Dates: January 1897 - June 1898 | Locations: West Adams, downtown Los Angeles, bank, FAME Church, home | Sam's Age: 13 years old (January 1897) to 15 years old (June 1898)
The letter arrived on a Tuesday morning in February 1897, and it contained the first explicit statement of what had previously been only implied.
Thomas opened it with the careful deliberation of someone who had been anticipating bad news and was finally receiving confirmation. The letter was from the city—a notice regarding property taxes and assessment values in West Adams. But beneath the bureaucratic language was a clear message: property values in the neighborhood were being reassessed downward. The reason, though not stated directly, was understood by anyone paying attention. The neighborhood was becoming Black. Therefore its value was declining.
"How much?" Evelyn asked, reading over his shoulder.
"Enough that the reassessment will cost us significantly," Thomas said. "And this is only the beginning. Once they establish the precedent that Black neighborhoods decline in value, every property owner here will face the same assessment. Our assets are being devalued because of who we are. Not because anything has changed about the properties themselves."
Sam, listening from the hallway as he had learned to do, understood that something was shifting in the family's material security. The wealth that Thomas had built through careful positioning was now vulnerable to something that had nothing to do with financial competence and everything to do with the color of the people who owned the property.
That afternoon, Thomas brought Sam to the bank. They sat in the office, and Thomas showed him the property records, the assessments, the numbers that represented what the family's assets were worth according to the official measures of value.
"Look at this," Thomas said, pointing to a column. "Two years ago, this property was assessed at this value. Today, the same property, with no physical changes, is assessed at this lower value. Why?"
"Because Black people live there now," Sam said.
"Yes. Because a law was passed that said separation was constitutional. And people interpreted that to mean that Black neighborhoods were inherently less valuable. That the presence of Black people diminished value. So they began adjusting their assessments accordingly. The law didn't mention property. But the law made this possible."
Thomas closed the ledger. "This is the kind of racism that is harder to fight than the obvious kind. Because it wears the language of economics. Because it can be defended with numbers and assessments. Because it is systematic rather than personal."
A week later, as the Los Angeles spring began to soften the edges of winter, Thomas brought Sam to a meeting with Edward Blake.
Blake was becoming increasingly important to Thomas's business operations. The white investor had proven himself reliable, discrete, and—most importantly—willing to work with Thomas in ways that white businessmen typically would not. But their arrangement was becoming more explicit about what it actually was: Blake provided the white identity that opened certain doors. Thomas provided the knowledge and positioning. They shared profit.
This meeting, however, had a different quality. Blake seemed nervous in a way Sam had not seen before. His fingers moved repeatedly to his collar, adjusted it, moved away again. His eyes didn't hold their usual calculation.
"The property assessments," Blake said without preamble. "They're going to affect your position."
"I'm aware," Thomas said.
"Your assets are being devalued at a rate that's unprecedented," Blake continued. "Which means your borrowing capacity is declining. Which means certain investments become inaccessible to you."
"Yes," Thomas said. He was watching Blake carefully.
"I want to propose something," Blake said. "We restructure. I become the primary property owner on several of your holdings. On paper. You retain operational control and majority interest, but the properties are registered under my name. That stops the reassessment. Your assets maintain their value."
Thomas was quiet for a long moment. "And what do you receive for providing this service?"
"Thirty percent of the gains on those properties," Blake said. "Plus the knowledge that I'm protecting an investment arrangement that has been profitable for both of us."
Sam watched his father's face as he considered this offer. It was a kind of violation—having to hide ownership behind a white man's name in order to maintain the value of what he had legitimately earned. But it was also pragmatic. It was survival.
"Send me the details," Thomas said finally. "I'll review them."
After Blake left, Thomas turned to Sam. "This is the mechanics of how the system works. I built these assets. But because of my race, their value is being attacked. I can defend them by having a white man put his name on the papers, even though I retain control. This is not justice. This is not even fairness. This is survival. And survival requires compromises that are humiliating."
Late Spring: The Scholarship
By May, as the Los Angeles heat began to build and the school year approached its end, there was discussion of a scholarship for advanced secondary education.
A private school across the city was offering positions to exceptional students from the community. Sam's name had been mentioned. His teachers had discussed it. The possibility seemed real, tangible—a path that would recognize his abilities and provide him access to education that the FAME Church school could not offer.
Thomas received a letter from the school's administrator in late May. He opened it while Sam was present, and his expression shifted in ways that made clear the letter contained what he had been expecting but still hoped might not arrive.
"They regret to inform you," Thomas read aloud, "that while Samuel's academic achievements are noteworthy, the school's current enrollment picture makes it difficult to accommodate additional colored students at this time."
He set the letter down. "They mean: we would have taken you a year ago. Before Plessy. Before the reassessments. Before the clear message was sent that separating ourselves from colored institutions was the proper course. Now that the legal framework has clarified, we can act on our preferences without the discomfort of pretending otherwise."
Sam felt something settle into his chest—a kind of resigned understanding that the world was reorganizing itself in real time, and he had no power to stop it.
"What will I do instead?" Sam asked.
"We'll find you other options," Thomas said. "But understand what this means. Your intelligence was welcome when the world was still pretending equality was possible. Now that the pretense is gone, your intelligence is less welcome because it threatens the architecture of separation."
In June, as the heat settled over Los Angeles with the weight of expectation, Thomas brought Sam to a meeting with a man named William Foster.
Foster was emerging in the electrical industry—a business booming as Los Angeles expanded and modernized. He was personable, professional, and his business proposal was sound. He had come to the bank seeking capital and advice.
Thomas listened to the proposal, reviewed the financials, and said the words that Sam watched him say: "I think this is a promising venture. I would like to help you position yourself to pursue it."
But what Thomas actually did was introduce Foster to white businessmen who had the capital to invest. Thomas facilitated the connections but remained in the background. The transaction would appear to come from the white businessmen. Thomas provided the knowledge and positioning but received none of the public credit and only a small piece of the profit for his work.
In the weeks that followed, as Foster's project took shape and capital began to flow, Thomas brought Sam along to several meetings where Thomas's role was visible but secondary. He watched his father sit slightly back from the main conversation, offer suggestions that the white businessmen accepted as their own ideas, position himself as advisor rather than architect.
One afternoon in July, after a meeting where Thomas had essentially designed a solution that was then presented by a white businessman as his own thinking, Sam asked: "Why didn't you present it yourself?"
"Because if I had presented it, the other investors would not have accepted it," Thomas said simply. "Not because it's not sound strategy. Because I'm colored. My name on an idea makes them suspicious. His name on the same idea makes it seem brilliant. This is not justice. But it is how the world functions. And if I want to operate in it, I must accept this function."
They walked home through the summer evening, and Thomas continued: "You notice that I profit from this arrangement. That's important. I'm not sacrificing myself for principle. I'm making money by understanding how the system works and positioning myself within it. But understand the cost. The cost is invisibility. The cost is having your contributions attributed to someone else. The cost is knowing that your intelligence and strategy are valuable only when they're attached to a white name."
When school resumed in September 1897, Sam noticed the change immediately.
Miss Catherine was gone, replaced by a new white teacher named Mr. Whitmore. But more significant than the change in personnel was the change in the school's structure itself. The secondary program was being discontinued. There was no longer a path forward from the FAME Church school to advanced education. The school was retrenching, narrowing, focusing only on basic education for those who would enter the labor market directly.
"The secondary program was not sustainable," the school's director explained to the parents at a meeting in early September. "The reality is that our graduates, no matter how well-educated, face limited opportunities in the current employment landscape. Better to focus our resources on practical education—trades, domestic service, basic business skills—that align with what is actually available."
Sam understood what was being said beneath the words: there was no point in educating Black children for opportunities that society had decided they should not have. The door that had seemed to be opening was being closed, and the justification was practical rather than overtly racial.
One afternoon in October, as Sam was leaving school, Mr. Whitmore called him aside.
"You have real ability," the teacher said, and there was something almost apologetic in his tone. "In another context, I would be pushing you toward the best schools, the universities. But you understand the current situation. The opportunities for someone like you are limited by circumstances beyond your control or my influence."
He was acknowledging, without quite saying it directly, that racism had made the normal trajectory unavailable to Sam. That his intelligence was not the limiting factor. Society was.
By December, as Los Angeles settled into its mild winter and Sam approached his fourteenth birthday, Thomas began a new phase of his education.
One evening, Thomas brought Sam into his study and showed him a thick leather journal.
"This is mine," Thomas said. "A record of every significant decision I've made. Every partnership. Every investment. Every moment where I navigated around restrictions or found ways to work within them. I've kept this for twenty years."
He opened it to a page from the 1870s. "This was before you were born. I was young, ambitious, thought I could build something without understanding the full machinery of restrictions I was working within. I made mistakes. I wasted capital. I wasted time."
Thomas turned forward through the pages, showing Sam entries from different periods. Notes on failed investments. Records of partnerships that had cost more than they gained. Strategic decisions that had preserved the family's position during the Panic of 1893. Careful recordings of how he had maneuvered Blake into increasingly favorable arrangements while maintaining the relationship's necessity.
"Over time, I learned," Thomas continued. "I learned to read the system. To understand where the flexibility was. To recognize when a partnership was worth the humiliation it required. To position myself so that I could operate effectively within the constraints."
He handed the journal to Sam. "This is yours now. I want you to read it. Study how I navigated. And then understand that your navigation will need to be different because the system has tightened. The restrictions I learned to work around are becoming formalized into law. You will need to be smarter about this than I had to be."
Sam took the journal. It was weighty—both literally and in what it represented. Twenty years of detailed record-keeping. Strategy. Compromise. Resilience in the face of a system designed to limit him.
By April 1898, as the Los Angeles spring arrived again and marked the year that had passed since the property reassessment letter, Sam was no longer a child pretending to be a man. He was a young man learning to pretend to be less than he was.
The California Eagle published an article that made the narrowing explicit. "Opportunities for Colored Labor" it was titled, and it detailed which industries and positions were remaining open to Black workers in Los Angeles. The list was not long. Domestic work. Manual labor. Small-scale business serving primarily Black clientele. Everything else was either explicitly closed or informally closed through hiring practices that made it clear colored workers need not apply.
Sam read the article and showed it to Thomas.
"What if I wanted to work in the electrical industry?" Sam asked. "Like Foster?"
"You would find that the companies don't hire colored men in technical positions," Thomas said. "You might be hired as a laborer. But to move into the positions where decision-making happens, where technical knowledge is applied, you would face barriers that have nothing to do with your ability and everything to do with your race."
"So what can I do?"
"You can own your own business. You can work for other colored businessmen. You can find the edges where the restrictions are less rigid and position yourself there. You can work with white businessmen who are willing to work with you in ways that are mutually beneficial. These are not ideal options. But they are available."
Thomas paused. "Or you can move to a place where the restrictions are less rigid. But by the time you're old enough to choose that, those places may not exist anymore. The narrowing is happening everywhere, just at different speeds."
On June 12, 1898, Sam turned fifteen.
He was no longer a child. His body had finished most of its transformation. His voice had settled into its lower register. He moved through the world with increasing physical confidence, though that confidence was complicated by the knowledge of how the world perceived his growing manhood.
Thomas took him to his study that afternoon, something that had become their tradition on significant dates. The room was quiet, the late afternoon light falling through the windows in the particular way of Los Angeles summer.
Thomas brought out the journal—the thick leather record of twenty years.
"You're fifteen now," he said, and his voice carried something Sam had not heard before. Not weakness, but weight. "Which means you've crossed a threshold that cannot be uncrossed."
He opened the journal to a random page. Sam saw entries from years ago, decisions made, calculations recorded, partnerships that had cost more than they gained.
"Everything in this journal," Thomas said, "is the record of me learning how to exist in a world that did not want me to exist. How to build something when the ground beneath it was constantly shifting. How to maintain dignity while accepting humiliation. How to survive."
Thomas closed the journal without showing Sam more. "I'm giving this to you not so you can learn from my victories—there are very few in here. I'm giving it to you so you can understand that survival itself is an accomplishment. That a man can be brilliant and still be constrained. That intelligence without humility about what the world will permit is simply a faster way to ruin."
He placed the journal in Sam's hands. "The world is going to tell you that your manhood is a threat. Your body will be seen as dangerous. Your intelligence will be seen as presumption. Your ambition will be seen as uppity. These are not truths. But they are the rules you'll have to navigate. This journal is the map of how one man learned to do that."
Thomas paused, looking at his son—really looking at him, seeing not the boy Sam had been but the young man he was becoming.
"I cannot make it easier for you," Thomas said. "I cannot change the system. I can only teach you how to function within it without losing yourself entirely. That's all any of us can do.