When white citizens of the United States flocked to California during the Gold Rush, they brought with them the racial attitudes of Jacksonian America as well as the conviction that they had won land and resources through conquest in the Mexican War. Such attitudes prevailed in the 1850 Foreign Miners' Tax; aimed at Europeans, Indians, Mexicans, and Chinese, the act provided that only native or naturalized citizens of the United. States could mine without a license, the cost of which was a prohibitive twenty dollars a month. Black Americans, slave and free, also had come or been brought to California, sometimes earning enough in the mines to purchase freedom or begin a business. The census of 1850 counted 962 Afri- . can Americans in the state, 206 of whom lived near the northern mines in Sacramento City. After the Sacramento City Council levied a school tax in...