A fight over Jim Crow Road divides Northern California town of Downieville
As the story goes, a Native Hawaiian man came as a Gold Rush pioneer to a mountainous swath of Sierra County to strike it rich.
His name was given to a ravine, a stream and a street off scenic Highway 49, three miles east of Downieville, Calif. That's how Jim Crow Canyon, Jim Crow Creek and Jim Crow Road came to be.
Generations later, people who own property along the less-than-a-mile-long road, including a small mountain resort, say that Jim Crow has got to go.
In April, their pleas sparked a proposal before the Sierra County Board of Supervisors to consider renaming the road.
That has led to counter-complaints from residents of this community about 100 miles northeast of Sacramento, who argue that the effort to expunge the name Jim Crow is an example of "woke cancel culture" run amok.
The debate is unfolding in one of the least ethnically and racially diverse counties in California: About 93% of the 3,000 people who make up Sierra County are white.
"All four property owners have had uncomfortable discussions about the name. Even if it's a UPS driver delivering something or some public agency that you call and they ask you what your address is and you go ... 'Jim Crow Road.' There's a little twinge when you're saying it," said Jim Steinbarth, who has owned property on the road for more than 20 years.
"Nobody wants to make a big issue of this, but especially in today's political issues and sensitivities I don't see why there can't be a compromise."
Cherry Simi, a Downieville resident who has lived in the area for nearly half a century, questioned the timing of the potential name change.
"It's very disappointing that that cancel culture movement has affected our small community. I never thought that would happen here," she said. "There was never any reference I found that compared him to any of the bad Jim Crow image. That was just the guy's name, and whether or not it was his real name or not, we don't know. That's kind of what I'm arguing. Why change it? Just leave it alone."
The debate over Jim Crow Road is the latest example of political and cultural schisms that can raise temperatures in rural California, away from the spotlight of largely liberal cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles. Arguments have ensued over a Placerville city logo depicting a noose, which the City Council later voted to remove. Last fall, Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows ski resort near Lake Tahoe announced that it planned to drop the word "squaw" from its name, calling it a derogatory and offensive term.
On Tuesday, the Sierra County Board of Supervisors will hold a public hearing regarding a possible name change.
"A hundred percent of the people that have private property on that road asked for it to be changed," said Lee Adams, a Sierra County supervisor who brought the issue before the board after hearing from his constituents. "To me, this is just a no-brainer, but I also realize that everybody looks at these things different."
The words "Jim Crow" have come to stand for the racist laws that for generations kept Black people segregated in the American South. The phrase itself, which predates the Gold Rush, originated in blackface minstrelsy. (Last year, 2,500 miles away in Georgia, Jim Crow Road — named for Glennon "Jim" Crow — was renamed G.C. Crow Road.)
There's little information in the historical record about a Hawaiian man in the region who somehow came to be called Jim Crow.
"I've been to Hawaii many times and I've never heard of a Native Hawaiian that was named Jim Crow," Steinbarth said. "Even if there wasn't a racist connotation ... I doubt that that was his birth name."
Jim Crow, as he's called, is believed to have been an early pioneer in the region with William Downie, the founder of Downieville.
In his book "Hunting for Gold," Downie shared a story of the man he called Crow catching "a monster salmon, weighing nearly fourteen pounds." After boiling the fish in the camp kettle, they found gold at the bottom.
Downie details the two of them, in the fall of 1849, panning for gold and taking out more than a dozen ounces for four days straight. Later, so-called Crow headed out with a handful of men for provisions but never returned to the camp. Downie said he thought he had met his demise.
Months later, after hearing that the Hawaiians had struck it rich, Downie and dozens of other men headed in that direction. To his great surprise, he wrote, he encountered Crow, who he said "held full sway" over his fellow Hawaiian miners.
"The place had already been named Crow City, and the canyon is to this day known as Jim Crow Canyon," Downie wrote.
Downie wrote that Crow told him "a pack of lies" to explain his not returning to the camp with provisions. He added that many believed the Hawaiians "were only waiting for the white people to vacate, and then they would plunge into the very richest places."
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