Contributor: California's place in enslaved people's struggle for freedom

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In one version of U.S.history, California is a place where slavery was prohibited from the founding, in the 1849 state constitution, and where that ban was reaffirmed by the state’s ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865.

In another telling, it was a place that had ended the practice some 30 years earlier — when it was part of Mexico.Despite being on the periphery of the Spanish empire and Mexico before becoming part of the United States, California had an important place in the larger struggle by enslaved people for their freedom.California connects Mexican and U.S.

history while also serving as a reminder that there are few corners of the Western Hemisphere that are untouched by the legacy of slavery.The story of the rise and fall of African enslavement is often presented as a national story in the United States — and a mostly Southern one — rather than as the hemispheric phenomenon that it was.Enslaved Africans could be found as far south as Chile and Argentina all the way up to Canada.

Likewise, the end of slavery was not solely brought about by the Civil War in the U.S., but also by centuries of resistance through rebellions, wars, sabotage and self-emancipation, across the entire Americas.This, too, was part of California’s story.After the Spanish toppled the Mexica empire in 1521, they wasted little time bringing captive Africans to the place they called New Spain — a vast territory that would later expand to the north to include New Mexico and California.

By the 1530s there were reports of conspiracies to revolt, as well as the establishment of colonies by escapees from slavery.The leader of one such community, Gaspar Yanga, forced Spanish authorities to recognize its autonomy, after troops failed to vanquish him in 1608.

This land outside of Veracruz became the first free Black town in Mexico, today known as Yanga.It was a significant victory at a ti...