Archy Lee: The Rodney King of Gold Rush California

Image from:”The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom” By Wilbur Henry Siebert, Albert Bushnell HartEdition: 2Published by Macmillan, 1898, pg. 26[1]), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48283078

In March 1991, California and the world were transfixed by the video of Rodney King being brutally beaten by Los Angeles Police Department officers. The public remained transfixed throughout the legal proceedings, both criminal and civil, which followed. The acquittal of the officers who beat King on April 29, 1992 sparked the 1992 Los Angeles Protests, Riots, or Uprising (depending on your point of view).

This is a story of another Black Man, unwittingly caught in the middle of events which transfixed public attention and laid bare the ugly sores of racism of the time. This is the story of Archy Lee, who I call the “Rodney King” of Gold Rush California.

Like King, Lee was an ordinary man who did not seek out this attention. The controversies around King dominated the news of 1991–1992, especially in California. The controversies around Lee similarly dominated the news of 1858 California.

Before we can tell the story, we must set the stage. California became part of America as a result of the Mexican-American War, a war fought for the purpose of expanding slave territory into the West. When gold was discovered, it sparked the first truly…