The Brief

Gen Z could be poised to paint California a deeper shade of blue this November — if they turn out to vote.

An age gap exists across the top issues on California's ballot this November: youth overwhelmingly favor taxing billionaires and not requiring IDs to vote, while seniors would prefer to block new taxes and impose voter ID requirements. Gen Z voters are also opting for the Democratic gubernatorial candidate – albeit reluctantly. That's all according to a September report from the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan research organization.

CalMatters spoke with DemocratIc and Republican voters age 18 to 29 about their attitudes toward California's gubernatorial race and top election measures. Gen Z support for Xavier Becerra, the Democratic pick for governor, is lukewarm, but that same cohort generally seems eager to vote against his opponent and billionaires this fall.

Nonetheless, young people face an uphill battle when it comes to shifting the balance of power. They make up 30% of the state’s adult population but only 21% of its likely voters; adults age 55 and older, meanwhile, represent 36% of Californian adults but nearly 50% of expected voters, according to the research organization.

”We're not used to seeing representation that takes into account our needs and our struggles,” said Athena Burciaga, 25, a computer science student at Cal State Monterey Bay. She's also co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America’s Central Coast chapter and a candidate for city council in the neighboring town of Marina. “So I do empathize with the sentiment that, like, ‘Why give a damn about politics if politics doesn't care about me?’”

The wide gap over the billionaire tax

Proposition 40, dubbed “the billionaire tax,” represents one of the sharpest political contrasts between generations in California.

Young voters are arguably a key bloc for the proposition's passing since slim majorities of likely voters overall back not just the wealth tax, but also its countermeasures, Proposition 41 and 42. Young adults plan to vote overwhelmingly in favor of the measure with around 76% in support, as opposed to 36% of voters age 55 and over that plan to do the same, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. Middle-aged voters, meanwhile, have been generally supportive, with about 59% backing the measure.

To Stanley Shi, a 19-year-old student at UC Irvine, the reasoning behind that generational split is clear.

“I think it's pretty obvious that older people tend to own property or tend to be wealthier than Gen Z,” said Shi. “Meanwhile, I own nothing… So I'm obviously going to be in favor of a tax that will never threaten to touch me.”

Federal Reserve data indicates that the share of wealth held by the nation’s oldest residents has roughly doubled in the last 37 years, while that of its youngest has been reduced by half.

According to Burciaga, Gen Z is well aware of their declining economic prospects. She said that may be why youth political organizations on both sides of the aisle have recently seen explosive growth.

The Young Democratic Socialists of America has grown by over 50% nationwide in the last year, bringing it to the highest membership levels of its 50-year history.

Meanwhile, Turning Point USA – among the nation’s dominant conservative youth organizations – has also grown tremendously, particularly since the assassination of its founder, Charlie Kirk, last year.

A voter fills out their ballot for the primary election at Sacramento City College on June 2, 2026.

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Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

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CalMatters

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While Turning Point did not respond to recent requests for comment, previous CalMatters reporting found that the organization had seen its presence on California campuses nearly triple as of March, with 78 of the state’s 119 active college chapters founded after Kirk’s death.

“Young people these days are a lot more class conscious overall, wherever they fall on the political spectrum,” said Burciaga. “Our generation is a lot more hip and aware of what's going on right now than previously because of the material conditions under which we live.”

Young voters lack enthusiasm for Becerra

In the governor's race, the wide lead enjoyed by Democrat Xavier Becerra over his Republican rival Steve Hilton is no surprise due to California’s party demographics. But perceived instability and disillusionment with the Democratic party has left some young voters lacking confidence in Becerra, interviews show.

A September Politico poll surveying 2,418 registered voters in California, including 174 Gen Z voters, showed that only 34% of those Gen Z voters found Becerra favorable while 39% found him unfavorable. Yet, a much higher percentage of them, 57%, found Hilton unfavorable.

“I don't like that he seems to have positioned himself more in the center on some issues,” said Shi about Becerra. “I don't hate centrism… But I've heard that rhetoric for so long and it hasn't resulted in a lot of the political results that I want.”

Carla Fuentes, 28, president of the Los Angeles County Young Democrats and a graduate of Cal State Northridge, said that the abundance of Democratic candidates running for governor in the primary gave the impression to younger voters that the party lacks cohesion and a clear vision.

“Becerra is the natural choice, and we're excited to endorse him and support him in his endeavors, but I do wish that there was a little bit more thought put behind it,” Fuentes said.

Cole Marting, executive director of the San Diego Young Republicans, believes that Hilton has the solutions necessary to alleviate one of the most pressing issues for young people: affordability.

“He's really the one that's saying fees and CEQA and energy rules need to be reformed… Maybe that's some of the reason that a 28-year-old today can't afford a starter home,” said Marting, 29. “At the end of the day, Hilton is the affordability vote.”

In an interview with CalMatters, Becerra made an appeal to young voters by saying he will pursue policies to support first-time homeownership, tackle inflation and make healthcare more affordable.

“We have to stop the nonsense, the chaos in Washington D.C., so we can make life more affordable here at home,” Becerra said. “I want you to become a homeowner, I want you to develop wealth because that's what drives the economy of the state of California.”

CalMatters similarly asked Hilton for his plan for youth, which he said is focused on jobs, affordability, $3-per-gallon gas and housing.

“[California] should be the home of energy and innovation and entrepreneurialism and business and jobs,” said Hilton. “We're going to make California the best place in America to start and run a business by getting rid of the regulations that are now driving businesses to other states like Texas.”

Gen Z voters are largely against Voter ID

Proposition 39, which would require citizens to present government-issued identification to vote, has been championed by its proponents as a “common-sense constitutional amendment.”

The aim of the proposition has been to target alleged election fraud in California, a suspicion largely held among MAGA voters. Efforts to reign in alleged fraud in the state have yet to produce any evidence — and in one case was deemed unlawful.

Earlier this week, federal prosecutors charged 28 immigrants with illegally voting or registering to vote in California. California Attorney General Rob Bonta told reporters 28 registered voters out of 23 million is a “drop in the bucket” and shows no widespread fraud.

Only 27% of likely voters age 18 to 29 support Prop. 39, as opposed to 46% of voters age 50 to 64, according to the polling conducted by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies.

Fuentes, who is also a board member of the League of Women Voters, takes this sentiment even further by stating that Prop. 39 is a “huge misstep” that will deter voter participation by disproportionately making it more difficult for certain groups who lack the ability to obtain proper identification. The league asserts that such measures negatively impact voter turnout among people of color, low-income voters, Native American communities, students, and particularly women going through name changes and divorces.

Students wait in line to vote on Proposition 50 at the Price Center at UC San Diego on Nov. 4, 2025.

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Ariana Drehsler

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CalMatters

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“I think the idea, the fundamental concept that voting is kind of sacred and voting should be protected, is right. Do I think that this is the way to accomplish that? No,” Fuentes said.

Jake Krepps, 21, a junior at San Diego State University and president of the campus chapter of College Republicans, said he has no idea if the proposition will pass, but that he and those he knows support it.

“I think it's really important to have a good security net to ensure that people who vote ... for representatives that are going to represent the American people, that they are themselves American people,” said Krepps.

As many voter ID proponents mention, Krepps said, “you have an ID to drive, you need an ID to fly somewhere. So I think it's critically important that you have an ID to vote as well.”

Despite his support for the Republican-backed measure, Krepps feels that the majority of the political landscape is deeply flawed and ineffective. When asked how he felt the current state government was serving young voters, he led with one word: “Terrible.”

“Being a legislator and elected official in California is a two-edged sword. You have to address issues and you have to pass policy to accommodate those issues,” Krepps said. “You also need to prove to voters that the policies and the legislation that you're passing is actually effective … I don't think the state of California has successfully fulfilled either [of those] issues.”

Dylan Arreola and Tom Nolan are contributors with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

For nearly a decade, California’s Yes In My Backyard activists and other pro-development advocates have wanted to overhaul California’s signature environmental law to clear the way for more housing construction.

Now Proposition 45 is on the ballot. Supporters say it would, among other things, overhaul that law, known as the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, to clear the way for — you guessed it — more housing construction.

So why are YIMBYs divided?

Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat and one of the movement's most stalwart champions in the Legislature, is for it. So is the bulk of the building industry, including many major for- and non-profit developers.

Bay Area pro-housing advocates Eastbay for Everyone and the Greenbelt Alliance, two typical allies of Wicks, are emphatically against it.

In the uncommitted middle lies the lion’s share of California YIMBYism: Abundant Housing Los Angeles, SPUR, and both California YIMBY and YIMBY Action — the movement’s two flagship advocacy organizations — have all taken neutral positions.

“It’s been a weird campaign so far,” said Ali Sapirman, advocacy manager at the Housing Action Coalition, an urban building industry group that supports the measure. “The housing community has been a little bit fractured.”

Those fissures aren't over whether more homes should be built across California. Instead, it mostly boils down to a question of where.

“The central question here is how you feel about sprawl,” Max Dubler of California YIMBY wrote in the group’s non-endorsement statement, referring to low-density housing development at the edge of metro areas. Though some exurban growth “will necessarily be part of solving our housing shortage,” he expressed concern about making it easier to build “car-dependent sprawl housing and the freeways and water infrastructure necessary to serve that sprawl.”

To sprawl or not to sprawl

For nearly a decade, the Legislature has been on a tear, passing “streamlining” bills aimed at speeding up the regulatory approval of new construction. Almost all of those laws have only applied to projects in places where homes and other infrastructure already exist.

Prioritizing so-called infill development helped wrangle together a coalition of developers and construction labor unions, but also a diverse swath of Democratic-leaning advocates whose interest in seeing more apartments and condos goes beyond the cause of affordability alone. That includes climate activists who want to see less commuter car traffic; transit, bicycle and pedestrian advocates who want more riders and walkers and urbanists who want Los Angeles to more closely resemble Barcelona.

In breaking from that urban focus, Prop. 45 is driving a wedge inside that coalition.

If passed, the measure would speed up the review process required under CEQA (pronounced “see-kwah”) for all types of housing projects. That includes transit-adjacent downtown condo towers, but also freshly paved subdivisions at the metropolitan fringe.

The measure is “a doubling down on essentially 75 years of land-use patterns that we know haven't worked,” said Jordan Grimes, legislative director with Greenbelt Alliance, which opposes the measure. “It's a return to the sprawl era.”

Not everyone in the movement necessarily sees that as a bad thing. Among those who want California to build its way out of its current housing shortage, opinions differ over whether more environmentally-friendly infill development alone is up to the task.

“I'm an ‘all of the above’ person when it comes to housing,” said Wicks, explaining her support of the measure. “I think we need housing of all different types, shapes, and sizes.”

An earlier version of this rift first emerged earlier this decade when a handful of Bay Area tech investors announced plans to build a brand new city on Solano County farmland in 2023 under the banner of California Forever. Some YIMBY commentators applauded the plan as a welcome injection of much-needed supply. Others decried it as sprawl dressed in urbanist clothing.

With Prop. 45, that regional debate is now playing out at a statewide scale.

Housing front and center 

Prop. 45 is about much more than housing policy.

CEQA requires public agencies to review the possible environmental consequences of the decisions they make, including the permitting of private projects. For decades industry groups, developers and, more recently, housing supply boosters have said the law makes it too easy for project opponents to jam up worthwhile projects by repeatedly demanding additional analysis.

“The clock is endless and the number of people and entities who can challenge you are also endless,” said Linda Mandolini of Eden Housing, an affordable housing developer.

Prop. 45 would not exempt any projects from environmental review outright. But for projects deemed "essential," it would narrow the focus of these reviews and require them to wrap up within 365 business days. Any resulting litigation would also face a shot clock; Judges would have 270 business days to resolve them. Such lawsuits would also be made harder to sustain in court. Aside from housing, essential projects include roads, hospitals, schools, clean energy projects, water and broadband infrastructure.

But housing has loomed large in the electoral debate. The Yes on 45 campaign has touted the support of affordable housing developers and housing advocates, while pointing to housing affordability concerns as the initial impetus for the measure.

It’s easy to see why. Environmental challenges to often innocuous-seeming housing projects have regularly generated headlines for years, helping to cement the idea among lawmakers and many voters that CEQA is a major cause of the state’s housing woes.

Environmental justice groups and their allies have spent years fighting against that argument in the Legislature. Though Prop. 45 does not exempt “essential” projects from environmental review outright — it just shortens and hems in the process — these groups have now lined up to oppose it for much the same reason: They reject the premise that CEQA needs fixing.

But for opponents like Grimes, who supported many recent streamlining bills, the argument that the law is holding up desperately needed residential construction is a year out of date. Last year, the governor signed Assembly Bill 130, a Wicks-authored measure that exempted most infill housing from the CEQA.

Since becoming law in July 2025, developers have used it to entitle 17,913 units of housing, according to the Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation, a state agency.

“When you look at what’s left to do on urban housing, there are absolutely still barriers,” said Grimes, whose organization applauded last year’s exemption. “CEQA just isn't one of them.”

The task of the No on 45 campaign, he said, is to convince enough voters that “we’ve actually solved this problem.”

Are we done here?

Many developers and affordable housing advocates, even those working in urban areas, dispute that CEQA is no longer a major obstacle.

Last year’s exemption does not exempt projects larger than 20 acres, which means supersized urban redevelopment projects are still subject to the old process.

Prop. 45 also applies shot clocks to other permits issued later in the development process and which regularly slow a project more than environmental review.

And while state laws like last year’s infill carveout may grant certain developers the right to ignore CEQA, there is nothing to stop a deep-pocketed opponent from suing anyway. Putting time limits on those lawsuits could be the difference between a project succeeding and being delayed to death, said Mandolini.

She points to the planned 130-unit affordable housing project that Eden Housing has been trying to and failing to build in the Bay Area suburb of Livermore since 2018 as an example. In 2021, a nonprofit funded by a handful of well-heeled Livermore residents sued the city, arguing that it hadn’t done enough environmental analysis on a housing development that would be built on a former grocery store parking lot behind a row of downtown restaurants. A lower court ruled that the group’s CEQA arguments were “almost utterly without merit.” An appellate court agreed. The state Supreme Court allowed that ruling to stand.

But by then two years had passed.

“Every year you lose in litigation is real money for real projects and another year that 130 families don't get to live in that housing,” said Mandolini. “It’s a great way to kill a project.”

Even an infill project.

But among some pro-housing supporters of the proposition, the infill versus sprawl debate isn’t much of a debate at all.

“We’re not an urbanist organization,” said Mahdi Manji with the Inner City Law Center, a legal aid provider and housing advocacy group in Los Angeles’ Skid Row. The group supports Prop. 45 and doesn’t mind the concept of more housing far from the city’s core. “To the extent it results in housing that is a little more affordable in Lancaster and Palmdale, a lot of our clients live out in Lancaster and Palmdale.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

If Nithya Raman defeats incumbent Karen Bass on Nov. 3, she’ll become the third mayor of Los Angeles to oversee plans for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games — and the first to have started out as an Olympics critic.

Raman told the Democratic Socialists of America’s L.A. chapter in 2020 that she opposed Los Angeles playing host to the world’s largest sporting event, skewering the city for making a “rushed” deal without public input.

Still, she’ll be stuck with the Games if she becomes mayor, and will also oversee the city in the period that follows, when L.A. will be left with any cost overruns if the private organizing committee LA28 runs out of money.

Depending on how she wields the role, Raman could shift the city’s approach to its host duties, ramping up pressure on LA28 to publicly disclose more about its finances and also changing the leadership on key bodies like the Board of Police Commissioners, Metro Board and even, potentially, the LA28 board of directors.

She’ll also have significant power to set the tone for the Games and the city's agenda leading up to them, observers told LAist.

“I think that she will end up being a booster of the Olympics because she has to be,” said Jim Newton, a veteran L.A. journalist and expert on California politics. “But what she does with that authority is what's up for grabs.”

Would Raman keep police chief through 2028?

The 2028 Games haven’t been a major talking point on the campaign trail, but Police Chief Jim McDonnell's fate has.

Bass nominated McDonnell to the post in 2024, and Raman voted to confirm him. But Raman said she’ll replace the chief if elected as mayor, criticizing LAPD’s response to federal immigration enforcement in Los Angeles. She has declined, however, to say if she’d do this ahead of 2028.

The mayor can’t directly fire the chief, but appoints the Board of Police Commissioners, which can. If Raman appointed a new chief ahead of the Games, the person would need council approval.

“The mayor appoints the Board of Police Commissioners, so they are unlikely to retain a chief that the mayor doesn't like,” said Raphael Sonenshein, an expert on the city charter and the executive director of the Haynes Foundation. He said it’s more typical for new mayors not to appoint a police chief to a second term than to remove them early. McDonnell’s five-year term is up at the end of 2029.

Moderator Conan Nolan pushed Raman to clarify if she’d remove the chief ahead of 2028 at the NBC4 and Telemundo 52 mayoral debate, citing the high-security status of the sprawling sporting event. Raman responded, saying it would depend on conversations with “other decision-making bodies.”

“I will work towards that with all of the responsibility and all of the care that this moment requires,” Raman said of removing McDonnell. “And I promise you Angelenos, I promise you, there is no decision that I will take as your mayor that will put you in danger.”

Bass pushed back, saying Raman didn’t have “any idea” what identifying a new police chief required.

“We are 640 days away from the largest sporting event to ever take place — a major national security event — and if you think that you’re going to find a police chief, you would send the department in disarray,” Bass said.

The U.S. Secret Service leads security for the Games but works closely with LAPD and other law enforcement agencies. In the spring, LAPD estimated its policing costs for the Games would exceed $730 million.

Other leadership roles could change

Raman could also shake up the L.A. Metro’s Board of Directors, which is overseeing Metro’s 28 by 28 initiative and steering the temporary bus system planned for the Olympics and Paralympics. Mayor Karen Bass currently chairs the Metro Board, and if Raman is elected, she would hold that position through June 2027, the end of the fiscal year.

She could replace any of the three mayoral appointees: Jacquelyn Dupont-Walker, president of the Ward Economic Development Corporation; and City Councilmembers Imelda Padilla and Katy Yaroslavsky

“I want to use those four seats to push Metro to invest in the biggest bang for the buck in terms of public transit investments,” Raman said at a mayoral forum in September, referencing her own spot on the board and her appointees'.

Alissa Walker, a mega-events expert who writes the popular newsletter Torched, told LAist that the mayor’s role on Metro is another way she can flex power ahead of the Games.

 “You could push forward an agenda,” Walker said, referring to former Mayor Eric Garcetti’s plan to accelerate transit infrastructure for the Games. “Let’s remember Garcetti's 28 by 28, that came from him being on the Metro Board. It wasn't something that he pushed through the city.”

The mayor also has direct influence on the makeup of LA28’s board of directors, a body that has faced scrutiny for its Trump allies and its chairman, Casey Wasserman. The city has six members on the board who were appointed by the mayor without city council approval, the mayor’s office told LAist.

The board mainly operates behind the scenes, but the City Council can require the city’s board members to report back on the board’s progress and decisions that impact the city — a right the mayor could encourage the council to flex.

LA’s financial gamble

Then there’s the question of how Raman would navigate the city’s complex relationship with LA28, and unlimited financial risk as the backstop of the Games. The host deal was championed and brokered by then-Mayor Garcetti, but it’s the coming mayoral term that will oversee the actual event and its aftermath.

The Olympics committee is operating mainly on its own to deliver the Games with a $7.2 billion budget, but will use many city resources to pull them off, including police, traffic control, trash collection and more.

Raman was one of four council members to vote against the city’s agreement with LA28 on how it will be reimbursed for those services during the Games earlier this year, saying it left taxpayers too exposed to unexpected costs. The deal established that the city will seek reimbursement for the cost of policing venues from the federal government, which is overseeing Olympics security.

“Would you agree to cover someone else’s bills without knowing what you might have to pay — or even being allowed to see what they’re spending? Of course not!” Raman wrote on X.

If elected, Raman could throw her weight behind her ally, City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who subpoenaed LA28 this month for financial documents he said the organization owed the city.

“Right now you have a mayor, Karen Bass, who's really highlighted the Olympics as a signature moment for Los Angeles, and certainly as a signature moment for what she hopes will be her second term,” Newton, the L.A. journalist and historian, told LAist. “Raman, if she were elected, is not as invested in that and may see that she has some leverage over LA28.”

She has also said she would appoint “an experienced financial executive to oversee the City’s Olympic costs” in her first 100 days in office. LAist asked Raman’s campaign whether she would remove Paul Krekorian, who currently leads the city’s Office of Major Events, but did not receive a response.

Kavish Harjai contributed to this story.

Los Angeles Unified will hold another round of community meetings in November as it begins to consider school closures and mergers.

“We're gonna be embarking, I would say, on one of the most consequential initiatives that this district has completed and done over the last 30 years,” said Pedro Salcido, a deputy superintendent, at a similar community meeting in early October.

LAUSD officials’ decisions could reshape the experience of 374,000 students from transitional kindergarten through high school. The meetings, scheduled from Wednesday, Nov. 4, through Monday, Nov. 9, offer community members a chance to share their concerns and questions directly with district staff. Most are virtual, but there are two opportunities to attend in person.

Enrollment has fallen more than 40% in the last two decades, and the district has closed relatively few of its more than 1,000 schools. District officials say resources are often stretched thin at underenrolled schools. For example, small high schools may not be able to offer as many electives or advanced courses.

The district is also under increasing scrutiny by state and county officials because current projections show LAUSD will be unable to pay its bills by the end of the next school year. In response, the district is considering a series of budget cuts that could lead to the elimination of thousands of jobs.

When are the meetings?

After 170 years, one of the great mysteries of early Los Angeles history remains unsolved: Who initiated the freedom suit that emancipated Biddy Mason and 13 other Black women and children in an L.A. courtroom in January 1856?

The City Council’s recent move to rename Pershing Square for Mason has refocused public attention on her history. Yet we’re no closer to identifying the single figure behind her emancipation, a historic case that broke the back of slavery in Southern California.

I’ll confess, I’ve probably spent as much time as anyone trying to unravel that mystery. A decade of research, resulting in the first scholarly biography of Biddy Mason, The Boundless Biddy Mason: An Odyssey from Slavery to Freedom Across the American West, brought me no closer to the truth.

My excuse: The 19th-century official court records were either destroyed or lost, while the accounts of Mason’s own descendants point toward different people, in different places.

Only recently did I realize that I’d been asking the wrong questions all along. No single figure was capable of overturning the institution of slavery in California, which had gone uncontested for years, despite the state’s constitutional ban on human bondage.

The only way to understand Mason’s emancipation was to begin, not with a person, but with a network: the hidden history of Southern California’s Underground Railroad.

Proslavery status quo

Southern California and the Underground Railroad are terms not often paired together. The Underground Railroad, after all, is almost exclusively associated with the history of abolitionism in the Northeast. According to common understanding, it was a network of Black and white allies, working in secret, to ferry enslaved people from the South to freedom in the North or Canada.

That’s all true, of course. But those same networks existed in the American West as well. They helped usher Black people from slavery in Texas to freedom in Mexico. And they challenged the entrenched power of slaveholders in Southern California.

Although California had outlawed slavery in its 1849 constitution, that didn’t stop white Southerners from hauling their human property into the state. Perhaps as many as 1,500 enslaved African Americans had been carried into California by the time Mason’s freedom suit came to trial. Black Californians could count on little support from the state’s courts. Nearly every case they tried went in favor of slaveholders.

Whereas most slaveholders made their way to the gold diggings around Sacramento, a sizable colony of Southern transplants settled in San Bernardino, about 60 miles east of Los Angeles. There, they held more than two dozen Black people, including Biddy Mason and her three daughters, in bondage.

Robert Mays Smith, pictured here in old age in Texas, traversed the continent in search of fortune, built on the backs of enslaved people.

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Courtesy Kevin Waite

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By the mid-1850s, San Bernardino was the most prosperous slaveholding settlement anywhere in the American West. And Mason’s owner, Robert Smith, was the single largest slaveholder among them, with 14 people under his control.

California abolitionists challenged the proslavery status quo at their own peril. “The name of ‘black Republicans’ stunk in their nostrils worse than that of a horse-thief,” wrote one Californian of his violently anti-abolitionist neighbors. As the future U.S. Sen. John Conness recalled: “If any man could be found who had temerity enough to believe it [slavery] was a bad system, and his opinions became known, he was proscribed, clubbed, or shot, according to the pleasure of the ruffians who dominated public opinion” in California.

The politics of slavery became a matter of life and death in Los Angeles. In 1851, L.A.’s marshal discovered that a local slaveholder had been whipping a Black man in the courtyard of his adobe home. When the marshal attempted to intervene, he was confronted by a group of vigilantes. “They told me that I was required to leave the city within the space of 24 hours, at my peril,” he later reported in court records, “which I distinctly understood to mean the peril of my life.” The marshal departed the next morning for San Francisco.

“Mob Law,” lamented the Los Angeles mayor, “is triumphant as respects the existence of negro slavery in this district.”

Refuge for Black freedom-seekers

That didn’t dissuade Robert and Winnie Owens, two of the earliest Black settlers in Los Angeles. They knew as well as anyone that freedom often came at great personal sacrifice. They had been enslaved in Texas but managed to purchase their freedom and make their way west with their children. In Los Angeles, they formed the early core of the region’s Underground Railroad.

The San Pedro Street home (right) of Robert and Winnie Owens, a key site on the Underground Railroad of Southern California.

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C.C. Pierce Collection of Photographs, the Huntington Library, San Marino, California

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They turned their adobe home on San Pedro Street into a refuge for Black freedom-seekers. “Many slave owners have claimed that their property was kept in hiding” at the Owens home, recalled a resident of early Los Angeles in the Los Angeles Herald. In one instance, Bob and Winnie harbored a fugitive woman from her owner, “a drunken brute” from Rancho Cucamonga.

The Owens family did not act alone, however. The enslaved themselves provided the engine for Southern California’s Underground Railroad. Although their actions were circumscribed and their movements policed, they found ways to resist within the bonds of slavery.

Biddy Mason had been chipping away at her owner’s authority for years. In 1849, a Black man named Rande successfully escaped from Robert Smith and made his way to freedom. Mason almost certainly colluded in his escape. Although she couldn’t flee herself as the mother of three young daughters, she could take a vicarious pleasure in depriving her enslaver of his only adult male worker.

Mason’s was a rebellion in slow motion, a campaign built over months and years. In San Bernardino, she began conspiring with other enslaved people. A woman named Elizabeth Flake played a key role in those efforts, according to a later interview with Mason’s eldest daughter. Flake and Mason had formed a friendship through their shared ordeals, including a harrowing overland journey and enslavement in San Bernardino.

Elizabeth Flake (later Rowan), seen here later in life, played an instrumental role in Mason's quest for freedom in 1855-1856.

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San Bernardino Historical and Pioneer Society

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It was probably Elizabeth Flake to whom Mason first turned when she discovered that her owner intended to transport her family to Texas in late 1855. Somehow, they got word to the Owens family and a small network of Black and white allies.

From there, those allies alerted local law enforcement, who then apprehended Robert Smith on the eve of his planned departure for Texas. The largest freedom suit in the history of the American West was underway.

A suit for freedom

Despite her success in bringing Smith to trial, the odds were not in Mason’s favor. The presiding judge was a former slaveholder himself who claimed to “appreciate the kindly attachment that grows up between master and slave.” Mason was prohibited by California law from testifying against her enslaver or any other white person. Meanwhile, Smith or one of his cronies threatened Mason’s lawyer, prompting him to abandon her case. A gang of local rowdies stood at the ready to help Smith reclaim his property “by force.”

As her case rapidly deteriorated, Mason turned once more to her allies. The Owens family harbored Mason and many of the enslaved petitioners, enduring more threats of violence from Smith’s thugs. A white ally, Dr. A.H. Cooper, narrowly escaped a belligerent former constable who threatened to “blow your brains out” for daring to side with the enslaved.

Benjamin Ignatius Hayes in 1849, several years before he would become district judge for Los Angeles, San Bernardino and San Diego Counties.

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The Bancroft Library Portrait Collection

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It may have been one of Mason’s allies who convinced Judge Benjamin Hayes to interview her privately in his chambers (thereby skirting the ban on Black testimony). That interview finally swung the case in her favor. Mason’s “glorious instinct of freedom,” Hayes wrote, had lifted a “bright torch” to expose the subterfuge of her enslaver and convinced Hayes that justice lay on the side of the enslaved. On January 19, 1856, he declared Mason and 13 others “free forever.”

Mason’s courtroom victory emboldened other Black Californians to seek freedom for themselves. A wave of self-emancipations in San Bernardino followed. By 1857, the institution of Black chattel slavery in Southern California had ceased to exist.

California wasn’t born free through its putatively antislavery constitution. It only became free after the coordinated efforts of a courageous network of abolitionist allies — the westernmost spur of the Underground Railroad.

So, we may never know who, specifically, initiated the freedom suit that led to Mason’s emancipation. But I’d argue we shouldn’t lament our ignorance; we should celebrate it. Mason and her allies so carefully covered their tracks that neither the judge, nor their enslaver, nor anyone else in Southern California uncovered the full extent of their abolitionist network. They confound us still.