According to the 2010 book \u201cLa Jolla, California Black Pioneers and Pioneer Descendants 1880-1974,\u201d Thomas Debose was an African-American man born during the time of slavery and the first Black person to buy land in La Jolla. It was in 1904 that DeBose purchased two lots on Draper Avenue.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ljl-l-reunion-3.jpg\")
The La Jolla house once occupied by Thomas DeBose, the first Black person to own land in La Jolla. (Provided by Sabrina Goosby)<\/p>\n
Thomas DeBose and his wife Christina Moss had five children, some of whom married into the Ritchey and\/or Shannon families.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe DeBose, Shannon, and Ritchey families have deep historical ties to San Diego County, including (being part of) the early African American community of La Jolla,\u201d Goosby wrote in a press statement. \u201cFamily ancestors established homes, raised families, worked, worshipped, and contributed to the growth of the region during a period when African Americans faced significant social and economic barriers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having since dispersed across California and the country, some of these descendants were unaware of their family histories \u2014 or one another. But all that changed when Goosby saw a social media post and the idea for a reunion was born.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo people who turned out to be my distant cousins responded to a Facebook post about Johnny Ritchey (a descendent of the Ritchey family and the first Black baseball player signed by the San Diego Padres), and I realized they were both related to me,\u201d Goosby said. \u201cI reached out and we connected by phone and realized we were all living in San Diego. It didn\u2019t make sense that we lived so close but did not know each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
After meeting, the small group of cousins decided to host a family reunion. They put out messages on social media and within their immediate family groups. Ultimately, they found other relatives in Texas, New York, Alabama, North Carolina and across California, all of whom were willing to come to San Diego for the Aug. 8 reunion.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was an absolutely incredible day,\u201d Goosby said. \u201cIt was amazing that we were able to bring all these people together. I got chills that day. I looked around the room and saw aunts and cousins and people who hadn\u2019t seen one another in years. One cousin didn\u2019t know her father, but had just done her genealogy and found him and us. So to look at her and see her being loved by people she didn\u2019t know existed, I can\u2019t explain how amazing that felt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Antoinette Gordon, DeBose\u2019s great-great-granddaughter and so-known \u201cfamily historian,\u201d added, \u201cIt was fun to figure out who was related to who, because some people didn\u2019t know how they were related. Some members of the Ritchey family knew that family history, and some members of the Shannon family knew that history, but some didn\u2019t know they were descendants of Thomas DeBose.<\/p>\n
![\"Jeanette](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ljl-l-reunion-4.jpg\")
Jeanette McKinney, Joann Logans, Ed Fletcher and Antoinette Gordon are among the elders at the DeBose, Ritchey and Shannon family reunion. (Provided by Sabrina Goosby)<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just a fun day,\u201d she continued. \u201cIt was a dream come true for me. It was a beautiful expression of remembrance and love, it made me tear up. It just made me feel so happy, excited and proud to be in this family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Going forward, Goosby\u2019s son and his cousins have agreed to carry the torch by keeping their family history and heirlooms, as well as hosting future reunions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want this to continue because it\u2019s important to us that we all remember our family history,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m glad (the next generation) is going to pick it up and run with it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Well over 100 descendants from some of La Jolla\u2019s pioneering Black families recently came together to celebrate their…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1011350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,3548,7354,19284,3549,3550,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-1011349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-america","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-la-jolla","tag-la-jolla-light","tag-la-jolla-light-news","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-county","tag-sandiego","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1011349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1011350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1011349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1011349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1011349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}