"Elizabeth Thorn Scott Flood"

Born free she is known as the mother of desegregated education for children of color in California.Elizabeth led the battle to open the public schools of  of California to her own children and paved the way for integrated public schools throughout the state.Elizabeth,received her education in New Bedford,Massachusetts.Sher and her husband Joseph Scott came west during the gold rush era to Placerville California.After Joseph died,Elizabeth and her young son moved to Sacramento in the early 1850s which,along with San Francisco,had a sizable African-American community.Her son was not allowed to enter Sacramento's public school.Elizabeth was not allowed to enter Sacramento's public school.Her first response was to open a private school for her son and other African-American children in the city.That school was established on May 29,1854 in her Sacramento home and was soon open to Native American and Asian pupils as well.The Sacramento School Board offered to assume the administration of the school as a segregated institution it did not commit public school tax revenue to support the school.Despite this limitation she and her other African-American parents accepted the arrangement and in 1855 the school opened as part of the Sacramento school system.Elizabeth continued to teach at and became the first African-American public instructor in California history.In 1855 she married her second husband,Isaac Flood.The couple moved to Brooklyn, a community just outside Oakland,California.In 1857 Elizabeth began a second school for African-American children in her new home. One year later she helped establish Shiloh African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Oakland,the first AME church in the city which eventually took control of her school.She did not live to see integrated education in California but her youngest daughter,Lydia Flood,was among the first students to attend Oakland's integrated public school in 1872.