One Sunday evening in December 1919, two Black men, Arthur Davis and Harry Crosby, entered the Yosemite Soda Fountain Emporium across from the Petaluma railroad yard. Located on the first floor of the Yosemite Hotel, a boarding house for cowhands, hay balers, and railroad workers on the corner of Copeland and East Washington streets, the Emporium was a working man’s soda fountain.[1]
The soda jerk that evening was George Delehanty, an Irish immigrant with a history of assault charges, including a shootout in a Bodega saloon that left two men dead, one of them shot five times in the chest.[2] Delehanty’s recent transition from bartending to soda jerking was dictated by the Wartime Prohibition Act, a temporary measure passed by Congress during World War I to conserve grain used in the making of alcohol.
By the time the act was implemented July 1, 1919, the war had ended, the 18th Amendment indefinitely banning the making and sale of alcohol had been ratified, and Prohibition was set to commence on January 17, 1920.[3] Rather than nullify the temporary act, Congress let it stand as a soft launch of banning alcohol.
While most Petaluma’s saloons were forced to close on July 1st, a handful like the Yosemite converted to soda fountains. At least publicly. Privately, many surreptitiously added jackass brandy to the sugary syrup used in making sodas with carbonated water drawn from a spigot, giving birth by necessity to the fizzy cocktail.[4]
But serving booze under the table wasn’t the Yosemite’s only concealed practice—it also had an implicit “whites only” policy, as Crosby and Davis discovered the evening they walked into the soda fountain, when Delehanty grabbed them by their collars and began dragging them to the door.[5]
Davis was relatively new to town, having operated a sidewalk shoeshine stand for three months outside the Ecker Barbershop in the Washington Hotel, which wrapped around either side of the Bank of Sonoma County building on the northwest corner of Main and Washington streets. He boarded at the hotel.
Crosby worked as a chauffeur for Dr. Arthur Lumsden, a prominent physician in town. He and his wife Josie, who worked as a domestic for the doctor and his family, lived in the doctor’s household at 301 Sixth Street.[6]
Davis and the Crosbys were among only 13 Blacks living in Petaluma at the time, out of a total population of more than 6,000.[7] While the city served during the Civil War as Sonoma County’s abolitionist enclave with a small but vibrant Black community, by the turn of the century it had become what was known as a “sundown town,” excluding non-whites through some combination of discriminatory local laws, intimidation, or violence.
Its racial barriers were maintained institutionally through legal covenants inserted in property deeds banning the sale or rental of homes to “persons of African, Asiatic or Mongolian descent,” as well as more informal means, such as the reception Crosby and Davis received the night they entered the Yosemite.[8]
In Delehanty’s effort to eject them, a scuffle ensued that left Delehanty with a deep, eight-inch wound down his left arm. Crosby and Davis promptly fled the soda fountain, with Davis running up East Washington Street toward the Washington Hotel, and Crosby speeding home in Dr. Lumsden’s sedan.
Delehanty was rushed to Hillside Hospital, a repurposed Italianate-style Victorian house at 223 Kentucky Street across from Penry Park, to be stitched up.
Police Chief Mike Flohr and Officer Otto Rudolph arrived at the scene in a cab, as the police force lacked patrol cars. The two quickly set out after Davis, arresting him in Penry Park across from his hotel.[9]
Charges against Davis and Crosby were dropped a few days later at their arraignment for lack of evidence. Police were unable to locate the knife used in the stabbing, or find anyone in the Yosemite that night willing to testify to having witnessed the incident.[10] As became clear in coming months, when it came to enforcing the town’s racial boundaries, some Petalumans preferred to take a vigilante approach.
Part of that had to do with the high level of national racial tension at the time. The release of Birth of a Nation, a 1915 epic silent film glorifying white supremacism, had spawned a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, which grew to more than two million members nationwide. Petaluma’s KKK chapter made its presence known in 1925 with a giant burning cross at a nighttime rally held near the Petaluma Adobe, so large it was visible from the downtown.[11]
The period also saw the beginning of The Great Migration as Blacks left the South for urban areas in the North, seeking to escape the violence and oppression of living under Jim Crow. In a number of Northern cities their arrival was met with attacks, violent riots, and lynchings in what came to be known as The Red Summer of 1919.[12]
The national unrest was relayed to Petaluma that summer by the city’s two newspapers, which depicted America in the midst of a racial war.[13]
Davis and Crosby left Petaluma shortly after their arraignment, no doubt fearing for their safety.[14] Davis’ position at the shoeshine stand outside the Ecker Barbershop was filled by a Black man from San Francisco named Sidney Smith. Like Davis before him, he lodged at the Washington Hotel.
Smith had only been in town a month when rumors began circulating that he was making “slurring remarks” about young white women in town. One night an angry mob assembled in the hall outside his hotel room, violently threatening him. They had just knocked him to the floor when Flohr arrived, and took custody of Smith, escorting him to the police station in City Hall at Fourth and A streets.
Smith was detained for half an hour while police searched for someone willing to press charges against him. Finding no one, Flohr had no choice but to release him.
The mob was waiting for Smith outside the police station. They escorted him on foot to the city limits, warning him not to return.
The next afternoon, a defiant Smith returned to work at his shoeshine stand. That night, a large mob gathered for him outside the Washington Hotel. Flohr met with the mob’s leaders, requesting they swear out a warrant against Smith, allowing the chief to arrest him. They refused.
At 10 p.m. Flohr and Rudolph rushed Smith out of the hotel and into a waiting taxi. As they sped off, members of the mob secured other taxis and gave chase, raising alarm as they raced through the streets of the city. They failed to overtake the taxi carrying Smith and the police as it headed south into Marin County.
A few days later, one of Smith’s customers from Petaluma ran into him outside the Ferry Building in San Francisco, where Smith asked him to buy him a meal, as everything he owned was back at the hotel, which he was unable to return to.[15]
By 1930, Petaluma’s Black population had dropped to just three residents. It would remain in the single digits for the next two decades. In 1960, a federal commission on civil rights found only one home in town owned by a Black family, that of shoeshine operator Henry Chenault and his wife Bessie at 32 West Street. Their daughter Nancy had been the only Black student in Petaluma High School when she graduated in 1950.[16]
Petaluma’s Black population would not increase significantly until after passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, reaching 136 in 1970.[17]
By that time, the Yosemite Hotel was targeted for demolition. Three months after the incident with Crosby and Davis, the soda fountain was shut down by federal marshals, who arrested Delehanty and the Yosemite’s owners after finding liquor on the premises. The establishment operated as a speakeasy throughout Prohibition, and then as an Italian restaurant and bar until 1966, when it was shuttered for good.
In 1971, the entire hotel was demolished for the widening of East Washington Street.[18]
*****
A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 10, 2022.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] “Yosemite Opened,” Argus, April 4, 1905; Bill Soberanes, “Petaluma Loses Well-Known Landmark,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 14, 1971.
[2] “Blood at Bodega,” Petaluma Courier, July 18, 1894; “Delehanty,” Sonoma Democrat, October 13, 1894; “Delehanty Acquitted,” Healdsburg Tribune, October 18, 1894.
[3] Michael A. Lerner, “Going Dry,” Humanities, The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities, September/October 2011, Volume 32, Number 5.
[4] “The Great Drought Begins at Midnight,” Petaluma Argus, June 30, 1919; Tristan Donovan, Fizz: How Soda Shook Up the World (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2014), pp. 89-98.
[5] “Stabbing Affray Sunday,” Petaluma Argus, December 15, 1919; “Man Stabbed by a Negro,” Petaluma Courier, December 16, 1919.
[6] 1920 U.S. Census.
[7] 1920 U.S. Census.
[8] “Trip to Petaluma,” Pacific Appeal, January 30, 1864; “Notice,” Petaluma Argus, November 30, 1865; “Flag Presentation,” Petaluma Argus, January 1, 1869; “The Picnic,” Petaluma Argus, July 9 1870; “Uncle Aleck Dead,” Petaluma Argus, August 4, 1886; Moore, Montojo, Mauri, “Roots, Race, and Place,” Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, University of California, Berkeley, October 2019, p. 22; Sharon McGriff-Payne, John Grider’s Century: African Americans in Solano, Napa, and Sonoma Counties from 1845 to 1925 (iUniverse, 2009), p. 58; James E. Loewen, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism (New York: Touchstone Books, Simon & Schuster, 2006), pp. 3-5; An example of the covenants can be found in the Sonoma Deeds of Record, Book 293, Page 330, April 13, 1931, for the sale of property by Willian and Marie J. Deiss to Clifford B. and Minnie J. Murphy: “FOURTH: That prior to the first day of October, 1990, no persons of African, Asiatic or Mongolian descent shall be permitted to purchase or lease said property, or any part thereof and this restriction shall bind, whether such attempted purchase shall be made at any execution sale, foreclosure sale or in any other manner.”
[9] “Stabbing Affray Sunday,” Petaluma Argus, December 15, 1919; “Man Stabbed by a Negro,” Petaluma Courier, December 16, 1919.
[10] “Dismissed at the Hearing,” Petaluma Argus, December 18, 1919.
[11] “Initiation of KKK Before Guests,” Petaluma Courier, June 2, 1925.
[12] “Racial Violence and the Red Summer,” African American Heritage, The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/wwi/red-summer
[13] “Race War in Washington,” Petaluma Argus, July 21, 1919; “More Die in Race War in Chicago,” Petaluma Courier, July 31, 1919;“Race War Deaths Now Total 33,” Petaluma Argus, October 13, 1919.
[14] “Case Dismissed for Lack of Evidence,” Petaluma Courier, December 18, 1919.
[15] “Negro Threatened by Angered Citizens,” Petaluma Courier, June 2, 1920; Brief Item, Petaluma Courier, June 5, 1920.
[16] “Ex-Petaluman Honors King: As a Girl, She Was the Only Black Student,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 19, 1993; U.S. Census; United States Commission on Civil Rights, Hearings before the United States Commission on Civil Rights. Hearings held in Los Angeles, California, January 25, 1960; San Francisco California, January 27, 1960, January 28, 1960 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1960), p. 588, https://www.google.com/books/edition/Hearings_Before_the_United_States_Commis/fUXVAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1
[17] U.S. Census.
[18] “8 Violators of ‘Prohi’ Law Arrested,” Petaluma Courier, December 30, 1925; “Two Are Fined $500 Each and One Case Pending Following Federal Raid,” Petaluma Argus, June 22, 1926; “Abatement Proceedings Against East Petaluma Hotel,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 19, 1927; “Federals Start Abatement Suits Here,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 18, 1931; Bill Soberanes column, “Petaluma Loses Well-Known Landmark,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 14, 1971.
