Homesteading in Jim Crow Los Angeles County: A Comparative Study of Material Culture at the Alice Ballard Cabin

Summary

This is an abstract from the "City and Country in the American West:Post-1848 Historical Archaeologies of Denver and Los Angeles" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Black Americans had the opportunity to build achievable wealth through land ownership under the Homestead Act of 1862. Alice Ballard was one of few Black women to homestead in California during the height of the Jim Crow Era. Excavations in 2018 at Alice's cabin site in Los Angeles County have unveiled significant archaeological investigations. Recent research has analyzed the material culture of Alice Ballard's homestead, primarily ceramic ware and glass bottles, with that of contemporary homesteader William Moores, a White Anglo-American man located sixteen miles away. The two homesteads present a dichotomy of historic sites with similar contexts and contrasting ethnic backgrounds. This study addresses consumer choices as a method of building social capital in the late nineteenth century. Alice Ballard's homestead gives insight into the multifaceted gendered experiences of women and the reality of the American West for Black individuals compared to their local non-Black contemporaries.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• City and Country in the American West:Post-1848 Historical Archaeologies of Denver and Los Angeles

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53001