Allen Light, the Douglas Hotel and the Creole Palace, and Leon Williams.
Allen Light
Black San Diego goes back to the Mexican era. Allen Light, a Black mariner, reportedly arrived in Santa Barbara on the Pilgrim in 1835, and his marksmanship as a sea otter hunter soon made him famous along the Southern California coast. By 1839 he was a naturalized Mexican citizen, appointed by Governor Alvarado to a post overseeing otter hunting, and in the autumn of 1842 he arrived in San Diego with his hunting partners and a load of furs. In 1847 Richard Freeman, also African American, bought a house in Old Town, where the two men lived and which was said to have been a saloon. In 1948 workers found two of Light's documents hidden in the adobe walls of the Machado Chapel in Old Town.
Hotels For Everyone
The Clermont/Coast Hotel, established in 1887, was one of the first hotels in San Diego to advertise to both white and Black guests, during the Panama-California Exposition in Balboa Park in 1915 and 1916. In 1938 Lucille Simmons took over a hotel and renamed it the Simmons Hotel, giving African American travelers a place to stay.
The Douglas Hotel And The Creole Palace
In 1924 the African American businessman George Ramsey and his partner Robert Rowe built the Douglas Hotel in the Gaslamp, a hotel, restaurant and club developed by and for Black San Diegans. The Douglas Hotel's ballroom ran as a cabaret, the Creole Palace, the premier Black entertainment venue on the West Coast, with jazz, blues and a chorus line. It hosted Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday and Count Basie, and its company of singers, dancers and actors drew audiences of every background. The hotel ran for more than thirty years until Ramsey sold it in 1956, and it was demolished in 1985.
Leon Williams
In 1969 Leon Williams became the first Black member of the San Diego City Council, and he later became the first Black person elected to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors. In 2020 the county named its reestablished Human Relations Commission in his honor.
Black San Diego Today
From the Gaslamp's old hotels outward, the city's Black history is part of its map, and Black-owned restaurants, salons, shops and brands are part of everyday San Diego.
Shop Black-owned businesses in San Diego on CashBlack.
Photo Credits
The Gaslamp Quarter. Photo: Sebastian Wallroth, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons