CIVIL RIGHTS PIONEER FINALLY RECOGNIZED.

Byline: Ralph E. Shaffer LOCAL VIEW

ETHNIC historians have uncovered the first African-American policeman in Los Angeles (Robert Stewart, 1880s) and the city's first black ``mayor,'' (Francisco Reyes, 1790s). They've even tracked down the first black barber (Peter Biggs, 1850s). But as the city celebrates Black History Month, the name of the first black Angeleno to register to vote has until now been lost in the fog of history.

While citizens of African descent had voted in California under Spanish and Mexican rule, the 1849 state constitution restricted the ballot to white male citizens.

State law in the 1850s and '60s banned interracial marriage and integrated schools, prohibited black testimony in cases involving whites, and denied blacks the right to homestead public land.

Recognizing that suffrage was essential in removing limitations on their civil rights, the franchise became the primary concern of the state's black activists at the end of the Civil War.

Although former slaves in the ex-Confederate states were enfranchised in 1867, most northern states still refused to extend voting rights to blacks. To enfranchise northern blacks, and in an unsuccessful effort to prevent the future disfranchisement of southern blacks, Radical Republicans forced the 15th Amendment through Congress in 1869.

The California Legislature, controlled by Democrats who denounced the amendment as a step toward citizenship and voting rights for the state's Chinese population, overwhelmingly rejected the 15th. Democrats also denounced the idea of being governed by blacks or by officials elected by black votes. (In 1962, as a statement in support of the civil rights revolution of that era, the Legislature finally approved ratification.)

Despite California's opposition, President Ulysses Grant proclaimed ratification of the amendment at the end of March 1870, and blacks began to register in California.

But not in Los Angeles. When 43-year-old Louis G. Green, a barber from North Carolina, attempted to register in April, County Clerk Thomas Mott, the city's leading Democrat, refused to place his name on the Great Register.

Mott argued that the 15th Amendment alone was not sufficient authority to register someone denied the right to vote by the state constitution. Mott was not alone in his position. The state attorney general urged other county clerks to wait for ``appropriate legislation'' before registering blacks.

Sixty prominent Democrats endorsed the Sacramento clerk's refusal to register any but whites. Even Democratic Gov. Henry Haight denounced the amendment, calling both its subject and its ratification unconstitutional.

Green asked the local court to order Mott to register him. Green v. Mott, tried before Judge Ygnacio Sepulveda, was argued by some of the most prominent attorneys in the city. Robert Widney, a founder of the University of Southern California, argued for Green. The county was represented by the prestigious firm of Glassell, Chapman and Smith, who claimed that Mott faced severe penalties under the state's registration law if he enrolled blacks.

Sepulveda ruled for Mott. Green and all other blacks in Los Angeles would have to await that ``appropriate legislation.'' Mott was immovable, however, until Congress enacted fines and imprisonment for those obstructing the voting rights provision of the 15th. Even then it was three more weeks before Mott registered the county's blacks.

On June 21, 1870, Green, followed by three other African-Americans, was enrolled on the Great Register. In an apparently defiant mood, Mott wrote after the name of black registrants: ``per 15th Amendment to U.S. Constitution.''

Ahead of each black name was the letter ``C,'' apparently indicating ``colored.'' By the end of 1870, 21 blacks were registered voters in the county.

That December, without fanfare, an unknown number of the city's African-Americans marched to the polls to cast their votes in a municipal election.

A decade later, the Los Angeles Prohibition Party would nominate S.B. Bows as its candidate for constable, the first black to be nominated for political office in Southern California.

While effective implementation was still a long way off, the right to vote and to seek office had become a reality.