Ledger and the Mirror

A Black man arrived in California in 1841 at the helm of a ship carrying ambition and a secret. He was William Alexander Leidesdorff. Within a few years he had become an American diplomat and civic leader who helped establish San Francisco on a patch of windswept sand dunes at the world's edge. He built a fortune — among the largest in California. When he died in 1848, he left behind a fiercely co...