The Bay Area has been home to prominent Black community leaders since the Gold Rush, when workers and entrepreneurs made their way to California, some enslaved and some to escape Slave States (California joined the Union in 1850 as a Free State, which did not eradicate discrimination but prohibited slavery).
By 1857 a statewide “Colored Convention” was held in San Francisco, which led to the creation of the Mirror of the Times, California’s first Black newspaper. In 1860, 2% of the city’s population was Black, mostly middle class. At the time, George Washington Dennis, a former slave turned entrepreneur, real estate developer, and advocate for Black rights was the city’s wealthiest Black man.
During World War II, the total African American population in the Bay Area rose from less than 20,000 in 1940 to over 60,000 in 1945, as shipbuilding jobs around the Bay drew Black southerners seeking work and escaping Jim Crow laws.
The growth of the Black population had a profound effect on the culture of the Bay Area, In the 1960’s the Black Panther Party, a leftist political party with a strong intellectual and socio-cultural orientation was founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, students from Merritt College in Oakland. The Black Panthers promoted Black power and Black nationalism, spearheading the national political movement from the Oakland headquarters.
Kamala Harris, who was born in Oakland, was a product of the vibrant intellectual and socially conscious environment. She would go on to serve as California Attorney General, U.S. Senator representing California, and, in 2020, became the first female U.S. Vice President, making her the highest-ranking female official in U.S. history.
Below, in honor of Black History Month, we highlight the lives and work of several prominent Black historical figures from the Bay Area.
Feature image: Women of the Black Panther Party. From Wikimedia Commons

Maya Angelou
Poet and activist whose prose earned her the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama
Maya Angelou (1928 – 2014) was a renowned American memoirist, poet and activist, but even in the Bay Area, many are not aware of her stint as San Francisco’s first Black female streetcar conductor.
In the early 1940’s, pre-World War II, Angelou, who was born Marguerite Ann Johnson, moved to Oakland with her mother. She attended George Washington High School and, when war broke out and jobs were plentiful, she decided to take a break from high school to work (she was a year ahead of her classmates academically). At age 15, she applied to be a streetcar conductor and got the job.
Later, in the 1950s, Angelou met choreographer Alvin Ailey and formed a dance team with him called “Al and Rita.” The duo performed around the Bay Area until Angelou moved to New York City briefly to further her dance career. When she returned to San Francisco, she began performing at the Purple Onion, a celebrated club in North Beach. It was there that she took on the name Maya Angelou.
Angelou went on to become one of the nation’s most notable authors and poets, publishing her memoir, “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” in 1969. In 2010, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.
Delilah Beasley
The first Black female columnist in a major metropolitan newspaper
Delilah Beasley, (1867 – 1934) was an Oakland resident who became the first Black woman in the United States to be regularly published in a major metropolitan newspaper.
Beasley launched her career as a newspaper columnist in Cleveland in 1883, when she was just 26 years old, writing for the local Black paper, the Cleveland Gazette. Three years later, she began publishing a column in the Sunday edition of the Cincinnati Enquirer.
In 1919, after to moving to Oakland, she began to attend classes at UC Berkeley where she researched and eventually published a book called The Negro Trail-Blazers of California, chronicling the contributions and achievements of Black people in early California history. In 1925 she became a columnist for the Sunday edition of the Oakland Tribune, writing a column called “Activities Among Negroes,” which she wrote until her death in 1934.

Ron Dellums
Democratic House Representative who fought for racial equality
Oakland-born Ronald Dellums was a Democratic House Representative from 1971 until 1998. His background and education were solidly Bay Area, having received an associate’s degree from Oakland City College (now Merritt College), a bachelor’s from San Francisco State University and a Master’s of Social Work from UC Berkeley. Dellums also taught at the latter two universities.
Dellums started his political career on the Berkeley city council in 1967 before running for the U.S. House of Representatives on an anti-war platform. Once a Congressman, he initiated an inquiry on American war crimes in Vietnam. He also used his position to legislate for racial equality, launching hearings on racism in the military and initiating the first legislation to sanction South Africa’s apartheid regime.

A founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, Dellums also became a member and eventual chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. In 1993, as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, he aimed to persuade President Bill Clinton to honor his commitment to lift the military’s ban on gay servicepeople.
Dellums examined urban issues that were not being addressed in other forums, including education, housing, public safety, transportation and health care. He even introduced legislation in 1977 to create a national health service, which would have provided free health care to all U.S. citizens.
Dellums resigned from the House in 1998 and founded his own lobbying firm in 2001, but he returned to politics in 2006 to run a successful campaign for Oakland mayor. Dellums’ accomplished career has been honored by a number of awards and designations, including the creation of the Ronald V. Dellums Chair in peace and conflict studies at UC Berkeley. He passed away in June 2018.

George Duke
A legendary musician who contributed to soul, jazz and funk
Born in San Rafael and raised in Marin City, George Duke gravitated to the piano at the ripe age of 4 and began his formal studies a few years later at the local Baptist church.
Duke attended nearby Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley. His musical education continued at San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in trombone and composition with a minor in contrabass. After that, he earned a master’s in composition from San Francisco State University and also taught at Oakland’s Merritt College.
Duke switched from classical piano to jazz at the behest of his cousin, bassist Charles Burrell. His first album arrived in 1966 and the second in 1970 — the latter of which he created with French violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, a fellow San Francisco musician.

One of Duke’s performances with Ponty had two influential listeners in the audience: Frank Zappa and saxophonist Cannonball Adderley. The two invited Duke to join their bands, and he accepted, spending two years with Zappa’s Mothers of Invention, then two years with Adderley’s band before going back to Zappa in 1973. Zappa also contributed guitar solos to Duke’s album Feel (1974).
Duke’s albums wove soul, jazz and funk sounds, while maintaining a pop appeal that kept his records high on the charts. As the 1980s progressed, he began to move into a new role as a record producer. Duke’s discography is extensive, and he created hits for superstars like Anita Baker, Gladys Knight and many more. He also participated in the 1988 Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute concert as its musical director.
Duke passed away from chronic lymphocytic leukemia on August 5, 2013 in Los Angeles at the age of 67.
Sargent Johnson
The first Black West Coast artist to gain national notoriety
Sargent Johnson (1888 – 1967) moved to San Francisco in 1915, at age 27, to study painting, drawing and sculpture. From 1919 to 1923 he studied drawing and painting at the California School of Fine Arts (the now closed San Francisco Art Institute).
He was known for his Abstract Figurative and Early Modern styles. A painter, potter, ceramicist, printmaker, graphic artist, sculptor, and carver, he worked in various mediums, including ceramics, clay, stone, wood, terra cotta, tiled murals, watercolor, oil on canvas, porcelain enamel on steel, and lithography.
Johnson was committed to using his art to create positive representations of Black people., studying African carvings and, in the 1930s, while working on public art projects for the New Deal, expanding his range of influences and subjects, taking on abstraction as well as Mexican muralism. Although often associated with the Harlem Renaissance artists, Johnson was actually the first Black West Coast artist to gain national notoriety.
Mary Ellen Pleasant
A successful businesswoman who outsmarted 19th Century prejudices
There’s a good chance you’ve heard of Mary Ellen Pleasant if:
a. You live in San Francisco, or …
b. Watch Comedy Central.
Pleasant’s story was covered — albeit sloppily — in a popular episode of Drunk History. But her contributions to society go beyond a brief comedy special.
Pleasant came to San Francisco from New England at the height of the Gold Rush, passing herself off as a white woman for years to evade scrutiny. She amassed a fortune through smart investment and business sense, investing in properties in Oakland and San Francisco and opening laundries and boardinghouses that were mostly staffed by Black people. She put her money to good use, working to free enslaved African Americans and shelter them in the West.
While working as a housekeeper for powerful San Francisco families, Pleasant honed her business savvy and chose investments based on the conversations she overhead between influential men. Pleasant is also noted for having sued a streetcar company for denying service to Black citizens after a driver refused to stop for her. The case went to the California Supreme Court, which declared segregation on streetcars to be unconstitutional. A wealthy woman, in 1890 she listed her profession as “capitalist” in the census.

But her money and connections did not shield her from trouble. Pleasant’s final years were spent dealing with fallout over her relationship with Thomas Bell — a well-to-do business partner with whom she resided on the corner of Bush and Octavia. She financed and developed plans for large mansion that she shared with the Bell family, making the mansion outwardly seem like it was the Bell’s estate. After Thomas Bell died in 1892, she had lost most of her estate and was deemed insolvent.
Her former mansion was eventually demolished and is now the Mary Ellen Pleasant Memorial Park. Six old eucalyptus trees that once stood within her gardens can still be seen next to the historical marker erected in her memory on the corner.
Willie Mays

Major League Baseball center fielder who some consider the best player in history
Willie Mays (1931-2024), known affectionately as the “Say Hey Kid,” was a Hall of Fame center fielder and 24-time All-Star who played with the Giants (first in New York and later in San Francisco). Mays remains one of just four players in Major League Baseball (MLB) to record more than 600 home runs and 3,000 hits. His athletic brilliance (a .301 batting average), winning personality and passion for the game made him a beloved star. To this day Mays is respected as one of the best all-around players in baseball history.
Born in Alabama and coming of age as an athlete at a time when segregation was ongoing in the South, Mays started his career in the negro leagues from 1948-1950 before emerging in the MLB where he went on to play for 23 seasons. In November 2015, President Barack Obama honored Willie Mays with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Tupak Shakur
The Hip Hop artist from Marin City who remains one of the most influential musical artists of our time
Tupak Shakur (1971 – 1996) was a hip-hop artist, poet and social justice activist. Although Shakur released music for only five years, and was shot and killed at age 25, he continues to be one of the most prolific and influential recording artists in modern music history, with over 75 million records sold worldwide.
Born in New York City to activist parents who were members of the Black Panther party, Shakur moved to Baltimore where he started high school at the Baltimore School of the Arts. In 1988, he moved to Marin City, California where he attended Tamalpais High School. Releasing rap songs that were profound in their political messages and included pointed commentary on race relations, the marginalization of the Black people and the lives of young Black me, he became a central figure in the emergence of “West Coast Rap” and, later in his life, “Gangsta Rap.”
Music historians regard Tupak Shakur as one of the most influential musical artists of the 20th century. In 2023, FX network released a multi-part documentary series about Shakur’s life and career entitled Dear Mama, which became the network’s most viewed documentary series ever. In April of 2017, Tupak Shakur was posthumously inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Iola Williams
A trailblazing politician who championed the rights of minorities in San Jose
Iola Williams was born on February 2, 1936, in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. In 1955, she married an Air Force officer, whose career caused the two and their children to frequently move cities. Eventually, the family landed in San Jose in 1969.
Williams was working as a licensed vocational nurse when she decided to run for her local school board. Upon winning, Williams became the first African-American to be elected to the Franklin-McKinley School District school board, and she held that post until her appointment to the San Jose City Council in 1979.
The 1970s in San Jose saw a boom of women winning public office — a trend that Williams portended with her 1970 school board victory. This electoral trend even caused some to call Santa Clara County the “feminist capital of the world.” Williams was also the first African American to serve on the city council, and she served on it until her 1991 retirement.

Along with being a trailblazer in San Jose politics, Williams was a champion of civil rights for women, minorities and the LGBTQ+ community. She was noted to have been the only elected official to attend the 1986 dinner held by the LGBTQ rights organization Bay Area Municipal Elections Committee (BAYMEC). After 12 years on the city council, Williams retired from San Jose politics and returned to her hometown of Hattiesburg. She continued to be heavily involved in community affairs, like helping to revamp Hattiesburg’s USO Club and create the African American Military History Museum.
In 2016, the San Jose African-American Community Service Agency recognized Williams with a Lifetime Achievement Award, which the organization renamed after Williams. At the ceremony, Williams commented on the history undergirding her achievements:
“My grandmother could not vote. My mother, it wasn’t until the 70s until she could vote. So a lot of things happened during that time. They seemed like little things but they carried families through the years. We have seen a lot of the things that remain, but there’s so much that has to be done.”
Williams passed away at the age of 83 on April 4, 2019, from Parkinson’s disease.
Hettie B. Tilghman
Trailblazing social activist for the rights of Black women and youth
Hettie B. Tilghman (1871–1933) was a social justice activist and civic leader who paved the way for 20th century activism around the rights of Black women and youth.
Born in San Francisco in 1871, Tilghman moved with her family to Oakland in 1885 and lived there for the rest of her life, leading social justice social service groups in both Oakland and San Francisco. She served on the board of the Home for Aged and Infirm Colored People, was then elected president of the California State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, became president of the Fannie Wall Children’s Home and Day Nursery, the only daycare and orphanage available to children of color in the area, and ran the Oakland branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She established and managed a YWCA specifically dedicated to Black youth, co-founded the Phyllis Wheatley Club of the East Bay and served as president of the Alameda County League of Colored Women Voters, as well as assuming a leadership role in the Black women’s division of the League of Women Voters.
During World War I, Tilghman organized a group called First Liberty Boys to celebrate all of the Black men drafted into the Army from the Bay Area. And finally, she worked as the financial secretary of Northern Federation of California Women’s Clubs and was an active member in the national and local women’s suffrage movements until her death in 1933.
Celebrate Black History Month in the Bay Area
Looking for ways to honor the occasion? Check out these listings for events taking place this month: