William Byron Rumford
| William Byron Rumford | |
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| Member of the California State Assembly for California's 17th district |
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In office January 1949 – 1967 |
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| Preceded by | Edward J. Carey |
| Succeeded by | John J. Miller |
| Personal details | |
| Born | February 2, 1908 Courtland, Arizona |
| Died | June 12, 1986 (aged 78) Berkeley, California |
| Nationality | American |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley |
| Occupation | Pharmacist |
William Byron Rumford (February 2, 1908 – June 12, 1986) was an American pharmacist and politician. He was the first African American elected to a state public office in Northern California.
Rumford was born in Courtland, Arizona, a now-defunct mining town, the second of Chauncey G. Rumford and Margaret Lee Johnson's two sons. His father, who had left the family when Rumford was very young, lived in Los Angeles, where his family had moved in about 1910 from Iowa by way of Colorado Springs.
Rumford's mother's side were some of the first American settlers of Arizona. His maternal grandmother ran a boarding house in Tombstone and fought to keep the Tucson public schools desegregated. When Whites established separate schools, she relocated to Los Angeles, having decided that "she was not going to bring those kids up in a segregated environment." Rumford remained with his mother in Tucson, where she worked as a housekeeper. His older brother Chauncey moved to Los Angeles to live with his father and paternal grandmother, and Rumford and his mother soon moved to Phoenix, where she married a barber, Elmer J. Williams. They joined the rest of the family in Los Angeles in 1915, living for a time in a large house on Burlington Avenue. There, his paternal grandmother's sister, who was a songwriter, poet, and painter, helped Delilah L. Beasley write her 1916 history The Negro Trail Blazers of California.
His stepfather, however, did not take to Los Angeles well, and returned the family to Phoenix. His mother and stepfather had children of their own, and Williams paid little attention to the Rumford brothers, who had to work to survive.
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