Bell, known as the woman who planted Fowler’s first peach tree, was a pioneering landowner and community leader in rural Fresno County. Widowed by 1900, she headed her household, helped reunite family members migrating from the South, and co-founded the area’s first all-Black church, First Baptist Church. In 1919, when Fowler was little more than a wheat field, Bell planted the town’s first peach tree. This photograph, part of the Hutchison Collection, was taken in Fowler, California.
Photo courtesy of the Fresno City & County Historical Society and the Pop Laval Foundation. All rights reserved. Julia Bell, known as the woman who planted Fowler’s first peach tree, was a pioneering landowner and community leader in rural Fresno County. Widowed by 1900, she headed her household, helped reunite family members migrating from the South, and co-founded the area’s first all-Black church, First Baptist Church. In 1919, when Fowler was little more than a wheat field, Bell planted the town’s first peach tree. This photograph, part of the Hutchison Collection, was taken in Fowler, California.


Julia Bell was an African American woman best remembered for something fundamental to this proudly agricultural Valley: She planted the first peach tree in what is now Fowler. Born to enslaved parents in South Carolina, she and her husband came to California in the late 1880s and settled in rural Fresno County. 


Ms. Bell’s story reflects the essential contributions of African Americans in the Central Valley.


In the 1800s, African Americans were recruited from the South to work in the Valley and would continue to migrate here throughout the early 1900s and beyond. A large number of African Americans came in the 1930s and 1940s after World War II. Some came to work in agriculture, others to help build the railroad. 


Photo courtesy of the Fresno City & County Historical Society and the Pop Laval Foundation.  All rights reserved. Circa 1910. Believed to depict Bill Palmer, the first African American man in Fresno to own a mule train. Black farmers were instrumental to Central Valley agriculture in the early 20th century, using land, labor, and livestock to establish economic stability and community.
Photo courtesy of the Fresno City & County Historical Society and the Pop Laval Foundation.  All rights reserved. Circa 1910. Believed to depict Bill Palmer, the first African American man in Fresno to own a mule train. Black farmers were instrumental to Central Valley agriculture in the early 20th century, using land, labor, and livestock to establish economic stability and community.

Drawn by promises of opportunity and fleeing overtly racist practices in the South, African Americans came to the Valley filled with hope. However, when they arrived, they were met with covert racism and systemic racial discrimination. Examples include practices like redlining, which blocked African Americans from getting loans to buy houses in certain neighborhoods, and “sundown towns,” where people of color could visit but were required to leave by the time it was dark outside. 


These practices would continue well into the Civil Rights Era, and even prompted Martin Luther King Jr. to visit the Central Valley in June 1964 to protest unfair housing laws. Mattie B. Meyers, a local civil rights leader at that time, was pivotal in bringing Dr. King to the Valley. Meyers was the head of the Fresno chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and a passionate advocate for housing and educational equality. 


Although progress has been made, more remains to be done.  Many organizations and efforts have stepped up to ensure justice and equality for African Americans and other people of color throughout the Central Valley. These initiatives include:


We encourage you to explore these and other organizations to better understand the experience and impact of African Americans in the Central Valley.  To hear more stories about early African American settlers in the region, visit valleyhistory.org 


This story is part of the Central Valley Community Foundation’s “Sixty Stories That Shaped Us” initiative to help mark 60 years since our founding. We invite you to join us in celebrating this milestone as well as this special place we call home. To learn more, visit us at centralvalleycf.org and follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn @centralvalleycf.





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