UC Davis Students Uncover History Of A Little-Known Black Community In Woodland

Sareena Crawford, a doctoral student in history at University of California, Davis, was working with other students on a research project when she came across histories of Black women in Yolo County. She and other students found information about Mary Ann Johnson (née Winrow), one of the first Black women in Yolo County, who was brought by her enslaver from Missouri with only two of her six children. Winrow was not reunited with all her children until after emancipation.

Crawford is now expanding her research for a possible doctoral thesis, exploring the role of Black women who formed “kin groups” throughout Northern California. Mary Winrow and her sons were one of the core families in Woodland’s geographic kin group, she said. Kin groups are generally Black people across different geogra