Henry Chenault Archives - Petaluma Historian

Petaluma’s Black History

Linda Jones, second from right, first Black contestant for Petaluma Dairy Princess, 1971, standing with other contestants outside the Brown mansion at 920 D Street (photo Sonoma County Library)

The successful and persistent efforts of Black people to reach Petaluma, find jobs, combat discrimination, raise families, create positive images, and become a part of the community represent the creative and heroic aspects of Black history.

While Petaluma’s Black population has historically remained below two percent, it doesn’t mean the city lacks in stories of remarkable Black citizens. Even in the face of persistent racism, Black people have thrived, accumulating wealth, property, political clout, and a legacy that has left an indelible mark on Petaluma as we know it today.

Rivertown Era (1852 to 1900)

The Gold Rush

*Black miner during Gold Rush era (photo California History Room, California State Library)*

The Gold Rush brought Black people, both those free-born and educated in the North and those enslaved in the South, to California in search of economic and social opportunities. While many of those enslaved were able to purchase their freedom working for their owners in the gold mines, others escaped to freedom.

California’s Fugitive Law of 1852 authorized the return of runaway slaves to the South, placing any Black person who lacked clear legal documentation of their freedom at risk of being kidnapped and sold into slavery in the South. Although slaveowners were only briefly allowed to keep their slaves in California, many informally held them until 1864.^[1]

While most Black people settled in mining counties or in San Francisco during the 1850s, some chose towns like Petaluma, a small but bustling agricultural river port. Settled largely by Protestant abolitionists from New England, Petaluma was the sole Union outpost in Confederate Sonoma County during the Civil War.^[2]

George W. Miller (1825-1873)

*Inside a 19^th century Black barbershop (photo public domain)*

One of the more lucrative occupations for Black men was barbering. Their access to a white clientele provided them with economic and social advantages that conveyed prestige and influence within their communities.^[3]

Petaluma’s leading barber was George W. Miller. Born a free man in New Jersey, Miller migrated to San Francisco in 1850, before moving to Petaluma in 1855 and opening a barbershop on Main Street.^[4]

Miller continued to commute regularly to San Francisco, where he maintained his membership with prominent Black organizations, including the Olive Branch Lodge of the Black Masons, the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Brannan Guards ceremonial militia. The latter inspired him to establish the Colfax Guard in Petaluma.^[5]

Miller was also a contributor to San Francisco’s two Black-owned newspapers, the Pacific Appeal and the Elevator, which provided Black people on the Pacific Coast as sense of community.^[6]

He also represented Sonoma County at the four California Colored Conventions held between 1855 and 1865, where members organized to fight for full citizenship rights for Black people, including the right to court testimony, homesteading, publicly-funded schools, and suffrage.^[7]

Union African Methodist Episcopal Church

*Former Union A.M.E. Church, 109 Howard Street (photo courtesy of Scott Hess)*

In 1865, the first African Methodist Episcopal church (A.M.E.) in the North Bay was established in Petaluma. Located in a house at 109 Howard Street, the church served as a religious, social, and political center for the town’s small but vibrant Black community, a number of them homeowners.^[8]

Reverend Peter Killingsworth, a former slave and A.M.E. circuit preacher, was assigned as founding pastor.^[9] In 1865, he accompanied George Miller to the Colored Convention held in Sacramento, serving as the convention’s chaplain. Killingsworth noted in his convention report that Sonoma County had 70 black residents, 58 adults and 12 children. Of the adult men, a dozen were general laborers, ten farmers, seven barbers, two blacksmiths, and two carpenters.^[10]

A schism later developed between Killingsworth and the Petaluma church’s more politically cautious trustees—all former slaves—leading to his departure in 1869. That same year, those trustees were among 12 Black residents who signed a petition for woman’s suffrage, on the eve of ratification of the 15^th Amendment, which extended voting rights to Black men.^[11]

The church operated with visiting preachers before shutting down in 1878 after a large decline in the local Black population.^[12]

“Colored School”

In 1864, George Miller spearheaded the opening of a private “colored school,” as it was called at the time. A young Black woman from San Francisco, Mrs. Rachel Coursey, was hired as the school’s first teacher.^[13]

Later that year, after the California Supreme Court ruled public school districts were required to provide “separate but equal” schools for Black students, Petaluma’s “colored school” became one of six such schools in the state to be publicly funded.^[14]

In the early 1870s, Miller joined with other members of the Colored Convention’s Education Committee in bringing a case for school integration before the California Supreme Court. Although the court upheld “separate but equal” schooling in Ward v. Flood, committee members convinced most of the cities with “colored schools” to voluntarily integrate.^[15]

Petaluma was the lone hold-out, generating national press and serving as a polarizing issue locally.

The city’s “colored school” remained in operation until 1880, at which time the state legislature voted to abolish segregated schools.^[16] By that time, the school had only one student, as most Black families had relocated to friendlier communities in Vallejo and Oakland, where jobs were readily available in the shipyards and on the railroads.^[17]

Egg Boom Era (1901 to 1945)

Sundown Town

*New housing development in Los Angeles, 1950 (photo Irving C. Smith, California Eagle newspaper; California Eagle Photo Collection, Southern California Library, Los Angeles, California)*

Having served as an abolitionist, pro-Union enclave during the Civil War, Petaluma became less friendly for Black residents following the end of Reconstruction in 1877.

Abolitionists may have supported the end of slavery, but not all were in favor of providing Black people with equal rights.

Black barbers in town, who had gained wealth, prominence, and influence servicing white clientele, found themselves displaced in the 1880s by German and Swiss-Italian immigrants.^[18]

By the beginning of Petaluma’s prosperous egg boom at the turn of the century, the city had become a so-called “sundown town,” intent on excluding non-whites through a combination of discriminatory local laws, intimidation, and violence.

This was accomplished largely by restricting housing access to Caucasians through both implicit and explicit means. The latter came in the form of institutional racism.^[19]

In 1927, the National Association of Real Estate Boards championed the inclusion of legal covenants in property deeds that banned the sale or lease of property to non-whites. The Federal Housing Administration, created in the 1930s to insure home mortgages, also required racial covenants to guarantee loans, a practice better known as “redlining,” referring to the red colored areas on maps they would not insure. ^[20]

While Petaluma’s population surged with the egg boom in 1920 to 6,226 residents, only 13 of them were Black, and were employed as domestics, porters, chauffeurs, and shoeshine men.^[21]

The largest Black presence in town during the 1920s and 30s were traveling Black minstrel troupes and jazz groups performing at the Mystic Theater and Hill Opera House, and Black cowboys at the local rodeos held at the fairgrounds.^[22]

*Black rodeo champion Jesse Stahl*, *a frequent visitor to Petaluma (photo public domain)*

The 1920s also brought a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, thanks largely to the release of the epic silent film Birth of a Nation, which glorified white supremacism. The local Petaluma KKK chapter staged a recruiting rally in 1925 with a nighttime cross-burning outside the Petaluma Adobe that was visible from the downtown.^[23] By 1930, the city’s Black population had dropped to three citizens.^[24]

One open-minded group in town was the Men’s Forum of the Congregational Church, led by grain merchant George P. McNear. The forum regularly brought to town Black speakers, including Dr. E.W. Moore, a Baptist preacher and charter member of the NAACP, to educate them on race matters^.[25]

Suburban Boom Era (1946 to current)

Housing Discrimination

Chenault House at 32 West Street, only Petaluma home owned by a Black family in 1960 (photo John Sheehy)

The suburban tract housing boom following World War II more than tripled Petaluma’s population to almost 25,000 by 1970. However, the boom however came with restrictive deed covenants redlining by the banks that prevented the sale or resale of homes to “persons of African, Asiatic or Mongolian descent.”^[26]

Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled such covenants unenforceable in 1948, they were still being used in the North Bay as late as the 1960s, often serving as a means of placing social pressure on white families not wishing to discriminate.^[27]

In 1960, a report by a federal commission on civil rights found only one home in Petaluma owned by a Black family, that of Henry and Bessie Chenault. The commission attributed this to a cabal of bankers, realtors, developers, and neighborhood associations who ostracized and financially threatened anyone attempting to sell or rent a home to Black people.^[28]

In 1963, the California Fair Housing Act was passed, making it unlawful to discriminate against home buyers and renters. The next year, the California Real Estate Association put forth a successful ballot measure to nullify the Fair Housing Act. The ballot measure was overruled by the U.S Supreme Court in 1967.^[29]

Henry Chenault (1895 -1969)

*Henry Chenault at his Western Avenue shoeshine stand, 1954 (photo Sonoma County Library)*

From the 1940s through the 1960s, Petaluma’s most prominent Blacks were Henry and Bessie Chenault. Actively engaged in politics, they served as officers of Petaluma’s Democratic Club and founding members of the Sonoma County NAACP, where Bessie was elected the chapter’s first treasurer.^[30]

Henry moved to Petaluma in the 1930s, after serving 13 years in Leavenworth Prison for his participation in a deadly uprising of Black soldiers on a Houston army base in 1917.^[31]

Keeping his past secret, he operated a sidewalk shoeshine stand at 18 Western Avenue, across from Andresen’s Tavern, until his death in 1969.

Thanks to Henry’s outgoing personality, his stand became a popular downtown crossroads. Among merchants, it served as the city’s “second chamber of commerce.” For local politicians, many of whom relied upon Henry as a trusted advisor, it helped them keep a finger on the pulse of the community.^[32]

For many years, Henry was Petaluma’s only Black businessman, and he and Bessie were the city’s sole Black homeowners.^[33] Henry was posthumously pardoned in 1972 for his role in the Houston uprising, determined to have been staged by white racists.^[34]

Sonoma County NAACP

The 1950s and 60s marked a period of unprecedented protests against the status of second class citizenship accorded to Black Americans.

The protests took form in civil disobedience, nonviolent resistance, marches, protests, boycotts, “freedom rides,” and rallies. There were also continuing efforts to legally challenge segregation through the courts.^[35]

In 1955, Platt Williams and Gilbert Gray of Santa Rosa spearheaded organizing the Sonoma County chapter of the NAACP. Henry and Bessie Chenault represented Petaluma as founding members.

One of the chapter’s first actions was closing down the Montgomery Village Lions Club’ annual minstrel charity show, which harkened back to blackface entertainment.^[36]

While the chapter supported the national NAACP movement—for example, picketing and boycotting the F.W. Woolworth department stores in Petaluma and Santa Rosa over the chain’s refusal to serve Black people at lunch counters in the South—their primary focus was securing equal treatment in jobs and housing for the county’s Black residents, who by 1960 totaled 916.^{^[37]}

That included successfully lobbying for the California Fair Employment Practice Act of 1959 and the California Fair Housing Act of 1963.^[38]

Petaluma Blacks for Community Development

*Gloria Robinson, 1982 (photo courtesy of Petaluma Argus-Courier, Brant Ward photographer)*

Gloria Robinson moved to Petaluma from San Francisco in 1971 with her husband Herbert and four children, attracted by the affordable real estate. She quickly made friends with civil rights activist Bessie Chenault, and began working with the NAACP and Sonoma County People for Economic Opportunity.^[39]

Petaluma’s Black population by that time had grown from 11 in 1960 to more than 100, and was on its way toward reaching almost 500 by 1980.^[40]

In 1976, Gerald Ford became the first U.S. president to recognize February as Black History Month, an event started 50 years before by Black historian Carl G. Wooden.^[41]

Seeing an opportunity to increase Black visibility and representation in town, in 1978 Robinson formed Petaluma Blacks for Community Development. Serving as president, she was joined by founding board members Faith Ross, Ted Morris, and Nadine Lawson.

The group’s mission has been to share Black history and culture with the Petaluma community and bring Black families together for social and educational activities by sponsoring events, speaking engagements, and exhibits.

Their vision is to help “make the Petaluma community free of hate and get rid of those issues that divide us based on color.”^[42]

******

FOOTNOTES

[1] Rudolph M. Lapp, Blacks in Gold Rush California (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977); Douglas Henry Daniels, Pioneer Urbanites (University of California Press, 1990), pp. 12-13; Mike McPhate, “California’s Black Slaves and the Myth of Free Soil,” California Sun, January 23, 2019. Californiasun.com.

[2] Delilah Leontium Beasley, The Negro Trail Blazers of California (Los Angeles: Times Mirror Printing,1919) p. 42; Adair Heig, History of Petaluma: A California River Town (Petaluma, CA: Scottwall Associates, 1982), p. 47.

[3] Douglas W. Bristol, Knights of the Razor: Black Barbers in Slavery and Freedom (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015); Sean Trainor, “The Racially Fraught History of the American Beard,” The Atlantic, January 20, 2014.

[4] Advertisements, Sonoma County Journal, August 25, 1855, and September 5, 1856; “Deaths: George Miller,” Pacific Appeal, October 25, 1873.

[5] “Prince Hall Freemasonry,” Freemason Information, freemasoniformation.com; Delilah Leontium Beasley, The Negro Trail Blazers of California (Los Angeles: Times Mirror Printing, 1919) p. 146; “Masonic Notice,” The Elevator, December 21, 1872; “Died,” The Elevator, October 25, 1873; “Trip to Petaluma,” Pacific Appeal, January 30, 1864; “Flag Presentation,” Petaluma Argus, January 1, 1869; “The Picnic,” Petaluma Argus, July 9 1870.

[6] https://blackvoicenews.com/2008/07/31/mirror-of-the-times-founded-1857/; “Agents,” Pacific Appeal, January 17, 1863.

[7] Herbert G. Ruffin II, “The Conventions of Colored Citizens of the State of California (1855-1865),” February 9, 2009. BlackPast.com.

[8] “Rudolph Lapp, Afro-Americans in California (San Francisco: Boyd and Fraser Publishing Company, 1987); “Santa Rosa,” The Elevator, July 4, 1865, the first newspaper mention of Rev. Killingsworth at the A.M.E. Church in Petaluma; “Trip to Petaluma,” Pacific Appeal, January 30, 1864; “Notice,” Petaluma Argus, November 30, 1865; “Campbell’s Chapel,” Petaluma Argus, November 30, 1865.

[9] California State Convention of Colored Citizens, held in Sacramento on the 25, 26, 27, 28 of October 1865. Coloredconventions.org; Delilah Leontium Beasley, The Negro Trail Blazers of California (Los Angeles: Times Mirror Printing,1919) p. 158; “The Appointments of the A. M. E. Church for the Conference,” Pacific Appeal, November 8, 1862; “The Appointments of the A. M. E. Church for the Conference,” Pacific Appeal, September 12, 1863; 1860 U.S. Census, Sacramento, California; 1861 Sacramento City Directory.

[10] http://coloredconventions.org/items/show/268, p. 14.

[11] Delilah Leontium Beasley, The Negro Trail Blazers of California (Los Angeles: Times Mirror Printing,1919) p. 252-253. “Petaluma,” The Elevator, November 1, 1867; “Correspondence of the Elevator,” The Elevator, February 19, 1869; “Petition for Woman’s Suffrage in Senate, March 2, 1870,” Journals of Senate and Assembly of the 18^th Session of the legislature of the State of California, Volume II, pp. 14-18, 23-24; Note: the 12 identified Black residents who signed the 1870 woman’s suffrage petition were Charles and Rebecca Montgomery, Peggy Barnes, Alexander and Malvina McFarland, Thomas and Juliana Johnson, John and Ellen Looney, E. Cooper and Eliza A. Smith, and Mary Espee.

[12] “Sixteen Volume: A.M.E. Appointments,” Pacific Appeal, August 10, 1878; City of Petaluma Deed Records, Lot 276, Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library, Ref. 979.418.732: Sold on October 3, 1885 by two trustees of the AME, a religious society not incorporated; includes a small frame structure; states it has been many years since any religious services were held, and that but four or five members of the society remain; remains of the sale to be extended to other A.M.E. churches throughout the state. Last service listed in the Petaluma Argus was August 14, 1878, when Bishop Black of Baltimore preached there.

[13] “Correspondence,” Pacific Appeal December 12, 1863; “Married,” Pacific Appeal June 27, 1863; “Arrivals from the Interior,” Pacific Appeal, February 13, 1864; “School for Colored Children,” Petaluma Argus, December 16, 1863; “Opened,” Petaluma Argus, January 13, 1864.

[14] Charles Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed: Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools, 1855-1975. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976), p. 25; “Trip to Petaluma,” Pacific Appeal, January 30, 1864.

[15] Delilah Leontium Beasley, The Negro Trail Blazers of California (Los Angeles: Times Mirror Printing, 1919) p. 180-182; “Educational Public Meeting at Bethel Church,” The Elevator, April 27, 1872; “Address of the Educational Committee,” The Elevator, May 11, 1872; “1874 Ward V. Flood, Blackpast.org, https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/ward-v-flood-1874/

[16] “Educational Items,” Petaluma Argus, August 13, 1875; “A Pennsylvania Opinion,” Petaluma Argus, May 18, 1876; “Our ‘Colored Schools,’” Petaluma Argus, December 22, 1876; “Our Colored School,” Petaluma Argus, August 11, 1876; “The Negro School,” Petaluma Argus, April 5, 1877; “A Pennsylvania Opinion,” Petaluma Argus, May 18, 1877.

[17] Sharon McGriff-Payne, John Grider’s Century: African Americans in Solano, Napa, and Sonoma Counties from 1845 to 1925 (iUniverse, 2009), p. 58; History of Sonoma County, Sonoma County, CA (Archives History – Books …..Petaluma Township, Part 3 1880); Charles Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed: Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools, 1855-1975. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976), 25; John Ford, Journal of the American Association, Volume 6, 1907, p. 84; “The Public Schools,” Petaluma Courier, June 18, 1879.

[18] Douglas Walter Bristol, Knights of the Razor: Black Barbers on Slavery and Freedom (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2009).

[19] Moore, Montojo, Mauri, “Roots, Race, and Place,” Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, University of California, Berkeley, October 2019, p. 22.

[20] “Is There Racism in the Deed to Your Home?” New York Times, August 17, 2021.

[21] 1920 U.S. Census; “Negro Attacked Officer; Arrested,” Petaluma Courier, April 24, 1920.

[22] “At the Theaters, California,” Petaluma Courier, June 19, 1927.

[23] “Initiation of K.K.K. Before Guests,” Petaluma Courier, June 2, 1925.

[24] U.S Census.

[25] The Negro and His Outlook,” Petaluma Argus, March 30, 1925; “Negro Lecturer Returns to Congregational Open Forum,” Petaluma Argus, November 18, 1925; “Solve the Race Problem If We Would Avoid War, Says Noted Authority,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 21, 1932; “Dr. Kingsley Addresses Club,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 8, 1933.

[26] 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.”

[27] Moore, Montojo, Mauri, pgs. 7, 13; Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation,2017), pgs. 6, 36, 52.

[28] “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. 590.

[29] Moore, Motojo, Mauri, p. 54.

[30] Bill Soberanes, So They Tell Me Column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 24, 1960; “Santa Rosa Unit of NAACP to Receive Charter,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, June 2, 1955.

[31] “Houston Mutiny and Riot Records: Henry Chenault,” South Texas College of Law Digital Collection, https://cdm16035.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15568coll1/id/1707

[32] Bill Soberanes, “So They Tell Me” column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 19, 1952; Bob Wells, “Everybody Here Knows Henry L. Chenault,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 24, 1954; “A Paragraph for Mr. Chenault,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 29, 1954; Bill Soberanes, “Henry Chenault Was a Petaluma Institution,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 20, 1993.

[33] Bill Soberanes column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 20, 1993; United States Commission on Civil Rights, Hearings before the United States Commission on Civil Rights, 1960, p. 588.

[34] Jaime Salazar, Mutiny of Rage: The 1917 Camp Logan Riots and Buffalo Soldiers in Houston (Prometheus eBooks, 2021), p. 51.

[35] “The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship,”Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african-american-odyssey/abolition.html

[36] “County Negroes are Forming NAACP Unit,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, February 9, 1955; “Santa Rosa Unit of NAACP to Receive Charter,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, June 2, 1955; “Village Minstrel Show Called Off After Protest,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, September 16, 1955.

[37] “Picketing by NAACP Continues in County,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, March 20, 1960; “Negro ‘Test’ Stores Open—Part of the Way,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 9, 1960.

[38] “F.E.P. Bill To Be Discussed,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 29, 1955; Michael C. Tobriner, “California FEPC,” Hastings Law Journal, 1965, Vol. 16, issue 3; Moore, Motojo, Mauri, p. 54.

[39] 1970 U.S. census; Ann Gray Byrd, Glimpses: Santa Rosa African Americans (Santa Rosa, CA, 2003),p. 96; “Gloria Robinson: If Not You, Then Who?” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 3, 2013; “Gloria Robinson Still Active, Still Working for Change,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 16, 2019.

[40] U.S. Census.

[41] “Black History Month,” history.com: https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/black-history-month

[42] Petaluma Blacks for Community Development website: https://pbcd4us.com/about/.

The Secret Life of a Petaluma Shoeshine Man

Henry Chenault’s Unknown Role in 1917 Houston Race Revolt

*Henry Chenault at his shoeshine stand outside the Arcade Barbershop, 18 Western Avenue, 1955 (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)*

Rain was falling the night of August 23, 1917, when 150 Black soldiers marched on the city of Houston. They were protesting the inhumane treatment they had received from residents and police, including the brutal beating that day of two soldiers by white policemen. By the end of the evening, 20 people would be dead, 16 of them white, resulting in one of the largest court-martials in American history and, ultimately, the death of 19 Black soldiers by hanging.¹

Henry Chenault was among an additional ten soldiers scheduled to be hung. At the last minute, President Woodrow Wilson commuted their sentences to life imprisonment, later reduced to 20 years. Chenault ended up serving 13 years of hard labor at Leavenworth Federal Prison. After his release, he made his way to Petaluma, where he opened a shoeshine stand in the early 1930s.²

Thanks to Chenault’s engaging charm, his sidewalk stand—first on Main Street and then Western Avenue across from Andresen’s Tavern—quickly became a popular local crossroads.

*Henry Chenault’s empty shoeshine stand outside the Arcade Barbershop beside Pedroni’s Delicatessen, late 1940s (photo courtesy of Petlauma Historical Library & Museum)*

For sports enthusiasts, the stand was a mecca to stop at and check the radio—always tuned to a ball game—for the latest score and Chenault’s play-by-play commentary. Among downtown merchants, it served the city’s “second chamber of commerce.” To newcomers it was an unofficial welcome center, stocked with brochures and Chenault’s recommendations of places to go and things to see. For local politicians, many of whom relied upon Chenault as a trusted advisor, it was a spot to keep their fingers on the pulse of the community.³

*Street sign outside Henry Chenault’s shoestand, painted Lew Barber (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)*

With his uncanny ability to recall names, dates, and scraps of street conversation, Chenault was said to be on a first-name basis with nine out of ten people who passed by. During Petaluma’s suburban housing boom in the 1950s and 60s, as the city’s population more than tripled to 25,000, that became increasingly important. A personalized greeting from Chenault was reassurance that Petaluma remained a place where people knew your name.⁴

Longtime Argus-Courier columnist Bill Soberanes attributed his popularity to a personal creed that if one looked for the good in others, the bad points would vanish.⁵

*Henry Chenault and Petaluma Argus-Courier columnist Bill Soberanes at Chenault’s shoeshine stand, 1960s (photo courtesy of Petaluma Argus-Courier)*

While that may have been self-fulfilling—Chenault never spoke of his incarceration, telling people he worked on the railroads after being discharged from the army—it didn’t erase Petaluma’s bad points when it came to race, no matter how much good Chenault brought out in the town.⁶ For most of his years in Petaluma, he was the city’s only Black businessman, as well as its sole Black homeowner.⁷

That wasn’t by accident. Unlike the blatant and violent Jim Crow racism he faced as a young soldier in Houston, the discrimination he found in Petaluma was largely covert, camouflaged behind a smiling face.

That didn’t stop Henry Chenault from trying.

Born in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1895, Chenault quit school at 16 to apprentice as a teamster and stableman. Upon turning 18 in 1913, he enlisted for a three-year stint in the U.S. Army. Following his discharge, he settled in Oakland, where he met and married Willie Bernice Butler, originally of Red Bluff, adopting her five-year old son Samuel.

On May 24, 1917, almost two months after the United States entered World War I, Chenault was recalled to active duty, and assigned to the all-Black Third Battalion of the 24th Regiment. A unit of the famed Buffalo Soldiers, the 24th had charged up San Juan Ridge with Teddy Roosevelt and fought in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War.⁸

*Soldiers of the Third Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment at Camp Logan, Texas, August 1917 (photo courtesy of the Houston Chronicle)*

In late July, the Third Battalion was dispatched to Fort Logan, three miles outside of Houston, Texas, to guard the construction off a new aviation training facility.

Racial tensions were high across the country that summer. In July, white mobs in East St. Louis, Illinois, staged a labor riot, killing dozens of Blacks who had moved there from the South to work in war factories.

*East St. Louis Race Riot headline, St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Friday, July 6, 1917 (image public domain)*

Houston officials and business leaders, looking to capitalize financially on the new army base, assured the military that Black soldiers would not pose any problem in their city.⁹

It proved to be an empty promise. A segregated state, Texas had a reputation for lynchings and racial violence. In Houston, the mere presence of Black men in uniform threatened the social hierarchy. A year before, a member of the 24th stationed in Del Rio, Texas, had been killed for no other reason than he was Black. It angered many white Texans to see Black men in uniform. They feared that if they weren’t kept in check, local Black civilians would begin demanding equal treatment for themselves.¹⁰

*Soldiers of the 24th Infantry Regiment, Camp Logan, Texas, 1917 (photo public domain)*

As a result, soldiers in the 24th endured an onslaught of racial slurs and discrimination from city residents, along with pistol whippings and arrest from police officers for violating such Jim Crow laws as sitting in “white only” sections on the streetcars and drinking from “white only” fountains.

Tensions came to a boil the night of August 23rd, after two white police officers assaulted a Black private for interfering in the arrest of a Black woman. When a Black M.P. patrolling the city asked the officers about the soldier’s whereabouts, he was hit with a pistol, shot at three times, and brutally beaten before being thrown in jail.

News filtered back to the 24th that police had killed the two soldiers and an armed white mob was headed for the camp. Shots rang out, sending the frightened soldiers scrambling for their rifles and shooting into surrounding buildings at suspected snipers. An examination of soldiers inflicted with bullet wounds that evening at the camp, found the bullets came from non-military rifles.

Camp Logan , Texas, 1917 (photo U.S. National Archives)

After forming a skirmish line to secure the camp, 150 soldiers began marching toward the Houston police station to hold the police accountable for their attacks on the two soldiers.

All in all, 20 people died in the soldiers’ uprising that evening, including 11 white residents, five policemen, and four Black soldiers killed by friendly fire. Afterward, 118 soldiers were court martialled for murder and mutiny. All pleaded not guilty. They included Chenault, who claimed to be sick that night, and so remained behind in camp.¹¹

As the night was dark and rainy, identification of individual participants proved impossible. Instead, military investigators persuaded seven frightened soldiers to testify against their battalion mates in exchange for immunity. The resulting testimonies were conflicting.¹² In Chenault’s case, an informant posing as a participant in the uprising, was planted in his cell to trick him into allegedly revealing his participation.¹³

*The court martial of members of the 24th Infantry Regiment, 1917 (photo U.S. National Archives)*

The men were tried in three groups. Despite inconclusive evidence, 19 black soldiers in the first group sentenced to hang, their executions expedited under the Articles of War, as the U.S was at war with Germany. Another 10 soldiers in the second group, including Chenault, were sentenced to death. After an outcry from the NAACP and high-ranking military officials, President Wilson, an avowed racist, reluctantly commuted their sentences to life in federal prison.

All told, 110 men of the 24th were convicted, 63 men of them received life sentences. Some soldiers served as many as 20 years before their release.¹⁴ Chenault was released after serving 13.¹⁵

Upon his release, Chenault reunited with his wife Willie, then working as a hotel manager in San Francisco. By 1933, they were renting a house in Petaluma, where he opened a shoeshine stand outside Damon and Oster’s, the town’s largest barbershop and beauty salon, on Main Street across from the town clock.

Damon & Oster’s Barbershop and Beauty Salon across from the town clock, in 1935 (photo Sonoma County Library )

Chenault soon became a Petaluma fixture with a signature technique of taking a deck of cards and placing individual cards in a customer’s shoe to keep the polish from rubbing off on the man’s socks.¹⁷ Behind his happy demeanor however, he struggled.

In 1937, he and his wife divorced, after which he became engaged to Cecily Clapp, a 30-year old Black woman working as a domestic for the Herold family of Herold Drug Store in town. In May 1938, Chenault purchased a house at 32 West Street. Three months later, Clapp died from an illness apparently brought on by sunstroke. Chenault accompanied her body by train to her hometown in Virginia.¹⁸

When World War II broke out, disrupting his shoeshine business, he took a job on Mare Island, where thousands of Blacks had immigrated from the South to work in the shipyards. In 1944, he married Bessie Thompson, a Kansas native who had moved to Petaluma from Eureka in 1939 with her young daughter Nancy Lou.¹⁹

After the war, Chenault opened a new shoeshine stand outside the Arcade Barbershop at 18 Western Avenue, where he would remain for the next twenty-one years.²⁰

*Henry Chenault at 18 Western Avenue stand, 1949 (photo courtesy of Santa Rosa Press Democrat)*

He and his wife became actively engaged in politics, serving as officers of the Petaluma Democratic Club, and founding members of the Sonoma County NAACP. Established in Santa Rosa in 1955, the chapter elected Bessie Chenault as its first treasurer.²¹

While the county chapter supported the national civil rights movement—for example, picketing and boycotting the F.W. Woolworth’s Department Stores in Petaluma and Santa Rosa over the chain store’s refusal to serve Blacks at lunch counters in the South—their primary focus was securing equal treatment in jobs and housing for Sonoma County’s estimated 1,000 Black residents, most of whom lived either in rural areas or Santa Rosa’s South Park neighborhood.²²

*F.W. Woolworth Co. department store in Phoenix Building on Main Street in the mid-1950s (photo Sonoma County Library)*

That included lobbying for the controversial California Fair Employment Practice Act, which barred businesses and labor unions from discriminating against job applicants because of race, color, or creed. After many legislative defeats, it was signed into law in 1959.²³

They also pressed for the California Fair Housing Act of 1963, which made it unlawful to discriminate against home buyers and renters.

In 1960, a federal commission on civil rights found Petaluma had only one home owned by a Black family—that of Henry and Bessie Chenault at 32 West Street.²⁴

*The Chenault home, 32 West Street, purchased in 1938 (2021 photo by John Sheehy)*

The Chenaults’ daughter, Mary Lou, was Petaluma High School’s only Black student when she graduated in 1950. Santa Rosa Junior College, which she went on to attend, was only marginally better in terms of student diversity.²⁵

The commission determined Petaluma’s lack of Black residents was due to exclusionary housing practices. They pointed to a cabal of Sonoma County bankers, real estate agents, developers and neighborhood groups who blackballed and financially threatened anyone attempting to sell or rent property to Blacks.²⁶

Such exclusionary practices were reinforced by formal housing policies. In 1927, the National Association of Real Estate Boards championed racial covenants, creating a model clause that was inserted into countless deeds: “No part of said premises shall be sold, given, conveyed or leased to any negro or negroes.” The Federal Housing Administration, created in the 1930s to insure home mortgages, also required racial covenants to guarantee loans—better known as “redlining.”²⁷

In Petaluma, the suburban tract housing boom on the city’s east side following World War II was accompanied by restrictive covenants that preventing the sale or resale of homes to Blacks.

Covenant in deed for Madison Square Subdivision development by Goheen Construction on Petaluma’s east side in 1946 (courtesy of Connie Williams)

Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1948 that such covenants were not legally enforceable, they did not rule that they couldn’t be used.²⁸ Stifling Black homeownership in suburbs like Petaluma pushed Black Americans, many who had migrated to California during the war to work in shipyards and factories, into zones of concentrated urban poverty in the East Bay and San Francisco.²⁹

*Henry Chenault near his shoeshine stand outside the Arcade Barbershop, late 1960s (photo Sonoma County Library)*

According to the 1960 civil rights commission report, Black families showing an interest in buying in Sonoma County were often told the property had “just been sold,” even though the house remained on the market. Blacks who did manage to purchase property in Sonoma County had to contend with the possibility of racially motivated violence and vandalism.

In the 1950s, the Santa Rosa weekend home of Jack Beavers, a leader of the San Francisco NAACP chapter, was burned. Black and white neighbors alike agreed that the fire was likely a deliberate act of discrimination.³⁰

The California Fair Housing Act, championed by the Chenaults and other members of the Sonoma County NAACP, was met with opposition after being adopted in 1963. The next year, the California Real Estate Association put forth a ballot measure to nullify the act, and explicitly allow discrimination in the housing market. It passed with 65% of the vote, but was overruled in 1967 by the U.S Supreme Court.³¹

Chenault was still shining shoes on Western Avenue and fighting the good fight in 1969 when he died unexpectedly at age 74.

Henry Chenault, 1895-1969 (photo courtesy of Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

In 2023, the Army formally overturned the convictions of Chennault and the other 109 soldiers charged with crimes association with the 1917 riot, acknowledging that the military trials had been unjust, tainted by racial discrimination.³²

*****

A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, and in the 2022 Buffalo Soldiers Exhibit at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles.

*****

Sidebar: In 2020, a motion picture based upon the 1917 Houston Race Revolt was released. It is currently streaming on Apple TV and Starz.

Footnotes:

[1] C. Calvin Smith, “The Houston Riot of 1917, Revisited,” The Houston Review, Spring 1991, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 85-102.

[2] “Houston Mutiny and Riot Records: Henry Chenault,” South Texas College of Law Digital Collection, https://cdm16035.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15568coll1/id/1707

[3] Petaluma Argus-Courier: Bill Soberanes, “So They Tell Me” column, June 19, 1952; Bob Wells, “Everybody Here Knows Henry L. Chenault,” June 24, 1954; “A Paragraph for Mr. Chenault,” October 29, 1954; Bill Soberanes, “Henry Chenault Was a Petaluma Institution,” January 20, 1993.

[4]“Shoe Shine Operator is C. of C.,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, November 8, 1949.

[5] Bill Soberanes, “Henry Was a Friend to All,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 15, 1969.

[6] “Henry Chenault is Dead,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 14, 1969.

[7] Soberanes, January 20, 1993; “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.

[8] “Houston Mutiny and Riot Records: Henry Chenault”; “Who Are the Buffalo Soldiers,” https://www.buffalosoldiermuseum.com/

[9] Allison Keyes, “The East St. Louis Race Riot Left Dozens Dead, Devastating a Community on the Rise,” Smithsonian Magazine, June 30, 2017. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/east-st-louis-race-riot-left-dozens-dead-devastating-community-on-the-rise-180963885/; Smith, pp. 86-89.

[10] Smith, pp. 86-89.

[11] “Houston Mutiny and Riot Records: Henry Chenault”; Christian, Garna L. (2009). “The Houston Mutiny of 1917,” Trotter Review: Volume 18, Issue 1, Article 14. https://scholarworks.umb.edu/trotter_review/vol18/iss1/14

[12] Outline of events from Smith, pp. 85-102.

[13] Robert V. Haynes, A Night of Violence: The Houston Riot of 1917 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976), digital edition, p. 286; “Houston Mutiny and Riot Records: Henry Chenault.”

[14] Smith, p. 97; Haynes, p. 301; “Houston Mutiny and Riot Records: Henry Chenault”; “5 Surprising Facts About Woodrow Wilson and Racism,” Christian Science Monitor, December 14, 2015,.

[15] “Houston Mutiny and Riot Records: Henry Chenault”; The 1917 Houston Riots/Camp Logan Mutiny. Prairie View A&M University.

[16] Burroughs Miller is Bride of Julio Coehlo,” Petaluma Argus Courier, August 7, 1933;

[17] Bill Soberanes, So They Tell Me Column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 3, 1966.

[18] “Final Divorce Decrees Granted,” San Francisco Examiner, November 10, 1937; “H. Chenault’s Fiancee is Called,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 17, 1938; “Henry Chenault Home from East,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 9, 1938; Sonoma County Deeds, Sonoma County Clerk: May 19, 1938: Grantee- Henry Chenault; Grantor – Central Bank, etc., Deed, Book 455, page 138; 1940 U.S. Census, Petaluma, lists Henry Chenault, single, white, living at 32 West Street.

[19] “Henry Chenault is Dead,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 14, 1969.

[20] Bob Wells, June 24, 1954.

[21] Bill Soberanes, So They Tell Me Column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 24, 1960; June 27, 1966; December 19, 1966; “Santa Rosa Unit of NAACP to Receive Charter,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, June 2, 1955.

[22] “Picketing by NAACP Continues in County,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, March 20, 1960; “Negro ‘Test’ Stores Open—Part of the Way,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 9, 1960.

[23] Bill Soberanes, So They Tell Me Column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 20, 1955; Michael C. Tobriner, “California FEPC,” Hastings Law Journal, 1965, Vol. 16, issue 3.

[24] Hearings before the United States Commission on Civil Rights, p. 588. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Hearings_Before_the_United_States_Commis/fUXVAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1

[25] “Petaluma High School Will Hold Graduation Exercises on Durst Field Friday Night,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 8, 1950; “Ex-Petaluman Honors King: As a Girl, She Was the Only Black Student,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 19, 1993.

[26] Hearings before the United States Commission on Civil Rights, p. 590. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Hearings_Before_the_United_States_Commis/fUXVAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1

[27] “Is There Racism in the Deed to Your Home?” New York Times, August 17, 2021.

[28] Moore, Montojo, Mauri, “Roots, Race, and Place,” Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, University of California, Berkeley, October 2019, pgs. 7, 13; Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation,2017), 6.

[29] Rothstein, p. 6.

[30] Hearings before the United States Commission on Civil Rights, p. 590.

[31] Moore, Motojo, Mauri, p. 54.

[32] Jaime Salazar, Mutiny of Rage: The 1917 Camp Logan Riots and Buffalo Soldiers in Houston (Prometheus eBooks, 2021), p. 51; “Army Overturns Convictions of 110 Black Soldiers Charged in 1917 Riot,” New York Times, November 14, 2023.