A brief patrol: law enforcement, minority agency & Gilded Age California, 1870-1900

This thesis analyzes the window of opportunity that existed for minorities in Gilded Age California in relation to law enforcement. It has been written to show the untold contribution minorities made to law enforcement, and to complicate the current historiography of race in California. Through the examples of Fong Ching in San Francisco, Robert Stewart in Los Angeles, and Jose Cota in San Diego, a wider phenomena is uncovered. Fong Ching utilized the San Francisco Police Department and the court system to make himself more powerful than any other Chinese man in the city. Robert Stewart, an African American, was hired by the LAPD in 1886 and became one of its most famous officers. Jose Cota, a California man, worked as a lawman for decades, even before the establishment of the official San Diego Police Department itself. However, the coming of the progressive reform movements at the tum-of-the-century would jeopardize the social advancements of these individuals as well as opportunities open to minorities as a whole.