This thesis has two main goals. First, it aims to resolve once and for all whether or not there was ever a history of African Americans in Napa County. It seems like a relatively simple question with an obvious answer, yet the population has always been so small that even Black Napans often joke with each other, "What Black people?" When white people are asked to discuss local African Americans, they usually either recite an urban legend about the Black woman doctor driven from St. Helena by racists or engage in a debate as to whether or not Willie the Woodcutter was really guilty. (Willie the Woodcutter, whose real name was Walter Boyd Williams, was an African American man who murdered a white female Pacific Union College student in 1971.) Long forgotten are John Grider, a Bear Flagger and one of the first African Americans in Napa, Frederick Sparrow, the first Black man in the county to register to vote, the Canner family who came to Napa as slaves and stayed for three generations, Matilda Seawell who was beloved by all and affectionately known as Aunt Tillie, and the thousands of others who have lived and worked here for the last 169 years. Recovering their stories and relationships is important to move the discourse away from the sensational.
Second, this thesis examines contemporary race relations in Napa County from the perspective of African Americans who lived here over the last four decades. White Napans often believe themselves to be either liberals free of bigotry, racism, and sexism, or conservatives defending traditional values. Neither case is really accurate, as the interviews will show. Napa, both as a county engaged in its own internal debate about race and as part of the statewide conversation, expresses "many of the forces and dynamics posited to be the engines of 'racial progress': a generally liberal political culture, a relatively robust economy, and increasingly diverse populace, and well-organized civil rights leadership. Yet. .. nearly every major civil rights and racial justice issue put before a vote [in the last few decades] ... has failed." Napa's current racial conflicts are not isolated events devoid of historical context but part of a centuries-old continuum of white privilege and minority oppression. They are part of a larger social "effort to turn back the clock on the state's history of racial progress," and unfortunately, that effort has thus far succeeded. Napa County has come a long way in terms of race relations between African Americans and whites, but still has a very long way to go.
