The Post-War Lives of the 54th Coast Artillery Regiment: Exploring involvement and impact in the Santa Cruz community

We began the class by reading Phil Reader’s “To Know My Name”, which was helpful not only in its summary of Santa Cruz history, but also in the precedent it set for the caution with which one needs to proceed in doing this kind of research. Reader’s account is mostly factual, sometimes not, but usually insensitive in language and tone. This formed the basis for this project; the idea that Santa Cruz needs research on local Black history, done by people with a vested interest in not only learning it, but making it as accessible as possible, without prejudice. It was in “To Know My Name” that I read about Circles being a primarily Black neighborhood post-WWII and learned to stay skeptical in doing this kind of research.

The next week, we met with Luna HighJohn-Bey from the London Nelson Legacy Initiative to hear about their research, their impact, and decide where we wanted to focus our own research. At this point I had learned more about Circles, learned that it was previously known and marketed as a Black neighborhood in the mid-twentieth century, and that much has changed since then. I saw Circles as an area likely to contain instances of land-takings, and in anticipation of the next week’s visit to the county recorder’s office, I began searching their files (indexed only from 1977 onward) for instances of decrees of condemnation, restrictive covenants, abandonments of homestead, etc. I found absolutely zero instances of any of these online, not surprising but still discouraging. I knew that any information I needed (which would be beginning around the 1940s) would be found in-person at the office.

Once at the county recorder’s office, I encountered many of the same roadblocks. At this point I had identified my time period (1940 - 1970) and a few points of interest relating to Circles, such as the Missionary Baptist Church on Woodrow Ave. and the main streets, but I wasn’t finding recordings of any explicit land-takings in the county’s files. I realized I needed to start with names. Knowing that the 54th Coast Artillery Regiment was all-Black, and that many of them stayed in Santa Cruz after the war, I quickly learned about a memorial plaque that named thirteen men from the regiment. I headed to Lighthouse Point to see the names and began my research.

I began to look for any and all instances of these men in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, which proved to be the most valuable source of information I used in this project. The Santa Cruz Public Library has microfilm of almost every publication of the Sentinel, and I visited the library to check through newspapers starting in 1942, the year the regiment arrived. I found many clippings for each man, in most cases relating to events at the Missionary Baptist Church or hosted by the local NAACP chapter.

Here I began to investigate as much as I could about the homes these men lived in and where they were employed postwar. The 1950 census was incredibly helpful as I discovered that many of the men were working for the A.K. Salz Tannery, one of the only employers in the city actively willing to hire Black employees. Knowing that many worked at the Tannery, I was able to focus on River St. as another focal point of the Black community, besides Circles. Ansel Adams was a friend of the tannery owner and did a project photographing the tannery workers, one of which is confirmed to feature Frank Willis. I am sure that further investigation might yield more familiar names in those photographs. I found the Santa Cruz City Directories online for the years 1946 - 1970, which were an incredible resource for finding places of employment and addresses.

I wanted to uncover as much about each man as I could, and I began to try and find enlistment information for the group. This was where the puzzle of Chaplin Baskerville came into play. There were no records of a Chaplin Baskerville in any of the NARA files I was searching, so I headed back to the library to look for mentions of this man. What I quickly discovered was a Baskerville, who was a chaplain in the regiment and heavily involved in the Missionary Baptist church, who was really named Lewis Austin Baskerville. I began to do further research on Baskerville specifically in order to identify him.

Although I found an enlistment record for Captain Willliam L. Baskerville, Lewis Austin’s brother who was also stationed at Fort Ord, I struggled to find enlistment records for Lewis himself. He is reported in the Sentinel repeatedly as being named “Lewis”, but I found a few other instances where he is called “Louis”. In some cases he is reported as “Baskervill”, but likely to have been named Baskerville. I found record of his enrollment at a college in Pennsylvania, corroborated by William’s enlistment record as being from Philadelphia. I became more confident that the man on the plaque was misnamed.

As the quarter began to wrap up, I started to focus on compiling this information and gathering as much biographical information about each man as I could, including where they were buried. Although all men stayed in Santa Cruz after the war, some moved on in their advanced age and I was unable to track them beyond their departure from Santa Cruz.