Smith established a farm on this land and worked to build his California agricultural operation. He had brought his enslaved household from Mississippi through Utah and now to California, where they continued to work for him in the same relationship of compelled labor. The California constitution’s prohibition on slavery was a matter of public knowledge; the question was whether anyone would enforce it.
For several years, no one did. This was not unusual. California’s free-state status was real in constitutional terms but inconsistent in enforcement. Enslaved people had been brought to California by enslavers from various southern states, and while some had successfully petitioned for their freedom through the courts, others remained in conditions of practical slavery without legal challenge. The burden of initiating a legal challenge fell on the enslaved person or their allies, and the legal system was structured to make that challenge as difficult as possible.
The testimony rule that barred Black and Native American people from testifying against white people was perhaps the most significant structural barrier. It meant that an enslaved person who wanted to bring a legal challenge to their status had to do so without being able to speak for themselves in a formal court proceeding. The case would have to be made through the testimony of white witnesses or through the construction of a legal argument that did not require the enslaved person’s own account.
During the San Bernardino years, Biddy Mason was building the connections that would eventually make it possible to bring that challenge. The Owens family in Los Angeles was one part of this network. Robert Owens and his wife Minnie had established themselves as free Black residents of Los Angeles with property, standing, and connections to the broader community — both the Black community and, through commerce, the white community. Their son Charles was developing an interest in Ellen Mason, Biddy’s eldest daughter. These personal connections were also practical ones: the Owens family had the resources and the standing to intervene in a way that an isolated individual could not.