Civic Service

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History Tracker

Michael L. Smith carries on the task of charting black history in Tulare.

By Mary Lou Aguirre / The Fresno Bee

(Updated Friday, February 18, 2005, 10:00 AM)

TULARE — The monetary value of the burgundy-colored scrapbook isn't what compels Michael L. Smith to handle the item with scrupulous care. It's the legacy behind the scrapbook — on the community's first black families — that Smith holds in reverence.

"I teach my own kids to ask their grandparents questions," Smith says. "Know where you come from. Be proud of who you are."

Smith, a corrections officer, has taken over what the late Edna Wade began in 1989. Wade, who died in 1999, started charting the early black families of Tulare. Her motto: "If we don't remember, how will they?"

In keeping with Wade's goal and Black History Month, Smith will discuss Tulare's early black settlers at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Tulare Historical Museum. In addition, George Finley of Friends of Allensworth also will speak on California's first all-black town. Allensworth, now a state park, is 30 miles north of Bakersfield.

Smith has put together a display of notable black residents past and present in the museum's audio-visual room. It features photographs and short biographies of people, such as Frank A. Smith, one of Allensworth first families in 1909. James Sims was one of the first blacks to settle in Tulare in the early 1900s and was noted as the first black real estate developer in the city, according to Smith.

Edna Louder Pope-Wade, starting collecting newsworthy articles depicting African American reaching to achieve success. She also wanted the youth of Tulare to know about the early pioneers and what they accomplished through the years. Her work was uncompleted at the time of her death in 1999, but her dreams of one day picking up the torch to light the fame of history has been taken up. Today we are proud to display for the pleasure of the those whom open our Web site to Black History of Tulare (Edna Wade) Project. We hope you will enjoy it and tell a friend or love one about it.

Tulare Advance Register: Anita Stack-House Hite

Antoinette Chatmon's family's quest for economic security brought them to Tulare in the early 1920s. As a result, Chatmon, 95, became the first African-American to attend school in Tulare.

"That's what they say, that I was first," Chatmon said. "But I heard there may be one person before me, a man. I went to Central School. They call it Tulare Union now. I was the only black there and it was just hard. They called me 'black cloud' in grammar school. I didn't like it."

Some memories don't come easily after more than nine decades of accumulating them. Time and pain have conveniently repressed other unwanted recollections. Chatmon's failing hearing often causes visitors to have to repeat what they've said.

She chuckles and says she just might like not being able to hear everything everybody says. It's peaceful that way, she says.

Chatmon's parents moved from New Orleans to California. They spent time in Fresno and Lindsay before settling in Tulare. Henry and Corinne Douglas, her stepfather and mother, came to Tulare from Lindsay in 1920, according to the Advance-Register archives. She attended Tulare Union High School in 1924.

"I had one white friend at school," Chatmon said. "I never did go to her house and she never was [allowed] to my house. [The kids] were prejudice? They made me feel alone and I'd stand off to myself."

Chatmon left school because she couldn't cope with the prejudice and isolation, she said. "I don't like to talk about all this stuff because sometimes I think I could have done better. Maybe if I'd gone and gotten an education. I didn't because I didn't think it would do any good to tell you the truth."

Artie Mae Allen was the first African American graduate of Tulare Union High School, according to local history book "Tulare A to Z."