The 19th Century Teacher Who Fought to Give Black Children an Education

Within a year, the Sacramento School Board accepted Elizabeth’s school into the official school district, making Elizabeth’s the first African American public school in Sacramento. However, the Board also refused to provide her with any funding, following the example of the rest of the state. (Although the California Constitutional Convention had introduced a tax fund for state schools in 1849, local school boards routinely granted funding to white schools only.) As such, Elizabeth’s students agreed to pay tuition of one dollar per week to keep her doors open.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth herself kept involved in civic matters beyond her school. St. Andrew’s hosted California’s first State Convention of Colored Citizens in November 1855. The convention’s primary concerns were voting and housing rights, civil rights protections and access to education. Elizabeth was in attendance, as were 49 delegates from 10 California counties.

That same year, she married Isaac Flood, a man who, unlike Elizabeth, had been born into slavery. Flood had purchased his own freedom, moved to Oakland during the Gold Rush and in 1855 worked as a tradesman. At the time of their meeting, Flood was also a single parent to a young son. The merged family soon moved to the area east of Lake Merritt — then named Brooklyn. Elizabeth left her school in the capable hands of another teacher from Massachusetts, Jeremiah B. Sanderson. It was on his watch that a new schoolhouse was finally built for Sacramento’s children of color in 1855.

As one of the first African American families to settle in Oakland, the Floods made their presence felt immediately with a series of firsts. In 1857, Elizabeth turned their home into Oakland’s first private school for Black children. That same year, the couple’s first son together, George, was said to be the first Black baby born in Oakland. The next year, in 1858, the Floods helped establish Oakland’s first Black church—the First African Methodist Episcopal Church. When the church moved into a former schoolhouse, Elizabeth taught classes there, too.

In 1866, Elizabeth’s fight for better schools began to pay off. Up until then, no laws existed protecting the right of Black children to attend school. The Revised School Law required the establishment of a public school for Black students in any district with ten or more Black children that wanted to attend, or else make allowances for them to join white schools — as long as the majority of white parents didn’t object.

The following year, Elizabeth’s campaign for equal education came to a tragic halt when she died suddenly at the age of 39. But her loving husband picked up the baton, later serving as secretary on the Education Committee of the Colored Citizens of California. Crucially, in 1871, he successfully petitioned the Oakland School Board to admit children of color based on the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Finally, in 1880, integrated schools became California law.