California
Film opening in Redding spotlights Black people’s experiences in the California Gold Rush
A Mount Shasta artist known for his multimedia exhibit about the contributions of Black people during California’s Gold Rush is about to premier his new movie on the topic.
Filmed in Siskiyou County, Mark Oliver’s “The Golden Ghosts” opens on April 21 at the Riverfront Playhouse in Redding.
The movie is a work of historical fiction based on actual events from the North State’s gold mining days, Oliver said.
The film aims to bring understanding about some of the experiences of the thousands of Black prospectors who flocked to California more than 150 years ago seeking gold-fueled fortunes.
Oliver and his crew shot the film entirely in Siskiyou, Shasta and Tehama counties during the summer and early autumn of 2023 at sites including William B. Ide Adobe State Historic Park, the McCloud area near Fall River and places north of Weed.
While researching his Golden Ghosts project, Oliver worked with Mount Shasta archaeologist Patrick Brunmeier. The two scanned old maps and visited sites in Siskiyou County with place names indicating Black people had lived and mined there in the 1800s.
‘A part of history that’s never been in the history books’
While U.S. Census data shows many Black Americans lived in far Northern California in the mid-1800s, their contributions aren’t widely recognized, Oliver said.
For more than a decade, Oliver has sought to correct that omission.
His past projects include bringing the “Voices of the Golden Ghosts” play to Shasta College in 2019, presenting a documentary exhibit of historic photos and stories from the era that was displayed at Turtle Bay Exploration Park and other venues in 2020 and writing an illustrated history book last year.
His other films include “From the Quarters to Lincoln Heights,” a 2011 documentary about the migration of Black people from the American South starting in the 1920s to Weed, McCloud and other North State lumber towns. It was while researching that documentary in 2009 that Oliver said he learned of the role of Black people during Siskiyou County’s gold rush.
In his book “Voices of the Golden Ghosts,” Oliver wrote that as miners from around the globe descended on Northern California aiming to strike it rich, “by 1852, over 2,000 men of African American descent were in the California goldfields” after the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in the small El Dorado County town of Coloma in 1848. By 1860, more than 5,000 Black Americans “had made the difficult trek to California in search of quick wealth,” according to Rudolph Lapp, in his book “Blacks in Gold Rush California.”
Those Black 49ers included both free and enslaved people, who mined alone, formed their own companies or teamed up with white prospectors, Lapp’s book said.
The making of “The Golden Ghosts”
In the film, Black protagonists Money and Tall arrive in the North State, as did many others from varying backgrounds who streamed into the area in the early 1850s, searching for gold. While prospecting, the pair meet a Chinese herbalist who runs a brothel, a Mexican couple who caution them about the risks of encountering white settlers and two Native Americans who have been mistreated by white miners.
The characters and their experiences are composites of people who mined gold in the North State, Oliver said. They’re heading West, Oliver said, “probably toward the Salmon River or the Klamath River.”In the mid-1800s, Black people mined mostly their own claims, not for a company. They searched for gold in remote regions with rough terrains to avoid clashing with other miners, Brunmeier said. By the late 1800s, Black people worked as paid laborers for mining companies at several Siskiyou County mines, including Forks of Salmon.
Mining was dangerous, especially for Black people at the time of slavery in the U.S.
While California was founded as a free state, for Black people “if you didn’t have papers proving you were free … you could be arrested and sent back” to slave owners in other states, Brunmeier said.
More: 27 African-American North State sports influencers honored to celebrate Juneteenth
Local actors performed most of the parts in the movie, including Dunsmuir actor and musician Victor Martin, who played Tall in the film.
“Tall is kind of a reasonable guy. He thinks before he takes action,” said Martin. Money, played by Fred Magee of Redding, is quicker to act, Martin said.
Part of what shaped the two characters so differently is that Tall legally gained his freedom from slavery. Money had escaped slavery to reach California. So Money lived in fear of bounty hunters capturing and returning him to people in another state who claimed they owned him, Martin said.
Both characters live their lives in peril, as did almost all Black, Asian, Native American and other people during Old West times. “I’m glad I wasn’t born in those days,” said Martin. “You had to be a tough individual. I wouldn’t have made it.”
More than a story, the film derives impact by depicting “a part of history that’s never been in the history books,” Martin said.
A special treat for fans of Martin’s music at his Pops Performing Arts and Cultural Center jazz club club in Dunsmuir: The character Tall is a musician and in the movie, Martin breaks out his famous saxophone.
Martin said he worked hard to make his sax echo traditional Native American music. While on location in Siskiyou County, he said, “we could feel the spirit” of the people who had been hunted and abused.
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If you go: “The Golden Ghosts” film premier
- Where: Riverfront Playhouse, 1950 California St. in Redding
- When: Noon and 3 p.m. on April 21. A reception with the actors follows the 3 p.m. show.
- Cost: Tickets are $12 in advance, $15 at the door. Go to markoliver.org/golden-ghosts-film to buy tickets.
- Information: Go to markoliver.org
Jessica Skropanic is a features reporter for the Record Searchlight/USA Today Network. She covers science, arts, social issues and news stories. Follow her on Twitter @RS_JSkropanic and on Facebook. Join Jessica in the Get Out! Nor Cal recreation Facebook group. To support and sustain this work, please subscribe today. Thank you.
It’s been quite the unexpected slog through a field of candidates so numerous that all of their names don’t even fit on a single page of the ballot. Democrats in California have held the governor’s mansion, state House, and state Senate for almost two decades and unrest about that trifecta out West is real. The traditional political alliances are frayed, at best, with socialists backing a billionaire and Trump supporting an immigrant. A sex scandal tanked the hopes of a leading candidate, Rep. Eric Swalwell, and Trump’s endorsement of Hilton all but sidelined tough-on-crime Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco. It’s why Hilton, who moved to California in 2012, is in the mix in a race that is set to test assumptions about party loyalty, candidate partisanship, and money’s power. And it carries massive consequences about who will be the de facto CEO of the fourth-largest economy on the planet, between Germany and Japan, and a major player on the national political stage. This is not some backwater local election.
By Alejandro Lazo, CalMatters
This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
California air regulators on Friday approved a contentious overhaul of the state’s carbon market, creating a program that could steer billions of dollars in free pollution permits to oil refineries and other major polluters over the objections of environmental groups, key lawmakers and three of the board’s own members.
Ten members of the California Air Resources Board voted to adopt the changes to its cap-and-invest program after two days of lengthy hearings, including a full day dedicated to hundreds of public comments.
The overhaul followed intensive lobbying by the oil industry as well as pressure from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration to help keep refineries operating in the state amid rising gas prices.
The approval sets up a potential budget fight in Sacramento. The Legislative Analyst’s Office projects that quarterly auction revenue for state climate programs will drop from roughly $4 billion a year to about $2 billion under the new overhaul.
Such a shortfall would effectively zero out programs lawmakers spent last year fighting to fund: affordable housing, public transit, drinking water in low-income communities and pollution monitoring in California’s most polluted neighborhoods.
The governor’s office praised the measure as a compromise that balanced economic uncertainty with the state’s climate goals. Refinery closures and the Iran-Israel war have driven average California gas prices above $6 a gallon.
Newsom, in a statement, used the moment to draw a contrast with President Donald Trump.
“While Trump sows ongoing chaos and uncertainty, California is staying focused by protecting our economy, safeguarding public health, and doubling down on the clean energy future all Californians deserve,” he said.
Environmentalists warned the changes to the program amount to a giveaway to the fossil fuel industry that weakens California’s only program setting a firm cap on greenhouse gas emissions.
Katelyn Roedner Sutter, California senior director for the Environmental Defense Fund, called the decision “deeply misguided” for prioritizing polluters over communities.
“Newsom’s air regulators are handing billions to oil executives at the expense of our climate, health, and affordability for working families in a rushed process that has shortchanged meaningful public participation,” said Bahram Fazeli, policy director at Communities for a Better Environment.
How the program works — and what changes
California’s 13-year-old carbon market forces major polluters to buy permits while the state lowers the overall cap each year. Friday’s vote will reduce those permits – and creates a new subsidy program carved out of the market.
The program, which may still see changes, could make available a new pool of free pollution permits available to industry valued at as much as $4 billion. Companies that pledge to invest in clean energy and efficiency may qualify for the permits in exchange for investments in clean energy.
The pool will be capped at 118.3 million permits — the same number the air board has said must come off the market for California to hit its 2030 climate target. Environmentalists say the proposal risks wiping out those reductions.
Half are reserved for the fossil fuel sector. A recent Berkeley analysis, by the chair of an independent committee that oversees the carbon market, found refineries could end up with more free permits than they need to cover their emissions.
The air board has defended the design. Officials say the credits will go only to companies undertaking decarbonization projects, will be limited and temporary and can be clawed back if companies misuse them. The plan, they say, is meant to keep California refineries operating at a time of mounting closures and global market pressure. According to air regulators, the amended program will spur clean-energy investment as Trump cuts federal support.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
A 40-year-old Los Angeles man was charged with murder after allegedly killing his girlfriend and kidnapping their young child before fleeing to Mexico, according to authorities.
Ruben Fregosojuarez has been charged one count of murder and one misdemeanor count of child abuse under circumstance or conditions other than great bodily injury or death, according to a Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office news release. Authorities first identified him as Ruben Fregoso but Los Angeles County prosecutors listed him as Ruben Fregosojuarez.
On Monday around 12:39 p.m., the Los Angeles Police Department conducted a welfare check in the 2600 block of South Alsace Avenue in West Adams, police said in a news release.
Officers found a woman dead inside the home “as a result of violence” and the woman’s daughter missing, police said. On Monday night, the California Highway Patrol issued an Amber Alert for the child, Daleza.
Photos obtained by NBC4 appear to show Fregosojuarez in a parking garage in San Ysidro with the girl on Sunday. The California Highway Patrol has listed her age as 4 years old but Los Angeles police say the girl is 5. She is also described as the suspect’s daughter.
The alert said that the girl was last seen with Fregosojuarez, who allegedly abducted her in a 2019 Land Rover Discovery, on Sunday at about 4 a.m.
The CHP posted in an update that the vehicle was found but that the child and man were still missing. The girl is described as 3 feet tall, 45 pounds, and having black hair and brown eyes.
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