Edward Park Duplex (1831-1900) was elected mayor of Wheatland on April 11, 1888. He was the first African-American to be elected mayor of a United States city west of the Rocky Mountains.
Born in Connecticut to free African-American parents, he moved to California in his early twenties and ran the Metropolitan Barber Shop on D Street in Marysville for 20 years.1 He also served as a spokesman for Mount Olivet Baptist Church in Marysville. He married Sophie Elizabeth Duplex, and they had several children.
In 1855 and 1856, he was the Yuba County representative at the first and second California Colored Citizens' State Conventions at the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Sacramento. In 1856, he was also a member of the convention's Executive Committee. These conventions were California's first civil rights organization. Additionally, Duplex served as a delegate to the San Francisco Franchise League, which strove to improve the status of African-Americans in California state courts.2
When the California State Fair was held in Marysville in 1858, Duplex employed seven barbers to cut fairgoers' hair.3 In 1875, he moved to the new city of Wheatland (which had just been incorporated as a city the previous year) and established the Hairdressing and Shaving Saloon, which became a gathering place for the leading men of the town and has remained in business as a barbershop ever since.
In 1888, Duplex was elected mayor of Wheatland. He died in Sacramento in 1900, at the age of 69, and was buried under an unmarked family headstone in the African-American section of the Marysville City Cemetery.4 His life and accomplishments are described in several articles and books on African American pioneers of California.
Links
A History of Black Americans in California: Historic Sites: Hairdressing and Shaving Saloon BlackPast.org: Edward Park Duplex Edward Duplex entry on Wikipedia
Footnotes
1. "Where History Lives—Marysville's Historic Cemetery" by Donna R. Landerman, Territorial Dispatch, July 14, 2010
2. "Where History Lives—Marysville's Historic Cemetery" by Donna R. Landerman, Territorial Dispatch, July 14, 2010
3. "Where History Lives—Marysville's Historic Cemetery" by Donna R. Landerman, Territorial Dispatch, July 14, 2010
4. "Where History Lives—Marysville's Historic Cemetery" by Donna R. Landerman, Territorial Dispatch, July 14, 2010
