From K-QED.

We often look back into California history on Bay Curious to give us context about how and

why something came to be the way that it is today. And many of our stories start at the

gold rush, and a pretty romanticized version of that story, I'll admit. You know it. Thousands of people

making their way to this land to build cities and fortunes for a fresh start.

California was a place where a nobody could become somebody and people came from all over the world to be a part of that.

When we look at the California we are today, came from all over the world to be a part of that.

When we look at the California we are today, so much of it is because of what happened during the

Gold Rush. But as today's question-esqueer knows, there are darker parts of that history that we don't

often hear about, something that's baked into the very foundations of this state.

Is I've done a little bit of research in understanding the gold mining era and the gold rush.

I learned that a lot of people from the South came to California and they brought their slaves.

My name is Doug Spindler.

I live in the United States.

California may have entered the Union as a free state, a place

that prohibited slavery, but it didn't act like it. Some of our first leaders built their

wealth by exploiting the labor of enslaved people.

And it's very, I find it very interesting

that we don't know any of this part of California's history. and yet this is so big and so important.

That history is coming to light right now in a big way.

California has launched a task force charged with recommending how the state should make amends for the harm done to black Californians by decades of slavery, segregation, and racist policies.

Today in Bay Curious, we look back at California's history with slavery.

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