San Joaquins trains will bring visitors to celebrate site unique to California’s African American history

By David Lipari, San Joaquin Joint Powers Authority

Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park is holding a celebratory “re-dedication” event on Saturday, October 14 from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. In partnership, Amtrak San Joaquins has scheduled a special stop at the park for multiple trains, bookable at a 50 percent discount rate to bring travelers to the historically significant park.  

The town of Allensworth was established in 1908 by Colonel Allen Allensworth and at one point was home to more than 300 families. The park is a California state treasure because it was the first town in California to be founded, financed, and governed by African Americans. Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park became a historical landmark in 1974.

The re-dedication is one of four major annual events hosted by Friends of Allensworth (FOA), a 501(c)(3) charitable organization whose mission is to support, promote, and advance the educational and interpretive activities at colonel Allensworth State Historic Park. According to FOA, the re-dedication is “presented to renew the commitment of the citizens of California to help the Department of Parks and Recreation preserve the history of the ethnically diverse contributions made in the development of the state of California and our nation.”

The festival will feature historical re-enactments, storytelling, square dancing, food vendors, crafts, and more.

“We are thrilled to partner once again with Amtrak San Joaquins to reconnect Californians with the historic town of Allensworth,” stated FOA President, Sasha Biscoe. “As a cornerstone of California’s rich history, Allensworth deserves to be experienced by all. Amtrak San Joaquins continues to provide a convenient, cost-effective, and enjoyable journey to this significant location. Mark your calendars for October 14th to partake in a day of historical immersion, as we recommit to preserving this invaluable site, all while traveling in the comfort and style that only Amtrak San Joaquins can offer.”

The southbound trains that will be running for the event include trains 702, 710, 712, and 714. When purchasing train tickets, a 50 percent discount will automatically be applied to the ticket purchase. Riders can save an additional 50 percent on up to five companion tickets by using the Friends and Family Discount code (V302). Additional discount programs regularly available to riders includes: 

• Infants under 2 years of age ride for free 
• Children 2-12 years old ride half-price every day
• Seniors (62+ years of age) receive 15% off 
• Veterans & active military members receive 15% off 
• Disabled riders save 10% off 

Visitors attending the re-dedication will be able to take Amtrak San Joaquins trains to the Allensworth station. From there, riders will be met by a free shuttle for the short ride to the main property. The Allensworth station is normally a whistle stop on the San Joaquins available to be booked by groups desiring to visit the park. 

Train tickets to Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park can be booked online at amtraksanjoaquins.com. For more information on how to book a group trip to Allensworth, please contact Carmen Setness, community outreach coordinator for San Joaquin Regional Rail Commission (SJRRC), at Carmen@sjjpa.com. 

About Allensworth State Historic Park

The town of Allensworth is located in the heart of the Central Valley, about 30 miles north of Bakersfield, and has a rich history that is of interest to students, families, history buffs, minority community organizations, and anyone else looking to spend a fun day exploring the historic community and its restored buildings. In 1908, Allensworth was established as a town founded, financed and governed by African Americans. There were a series of challenges impeding the town’s long-term survival, but it is celebrated as a key historic icon, and in 1974 California State Parks purchased the land in order to maintain it as a site for visitors to learn and explore the Colonel’s house, historic schoolhouse, Baptist church, and library. 

About the San Joaquin Joint Powers Authority (SJJPA)

Since July 2015, SJJPA has been responsible for the management and administration of Amtrak San Joaquins. SJJPA is governed by Board Members representing each of the ten (10) Member Agencies along the 365-mile San Joaquins Corridor. For more information on SJJPA see www.sjjpa.com.
Amtrak San Joaquins is Amtrak’s 6th busiest route with 18 train stations throughout the Central Valley and Bay Area, providing a safe, comfortable and reliable way to travel throughout California. Amtrak San Joaquins is currently running six daily round-trips. In addition to the train service, Amtrak San Joaquins Thruway buses provide connecting service to 135 destinations in California and Nevada including Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Napa Valley, Las Vegas and Reno. 

Named for Bay Miwok tribe that inhabited area

By Antioch Recreation Department

Join us on Saturday, August 5th, as we welcome Antioch’s newest park into our community. Named after the Bay Miwok indigenous tribes Julpun Park is located at 5500 Sierra Trail Way. The ribbon cutting ceremony will take place at 11:00 am.

According to the Museum of the San Ramon Valley, “Identified in Father Narciso Duran’s topographical map in 1824, the Julpun lived in the northeastern corner of the East Bay, probably including present-day Oakley, Brentwood and some of Antioch.  Thus, their land included the confluence of the San Joaquin River and lower Marsh Creek. Initially many of them moved eastward and northward into the delta rather than submit to the mission system.  A few went to Mission Dolores in 1806 and Mission San Jose from 1806-1808, with 108 more entering Mission San Jose by 1813.  (Author Randall) Milliken (in his book entitled, Time of Little Choice) lists a total of 141 Julpuns baptized by 1819.

John Marsh bought his Rancho Los Meganos from Jose Noriega in 1837, an area which included the Julpun’s territory; he called the Indians there ‘Pulpunes’.  Julpuns may have returned to their homeland to work for Marsh after Mission San Jose was secularized in 1836.”

Following is the text of the Declaration of Independence in celebration of Independence Day, July 4th, 2023:

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

---

The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:

Column 1

Georgia:

Button Gwinnett

Lyman Hall

George Walton

Column 2

North Carolina:

William Hooper

Joseph Hewes

John Penn

South Carolina:

Edward Rutledge

Thomas Heyward, Jr.

Thomas Lynch, Jr.

Arthur Middleton

Column 3

Massachusetts:

John Hancock

Maryland:

Samuel Chase

William Paca

Thomas Stone

Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:

George Wythe

Richard Henry Lee

Thomas Jefferson

Benjamin Harrison

Thomas Nelson, Jr.

Francis Lightfoot Lee

Carter Braxton

Column 4

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris

Benjamin Rush

Benjamin Franklin

John Morton

George Clymer

James Smith

George Taylor

James Wilson

George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney

George Read

Thomas McKean

Column 5

New York:

William Floyd

Philip Livingston

Francis Lewis

Lewis Morris

New Jersey:

Richard Stockton

John Witherspoon

Francis Hopkinson

John Hart

Abraham Clark

Column 6

New Hampshire:

Josiah Bartlett

William Whipple

Massachusetts:

Samuel Adams

John Adams

Robert Treat Paine

Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:

Stephen Hopkins

William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman

Samuel Huntington

William Williams

Oliver Wolcott

New Hampshire:

Matthew Thornton

From the website: www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration.html

Happy Independence Day from the Antioch Herald!

By Allen D. Payton

During the Antioch Juneteenth Celebration event a few years ago, I shared the fact with a few people, mainly youth, in attendance, that Juneteenth and the ending of slavery in the U.S. was the result of the efforts of the Republican Party, and some of them were shocked and even argued with me. I was surprised they hadn’t learned that in their history classes in school. So, here’s a little history about the day and celebration.

Deriving its name by combining June and nineteenth – Juneteenth, also known as Emancipation Day, is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. But while it became a national holiday in 2021 through a bill by a Democrat U.S. Senator and signed into law by Democrat President Joe Biden as the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, the day it celebrates occurred thanks to the Republican Party. Known as the Grand Old Party or GOP, the party was formed in 1854 to fight the expansion of slavery into the Western territories and ultimately abolish it. Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican to be elected president and under his leadership fought and won the Civil War to end slavery in the United States.

It’s the main reason the first Black U.S. Senators and Members of Congress were Republican, virtually all Black Americans voted Republican until the 1936 and the GOP continued to receive a large percent of the Black vote well into the 1950s and 1960s. A few other facts  you might find surprising is that it was Republicans who founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) on February 12, 1909, the 100th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth and reparations were originally a Republican idea. It was Union Army General William Tecumseh Sherman who issued Special Field Orders No. 15, giving 40 acres of land to freed slave families and later ordered the army to lend mules for the agrarian reform effort, as a means to provide for themselves and own an asset to pass on to future generations. It was reversed by Democrat Andrew Johnson, who became president following Lincoln’s assassination and issued a proclamation that returned the lands to southern owners.

Back to Juneteenth, it was on June 19, 1865 that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, a Republican career U.S. Army officer, arrived at Galveston, Texas  announcing that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free.

It was a little over two months after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant in Appomattox, Virginia, setting in motion the end of the war. A wave of Confederate surrenders followed. As a practical matter, the war ended with the May 26 surrender of the Department of the Trans-Mississippi, but the conclusion of the American Civil War lacks a clear and precise historical end date. Confederate ground forces continued surrendering past the May 26 surrender date until June 23. 

It was two and a half years after President Lincoln signed his Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 freeing all slaves in Confederate states. Granger issued General Order No. 3 further informing Texas – the most remote state of the former Confederacy – of, and enforcing the proclamation, just two months after Lincoln’s assassination.

When issued, the Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on the Texans due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce the new Executive Order. However, with the arrival of Granger’s regiment, the forces were finally strong enough to influence and overcome the resistance.

Later attempts to explain this two-and-a-half-year delay in the receipt of this important news have yielded several versions that have been handed down through the years. Often told is the story of a messenger who was murdered on his way to Texas with the news of freedom. Another is that the news was deliberately withheld by the enslavers to maintain the labor force on the plantations. And still another, is that federal troops actually waited for the slave owners to reap the benefits of one last cotton harvest before going to Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation. All of which, or neither of these versions could be true. Certainly, for some, President Lincoln’s authority over the rebellious states was in question   For whatever the reasons, conditions in Texas remained status quo well beyond what was statutory.

Juneteenth has been celebrated in Texas since 1866, at first involving church-centered community gatherings in Texas. They spread across the South and became more commercialized in the 1920s and 1930s, often centering on a food festival. Participants in the Great Migration brought these celebrations to the rest of the country.

Happy Juneteenth, a holiday of freedom that we can all recognize and celebrate, while honoring those who fought and died to make it a reality!

Information also sourced from Juneteenth.com and the book From the Deck to the Sea: Blacks and the Republican Party.

Entertaining times are returning to the Antioch Historical Museum this June. Recalling the rollicking Roaring Twenties fun time at the pre-Covid “Funeral for a Gangster,” put on by Caught in the Act Theater in September, 2019, the Museum is bringing back the theater with their western themed mystery to solve, “Death Near Dead Man’s Holler.” Ticket holders will gather on Saturday evening at 5:00 until 9:00 p.m., June 17, 2023, in the Museum’s Riverview Room, dressed in their western finest, ready to dine on western BBQ vittles at 6:00, then solve the mystery. A no-host bar will be in the Saloon Room. There will be prizes for the best costumes and best detectives.

The early-bird ticket price of $65 ends June 4, 2023, before going up to $75. Tickets are available through Eventbrite, or by mailing a check for reservations to the Museum, 1500 W. 4th St., Antioch, CA, 94509. For further information, please call the Museum at 925-757-1326.

Purchase tickets on Eventbrite.