Finally, ever the pragmatist and fully aware of the reservation about social interaction between black and white officers, Allensworth wrote, I know where the official ends and where the social life begins, and therefore [guard] against social intrusion.

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Allensworth’s considered exertions were rewarded: in April 1886, he was appointed chaplain of the 24th Infantry with the rank of captain.

For 20 years, Allensworth ministered to the needs of his flock as the 24th moved from Fort Apache in the Arizona Territory to Camp Reynolds in California to Fort Missoula in Montana. During those years, the captain not only saw to the troops’ spiritual needs, but also worked to raise their overall educational level, says Sibylle Zemitis, reference librarian at the California State Library. Throughout, he carried himself as an officer and a gentleman. And all in all, he was quite successful.

When he retired in 1906, Lt. Col. Allensworth and his family relocated to Los Angeles. But an ordinary retirement was unthinkable for this man, so involved with the struggle to improve the position of blacks. Not least among the motives of the colonel was his desire to change white attitudes toward blacks.

Rather than spending his golden years in the California sunshine, Allensworth continued to promote the African-American race and promulgate the teachings of another individual who had come up from slavery, Booker T. Washington. The colonel, an ardent supporter of the Tuskegean, believed that if the race was to rise, blacks had to be willing to do for themselves, to rely on black self-help efforts, rather than on white philanthropy. Allensworth was particularly fond of one admonishment published in the California Eagle by its editor, J. J. Neimore: Eschew cheap jewelry. Quit taking five-dollar buggy rides on six dollars a week. Don’t put a five-dollar hat on a five-cent head. Get a bank account. Get a home of your own. Get some property . . . Don’t be satisfied with the shadows of civilization; get some of the substance for yourself! (This statement is also credited to Booker T. Washington.)

To spread these and other ideas, Allensworth embarked on a speaking tour to inspire and educate blacks. Presenting lectures entitled, the Five Manly Virtues Exemplified, the Battle of Life and How to Fight It, and Character and How to Read It, the colonel sought to encourage thrift, instill the value of education, and plot a strategy whereby the whole race might uplift itself. Allensworth’s ideas, however, were restricted to theoretical discussion on the lecture circuit, until he met William Payne, a gifted teacher and university graduate living in Pasadena, Calif.

Although different in age and temperament, Payne and Allensworth were kindred souls in the struggle to improve their race. Payne, a graduate of Denison University and a West Virginia native, had spent his youth in Corning, Ohio. Before settling in Pasadena in 1906, he had been an assistant principal at the Rendsvile School and a professor at the West Virginia Colored Institute. Arriving in California, however, Payne soon discovered that if black teachers were rare, jobs for them were even rarer.

Recognizing the need for unusual measures, Allensworth and Payne plotted the creation of an all-black community — a colony of orderly and industrious African Americans who could control their own destiny. The two men believed that in such a community, free of the debilitating effects and limits of racism, blacks could demonstrate that they were capable of organizing and managing their own affairs.

The colony would prove to all Americans that black people were worthy of their rights and responsibilities as citizens, says Bry.

The soldier and the scholar envisioned a black community that would make opportunities for African-Americans — opportunities being central to the philosophies of both men. They believed that the disappointing status of the race nearly half a century after emancipation was due to circumstance rather than color. Yet most of the country, then imbued with the wisdom of eugenics (the science of selective genetics), believed that blacks were intrinsically inferior and therefore incapable of contributing to the American nation of its road to greatness. White Californians, of course, held this same belief. Payne and Allensworth believed that given the opportunity, blacks could live up to their potential, and in the process, destroy that malicious fallacy. Their colony, they believed, would provide that very opportunity.

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