Forgotten But Not Gone!

Unless you work for a state agency, tomorrow will go by unnoticed, not only in Los Angeles but throughout the state of California's cities and towns.  It wasn't always this way.


                                          SEPTEMBER 9 is ADMISSION DAY!


Admission Day?  California is a university student?  a patient needing to go to a hospital?  getting into a 12-Step program?  Uuhhhhh, no.

Admission Day marks the day when California, formerly a Spanish, then a Mexican, province became the 31st state of the United States on September 9, 1850.  California's admission to the Union was a very popular move, except for many of the previously-conquered Hispanic Californios and those U.S. senators who envisioned the lands that the U. S. fought and bought from Mexico as one continental cotton plantation, a slaveholder's heaven.  California's admission into the Union necessitated the Great Compromise of 1850 that soothed slaveholders in the South with more stringent enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law in exchange for California and the other former Mexican lands, except Texas, to enter the Union as free states.

Statehood was generally favored in Los Angeles, not just from English speakers but many Californios looked forward to gaining greater rights for themselves in the new nation they reluctantly and cautiously belonged to.  Statehood, they thought, would establish their claims to their own land and that the Hispanic Californio culture could continue undisturbed. Sadly, we know how that turned out in later years. 

California was going to be a free state, no matter what.  That same year, 1850, brought about California's commitment to civil rights, beginning the legacy that made California the state that created the 40-hour work week, child labor, allowed women the vote, Cesar Chavez and the UFW, the court cases that first ended racial segregation in the school and workplace and whose outcomes ended those civil rights abuses nationwide.  It was then that, Biddy Mason, a slave owned by a Texan who migrated to California, discovered California was free territory.  She sought a lawyer to demand her freedom through the courts.  After attempts to kidnap her by her former owner, Biddy Mason won her freedom through the California Supreme Court in 1856.  She had relocated her family to California and she began purchasing many lots throughout the city through her work as nurse and educator.  She donated some of her lots to build the city's first firehouse, school, and hospital.  She also became very wealthy in the sale and purchase of land.  She became almost universally loved in the cautiously, defensively multicultural society of the time and was given a funeral worthy of a head of state.

For much of California's statehood, Admission Day was a state holiday, observed by schools, banks, and many other businesses, as well as state offices.  There were parades in major cities celebrating Admission Day well until the 1970's.  I remember well getting that day off, often three days into the new school year.  

                            WHY DON'T WE CELEBRATE IT ANYMORE?

The answer is "I don't know." I could offer a number of theories but that's all they would be.  Certainly, the state's ever decreasing general funds phased out the civic parades that were so often found in cities, especially on Admission Day.  Also, educators and civic leaders have "dropped the ball" in promoting and publicizing Admission Day to newer generations, ignoring it's importance to all Californians.  Newer arrivals into California don't know of Admission Day. Since few apprise them of the holiday, Admission Day has entered the Twilight Zone of formerly important holidays, such as Arbor Day, May Day, and Flag Day.  Like the others, California's Admission Day deserves the pomp, festivities, and celebration that the state deserves.  After all, 37 million people call California home, more population than any other state in the United States.  It's economy ranks as the 12th largest in the world. It is home to the most ethnically diverse population in the western United States and it all began on September 9, 1850. 

Admission Day must become a reminder of how our great state came to be and how we shape it with our presence here every day!

Plaza de Los Angeles, where news of California's admission to the Union was read.

Los Angeles, 1848, newly American but not yet a state

Biddy Mason Park, Downtown Los Angeles

Biddy Mason Park, 300 Block, Broadway, across from the Grand Central Market

A quiet, beautiful place to meditate, relax, eat, right in Downtown Los Angeles, Biddy Mason Park

                                                 ADMISSION DAY, SEPTEMBER 9