A mural at Appeal-Democrat Park commemorates Jackie Robinson, the first African-American allowed to play major league baseball in the 20th century. Photo by queerbychoice. The African-American community in the Yuba-Sutter area is smaller, relative to the general population, than in most of California. It is most concentrated at Beale Air Force Base, where 10.7% of residents are black.
Marysville, Live Oak, Wheatland, and Nicolaus used to be sundown towns (towns in which people of color were threatened with violence if they attempted to live in the city or to remain in it after sundown). As late as the 1960s, the one or two African-American families who had tried to move into Marysville were so badly harassed by racist European-American residents that they begged their African-American friends from elsewhere to come help them desegregate the area. After the 1965 Watts Riots in Los Angeles, a group of African-Americans mostly from Oakland drove to Marysville and rioted here, inflicting very significant damage to the properties of the European-American residents who were said to have harassed African-American residents. This taught the racists enough of a lesson that African-American residents were no longer harassed as severely after that.
Events
February: African-American Heritage Festival June: Juneteenth Celebration October: Beckwourth Frontier Days
Places
- Beckwourth Riverfront Park Complex
- Big Lem's Bar-B-Q and Soul Food
- Daguerra Point
- Jack Slough
- Negro Bar Creek
Historical Figures
- James Pierson Beckwourth
- Benjamin Berry
- John Churchill
- Edward Park Duplex
- Spottswood DeGuirre
- Henry Kingsbury
- David Nelson Parker
- Jeremiah Parker
- Rachel Parker
Offensive School Mascots
Until 2005, Anna L. McKenney Intermediate School used the "Rebels" (with a picture of a Confederate soldier) as their mascot. The mascot was changed to the Mustangs by a majority vote of the students. (See Native American Communities for other offensive school mascots in the Yuba-Sutter area.)
