2024 CA State Capitol Kwanzaa Celebration - Matunda Ya Kwanza - California 175

California State Capitol Kwanzaa Press Conference and Kinara Making Workshop
Matunda Ya Kwanzaa - First Fruits of the Harvest - Kickoff 2024 Kwanzaa Food & Ag Expo

Folsom, California - Matunda Ya Kwanza means (First Fruits of the Harvest) and officially begins Kwanzaa Celebration and our journey to document and preserve 19th Century California History, preserving salient contributions to the path towards establishing of the Great State of California.

Together, California 175 will highlight our California Pan African Cultural Heritage throughout the vast Alta California Mexican Territory, to the 1846 Bear Flag Revolt, US-Mexican War and path toward "Manifest Destiny" becoming the 31st State of the Union, established by the U.S. Congress on September 9, 1850.

From the high desert plains near Lake Mt. Shastina, Siskiyou County to the rugged foothill streams above Jamul, San Diego County and all points in between... we continue to travel while exploring, researching and celebrating our unique early California Pan African Pioneer journey yearning for a greater measure of freedom (1840-1875)

Matunda ya Kwanza - California 175 (First Fruits of the Harvest) begins our focused efforts forming new partnerships, sponsorships and collaborations with our California State Library, California State Archives and global stakeholders as we identify pioneer origins, transportation modes and initial destinations of California Pioneers of Pan African Ancestry, both free and enslaved.

Historic Negro Bar, Sacramento County remains our physical headquarters of our California 175 - Underground Railroad Network to Freedom, as originally established, Juneteenth 2000, at the turn of the century.

Official records document out authentic geological location of 1848 Negro Bar gold mining camp, that grew into a townsite in the unincorporated northeastern part of Sacramento County.
The town of Negro Bar, Sacramento County was established upon land entitled to Honorable Don Guillermo Alexander Leidesdorff, Jr., "Pan African Founding Father of California" a small portion of his 1844 Mexican Land Grant, Rancho Rio De Los Americanos.

A nearly mile long gravel gold mining district will forever be known as "Negro Bar" named after early "Negro Miners" on land owned by Honorable William Alexander Leidesdorff, Jr. in 1848 Alta California, Mexico Territory when the light of day shines upon authentic primary source documents.

U.S. Army Officer P.B. Reading and James Marshall provided official written documentation via a commissioned report of land squatters and rich gold claims, Spring of 1848.

US Vice Consul to Mexico, Honorable William Alexander Leidesdorff, Jr. who owned many downtown San Francisco properties, businesses and 8 Spanish Leagues or 35,321 acres of land, Rancho Rio de Los Americanos, over 15 miles along today's American River Parkway.

Several thousand early California Pan African placer miners both enslaved and free were part of a much larger multicultural influx into the regional Gold Mining Districts of California, seeking fortunes in the newly discovered gold fields.

Major flooding along the American River in the Spring of 1852 and new legislation entitled the 'California Fugitive Slave Act of 1852' encouraged many early California Pioneers of Pan African Ancestry to move far away from local "Slave Patrols" to remote regions throughout the vast Gold Mining Districts throughout California.

By September 1854, Negro Bar, Sacramento County was a regional transportation hub for global miners as seen on the official survey map by Theodore Judah that shows the entire proposed Sacramento Valley Railroad route with the town grid of Granite City overlayed upon the existing town of Negro Bar. Construction of the "first railroad in the west" began February 1855, and after the death of Joseph Libby Folsom, construction was completed in February 1856.

Nearly a century later, in mid-1950's, after several decades of mechanical dredging for gold, the area "under the bridge," known as Negro Bar, was utilized as a concrete staging area for the constriction of Folsom Dam by the US Army Corps of Engineers, today operated by US Department of Interior, Bureau of Reclamation.

The vast land surrounding Folsom Lake is owned by the U.S. Department of Interior (Federal Land) named Folsom Lake Recreational Area and is managed by California State Parks, California Natural Resource Agency.

Matunda ya Kwanza - California 175, Thursday, December 26, 2024, 11:30 am - 1:30 pm, California State Capitol Rose Garden we kick-off our week long "California Grown" holiday utilizing the 7 principles and 7 symbols of Kwanzaa aligned with the spirit of MAAT (right-order).

Together, we share our efforts toward a broader, inclusive and transparent past, present and future throughout the Great State of California and beyond for the world to appreciate.