tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-340901492024-03-05T00:29:56.040-08:00California Historical Society<center>678 Mission Street, San Francisco CA 94105 <br> voice 415.357.1848 | fax 415.357.1850 <br><br>
Research Library | Wednesday - Friday 1:00 - 5:00 pm<br>Gallery | Tuesday - Sunday 11:00 - 5:00 pm<br></center>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger670125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-62784235543881248912019-07-29T11:26:00.000-07:002019-07-29T11:26:22.057-07:00Mug Shots and Railroad Mythologies<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In the early 1900s, the San Joaquin Valley—California’s geographical and agricultural
center—was marked by the growth of community and opportunity brought about by the
Southern Pacific Railroad’s longitudinal linkage of San Francisco and Los Angeles by way
of the valley. The movement of passengers and cargo into, out of, and through the valley
caused its population and its agricultural industry to grow tremendously. In the years following the 1876 completion of the railroad connection between San Francisco and Los Angeles,
the residents of the valley’s northernmost county, San Joaquin County, may have viewed the
maturation of their community with mixed feelings. Some may have felt deep satisfaction
with the prosperity and opportunity the railroad had afforded the county’s agricultural towns,
while others—especially those who had helped settle the valley—may have had feelings of
deep mistrust and bitter resentment toward the Southern Pacific Railroad, whose past strategies of obtaining land throughout the valley had caused loss of property and even life.<br />
<br />
Much of the animosity between settlers and the Southern Pacific centered around events
that occurred in Mussel Slough, Kings County, in 1880. Settlers had migrated to the valley
throughout the 1870s, encouraged by the Southern Pacific to occupy land that had been given
to the railroad company as a subsidy. The settlers set about improving the acreage surrounding
proposed railroad tracks by building homesteads and developing agricultural and irrigation
projects, confident that when ready to purchase the land, they would not be charged for the
improvements they had made through their own labor. Instead, the settlers, expecting to pay
two-and-a-half dollars per acre, were faced with prices set by market demand, sometimes
reaching as high as twenty dollars per acre. The settlers banded together to fight this injustice
while U.S. marshals began evicting settlers throughout the area. On May 11, 1880, a small
group of men, including a U.S. marshal, set foot on the homestead of Henry D. Brewer and
were met by an assemblage of settlers, gathered to thwart such evictions. While it is unclear
how the gunfight began—it has been attributed to a skittish horse knocking the marshal
down, quickly followed by the chaos of gun blasts—it resulted in the deaths of seven men. The
shootout, which made national headlines, was significant not only for the high death toll, but
also for how the incident played into the charged mythos of the outlaw West and a burgeoning
national resentment of big industry’s subjugation of the common man.<br />
<br />
In 1901, just over twenty years after the tragedy at Mussel Slough, Frank Norris published
his California novel The Octopus, a scathing denunciation of the railroad’s actions in the San
Joaquin Valley. The novel contains a retelling of the events of Mussel Slough as the natural,
violent result of the railroad’s greed and ruthlessness in the valley. Norris’s sentiment, coupled with a turn-of-the-century societal tension between agrarian lifestyles and the growth of
industry, bitterly reminded many of the valley’s residents of the earlier animosity between
the settlers and the railroads. Many valley residents agreed with Norris’s description of the
reviled company as “the iron-hearted monster of steel and steam.”<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUg7GD6V-WLjJWGTrCY2LjF6FONmHTVsEn0V7jh6twNrNfScN2IXr_Wf1lOMT6KSBGW3pjZYCJJqDtr5ZyzO0DXLWTWJ8LZS35PXNixgJbqIqlLFuh4JfqrVpjy8zM1NU20Kv64Q/s1600/Police+record+for+Victorio+Yopez%252C+detail%253B+Description+and+photographs+of+San+Joaquin+County+prisoners%252C+Vault+308%252C+California+Historical+Society.+.tif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1281" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUg7GD6V-WLjJWGTrCY2LjF6FONmHTVsEn0V7jh6twNrNfScN2IXr_Wf1lOMT6KSBGW3pjZYCJJqDtr5ZyzO0DXLWTWJ8LZS35PXNixgJbqIqlLFuh4JfqrVpjy8zM1NU20Kv64Q/s640/Police+record+for+Victorio+Yopez%252C+detail%253B+Description+and+photographs+of+San+Joaquin+County+prisoners%252C+Vault+308%252C+California+Historical+Society.+.tif" width="510" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="TextRun SCXW74888939 BCX0" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN" style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri" , "calibri_msfontservice" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 21.85px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW74888939 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">Police record for </span></span><span class="TextRun SCXW74888939 BCX0" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN" style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri" , "calibri_msfontservice" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 21.85px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW74888939 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">Victorio</span></span><span class="TextRun SCXW74888939 BCX0" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN" style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri" , "calibri_msfontservice" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 21.85px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW74888939 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCXW74888939 BCX0" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN" style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri" , "calibri_msfontservice" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 21.85px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN"><span class="SpellingError SCXW74888939 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; background-image: url("data:image/gif; background-position: left bottom; background-repeat: repeat-x; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">Yopez</span></span><span class="TextRun SCXW74888939 BCX0" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN" style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri" , "calibri_msfontservice" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 21.85px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW74888939 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">, Description and photographs of San Joaquin County prisoners, Vault 308, California Historical Society. </span></span><span class="EOP SCXW74888939 BCX0" data-ccp-props="{"201341983":0,"335551550":2,"335551620":2,"335559740":276}" style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri" , "calibri_msfontservice" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 21.85px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> </span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It is through the lens of both these historical facts and their resulting cultural mythology
that we recently viewed two volumes containing mug shots and descriptions of people
arrested in San Joaquin County between 1902 and 1907. Each record includes a black-andwhite mug shot as well as information about the alleged perpetrator’s physical appearance,
alleged crime(s), victim(s), and sentence. In particular, we were interested in the types of
crimes that had taken place on the railroad, the suspects and victims involved, and the motives surrounding their crimes. Over the five years covered in the prisoner logbook, eight
crimes were recorded as being committed against either a railroad company itself or railroad
passengers and personnel. The descriptions of the crimes are dispassionate and provide no
insight into motives or into the targeting of the railroad companies. In most cases the trespasses against the railroad companies were clearly crimes of opportunity, often recorded as
petit larceny: an overcoat, blankets, and materials such as brass and iron were all recorded as
burgled items. Punishment for the thefts varied, ranging from ten days in the county jail or a
ten-dollar fine to three years’ confinement in San Quentin.
One cannot help but wonder, though, about the motives in two of the more interesting
crimes, both of which could have resulted in loss of life. A seventeen-year-old Swiss immigrant, Ernest Intergant, was sentenced to thirty days in the county jail for removing a railroad
switch lamp from a Santa Fe Railway line on November 20, 1903. Although his crime was
originally considered a felony—removing a switch lamp could cause derailment of the
railcars, resulting in major loss of life or cargo—his sentence was reduced to malicious
mischief. Two years later, on December 16, 1905, Victorio Yopez fired seven shots at several
men seated in a Santa Fe railcar. The prisoner logbook records Yopez’s occupation as
“R.R. [Railroad] Laborer,” which certainly provokes curiosity over the motivation for the
shooting. Yopez was arrested the following day, pleaded guilty to the crime, and was sentenced to one-and-a-half years in Folsom prison.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdvMzIr4C4MxRfOCxyvQb0W72WfwlGMuZZkZwzhPDClQjpb4KcQnwG-B8CkVHyW5CESM1XU3NVE5yhqpevcl76VH5z2RK3zKyfVx33pRz-usd1aglWrqsc6oS_6zK7aF3tD_zgow/s1600/Police+record+for+Emma+La+Deux%252C+detail%253B+Description+and+photographs+of+San+Joaquin+County+prisoners%252C+Vault+308%252C+California+Historical+Society.+.tif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1366" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdvMzIr4C4MxRfOCxyvQb0W72WfwlGMuZZkZwzhPDClQjpb4KcQnwG-B8CkVHyW5CESM1XU3NVE5yhqpevcl76VH5z2RK3zKyfVx33pRz-usd1aglWrqsc6oS_6zK7aF3tD_zgow/s640/Police+record+for+Emma+La+Deux%252C+detail%253B+Description+and+photographs+of+San+Joaquin+County+prisoners%252C+Vault+308%252C+California+Historical+Society.+.tif" width="546" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="TextRun SCXW81899879 BCX0" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN" style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri" , "calibri_msfontservice" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 21.85px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW81899879 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">Police record for Emma La </span></span><span class="TextRun SCXW81899879 BCX0" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN" style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri" , "calibri_msfontservice" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 21.85px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW81899879 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">Deux</span></span><span class="TextRun SCXW81899879 BCX0" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN" style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri" , "calibri_msfontservice" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 21.85px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW81899879 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">, Description and photographs of San Joaquin County prisoners, Vault 308, California Historical Society. </span></span><span class="EOP SCXW81899879 BCX0" data-ccp-props="{"201341983":0,"335551550":2,"335551620":2,"335559740":276}" style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri" , "calibri_msfontservice" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 21.85px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> </span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Then there is the crime of Emma LaDeux (often spelled “LeDoux” in later published
accounts), a thirty-year-old woman from Amador County, California, who attempted to take
advantage of the Southern Pacific’s services in the San Joaquin Valley by using the railroad
as an unwitting accomplice in her criminal activity. Among more than two hundred arrest
records in the same San Joaquin County logbook, Emma’s stands out, not only because she
is one of only three women or because her crime (poisoning her husband to death with morphine) is shocking in its premeditated violence, but because—unlike her contemporaries—
she could just as easily be posing for a portrait, instead of a mug shot for a police photographer. The photograph reveals a young woman, head held high, her gaze veering slightly away
from the camera. A scarf is wrapped around her long neck, and an elaborately decorated hat
is perched fashionably at an angle on her neatly styled hair. Although she must have realized
the severity of the charges she faced, her composure was unwavering before the camera.<br />
<br />
On March 23, 1906, Emma LaDeux (aka Emma Williams or Emma McVicker) killed her
third husband, Albert N. McVicker, in the lodging house where they were staying. Afterward,
she stuffed his body into a trunk and arranged for it to be sent to the nearby Stockton station.
The logbook does not detail the destination she had in mind for the body, but clearly the railroad provided the perfect opportunity to get it as far away as possible from the murder scene.
Unfortunately for Emma, the untagged trunk sat too long on the station platform and the
odor quickly alerted station workers that something was amiss. For three days she avoided the authorities before being arrested in Antioch by a local deputy sheriff named Shine.
According to the Haggin Museum, which holds the trunk in its collection, Emma was
headed to meet a Mr. Jean LeDoux, the man she had married a year before without first
divorcing the unfortunate Mr. McVicker—adding bigamy to her list of punishable offenses.<br />
<br />
After her arrest, she was brought back to Stockton to await trial. It might have been hard
for jurors to believe that such a slight, refined-looking woman—at five feet two inches and
110 pounds—could have commited such a heinous crime. Nevertheless, on August 7,
1906, the jury found her guilty of murder in the first degree and the presiding judge, Joaquin
County Superior Judge W. B. Nutter, made history by sentencing Emma LaDeux “to hang at
San Quentin”—the first woman in California to receive the death penalty. Emma’s luck, however, may not have been all bad. An addendum to her arrest record, scrawled across the
bottom of the page in red, hints at a potentially more positive outcome to her case: “Took an
appeal and is still in appeal at this time—Sept. 12, 1907.” In the end, Emma spent two years
in the San Joaquin County Jail before getting word that her appeal was successful, her death
sentence commuted to life in prison. Nearly fourteen years from the day she killed her husband and sent his body off to the train station, Emma was released from San Quentin on parole and walked free.<br />
<br />
San Joaquin County’s shift from a rural, agrarian community to a more industrialized, agricultural center brought about an influx of wealth and population that, in turn, led to an influx of crime—a common growing pain of newly developing communities. In fact, enough
criminal activity took place on or against the railroad and its property that the Southern Pacific would eventually install its own agents to combat lawlessness on the rails. The San Joaquin County prisoner logbook provides a small glimpse of a wide range of crimes involving
the railroad within the suddenly booming agricultural county, demonstrating only one of a
myriad of geographic, economic, and cultural shifts caused by the railroad’s presence in San
Joaquin County and in the greater San Joaquin Valley.<br />
<br />
To learn more about the railroad’s industrial and cultural impact on California, please visit
the California Historical Society’s exhibition <a href="https://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/exhibitions/current_exhibitions/">Overland to California</a>, on view from March 21
through October 20, 2019.<br />
--<br />
Written by Jaime Henderson and Frances Kaplan, California Historical Society<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-35817641412352975692019-07-22T12:03:00.000-07:002019-07-23T13:07:38.657-07:00Peoples Temple Publications Department photographs now available online <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The California Historical Society is pleased to announce that
4,467 slides and negatives from the Peoples Temple Publications Department
Records have been digitized and are available for public viewing and research </span><a href="http://digitallibrary.californiahistoricalsociety.org/object/peoplestemple?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=377a28dbd870d7c28ce6&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=0&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=6"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">online</span></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">. The photographs
provide new visual documentation of Peoples Temple’s political, religious, and
cultural activities, as well as daily life in Redwood Valley, San Francisco,
Los Angeles, and Jonestown. This work was made possible by a generous grant
from the </span><a href="https://www.archives.gov/nhprc"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">National
Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC)</span></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">. The
collection was processed by project archivists Isaac Fellman and Lynda Letona
and digitized by </span><a href="https://www.twocatdigital.com/"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Two Cat
Digital</span></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> of San Anselmo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The Peoples Temple Publications Department
Records contain a wealth of imagery depicting the demonstrations, rallies, and
events organized by Peoples Temple. Before the mass migration to Jonestown in
1977, the Temple pursued an ambitious program of political action: defending
leftist activists, getting out the vote for candidates for local office,
working with mainstream media, maintaining relationships with other faith
organizations, organizing cross-country recruitment trips, participating in
rallies and demonstrations, and building alliances with celebrities and
politicians. Photographs in the collection were taken by the Publications
Department to support these activities. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Newly digitized photographs reveal the
connections between Peoples Temple and local, regional, national, and
international political and activist networks, situating the Peoples Temple
movement within the 1970s context of urban politics, radical activism,
communalism, internationalism, and Black Power.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> We hope that the online publication
of these images will support a new generation of scholarship on Peoples Temple
and Jonestown. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCqz8R8aOS2Yxgh6a6A_bFFxl2w5J46ApKcAi9jlSK-RhMc05T7vGb2y2lbkNlE1en07oxepv4jd2ohxxJyKJHHHtxNsEifBrCTWDrX7hRw76xLPgtaiUsNt0-LgJKL-lNgNM3XA/s1600/Teacher+in+school.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1100" data-original-width="1600" height="440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCqz8R8aOS2Yxgh6a6A_bFFxl2w5J46ApKcAi9jlSK-RhMc05T7vGb2y2lbkNlE1en07oxepv4jd2ohxxJyKJHHHtxNsEifBrCTWDrX7hRw76xLPgtaiUsNt0-LgJKL-lNgNM3XA/s640/Teacher+in+school.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white;">Teacher in school, circa 1976-1978;
Peoples Temple Publications Department Records, MS 3791; California Historical
Society.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyy2KOAyFdepDP0_jyLi3OTRB7WMAQfQAkj0Oq8Rst9GTFl3zrxwKgvpf_otK6hUaQPMHz20f6lZvCQ0yDs7jMI2bHDZg8ZuCvnEZqUbAx3WIJ9A9N5UBkhAw6bGxzJJWYupH7Zw/s1600/Peoples+Temple+choir.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1100" data-original-width="1600" height="440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyy2KOAyFdepDP0_jyLi3OTRB7WMAQfQAkj0Oq8Rst9GTFl3zrxwKgvpf_otK6hUaQPMHz20f6lZvCQ0yDs7jMI2bHDZg8ZuCvnEZqUbAx3WIJ9A9N5UBkhAw6bGxzJJWYupH7Zw/s640/Peoples+Temple+choir.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white;">Peoples Temple choir, 1974-1975;
Peoples Temple Publications Department Records, MS 3791; California Historical
Society.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_BHaHSxIbhVmkvY4YBdyx2Y-y-7jfWFMNhyphenhyphen2SS6FNoB_mS-iFPbbX7BDCAx9J1GmAZN9P7hAXHR1uNB1iaL4ZSpZ-tOUbsb5zCWQaSwDc4ky2oCErs95idN07unBIKojdhyb-6A/s1600/Spiritual+Jubilee+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1100" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_BHaHSxIbhVmkvY4YBdyx2Y-y-7jfWFMNhyphenhyphen2SS6FNoB_mS-iFPbbX7BDCAx9J1GmAZN9P7hAXHR1uNB1iaL4ZSpZ-tOUbsb5zCWQaSwDc4ky2oCErs95idN07unBIKojdhyb-6A/s640/Spiritual+Jubilee+%25281%2529.jpg" width="440" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white;">Spiritual Jubilee, 1976 May 23;
Peoples Temple Publications Department Records, MS 3791; Box 21; California
Historical Society</span><o:p></o:p></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi22bxfUvLA9vCJzuqeSy91_PwwLHEuwccNR6zgPl8tt3F8kAgGLJuNLQAkaw5VbDiDpYTGiCjKA26xlIk7tHFch-RJG0xIIGZd15mr266LQDiu3Fq7ezI-AKJDvC-ZSG3kKMQX1w/s1600/Dennis+Banks+benefit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1100" data-original-width="1600" height="440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi22bxfUvLA9vCJzuqeSy91_PwwLHEuwccNR6zgPl8tt3F8kAgGLJuNLQAkaw5VbDiDpYTGiCjKA26xlIk7tHFch-RJG0xIIGZd15mr266LQDiu3Fq7ezI-AKJDvC-ZSG3kKMQX1w/s640/Dennis+Banks+benefit.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white;">Dennis Banks benefit, circa 1976;
Peoples Temple Publications Department Records, MS 3791; California Historical
Society.</span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP8mQLa5bsdRAOyRHTmQ12qkStnxiUJs1KvKnXZJkpTGgUhfOQNfHPI1WokXFADOQt-r4GH4WlQbsU9rQmUCbLzqXfolw_YqH_iNzT2gLCksTzywatYquTdUpMoUJctcrcN2nb0g/s1600/Demonstration+at+International+Hotel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1100" data-original-width="1600" height="440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP8mQLa5bsdRAOyRHTmQ12qkStnxiUJs1KvKnXZJkpTGgUhfOQNfHPI1WokXFADOQt-r4GH4WlQbsU9rQmUCbLzqXfolw_YqH_iNzT2gLCksTzywatYquTdUpMoUJctcrcN2nb0g/s640/Demonstration+at+International+Hotel.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white;">Demonstration at International Hotel,
1977; Peoples Temple Publications Department Records, MS 3791; Box 24;
California Historical Society<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsVQZOikTOGX9oKVmMFJUUxqOWnFCUdTwFcPaj9GFKwntaZxyiKyzKg0E5SCsamd4Gy3PiB3t0Wf8Q16sz5JexQOEszuKH8Fgk8Ug4u03T6Sd1tAp_YUZEDVzp_hzspSBcphwV9g/s1600/1976+summer+trip_+Peoples+Temple+members+in+Chicago.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1100" data-original-width="1600" height="440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsVQZOikTOGX9oKVmMFJUUxqOWnFCUdTwFcPaj9GFKwntaZxyiKyzKg0E5SCsamd4Gy3PiB3t0Wf8Q16sz5JexQOEszuKH8Fgk8Ug4u03T6Sd1tAp_YUZEDVzp_hzspSBcphwV9g/s640/1976+summer+trip_+Peoples+Temple+members+in+Chicago.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white;">1976 summer trip: Peoples Temple
members in Chicago, 1976; Peoples Temple Publications Department Records, MS
3791; California Historical Society.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
Written by Marie Silva & Isaac Fellman, California Historical Society<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="text-align: center;">Funding to process the Peoples Temple collection provided by the National Historical Publications & Records Commission.</span></div>
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California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-45860895012909597232019-07-15T12:59:00.000-07:002019-07-15T12:59:48.474-07:00Uncovering remarkable documents through Teaching California<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The California Historical Society often relies on scholars in the field to illuminate new areas of collection and research. When exploring primary sources for our new <a href="http://teachingcalifornia.org/"><i>Teaching California</i></a> project, we came across two remarkable documents from our manuscripts collection that will soon be incorporated into our growing set of K-12 instructional materials. The first, a Spanish diary entry from California’s Mission period, and the second, a Chinese newspaper published in San Francisco shortly after the Gold Rush, both offer an insight into the daily lives of those living and working in two significant periods of California’s history. Below, we hear briefly from the two scholars who helped us translate these documents, including why these particular sources are important to them. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="541" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/QDMb37_-AKWMLTSAyXRSCOX9yS53F1FXFuzsco94kEQ2movQ4Ct-3bmgL1tpt3RGN3pCc2UhWlvaJLS-g_q6aQ_SpyGOzbHM6XY8DmJeQE6DmBnBa7PJ82ey7XVbYDb3ijm0zv9g" style="border: none; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="624" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-874d5e51-7fff-f8f9-48f2-0a36e2dba86d"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Diary entry of Captain Fernando Rivera y Moncada at Monterey on October 3, 1774; Fernando Rivera y Moncada diary, 1774-1777, MS Vault 48; California Historical Society.</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The first document, highlighted for fourth graders studying the Mission period, is one of many brief, daily entries by Rivera y Moncada, the Spanish military commandant of Alta California, 1774-1777. Written a few years after the second Franciscan mission and presidio in the Californias was established in present-day Monterey county, the diary includes a list of soldiers, craftsmen, and other non-native people living in California at the time. <br />
<br />
Rose Marie Beebe, Professor of Spanish based at Santa Clara University, California, undertook the translation of the 18th century Spanish-language document. She wrote about the entry’s significance: <br />
<br />
“On October 3, 1774, Fernando de Rivera y Moncada, commander of the Monterey Presidio,<br />
reported that the native peoples had started a large fire to the west of the fort. He knew what they<br />
were doing: “They set fire to the field so that new growth will sprout up from the ashes.” Yet a<br />
number of soldiers went out to extinguish the fire. They did so, Rivera wrote “to preserve the<br />
Fields.”<br />
<br />
Rivera’s remarks dramatically highlighted the different forms of food production that were present in colonial Alta California. The Spanish introduced European-style agriculture and were concerned that the crops that they had introduced into the region would not be able to grow in a charred landscape. The indigenous people, however, had lived for centuries from the food provided by the natural environment. They understood that fire was an important means of rejuvenating the soil that produced the fruits, berries, acorns, and other sustenance on which both they and the other living creatures with which they shared the California environment depended. Europeans were quickly exposed to this indigenous method of resource management. For example, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo sailed into San Pedro Bay in 1542 and was greeted by thick fires onshore, causing him to name the place La BahIa de los Humos-- the Bay of Smoke. He may well have been witnessing a series of controlled burns. As contemporary scholar M. Kat Anderson has written, “Fire was the most significant, effective, efficient, and widely employed vegetation management tool of California Indian tribes.” (M. Kat Anderson, Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 136). Rivera’s diary demonstrated that over 200 years later, Europeans in California still did not fully understand the ecological wisdom that was an essential part of the indigenous Californians’ way of life.”<br />
<br />
Below is Beebe’s English translation of the Moncada’s diary entry:<br />
<br />
<span id="docs-internal-guid-4d2ae876-7fff-2017-c12b-b07536d78fb7"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-4d2ae876-7fff-2017-c12b-b07536d78fb7"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">October 1 Señor don Juan Soler: Have three fanegas</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 6pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">1</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of beans and eight of corn sent to</span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-4d2ae876-7fff-2017-c12b-b07536d78fb7">
</span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 67.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-4d2ae876-7fff-2017-c12b-b07536d78fb7"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the escolta</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 6pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">2</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> at San Antonio. Because they have run out of lard and meat, send</span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-4d2ae876-7fff-2017-c12b-b07536d78fb7">
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 67.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">them the same amount of rations of ham given to the men here, that is, five</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 67.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ounces per ration. With regard to the cost [of the food] and the sacks [for</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 67.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">transporting the food], you and the corporals can come to an agreement on that.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 67.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And, if you should deem it necessary to notify me about any issue, I shall not</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 67.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hesitate to intervene in whatever manner is most appropriate. Monterey, October 1, 1774. Rivera</span></div>
</span><br />
<span id="docs-internal-guid-9913f341-7fff-8bea-ce09-391103a4fde1"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-9913f341-7fff-8bea-ce09-391103a4fde1"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[October] 2</span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-9913f341-7fff-8bea-ce09-391103a4fde1">
</span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-9913f341-7fff-8bea-ce09-391103a4fde1"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sunday Nothing to report.</span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-9913f341-7fff-8bea-ce09-391103a4fde1">
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[October] 3 A large fire was set west of us. It was burning the countryside and was drawing</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 67.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">closer to the presidio. Soldiers, young men, and even I, went out and managed</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 67.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to extinguish the fire, not because the homes were at risk, but rather to preserve</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 67.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the fields. The gentiles</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 6pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">3</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> have a bad habit of creating this kind of work for us.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 67.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After their seeds have all been gathered and because they have no animals to</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 67.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">take care of, their main concern is their bellies. They set fire to the fields so</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 67.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that new growth will sprout up from the ashes. It is also a way to catch rabbits </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 67.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that are trying to escape from the dense smoke. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
</span><span id="docs-internal-guid-053d02b5-7fff-23c1-a3ee-0e61e546835a"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1 One fanega is equivalent to about 1.6 bushels.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2 The escort or squad of soldiers assigned to protect a missionary at a mission.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3 Non-baptized Indians.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="505" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/uBtfmUlthnyx8TtUbhWpAQ7fHlx9MUpWEy4tbagRoDfLbYhxTBprgSTesJAgnJDEIbnYMOVUfrYSbMBR87pBWJ3oyS3b2Cxxy7fNV0v3C71MsCu2ODEUdQa5-LF0yuFR9mXwIc1S" style="border: none; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="624" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f9765dd5-7fff-bde7-56c0-920caa184356"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Golden Hills News.</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> May 27, 1854. California Historical Society, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chinese in California Virtual Collection, Newspaper Collection, Box 2.</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-6865a752-7fff-5331-b4b0-4b42b7018e42"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span></div>
<div>
For seventh graders, <i>Teaching California</i> authors chose this Chinese newspaper from our collections for an inquiry set exploring San Francisco as a <a href="https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/may-2012/sites-of-encounter-in-world-history">Site of Encounter</a>. The front page of the May 27, 1854 edition of the Golden Hills News features both Cantonese language characters and one column of English text. The publisher's welcome note in English reads: "Merchants, Manufacturers, Miners, and Agriculturists, come forward as friends, not scorners of the Chinese, so that they may mingle in the march of the world, and help to open America an endless vista of future commerce."</div>
<br />
Roland Hui, an independent historian based in San Francisco who helped with the English translation, had this to say about this special document: <br />
<br />
“The Golden Hills' News is a very special newspaper. In the words of the famed historian Him Mark Lai, it was the first Chinese-language weekly in the world that embodied all the ingredients of a modern newspaper. And for me to play a part in sharing this treasure with a wider audience is extremely gratifying. In doing the translation, I had a fun time trying to figure out the original English names of places, people, and ships from which the Chinese versions were transliterated. The contemporary issues of the <i>Daily Alta California</i> helped me ascertain most of them. For those few that I could not find any reference, it will be hilarious to know how widely I missed the target.”<br />
<br />
Below is an excerpt from Hui’s English translation of the Chinese portion of the newspaper:<br />
<span id="docs-internal-guid-1e657cbd-7fff-e799-d608-0ef80adac6d0"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-1e657cbd-7fff-e799-d608-0ef80adac6d0"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Front page, Purpose of the Newspaper] The purpose of publishing a newspaper is to promote commerce, provide knowledge, convey public sentiments, and communicate government regulations. Now, California is the meeting place of people from all over the world, and various countries have published their own newspapers except the Chinese. Therefore, although there are many Chinese merchants, they lack the skills to run their businesses, have limited general knowledge, and are powerless to make decisions. They do not fully understand business conditions, and are easily manipulated by tricksters; they are ignorant of government regulations, and are bullied by those with evil intensions. It is a pity that they, despite having years of experience, are struggling in their business and facing so many obstacles. This has prompted me to start this Golden Hills’ News, and use the Chinese language to describe daily happenings about Chinese and American business and government and legal affairs. It will be published every Saturday, so that people will know what is going on. If you have business news, we can advertise it here. That way, business will flourish, knowledge will expand, public sentiments will be felt, and government regulations will be understood; and to the Chinese this is by no means a small benefit. - Mr. Howard </span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-1e657cbd-7fff-e799-d608-0ef80adac6d0">
</span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-1e657cbd-7fff-e799-d608-0ef80adac6d0"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...</span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-1e657cbd-7fff-e799-d608-0ef80adac6d0">
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Food prices: </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Coffee: 18¢ per pound </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fine salted pork: $27/per large barrel </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Medium salted pork: $22, $23 per barrel </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fine salted beef: $18, $20 per large barrel </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Medium salted beef: $20 per barrel </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fine ham: 20¢ per pound </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fine bacon: 15¢, 16¢ per pound </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Manilla fine sugar: 7¢, 8¢ per pound </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lard: 15¢, 16¢ per pound </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fine Chinese sugar: 9¢ per pound </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Second-rate Chinese sugar: 8¢ per pound </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fine black tea: 50¢, 55¢ per pound </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">American fine sugar: 12.5¢ per pound </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chinese rice: 5¢, 6¢, 6.25¢ per pound </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Carolina Rice: 6¢ per pound </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Manilla rice: 3¢, 3.5¢ per pound </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">…</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In this city, barbarians of different nationalities bully the Chinese too much. From now on, if a Chinese is harassed, beaten, or cheated, he can report it to Mr. Howard so an English notice can be translated and sent to all countries. Chinese do not have to suffer mistreatments in silence. Mr. Howard is located at 163 Clay Street, upstairs. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">People from different countries who come to America and wish to become Americans can first go to court and take an oath. The court will issue a paper which can be renewed every two years. With that they can go to the hills to dig gold and do other things without having to pay for a license. If you wish to learn more, please visit Mr. Howard upstairs for a more detailed discussion.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">... </span></div>
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</span>Our <i>Teaching California</i> collections team has been busy researching and preparing documents like these over the past year, including working with our partners at the California History-Social Science Project to carefully incorporate over 60 primary sources from our collections into the project’s instructional materials.<br />
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Excitingly, we are creating newly-digitized copies of these primary sources for inclusion in <i>Teaching California</i>, and teachers will find these documents and more when we launch the project website later this year (more details to come). In the meantime, visit <a href="https://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/programs/teaching_california/">teachingcalifornia.org</a> for more details about the project, and follow along here on our blog for more updates.<br />
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We look forward to uncovering more stories as we dig deeper into the primary sources in our collections!<br />
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<i>The California Historical Society is working in partnership with the California History-Social Science Project (CHSSP) at UC Davis to establish and implement<a href="https://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2017/08/news-release-5-million-state-grant-to.html"> Teaching California</a>: a free and expansive online set of instructional materials to support the State’s<a href="https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/hs/cf/hssframework.asp"> new K-12 History-Social Science Framework</a>. This post comes from Kerri Young, Teaching California Project Manager. You can reach out to her at <a href="mailto:kyoung@calhist.org">kyoung@calhist.org</a>.</i><br />
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California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-59975264629579943622019-07-11T12:59:00.000-07:002019-07-11T12:59:52.600-07:00Teaching the Important, Honest, and Troubling History of Native California<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>This blog is reposted from the California History-Social Scient Project's blog. The original post can be found <a href="https://chssp.ucdavis.edu/blog/nativecalifornia/">here.</a> </i></div>
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Editor's Note: As we travel around California, one of the most frequent concerns we hear from teachers is that they don’t feel prepared to teach students about the history of California Indians. Elementary teachers have explained that they don’t know enough about pre-contact California, especially the history of indigenous people in their local area. Eighth-grade teachers reflect that their current resources are incomplete and don’t fully document the perspective of native peoples during the 19th Century. And high school teachers often remark they don’t have anything on native history after 1900. We’ve heard these concerns and in response, we’ve brought together a new team of scholars and members of native communities to design a workshop specifically focused on teaching the history of California Indians. Historians Shelley Brooks and Michelle Lorimer will lead the workshop, aided by the important scholarly contributions of Benjamin Madley, Steven Hackel, Clifford Trafzer, Khal Schneider, and Gregg Castro. This workshop will debut at our new <a href="https://chssp.ucdavis.edu/programs/framework">Framework Conference</a> series, which starts on September 10 at UC Irvine. Read below for a special blog post about the workshop, and learn more about the Framework Conference series <a href="https://chssp.ucdavis.edu/programs/framework">here</a>.</i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeW4pPQuzNUJ_Mvp9vPlnbWEIaM0FMNzTcVXouQiPqrDe_ueSzO183OaWvpq1zgyMt1oNzYEhss6eoCPPL6cm1vKkhsz6gDM_MMMj7NO-Ds6T9VP920P2kyoRsYDKeDKBr2QOgMg/s1600/chssp+blog.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="451" data-original-width="597" height="484" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeW4pPQuzNUJ_Mvp9vPlnbWEIaM0FMNzTcVXouQiPqrDe_ueSzO183OaWvpq1zgyMt1oNzYEhss6eoCPPL6cm1vKkhsz6gDM_MMMj7NO-Ds6T9VP920P2kyoRsYDKeDKBr2QOgMg/s640/chssp+blog.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Native Americans on Alcatraz Island during the 1969-1971 occupation to reclaim native land. </td></tr>
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In West Sacramento last month, <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/It-s-called-a-genocide-Gavin-Newsom-14016400.php">Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order</a> to apologize for California’s treatment of its Native population. As the governor explained, “That’s what it was, a genocide. No other way to describe it. And that’s the way it needs to be described in the history books.” In our new workshop, “Highlighting Native Californian History through the Framework,” we hope to guide teachers through this important, honest, and troubling investigation of California’s history.</div>
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California’s <a href="https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/hs/cf/hssframework.asp">History-Social Science Framework</a> calls for more complex examinations of California Indian history across grade levels and time periods. Our workshop will focus on ways to incorporate the history and culture of Native Californian peoples into lessons at both primary and secondary levels. Lessons that explore California Indian history provide teachers with unique opportunities to connect students with local history and contemporary Native communities that, historically, have been frequently misrepresented and not consulted in public representations of their groups.<br />
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Teaching about the history of California Indians also allows students to explore interdisciplinary themes that span the various fields of social and behavioral sciences, including history, geography, economics, civics (political science), anthropology, religious studies, and psychology. Investigations that focus on the lives of Native Californians both before and after foreign contact highlight important historical thinking strategies. Students learn to understand diverse perspectives, evaluate historical evidence, recognize continuity and change, assess cause and consequence, and unpack ethical considerations of the past. <br />
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We will investigate the experiences of Native peoples during transitional times in California’s history—guided by the major instructional shifts in the <i>Framework</i>. We will use inquiry to investigate primary source content from pre-contact, the California mission era, the Gold Rush, and the modern civil rights era. Teachers will receive classroom-ready materials for grades 3 (local history), 4 (California history), 8 (19th-century U.S. history), 10 (modern world history), 11 (modern U.S. history), and 12 (government). Many of these resources will come from our partnership with the <a href="https://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/">California Historical Society</a> and our shared <i>Teaching California</i> project, which will debut later this year. <br />
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Written by Michelle Lorimer, Ph.D., an historian and lecturer at California State University, San Bernardino, Shelley Brooks, Ph.D., and Beth Slutsky, Ph.D., who are both Program Coordinators at the California History-Social Science Project. </div>
California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-82187693980396943782019-06-28T17:16:00.004-07:002019-06-28T17:24:17.067-07:00Our Time Has Come<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
We’ve just added two new collections to CHS’s digital library: the <a href="http://digitallibrary.californiahistoricalsociety.org/islandora/object/chs:soc-mov-eph-gay">Gay and Lesbian rights movement ephemera collection,</a> and the <a href="http://digitallibrary.californiahistoricalsociety.org/object/altman">Joe Altman Photographs of the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade</a> - the event that is known today as the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Celebration.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJJ3HUjN3xT_69DBTILFy7jmkRbbnmMVMCzW5JErGvKrUlYEjaKo1vDLVg-QJoejp9ed-dRCEEyATzmekHCkFhqYxsLQ3XhmeASpSZsKE4PjW-41W7QrBl0mIyW9qgVaeVak2-UA/s1600/Preparing+float+at+Spear+St.+before+parade.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1286" data-original-width="1600" height="510" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJJ3HUjN3xT_69DBTILFy7jmkRbbnmMVMCzW5JErGvKrUlYEjaKo1vDLVg-QJoejp9ed-dRCEEyATzmekHCkFhqYxsLQ3XhmeASpSZsKE4PjW-41W7QrBl0mIyW9qgVaeVak2-UA/s640/Preparing+float+at+Spear+St.+before+parade.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">Preparing float at Spear St. before parade, 1979 June 24; Joe Altman photographs of the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parades, PC-040; Box 01, Folder 11; California Historical Society.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTg2emveR4BgILa9q0rmRs6PN-4dfzW0tHYZQXvY4MXaYmJRa18k908j85QMGedXmR9srHhLqXQeQco9lzE54tiWs6WfF01kSRNjLQfwx18RuEHqHItoHJJtxXqF1gV4iY_s_KKg/s1600/Creative+Award_+winning+women%2527s+float%252C+Market+St..jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1295" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTg2emveR4BgILa9q0rmRs6PN-4dfzW0tHYZQXvY4MXaYmJRa18k908j85QMGedXmR9srHhLqXQeQco9lzE54tiWs6WfF01kSRNjLQfwx18RuEHqHItoHJJtxXqF1gV4iY_s_KKg/s640/Creative+Award_+winning+women%2527s+float%252C+Market+St..jpg" width="514" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">"Creative Award" winning women's float, Market St., 1979 June 24; Joe Altman photographs of the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parades, PC-040; Box 01, Folder 11; California Historical Society. </span></td></tr>
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Joe Altman’s photographs of the 1979 Gay Freedom Day parade depict marchers and celebrants taking to the streets a little more than a month after the voluntary manslaughter verdict for Dan White in the assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk sparked the uprising against the San Francisco Police Department and City Hall known as the White Night riots. Fittingly, the theme of the 1979 Gay Freedom Day was “Our Time Has Come.”</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjglTdY8R1Z_7Kd1JQegp911v9l-pA8mc9geuIxRyLyJo9XJWQ1J8f-KJnOGVqbcXnSSv5BcIImuHiYDoWO8gkjhmitB0dYI6sxI0BmvhfkY_s2uSQ-OYTQ0gYVj6w9CfBUrGpJA/s1600/Gays+Against+Nuclear+Power+contingent%252C+Market+St.+at+California+and+Drumm+Sts.%252C+Ferry+Bldg.+in+background.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1285" data-original-width="1600" height="510" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjglTdY8R1Z_7Kd1JQegp911v9l-pA8mc9geuIxRyLyJo9XJWQ1J8f-KJnOGVqbcXnSSv5BcIImuHiYDoWO8gkjhmitB0dYI6sxI0BmvhfkY_s2uSQ-OYTQ0gYVj6w9CfBUrGpJA/s640/Gays+Against+Nuclear+Power+contingent%252C+Market+St.+at+California+and+Drumm+Sts.%252C+Ferry+Bldg.+in+background.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">Gays Against Nuclear Power contingent, Market St. at California and Drumm Sts., Ferry Bldg. in background, 1979 June 24; Joe Altman photographs of the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parades, PC-040; Box 01, Folder 07; California Historical Society. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Carrois Gothic"; font-size: 16px;">The gay and lesbian rights movement ephemera collection consists of flyers, brochures, announcements and newsletters from lesbian and gay rights activist groups working in Northern California in the 1970s.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_MWPhr1_0DI_8ntjU5_hGUIR7w6hKByXthi1bh17n0iupR5v_UII3T1UxD3nbv6hHq6d5kQA-eUWsdObWWPBhLML1qisAzcHe_WjBxh8V8xNFofSW-e22qFVUVXwflM7nQXXNyg/s1600/SOC_MOV_EPH_050.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1261" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_MWPhr1_0DI_8ntjU5_hGUIR7w6hKByXthi1bh17n0iupR5v_UII3T1UxD3nbv6hHq6d5kQA-eUWsdObWWPBhLML1qisAzcHe_WjBxh8V8xNFofSW-e22qFVUVXwflM7nQXXNyg/s640/SOC_MOV_EPH_050.jpg" width="504" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">Dan White Gets Special Treatment!, 1979; California social, protest, and counterculture movement ephemera collection, SOC MOV EPH; Box 1, Folder 13; California Historical Society. </span></td></tr>
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Stay tuned for stories from these two unique collections in the coming weeks.</div>
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Written by Al Bersch, Metadata and Systems Librarian at California Historical Society<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div>
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California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-6421683460392366522019-06-17T10:33:00.000-07:002019-06-25T09:44:07.314-07:00The Transcontinental Railroad, African Americans and the California Dream<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
A pivotal moment for the era and a monumental industrial infrastructure achievement in the history of the United States, the transcontinental railroad completion in 1869 had a profound effect on American life which changed the nation forever. It was a revolution which reduced travel time from the east to west coasts from months to about a week, and at less cost than previous overland and by sea options, that open economic and cultural opportunities for the possibilities of the movement of people and goods. It opened California, other parts of the U.S., and the Pacific World to more travelers, tourists, emigrants, and settlers. <br />
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A settler colonialist and imperialist project, corporate and military organization hosted imported (mostly from China) laborers who were paid low wages to plow across and lay the tracks through indigenous people’s sovereign nation lands to connect the distant colony of California to become a vital part of the U.S. continental empire. The railroad companies produced pamphlets and magazines to recruit whites from the U.S. and Europe to settle in California and the West, and those who wanted to explore the Western landscape from the comfort of the modern railway car. Although not thought of as part of the audience for this promotion, African Americans would also learn and benefit from what the transcontinental railroad could offer.<br />
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Before, during and after the transcontinental line’s construction, in southern states, thousands of enslaved and then freedmen worked on the railroads grading lines, building bridges, and blasting tunnels. They working as firemen shoveling coal into the boiler riding alongside the engineer, and as brakemen and yard switchmen. They loaded baggage and freight, and sometimes drove the train. Even with racist resistance to blacks as they migrated to northern states that rose after the Civil War, the new freedmen joined their northern brothers in the few jobs like these mentioned which were open to them. <br />
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The post-Civil War years into the early decades of the twentieth century, black men gained employment on the transcontinental railroad, most often as Pullman Company’s Palace Car porters and waiters, helping to define American travel during the railroad transportation era. These Pullman porters, as they were called, made “porter” synonymous with “Negro,” and provided glorified servant work as valet, bellhop, maid, and janitor for luxury sleeper cars used for overnight travel. Pullman cars were like or better than the best of America’s hostelries of the era, only on wheels.<br />
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Paid low wages, Pullman porters had to make money in tips from the public to survive and thrive, which they unquestionably accomplished. These men worked long hours and faced routine racial discrimination, abuse and indignities. The exploitative working conditions were imposed by management supposedly to incentivize black employees to provide the best service, compliancy in following orders and resistance to unionization, and to intimidate them to be grateful for their jobs. Scholarly studies showed in the 1920s, the Pullman company hired the most African Americans in the U.S. and the porters were one of the worst exploited workers in the country. But even under these conditions the job did have life changing benefits.<br />
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Pullman porter jobs offered stable blue collar employment, the adventure, glamour and education of travel to many places, and escape from hard physical labor on the farm or in the factory. Interaction with more intelligent classes in the travelers who Pullman porters meet and served, and the information gained from these people and the publications they left behind on the trains, informed them about what was going on in the broader world. Porters passed this knowledge and publications on to their families and the black communities they passed through in their travels around the country. <br />
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Between 1867 and 1969, thousands of African American men changed history as they rode the nation’s railroads as Pullman porters. They were an example of upward mobility for black males during the nation’s railroad transportation era. They spread the word of higher wages and improved circumstances which helped energize the Great Migration of nearly 500,000 southern African Americans who moved to the North between 1915 and 1919, and those who followed in later decades during the twentieth century to western, as well as northern cities. They created the first labor union for African Americans, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (which also included the maids) in 1927, and helped build the 1950s–1960s phase of the civil rights movement. <br />
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California had its share of African American men who worked as Pullman porters and in other railroad jobs who migrated from southern states to its railroad hub cities during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They, like many African Americans, would have been attracted by California’s admittance to the Union as a free state in 1850, and the freedoms and opportunities this extended over the years. A history of less racially motivated violence and harassment directed towards African Americans was also an encouragement for migration to Los Angeles and other western cities. The opportunity for their children to attend public schools and the state’s 1893 anti-discrimination law were other factors which made California an enticing destination for new life opportunities. <br />
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John Wesley Coleman (1865–1930) worked as a Pullman porter for 12 years, after migrating with his family from Austin, Texas to Los Angeles at the time of an economic boom in 1887. An entrepreneurial clan, he and his relatives bought land and settled in Boyle Heights, a newly subdivided area just east of Los Angeles’ downtown and the river. They were some of the earliest African American settlers in Boyle Heights.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM4R67LtFSVWCkMoYpuvGoqC9ASTQQdIJilzigAPw2gewqQKDABR9kR2kRWqFRjBcE8W50N_0vqDpdNuKUOw-8dkAv6Q016ztLsDKCzeA-KxFDxosOc-COUwJgHCCqbm8dSqvPVw/s1600/John+Wesley+Coleman.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="623" data-original-width="522" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM4R67LtFSVWCkMoYpuvGoqC9ASTQQdIJilzigAPw2gewqQKDABR9kR2kRWqFRjBcE8W50N_0vqDpdNuKUOw-8dkAv6Q016ztLsDKCzeA-KxFDxosOc-COUwJgHCCqbm8dSqvPVw/s640/John+Wesley+Coleman.JPG" width="532" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption">John Wesley Coleman and his family arrived in Los Angeles in 1887 from Austin, Texas and settled in the Boyle Heights District east of downtown. One of his early jobs in Los Angeles was working as a Pullman Porter, before he became a successful real estate investor, employment agent, and important civic leader. Photograph from The Negro Trail Blazers of California by Delilah Beasley, 1918.</td></tr>
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Before and sometimes while Coleman worked as a railroad porter, he used his skill set and resources to take advantage of several employment and business development opportunities in his years of becoming an established Los Angeles citizen. By 1907, after ending his traveling around the country serving and meeting all types and classes of people as a Pullman porter, Coleman began one of his most enduring business endeavors. He opened an employment agency in downtown Los Angeles where he helped many African American newcomers find jobs. <br />
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Enormously successful in getting people employment up and down the Pacific coast, some observers in the African American media called Coleman the ”Employment King of Los Angeles.” Over the years, he also would accumulate and sell valuable regional real estate on his own and with relatives, and be a part of other business ventures such as the Hotel Coleman DeLuxe which provided services to primarily an African American clientele at Lake Elsinore, a resort town in Riverside County.<br />
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Among Coleman’s many significant civic leadership undertakings was in helping establish and support the Forum, founded in 1903. This organization encouraged collective action to advance and strengthen African Americans socially, intellectually, financially, and in Christian ethics. With a membership of all African American classes, the Forum fought against racial discrimination and engaged in philanthropic efforts. They supported black business development and patronage. They urged white-owned businesses and the government to employ African Americans in non-menial positions. Lasting until the 1940s, the Forum was one of the most important organizations in the history of African Americans in Los Angeles as it helped them develop a sense of community through providing a space for public discourse, civic organizing, political dialogue, and aided newcomers to network and assimilate into Los Angeles society. <br />
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While working as a Pullman porter, Arthur L. Reese (1883–1963) first traveled to Los Angeles and its environs. On a layover in 1902, he read in the newspaper about a new amusement pier and resort town construction by pioneering developer Abbot Kinney in an area to be called Venice of America on the Pacific Ocean’s Santa Monica Bay, just south of the city of the same name. Looking toward the future, Reese was interested to develop his own business and rode out on the streetcar to Venice to investigate what opportunities might be available for him with Abbot Kinney and his new venture. Soon after this, on his returned to Louisiana, Reese quit his railroad porter job and then moved to Los Angeles.<br />
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Arthur L. Reese discovered Los Angeles and Venice,
California were he eventually moved, while on a layover from his Pullman Porter
job in 1902. After moving to the region in 1904, Reese eventually became
recognized as the “Wizard of Venice” due to the inventive decorations he
designed for the Venice-of-America amusement center.(Photograph collage from
the Arthur L. Lewis Family Archives)<o:p></o:p></div>
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Reese eventually established successful service oriented businesses which supported the needs of the Santa Monica and Venice business and residential community. Alongside his own business endeavors, he would become head of maintenance and decorations for the Kinney facilities and be very actively involved in Venice civic affairs with local business and other groups. Reese’s business operations would eventually extended into Los Angeles, and Lake Elsinore in Riverside County where he was part of a business partner in the Lake Shore Beach grounds, a resort site for African Americans. Over the years, Reese supervised a work force of a few dozen people which included several of his relatives who he inspired to migrate to California from Louisiana. Reese, his family members and other African Americans who worked with his and, or Abbot Kinney’s enterprises made up the early African American community which live in Los Angeles’ Venice beach community.<br />
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Like thousands of other African Americans in college, law and medical school, and other academic programs, Eugene Curry Nelson (1883–1962) spent summers working as a steamboat and railroad car waiter in the northeast U.S. In this temporary work, he earned a salary and tips which helped pay tuition and expenses for medical school and later the needed equipment for his professional office as a physician and surgeon. Born and reared in Charleston, South Carolina, he earned his undergraduate degree from Prairie View A&M University near Houston, Texas. He obtained his medical training degree from Meharry Medical School, in Nashville, Tennessee.<br />
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Dr. Eugene Curry Nelson, like so many young African American
men and a few women when in college, law and medical school, and
other academic programs, spent summers working on steamboats and
railroad cars as waiters, porters and maids in the northeast U.S. to earn money
to pay for tuition and other education. expenses. He moved to Los Angeles
in 1914. </div>
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In 1911, Nelson commenced his medical practice in Virginia, before migrating to Los Angeles in 1914, where he settled and built a practice that included patients who were African American, white, and from other racial and ethnic groups. In Los Angeles, even before the end of the Jim Crow era in the middle decades of the twentieth century, it was not uncommon for African American physicians to have patients from the varied ethnic communities of the city. This occurred even as these doctors and other African Americans were discriminated against in most other professional, employment and social settings. <br />
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By 1924, Nelson was called “one of California’s wealthiest Negroes” by Noah D. Thompson in an article which appeared in The Messenger, a nationally circulated African American monthly published by A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen in New York. In additional to practicing medicine, Nelson invested in several businesses in finance, real estate, manufacturing, oil, and amusement. He also held leadership roles in undertakings to promote and develop African American businesses and civic participation for individual and group benefit. In the 1920s, Nelson was part of a group of very ambitious African American businessmen who bought the white owned, Parkridge Country Club in Corona, a Riverside County community, to operate as an interracial space of recreation and for a new African American community development in Southern California’s Inland Empire.<br />
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Coleman, Reese, Nelson and others who worked as Pullman porters and waiters exemplified the “New Negro” determined to achieve fuller participation in American society in a hostile white world. Along the way, these men helped give birth to the African American professional classes. The transcontinental railroad line offered them new opportunities for employment, broader knowledge about the U.S. for their personal betterment and that of their community. It facilitated the ability of Coleman, Reese, Nelson and many other African American men and their relatives to migrate to Los Angeles to live their California Dream of new life opportunities in a mild climate and sublime landscape. <br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Bibliography<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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Jefferson, Alison Rose. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Living
the California Dream, African American Leisure Sites during the Jim Crow Era</i>.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, in press.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Tye, Larry. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rising
from the Rails, Pullman Porters ad the Making of the Black Middle Class</i>.
New York: Owl Books/Henry Holt and Company, 2004.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Written by Alison Rose Jefferson, MHC, PhD.</div>
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California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-55763712549926941992019-06-10T11:48:00.000-07:002019-07-11T15:09:17.930-07:00Children's voices in the Archives : El Joaquin Newspaper<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Children’s Voices in the Archives is a series of posts brought to you by CHS’s North Baker Research Library.</i></span></div>
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Reading through the historical newspaper issues of <i>El Joaquin</i> is a strange experience. <i>El Joaquin</i> was a newspaper published in the Stockton Assembly Center during Japanese incarceration. This was considered a ‘temporary detention center’--such centers or concentration camps as called by others were used from late March, 1942 until mid-October, 1942. The <i>El Joaquin</i> newspaper issues in CHS’s collections have a run from May 1942 to the Final Edition, September, 1942. It was published every Wednesday and Saturday by the El Joaquin Press, W.C.C.A. Assembly Center, Stockton, CA. Single copies were delivered to each ‘apartment’ free of charge. <br />
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The editors of the newspaper seem to take great pains to tread the line between boosting morale--in the face of a racist policy that used war as an excuse to force Japanese citizens and residents out of their households--and appeasing the people who were incarcerated, perhaps in the attempt to ensure their safety. In the first Volume (issue no. 1) one gets a sense of the appeasing tone the editors use to try to get everyone to cooperate: “However, our personal frustrations must be shelved temporarily for an undertaking which requires each individual to cooperate with his fullest and best effort” (p. 1). This appeal seems at once appeasing yet subversive. Why subversive? Let me explain. <br />
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The same Volume 1 (no. 4) introduces us to Pancho, the newspaper mascot. Pancho is a toothy <i>El Joaquin</i> staff character: “Little Pancho represents the spirit of the Center. He is <b>P</b>atient, <b>A</b>ctive and <b>N</b>eighborly, <b>C</b>ourteous, slap-<b>H</b>appy and <b>O</b>rderly” (an acrostic for his name).</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-762cbf96-7fff-e3b8-a6bb-b1cceb61c049"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pancho for President, June 10, 1942; El Joaquin, Vol. 1, No. 4; OV Vault 289, Stockton Assembly center; California Historical Society.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></td></tr>
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On closer study, little Pancho has an interesting backstory the reader may peruse in the <i>El Joaquin</i> Final Edition (page L3). When the newspaper staff discover little Pancho “perched pertly on the Art Editor’s desk” toting a huge sombrero with “patches of hair showing underneath” the staff writes that upon more close observation of this “mysterious object… we noticed that there was a face and even a body beneath the hat. ‘Hey,” we shouted, “What the ____.” <br />
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When they ask Pancho what he is doing there, Pancho replies, “Why… you know me. I helped develop the lands around here. I raised beets, celery, grapes, potatoes, and even carrots. I’ve been a doctor, lawyer, farmer, merchant, laborer and a scholar. You’ve seen me around -- everywhere. I came in when the evacuation order was issued, because I had to” (Final Edition, L3). The staff notes how their adopted mascot then leaps gracefully from the table to the right-hand corner of the front page with a cry of “Let it roll.” The story of Pancho within the pages of <i>El Joaquin</i> begins a subtle subversive thread of a character who is resilient and ready to take on the immense burden of captivity with an industrious spirit. <br />
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But the subversive hint doesn’t end here. Remember--the <i>El Joaquin</i> newspaper had to, by the nature of the people’s captivity, be tame since the captors and hired staff of administrators and center’s workers could read its contents. In the issues I reviewed, I didn’t find the significance of the name “El Joaquin.” I wondered if there was more to it than being emblematic of San Joaquin County, the center’s county location in Stockton. It turns out there may be more history there. Upon speaking with library staff at the San Joaquin County Historical Society and Museum, the special collections staff thought that at first glance the newspaper was just named after the county. However, when the staff spoke with the Education Director, he mentioned that according to local lore the name has historical significance for one of the following reasons:<br />
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The newspaper was named after Joaquin Murrieta, a symbol of resistance. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-e282f888-7fff-9fbe-0620-c931047fb0fd"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cover page, September 28, 1942;</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> El Joaquin </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Final Edition, 1942; OV Vault 289, Stockton Assembly center; California Historical Society. </span></span></td></tr>
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Joaquin Murrieta was a “legendary bandit who became a hero of the Mexican-Americans in California” during a time when Yankee miners pressured the legislature in Sacramento in 1850 to pass the Greaser Act and the Foreign Miners Act with the intent to drive out Mexicans (Encyclopædia Britannica). According to lore, Murrieta or several “Murrietas” responded to the oppression by “leading bands of outlaws that raided up and down the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys, robbing gold miners and holding up stages” (Encyclopædia Britannica). Murrieta reached a symbolic status as a freedom fighter that has “long resonated and provided a powerful symbol of resistance for Chicano activists” (Encyclopædia Britannica). Could this resonance be the motive for the re-branding of <i>El Joaquin</i> Newspaper by the editors? Remember there is power in naming. Is it a reach to say that the branding of <i>El Joaquin</i> Newspaper by the editors was a subtle act of resistance? A way of reminding us of the historical implications of racist laws meant to favor one group over another and undoing it by capturing the original spirit of a Mexican migrant who wanted to settle with his bride in California? <br />
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-3b813a9c-7fff-3a6b-1815-a17ddd79bb00"><br />Researchers must read between the lines and sometimes history is completely hidden from records and/or passed on as oral history. It’s hard to discover the “truth.” Remember the echoing lines, “Why… you know me. I helped develop the lands around here. I raised beets ... even carrots. I’ve been a doctor, lawyer, farmer, merchant, laborer and a scholar. You’ve seen me around -- everywhere. I came in when the evacuation order was issued, because I had to.” If the Japanese community saw themselves as Americans, they saw themselves as the traditional ideal of what Americans aspire to be: a helping hand, a laborer, a farmer, an intellectual. Whatever circumstance they are forced into, that ideal rises to meet the massive ‘challenge’ (an understatement in this context). Words are well but don’t always convey their true meaning. So we keep reading between the lines and between bodies’ gestures and actions. <br /><br />What terribly complicates this captivity and the extent to which the captive can object, resist, or openly rebel are, of course, the children. Imagine if you were a parent under captivity. Imagine what you would do if you were forced out of your home and told that you and your children had to stay in an assembly center until further notice not knowing what will happen. What would you do? </span><br />
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-3b813a9c-7fff-3a6b-1815-a17ddd79bb00"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-3bcc2170-7fff-a0b5-c67e-dab692f074f6"><br />The people at the Stockton Assembly Center and the newspaper staff got to work immediately-- organizing a nursery school; training Boy Scouts “the value of serving their communities” (A8, Final Issue); informing the “centerites” mothers that infant care would be provided as the dreams of the people were crushed when they were told they were being relocated to another new facility dubbed the “Arkansas project” (Final <i>El Joaquin</i> issue).<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="font-size: 12pt; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; white-space: pre-wrap;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-ac9e4798-7fff-4a8b-d647-c3e1ff2480fe"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pancho with travel bags, Aug. 8, 1942;</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> El Joaquin</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Vol. 2, no. 9. OV Vault 289, Stockton Assembly center; California Historical Society.
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From church activities (Buddhist and Christian), to playing chess, performing Nisei</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> symphonies, writing bittersweet poetry and humorous drawings, and setting up school lessons by dedicated volunteers serving as teachers in the center, the people of the Stockton Assembly Center arose to a difficult situation by uniting and organizing to make things work and to protect the children. </span></span></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAym6zT-1_nxq_Hj6yRvE6Ql_lD8Ll6RqXQtBxeqBQQqFjuuIvwPmyPxrhUbYUuw1btPmFGvruwSANrVnF3lwhvqndBQWndak_wVaA_IsE7t-CL4FWn9cOvH6smyUegRMoZnSkng/s1600/Stockton+Assembly+Center_Vol+2+No6+page+4+kids+playing+chess+cropped.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="648" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAym6zT-1_nxq_Hj6yRvE6Ql_lD8Ll6RqXQtBxeqBQQqFjuuIvwPmyPxrhUbYUuw1btPmFGvruwSANrVnF3lwhvqndBQWndak_wVaA_IsE7t-CL4FWn9cOvH6smyUegRMoZnSkng/s640/Stockton+Assembly+Center_Vol+2+No6+page+4+kids+playing+chess+cropped.jpg" width="251" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kids playing chess, July 29, 1942; El Joaquin, Vol. 2, No. 6; OV Vault 289, Stockton Assembly center; California Historical Society. </td></tr>
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<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBEweGgibPQe7VRNO8Y6zySMe2z5xEKbXiwoafS3o_dqHmcTQuJHRc1cM4zsD3g7dOMeig2kG-1O40s0cIVAtulCDTPXGQGVIRzsB9strx64KzGIbwKRn8P_CStx6Rl_o-kZYh_w/s640/Stockton+Assembly+Center_Final+Edition+L4+Poem+Night+and+Mood+cropped.jpg" /> <br />
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“Night and a Mood” poem, September 28, 1942; El Joaquin Final Edition, 1942; OV Vault 289, Stockton Assembly center; California Historical Society. <br />
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;">When I say that reading El Joaquin is a strange experience I mean to reflect upon the strength of the human spirit--how we meet captivity by doing what we've always learned to do--laughing at ourselves; caring for the children, and ensuring that their minds and bodies keep active (I'm thinking of the Girls' All-Star Teams noted in the Final Edition); dancing with "shimmering hues of brightly colored kimonos" (Vo. II, No. 2); informing our community of the latest developments through print and word of mouth. This is what a resilient and resisting people do. One may ask the bold question: What else can you do when you hope that the lives of the children will continue and maybe even thrive despite the trauma of captivity. </span></div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;">History repeats itself but it need not. We can learn from our costly mistakes and those of our ancestors. We can grow wiser and be better humans. We can resist. We can protect each other if we unite and raise a cry of protest against injustice.</span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-3b813a9c-7fff-3a6b-1815-a17ddd79bb00"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-fe05a27f-7fff-ea07-7934-b543f29aeded"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj08rAICQVOqSMckf74mhN5VzZvBSIVGIlryUwgZVqsxgSiF72-ZJELYqgcK78tvMB1ZrxBSuFFy_qijoG9a5lBacTI-ld3GwYkF2IrMEgzDciNurj4PMCa8pXCftU14afYfqXDRQ/s1600/San+Joaquin+children+cartoon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1092" data-original-width="1440" height="484" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj08rAICQVOqSMckf74mhN5VzZvBSIVGIlryUwgZVqsxgSiF72-ZJELYqgcK78tvMB1ZrxBSuFFy_qijoG9a5lBacTI-ld3GwYkF2IrMEgzDciNurj4PMCa8pXCftU14afYfqXDRQ/s640/San+Joaquin+children+cartoon.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-dd511cad-7fff-d0b0-cff8-c8dd8e9d2f9b"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">El Joaquin takes kids to center store, August 5, 1942; </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">El Joaquin</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Vol. II, No. 8; OV Vault 289, Stockton Assembly center; California Historical Society. </span></span></td></tr>
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</span></span>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-3b813a9c-7fff-3a6b-1815-a17ddd79bb00"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><u>References</u></span></span><br />
<div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-3b813a9c-7fff-3a6b-1815-a17ddd79bb00"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /><i>El Joaquin</i>, 1942; OV Vault 289, Stockton Assembly center; California Historical Society. </span></span></span><br />
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-3b813a9c-7fff-3a6b-1815-a17ddd79bb00"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Joaquin Murrieta. (2019, May 1). Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved May 29, 2019 from </span></span></span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-3b813a9c-7fff-3a6b-1815-a17ddd79bb00"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<div dir="ltr" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-3b813a9c-7fff-3a6b-1815-a17ddd79bb00"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joaquin-Murrieta" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;">https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joaquin-Murrieta</span></a></span></span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-3b813a9c-7fff-3a6b-1815-a17ddd79bb00"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<div dir="ltr" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-3b813a9c-7fff-3a6b-1815-a17ddd79bb00"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Nisei. (2017, September 11). Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved May 29, 2019 from </span></span></span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-3b813a9c-7fff-3a6b-1815-a17ddd79bb00"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<div dir="ltr" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-3b813a9c-7fff-3a6b-1815-a17ddd79bb00"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nisei" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;">https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nisei</span></a></span></span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-3b813a9c-7fff-3a6b-1815-a17ddd79bb00"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">
</span></span></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-3b813a9c-7fff-3a6b-1815-a17ddd79bb00"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Stockton (detention facility). (2015, July 14). </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Densho Encyclopedia</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">. Retrieved 15:31, May 29, 2019 from </span><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Stockton%20(detention%20facility)/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Stockton%20(detention%20facility)/</a></span></span></span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-3b813a9c-7fff-3a6b-1815-a17ddd79bb00"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-3b813a9c-7fff-3a6b-1815-a17ddd79bb00"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-3b813a9c-7fff-3a6b-1815-a17ddd79bb00"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">
--<br />Written by Lynda Letona, Assistant Archivist & Reference Librarian at California Historical Society (CHS).<br /><br />Photos digitized by Marissa Friedman, Imaging Technician and Cataloger at CHS.</span></span></span></div>
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California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-84723444860578543472019-06-05T16:40:00.000-07:002019-07-11T15:01:44.323-07:00What Not to Miss: PRIDE Month at CHS<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Part of the work of public programming is to level with the fact
that there are always gaps in the narrative, always stories that have not been
shared with your audiences, whether they be a result of bias, mistake, or
intention. To work in public programming means that you must look into yourself
and seek feedback from others, assess the menu you provide and ask yourself and
your department key questions such as: What is missing? Who is not being heard?
Who should tell those stories?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Oftentimes speakers, staff members, and colleagues from across
the cultural institution spectrum come to you with thoughts on programming,
which was the case with the set of four programs we are presenting this June to
celebrate, honor, and share the histories of LGBTQA+ in California. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Susan Anderson, Director of Collections, Library, Exhibitions,
and Programs at CHS and I worked closely to design these programs and sought
ideas and feedback from CHS staff, archival institutions, historians, and those
within the communities whose history we are presenting. We are honored to share
these programs with you and hope to see you at one (or more of them)!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Tuesday, June 11, 2019, 6:00PM<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Transgender History: The Roots of
Today's Revolution<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Presentation and Audience Q&A<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">$5 General Admission, Free for CHS and Tenderloin Museum Members
+ one guest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">In partnership with the Tenderloin Museum <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpXiJA2nG2YqwlOfNj04fMWWUJEbzOXeWjOmbYJFbY_R5et4tiDL8FdSsxnLx1mo1jD22tjFe1EWOj9mh7hB_VNnNjYE_veaBinAHRjKK2OHVKnd09ap40Y-kQ-h6tG5z-nDp2sA/s1600/transgenderhistory_bookcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="450" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpXiJA2nG2YqwlOfNj04fMWWUJEbzOXeWjOmbYJFbY_R5et4tiDL8FdSsxnLx1mo1jD22tjFe1EWOj9mh7hB_VNnNjYE_veaBinAHRjKK2OHVKnd09ap40Y-kQ-h6tG5z-nDp2sA/s400/transgenderhistory_bookcover.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c;">Join us for an evening with award-winning scholar and filmmaker
Susan Stryker as she presents on the newest edition of her book, </span><i style="color: #4c4c4c;">Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s
Revolution</i><span style="color: #4c4c4c;"> (Seal Press 2008, 2017), with particular emphasis on San
Francisco's rich transgender history, from the 19th century to the present.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">About
our Speaker:<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Susan Stryker is an award-winning scholar and filmmaker whose
historical research, theoretical writing, and creative works have helped shape
the cultural conversation on transgender topics since the early 1990s. Dr.
Stryker earned her Ph.D. in United States History at the University of
California-Berkeley in 1992, later held a Ford Foundation/Social Science
Research Council post-doctoral fellowship in sexuality studies at Stanford
University, and has been a distinguished visiting faculty member at Harvard
University, Yale University, Northwestern University, Johns Hopkins University,
University of California-Santa Cruz, Macquarie University in Sydney, and Simon
Fraser University in Vancouver. She is the author, co-author, editor, or
co-editor of numerous books and anthologies, including Gay by the Bay: A
History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area (Chronicle 1996), Queer
Pulp: Perverse Passions in the Golden Age of the Paperback (Chronicle 2000),
The Transgender Studies Reader (Routledge 2006), The Transgender Studies Reader
2 (2013) and Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution (Seal Press
2008, 2017).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Her academic articles have appeared in such publications as GLQ:
A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Radical History Review, South Atlantic
Quarterly, Parallax, Australian Feminist Studies, Social Semiotics, and Journal
of Women’s History, while her public scholarship has appeared in Aperture,
Wired, The Utne Reader, and Slate.com. She won an Emmy Award for her
documentary film Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria (ITVS 2005),
and is also the recipient of a Lambda Literary Award (2006), the Ruth Benedict
Book Prize (2013), the Monette-Horowitz Prize for LGBTQ activism (2008), the
Transgender Law Center’s Community Vanguard Award (2003), two career
achievement awards in LGBTQ Studies—the David Kessler Award in from the City
University of New York’s Center for LGBT Studies in 2008, Yale University’s
Brudner Memorial Prize in 2015, and a Local Genius Award from MOCA Tucson in
2018. Dr. Stryker served for several years as Executive Director of the GLBT
Historical Society in San Francisco (1999-2003), and for five years as Director
of the Institute for LGBT Studies at the University of Arizona (2011-2016),
where she is Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and coordinator
of the university’s Transgender Studies Initiative. In addition to serving as
founding co-editor of the academic journal TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly,
she is currently developing several media projects and has a book under
contract to Farrar Straus Giroux, What Transpires Now, about the uses of
transgender history for the present.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">About the Book:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Covering American transgender history from the mid-twentieth
century to today, Transgender History takes a chronological approach to the
subject of transgender history, with each chapter covering major movements,
writings, and events. Chapters cover the transsexual and transvestite
communities in the years following World War II; trans radicalism and social
change, which spanned from 1966 with the publication of The Transsexual
Phenomenon, and lasted through the early 1970s; the mid-’70s to 1990-the era of
identity politics and the changes witnessed in trans circles through these
years; and the gender issues witnessed through the ’90s and ’00s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Transgender History includes informative sidebars highlighting
quotes from major texts and speeches in transgender history and brief
biographies of key players, plus excerpts from transgender memoirs and
discussion of treatments of transgenderism in popular culture.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Tuesday, June 18, 2019<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Major!
The life and campaigns of Miss Major Griffin-Gracy<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">A film screening <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">$5 General Admission, Free Admission for CHS Members + one guest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlMx2efpVtqfVvobKBuVRQfCoZWgKY5tEWKD-kBUoWXncB0GlHsF0WJSJpG2Zj2Aq2pum9jjIrkizQ74GUb8wscgOEtX2j1Kwo3l0PVR7LZ7OZCojE3nfoJmMhBdkmDAZzscWazA/s1600/MAJOR+postcard.tif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1091" data-original-width="1600" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlMx2efpVtqfVvobKBuVRQfCoZWgKY5tEWKD-kBUoWXncB0GlHsF0WJSJpG2Zj2Aq2pum9jjIrkizQ74GUb8wscgOEtX2j1Kwo3l0PVR7LZ7OZCojE3nfoJmMhBdkmDAZzscWazA/s400/MAJOR+postcard.tif" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c;">Join us for a film screening of MAJOR!, a film that follows the
life and campaigns of Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a 73-year-old Black transgender
woman who has been fighting for the rights of trans women of color for more
than 40 years. It is a story of one woman’s journey, a community’s history, and
how caring for one another can be a revolutionary act.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Miss Major’s personal story and activism for transgender civil
rights, from mobile outreach and AIDS prevention to fighting the prison
industrial complex intersects LGBT struggles for justice and equality from the
1960s and today. She is a veteran of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion and was
incarcerated at Attica months after the 1971 Uprising. Most recently, Miss
Major has served as the executive director of the San Francisco-based
Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP), a grassroots
organization advocating for trans women of color in and outside of prison that
is led by trans women of color.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Miss Major’s extraordinary life and personal story is one of
resilience and celebration within a community that has historically been
traumatized and marginalized. While mainstream gay rights and marriage equality
dominate the headlines, Miss Major’s life is a testament to fierce survivalism
and the everyday concerns of transgender women of color, who so often live in
the margin of the already marginalized.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">About
the Filmmakers:<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Annalise Ophelian (producer/director) is an award-winning
filmmaker, psychologist, and consultant whose work includes Diagnosing
Difference (2009). She identifies as a white, queer, cis woman, and her work
focuses on decolonizing and the documentary filmmaking process.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">StormMiguel Florez (co-producer/editor) is a Xicano transgender
musician and multi-media artist. He is the owner of Bad Flower Productions,
providing services to queer and trans artists of color to help bring their
creative projects to life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Thursday, June 20, 2019, 6:00PM<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Call
and Response: Curator Swap<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">20-minute presentations at each organization<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Free for Third Thursday<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGJcKmTD1XQO3snax3ORwLE-2t-TmxBNZc_M3ib4fuPyqXhNGFEF-YTNpmToPOhrdRvHqWLDbOyvItUBmtdzzJN_-xy-HpRbQCmPSZTRTy8vQtU5yab2pQzfn0BdcnMG9p2pO1xw/s1600/callandresponselogo.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="673" data-original-width="960" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGJcKmTD1XQO3snax3ORwLE-2t-TmxBNZc_M3ib4fuPyqXhNGFEF-YTNpmToPOhrdRvHqWLDbOyvItUBmtdzzJN_-xy-HpRbQCmPSZTRTy8vQtU5yab2pQzfn0BdcnMG9p2pO1xw/s400/callandresponselogo.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c;">The Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM), California Historical
Society (CHS) and Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) launch a new
progressive gallery talk. Educators and curators examine work in each museum's
exhibitions in connection with Pride.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">We will begin at MoAD at 6pm, spend 20 minutes in each space,
moving on next to CHS and concluding at the CJM. Join us to learn new
perspectives and create connections with neighboring Yerba Buena institutions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Tuesday, June 25, 2019, 6:00PM<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">California's
"Gay Revolution" in the Stonewall Era<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">A Presentation and Audience Q&A<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">$5 General Admission, Free Admission for CHS Members + one guest
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c;">On the Fourth of July in 1969, the Berkeley Barb published one
of the earliest media reports on the Stonewall Riots in New York City. The
article was authored by Leo Laurence, one of the co-founders of San Francisco’s
Committee for Homosexual Freedom, and “Gays Hit NY Cops” began by declaring,
“Homosexuals took to the streets in New York City last weekend and joined the
revolution.” Laurence’s account was supportive of the rioters, but deliberately
noted that those who had fought back at Stonewall were “joining” rather than
“starting” the revolution. J. Marks, identified as the author of Rock and Other
Four-Letter Words and an eyewitness to the riots, was quoted as telling
Laurence, “The gay community in New York City has been inspired by your
homosexual liberation stories in the BARB.” These stories, which began
appearing several months before Stonewall had reported on the Bay Area’s “gay
revolution” as well as the alliances that gay radicals had tried to forge with
other leftist movements, and the demonstrations that CHF had organized to
protest police violence, capitalist exploitation, and the war machine.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">This presentation introduces a set of California developments
that are highlighted in Marc Stein’s forthcoming book, The Stonewall Riots: A
Documentary History (NYU Press, June 2019). After reviewing pre-Stonewall
direct action protests in California, the presentation turns to the Stonewall
era, focusing on how news about the riots reached the West Coast, how
Californians viewed the uprising in relation to pre-Stonewall developments, and
how Golden State residents responded to the news from New York.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">About
our Speaker:<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Marc Stein is the Jamie and Phyllis Pasker Professor of History
at San Francisco State University and the vice chair of the GLBT Historical
Society Board of Directors. He is the author of City of Sisterly and Brotherly
Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia (University of Chicago Press, 2000), Sexual
Injustice: Supreme Court Decisions from Griswold to Roe (University of North
Carolina Press, 2010), and Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement (Routledge,
2012). He also served as editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of LGBT History in
America (Scribners, 2003) and guest editor of the Homophile Internationalism
special issue of the Journal of Homosexuality (2017). His next book, The
Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History, will be published in June 2019 by NYU
Press. To learn more about the book, explore its NYU Page.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Sunday, June 30, 2019<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Museums
with Pride<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnnl487xj3r8T6zkJ1My_3_8eddiYhd-QzVGdVL-J813o0vMHizBivH2DTnhDq65CyuDIPRqZ1wBjY9bJanCGr82gmloNY_doObn7kyZnUhwafoSf5-CByjH4ZdPF7GwpRP74d8g/s1600/Museums+with+Pride.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="382" data-original-width="961" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnnl487xj3r8T6zkJ1My_3_8eddiYhd-QzVGdVL-J813o0vMHizBivH2DTnhDq65CyuDIPRqZ1wBjY9bJanCGr82gmloNY_doObn7kyZnUhwafoSf5-CByjH4ZdPF7GwpRP74d8g/s640/Museums+with+Pride.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #4c4c4c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">See our staff on the parade route with the Museums with Pride
contingent! Celebrate with us as we walk with fellow institutions like the Exploratorium,
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, SFMOMA, American Bookbinders Museum, Museum
of African Diaspora, Asian Art Museum, Oakland Museum of California, The
Contemporary Jewish Museum, Walt Disney Family Museum, California Academy of
Sciences, and more!</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<br />
--<br />
<br />
Written by Patricia Pforte, Public Programs and Visitor Experience Manager at California Historical Society</div>
California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-50833585739951508982019-06-03T09:56:00.000-07:002019-06-05T16:55:33.084-07:00History’s Imprint on the Land: Mark Ruwedel and Westward the Course of Empire<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Last month, organizations throughout the West celebrate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the first transcontinental railroad in North America. The California Historical Society commemorates this historic event with an exhibition featuring a contemporary photographic study of railroad landscapes by artist Mark Ruwedel (b. 1954). His series Westward the Course of Empire (1998–2004) documents hundreds of abandoned or never-completed lines throughout the US and Canadian West. Rather than chronicle the achievement of laying tracks across the frontier, the expansive survey asks us to consider the legacy of a technology that once promised to (and in many ways did) change the world.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOIwwYEhglEB5o42h13lAhpWAGO7pYrQgdWXtIMkaHmHhzaA_Lt3hsDtxPZRTLItj6OLoT_uS_1fDjOiRKPq0Dsmv1BHIhjw0h-pQCkcjLDy_fwb904N1lo9b4m7y9cRwS4y_hRw/s1600/Death+Valley+%252316%252C+01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1266" data-original-width="1600" height="506" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOIwwYEhglEB5o42h13lAhpWAGO7pYrQgdWXtIMkaHmHhzaA_Lt3hsDtxPZRTLItj6OLoT_uS_1fDjOiRKPq0Dsmv1BHIhjw0h-pQCkcjLDy_fwb904N1lo9b4m7y9cRwS4y_hRw/s640/Death+Valley+%252316%252C+01.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mark Ruwedel, <i>Death Valley #16</i>, 2001, gelatin silver print</td></tr>
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The triumphant joining of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads at Promontory Point, Utah, on May 10, 1869, marked the beginning of a period of prolific railroad construction. Short lines built for specific purposes crisscrossed the West. By the mid-twentieth century, redundancy, lack of demand, financial mismanagement, consolidation, and the rise of automobiles brought about an industry-wide decline. Ruwedel’s Death Valley #16 (2001), for example, shows us the remnants of a trestle that once carried trains full of borax from mines in Ryan, California, over a moon-like landscape. The narrow-gauge Death Valley Railroad (1914–31) was a feeder for the larger Tonapah and Tidewater (1907–41); both railroads closed when mining operations moved closer to better deposits, making them unprofitable.<br />
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For the series, Ruwedel used a large-format view camera and printed in gelatin silver—analog equipment and materials similar to those of the first railroad photographers. Westward the Course of Empire even takes its name from nineteenth-century images—specifically, a widely reproduced lithograph published by Currier & Ives and photographs by Alexander Gardner—that visualized US territorial expansion as iron horses crossing the frontier. Their purpose was to celebrate modern civilization’s ability to reach across the continent and its corollary conquest of hostile land and native peoples.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqgVM8KaPXYiMPD86fK3GBVFmtIXnqzWXhdJy-35S3jZeIXFljx76rtcJBuC6Y2DdXPHMzUilBjZCEOCD-o9hbAqCiySoFQVzdRK-GXi2TmMXCRYFNCB_tP6UlZwDB0HnITIMJww/s1600/Spokane+Portland+%2526+Seattle+%252335%252C+01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1257" data-original-width="1600" height="502" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqgVM8KaPXYiMPD86fK3GBVFmtIXnqzWXhdJy-35S3jZeIXFljx76rtcJBuC6Y2DdXPHMzUilBjZCEOCD-o9hbAqCiySoFQVzdRK-GXi2TmMXCRYFNCB_tP6UlZwDB0HnITIMJww/s640/Spokane+Portland+%2526+Seattle+%252335%252C+01.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Mark
Ruwedel, <i>Spokane Portland and Seattle #35</i>,<i> </i>2001, gelatin silver print<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinti3sRHHLcLrGVMG7MpZPewRayFL9UrPWHLH6YnJhzLjEfMIKJeOjFnsUkpj2_8gQhUEtfnL_gjlQ90LEqezuLNMWVieU_VRxgz2VB5eL__rbbUV_t2DdJ9XXUcm9ySX0rMO7xg/s1600/Central+Pacific+%252351%252C+94.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinti3sRHHLcLrGVMG7MpZPewRayFL9UrPWHLH6YnJhzLjEfMIKJeOjFnsUkpj2_8gQhUEtfnL_gjlQ90LEqezuLNMWVieU_VRxgz2VB5eL__rbbUV_t2DdJ9XXUcm9ySX0rMO7xg/s1600/Central+Pacific+%252351%252C+94.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinti3sRHHLcLrGVMG7MpZPewRayFL9UrPWHLH6YnJhzLjEfMIKJeOjFnsUkpj2_8gQhUEtfnL_gjlQ90LEqezuLNMWVieU_VRxgz2VB5eL__rbbUV_t2DdJ9XXUcm9ySX0rMO7xg/s1600/Central+Pacific+%252351%252C+94.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinti3sRHHLcLrGVMG7MpZPewRayFL9UrPWHLH6YnJhzLjEfMIKJeOjFnsUkpj2_8gQhUEtfnL_gjlQ90LEqezuLNMWVieU_VRxgz2VB5eL__rbbUV_t2DdJ9XXUcm9ySX0rMO7xg/s1600/Central+Pacific+%252351%252C+94.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinti3sRHHLcLrGVMG7MpZPewRayFL9UrPWHLH6YnJhzLjEfMIKJeOjFnsUkpj2_8gQhUEtfnL_gjlQ90LEqezuLNMWVieU_VRxgz2VB5eL__rbbUV_t2DdJ9XXUcm9ySX0rMO7xg/s1600/Central+Pacific+%252351%252C+94.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a>Ruwedel trod much of the same physical territory, often photographing features of the Western landscape that earlier photographers made iconic, but his images suggest hubris rather than victory. In Spokane Portland and Seattle #35 (2001), a craggy mountain cut opens to a view of distant hills, and we can practically envision a locomotive chugging through the pass, but there is no train here, and the tracks are nothing more than a pile of wood on the side of the road. In Central Pacific #51 (1994), railroad ties vanish in the distance—not into the horizon but into tall grass and dirt. The road takes on the character of something archaeological, an ancient path of a culture that no longer exists. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinti3sRHHLcLrGVMG7MpZPewRayFL9UrPWHLH6YnJhzLjEfMIKJeOjFnsUkpj2_8gQhUEtfnL_gjlQ90LEqezuLNMWVieU_VRxgz2VB5eL__rbbUV_t2DdJ9XXUcm9ySX0rMO7xg/s1600/Central+Pacific+%252351%252C+94.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1272" data-original-width="1600" height="508" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinti3sRHHLcLrGVMG7MpZPewRayFL9UrPWHLH6YnJhzLjEfMIKJeOjFnsUkpj2_8gQhUEtfnL_gjlQ90LEqezuLNMWVieU_VRxgz2VB5eL__rbbUV_t2DdJ9XXUcm9ySX0rMO7xg/s640/Central+Pacific+%252351%252C+94.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Mark
Ruwedel, <i>Central Pacific #51</i>, 1994,
gelatin silver print<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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In a recent talk at the California Historical Society, Ruwedel described the “land as a stage for human activity,”1 a notion that echoes ideas introduced in the 1970s by the New Topographics photographers, including Lewis Baltz, Robert Adams, and Bernd and Hilla Becher. Their work marked a decisive shift away from heroic views of pristine nature (or exaltations of technological achievement) in favor of human-altered landscapes that they presented with a distinct lack of artifice and near-scientific objectivity.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvPa_Okf5cf92gablesnOQKu3IgFJq5mRe5G2yj4_30SoIzkZVRSWNDqWCSEvACsOc3UKhkomLITx8PDMNp-msm9Yc8xgnAc4kHnloBzlwTw9Pu5XDgg_Mj-kytQse6jk_R5JlwQ/s1600/Photo+4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvPa_Okf5cf92gablesnOQKu3IgFJq5mRe5G2yj4_30SoIzkZVRSWNDqWCSEvACsOc3UKhkomLITx8PDMNp-msm9Yc8xgnAc4kHnloBzlwTw9Pu5XDgg_Mj-kytQse6jk_R5JlwQ/s640/Photo+4.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mark Ruwedel, photographs from <i>Westward the Course of Empire</i> on view at
the California Historical Society, 2019</td></tr>
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Ruwedel made the views for Westward the Course of Empire with a similar precision and formal rigor, using what he describes as “consistent camera syntax.” He photographed each site from a similar perspective and isolated it from its context or the full length of its original road. He then compiled the photographs into an inventory organized by type: cuts, grades, tunnels, water towers. (Only his pictures of trestles—best seen from distances or angles—deviate from his usual vantage point.) He presents the series in grids that suggest rationality while pointing to the scale and disorderliness of the railroad-building enterprise.</div>
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As though cataloging unique specimens, Ruwedel carefully handwrote the name of the rail line in pencil below each photograph. These names, he says, were aspirational in that many of the lines never reached their intended destinations. Tonapah and Tidewater, for example, did not meet the ocean. Nevertheless, he notes that “the caption implicates the picture in a historical drama.” These are not empty landscapes to be filled with human ambitions but evidence of what happened, the imprint of history on the land.<br />
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In many ways Ruwedel’s photographs are neutral documents that simply bear witness to the contest between nature and technology. Yet by showing us sites we would typically overlook and treating them like monuments elegantly rendered in gelatin silver, Ruwedel makes his point. The impact of our collective social and economic goals on the land deserves our attention.<br />
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Watch footage from our April 24th artists talk with Mark Ruwedel below:</div>
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1. This and all subsequent Mark Ruwedel quotations are taken from his April 24, 2019, talk at the California Historical Society.</div>
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Written by Erin Garcia, Managing Curator of Exhibitions</div>
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California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-27942455502693452882019-05-27T07:30:00.000-07:002019-05-28T09:35:19.050-07:00Spotlight on Japanese American History<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>Brocade of
Sacramento Valley, 1911; Vault 13061; California Historical Society. Translated
Title: <span style="background: white;">Japanese in California: A
pictorial history. By <i>Nichei Bei Times</i>,
1911; California Historical Society</span><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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This special edition booklet , created in 1911 by the Nichei-Bei Shimbun (Japanese American Times), provides a pictorial history of Japanese American families in rural California. It both documents and celebrates the Japanese community in the Sacramento Valley region and the important contributions they made to California’s agricultural economy early in the early twentieth century.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0WyhKadLFeQaNPuaPdywjgGsZh5bcBoU3BLvEPve9NEgmZybQkugarPpnAzU5OQ7yprIkE7m-yB4gvxvJu5d4DcvW27o09daTJrt48M0be6bqEW_wW2hH9aySI32MoRxDZVaNUg/s1600/Watch+shop+owned+by+Mr.+Aokihaka%252C+Sacramento+County%252C+Calif.%253B+Brocade+of+Sacramento+Valley%253B+Vault+13061%253B+California+Historifcal+Society.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1172" data-original-width="1600" height="468" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0WyhKadLFeQaNPuaPdywjgGsZh5bcBoU3BLvEPve9NEgmZybQkugarPpnAzU5OQ7yprIkE7m-yB4gvxvJu5d4DcvW27o09daTJrt48M0be6bqEW_wW2hH9aySI32MoRxDZVaNUg/s640/Watch+shop+owned+by+Mr.+Aokihaka%252C+Sacramento+County%252C+Calif.%253B+Brocade+of+Sacramento+Valley%253B+Vault+13061%253B+California+Historifcal+Society.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Watch shop owned by Mr. Aokihaka, Sacramento County, Calif.; Brocade of Sacramento Valley; Vault 13061; California Historical Society</td></tr>
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In 1869, when the transcontinental railroad laid its last piece of track, Chinese workers, the labor force behind the building of the railroad, were left to seek employment elsewhere. At the same time, in the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys, Northern California’s farming and agriculture industry was fast-expanding to meet the needs of a growing State. It was in these areas that many displaced Chinese workers migrated. Despite the clear need for labor in the orchards, fields, and vineyards of these regions anti-Chinese sentiment, formalized in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, was rampant - forcing many to move to urban areas where Chinatowns offered some form of protection against racial violence.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0Uwaal-mfxJ864CpGr83f8e36DRJSFUmk_OiDFfbr9BBkHI74dMne2Up3oe2xO73vDkXk2aUMniQqXbhHA_FJzytrC_BEj8a6-LN21nbb9jByqiphgdxRjKO8PtlKF4keMc93bw/s1600/Kaishundo+Drug+Store%252C+Sacramento%252C+Calif.%253B+Brocade+of+Sacramento+Valley%253B+Vault+13061.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1133" data-original-width="1600" height="450" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0Uwaal-mfxJ864CpGr83f8e36DRJSFUmk_OiDFfbr9BBkHI74dMne2Up3oe2xO73vDkXk2aUMniQqXbhHA_FJzytrC_BEj8a6-LN21nbb9jByqiphgdxRjKO8PtlKF4keMc93bw/s640/Kaishundo+Drug+Store%252C+Sacramento%252C+Calif.%253B+Brocade+of+Sacramento+Valley%253B+Vault+13061.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kaishundo Drug Store, Sacramento, Calif.; Brocade of Sacramento Valley; Vault 13061</td></tr>
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As Chinese workers were forced out, labor needs in these agriculture and farming areas started to be filled by newly arrived immigrants from Japan. Post 1900, immigration from Japan to Hawaii and the West Coast of America was fueled by people seeking economic security and many Japanese, particularly those from rural farming and fishing villages, took advantage of Japan’s loosening emigration laws to seek employment overseas. Communities were born all over rural California as people from the same prefecture in Japan often settled near each other, many making the transition over time from agricultural laborers to tenant farmers and even business owners. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mikado Fish Market with owner Mr. Fujita, Sacramento, Cal., Brocade of Sacramento Valley; Vault 13061</td></tr>
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Valerie Matsumoto in her book, Farming the home place: a Japanese American community in California, 1919-1982, estimates that between 1891 and 1900, 27,440 Japanese came to the West Coast from Hawaii and Japan to work in agriculture, canneries, logging, mining, and other industries, and that within a relatively brief period agriculture became the leading enterprise of the Japanese. In some areas of central California all-Japanese communities developed, including Florin in Sacramento County (known in Japanese as Taishoku) and the Yamato Colony at Livingston in Merced County. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfMFnqsOOpEAMoi-tfh-J0xdtCN_91wfsJZiQoYruLq_UZHrA1a1NTQrj12c-7atNskLzMG1XBNlwqHQYIunU8uRhJA28wB_OA2VWcBDECSr4nbDir_3F8jCmBBn_W39Lb9ivrPQ/s1600/%255BK.+Igarashi+%2526+Co.+Brocade+of+Sacramento+Valley%255D%252C+Brocade+of+Sacramento+Valley%252C+Nichi+Bei+Times%252C+1911.+Vault+13061.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfMFnqsOOpEAMoi-tfh-J0xdtCN_91wfsJZiQoYruLq_UZHrA1a1NTQrj12c-7atNskLzMG1XBNlwqHQYIunU8uRhJA28wB_OA2VWcBDECSr4nbDir_3F8jCmBBn_W39Lb9ivrPQ/s640/%255BK.+Igarashi+%2526+Co.+Brocade+of+Sacramento+Valley%255D%252C+Brocade+of+Sacramento+Valley%252C+Nichi+Bei+Times%252C+1911.+Vault+13061.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">[K. Igarashi & Co. Brocade of Sacramento Valley], Brocade of Sacremento Valley, Nichi Bei Times, 1911. Vault 13061</td></tr>
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</b>By 1913, two years after Nichei-Bei Times published this pictorial of the Japanese American community in Sacramento Valley, as many as 6,000 Japanese had become tenant farmers. Despite this clear need for labor, increasing xenophobia paved the way for discriminatory laws targeting Japanese farmers. The Alien Land Law of 1913 prohibited "aliens ineligible for citizenship" from owning agricultural land or possessing long-term leases over it.” In 1920, California made this law even stricter with amendments that prohibited even short-term leases of lands to non-US citizens. </div>
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These communities, continually under threat, were ultimately decimated in 1942 when Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, forcibly removing all Japanese residents and American citizens of Japanese ancestry and incarcerating them for the duration of WWII.<br />
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For many, after 1945, there was no home, no work, and no community to return to.<br />
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<b>Nichei-Bei Shimbun [Japanese American news] </b></div>
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Established in San Francisco in 1899, the Nichibei Shimbun was one of the most prominent ethnic newspapers in the continental United States. Reflective of its founder Kyutaro Abiko's vision, the newspaper called for assimilation and permanent settlement among Issei (“first generation”) as well as biculturalism and American patriotism among Nissei (“second generation”). <br />
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Throughout the prewar years, the Nichibei Shimbun remained one of the most important Japanese vernaculars in California, if not in the entire western United States. During the 1920s, its daily circulation peaked at over 25,000, which included the San Francisco and Los Angeles editions.<br />
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Sources </b><br />
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Waves of Immigration, by Emily Anderson, Densho Encyclopedia, <a href="https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Immigration/">https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Immigration/</a> <br />
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Terminology, Densho Encyclopedia, <a href="https://densho.org/terminology/">https://densho.org/terminology/</a> <br />
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National Park Service, A History of Japanese Americans in California: Patterns of Settlement and Occupational Characteristics, National Park Service, <br />
<a href="https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/5views/5views4b.htm">https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/5views/5views4b.htm</a> <br />
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The California Alien Land Law and the Fourteenth Amendment, Edwin E. Ferguson, Vol. 35, Issue 1, March 1947, <a href="https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=3652&context=californialawreview">https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=3652&context=californialawreview</a> <br />
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Matsumoto, V. J. (1993). Farming the home place: A Japanese American community in California, 1919-1982. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press.<br />
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Written by Frances Kaplan, Research Librarian at California Historical Society</div>
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California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-90374609121274946382019-05-20T13:35:00.000-07:002019-05-30T17:11:41.502-07:00Behind the Scenes with Research Librarian Frances Kaplan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Recently we sat down with California Historical Society’s Research Librarian, Frances Kaplan, to discuss the rich stock of resources available to the public through the North Baker Research Library.</div>
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<i>The North Baker Research library is a “special collections library,” can you explain what that means? </i><br />
A special collections library is different from a lending library which would cover a vast range of topics. Ours is a research library where people come to do more in-depth research on collections that we have in our archives. Our focus is only California, which is bigger than a lot of places but smaller in scale than what many other libraries may cover. We house diverse collections that people can view and study to help them draw their own perspectives of the history of California.<br />
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<i>What’s the difference between CHS’s library and a regular public library? </i><br />
At a public library you generally don’t have rare materials and it’s usually a lending library, meaning they let you take the books home with you. We don’t loan out our materials because they are rare and unique. We are similar to some universities which will have a library for student use but also have special collections that focus on one area, for example the labor archives at SF State.<br />
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<i>What does the public have access to through the North Baker Research Library?</i> <br />
We have more than half a million photographs as well as 35,000 books and 4,000 manuscript collections, plus maps, ephemera, posters, broadsides, periodicals, newspapers, and the Kemble Collection on Western Printing and Publishing. The bulk of our collections date from the 1860’s through the 1970’s, but we do have some very early manuscript material from when California was still part of Mexico. The public has access to everything in our vaults if they come visit during the library’s open hours. Anyone can visit the library and request to see a collection, which we will then take out of the vault for you to explore. People can also access our collection through the digital library, where we are rapidly digitizing material, and we have an online catalog which lets you see what we have and what you might want to look at when you come for an in person visit.<br />
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<i>Can you talk a little more about the work you and the rest of the library and collections staff are doing to make our collections accessible to people who might not be able to physically visit our space? </i><br />
We realize that it’s getting harder to get to San Francisco and difficult to stay here a long time, especially if you are a researcher exploring a specific topic. We want to, and are in the process of, digitizing as much of our collection as possible. The library is an intermediary between someone wanting to find information and the vaults below us where the information might be and so we want to make accessing those amazing resources as easy as possible. We do have to uphold a very deliberate process though, because the moment that we digitize something it becomes its own object that needs to be preserved and cataloged. There are also sometimes copyright and third-party rights that need to be addressed before a digital image is displayed online. Also some things you just can’t digitize, they’re too fragile, they’re oversized, or they might be thousands of pages long. So what we try to do is prioritize our digitization needs. Things that are older or more fragile need to be digitized sooner rather than later so they are handled and worn less. One example of a collection we recently digitized is the Peoples Temple collection. In this instance we felt it was necessary to digitize the photographs in the collection first, allowing people access to them immediately for research and learning purposes. That became a priority over the manuscripts materials, of which there are over one hundred boxes. The entire Peoples Temple collection is, however, open to researchers who visit our library. <br />
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<i>Who comes to the library? </i><br />
We get researchers from all over the world, we get people who are interested in their family genealogy, we get people from SF and the Bay Area who are interested in their neighborhood or their building history. We also get a lot of people from out of state or country who have a research topic in mind. We recently had a researcher from South Africa and spend a few days in our library looking over plans, drawings, and manuscripts related to water projects by a Californian who worked for a period of time in South Africa. There was also a professor from New Zealand who flew here to go through records we hold by the American Civil Liberties Union-Northern California. We also see a number of students, predominantly at the college and graduate level, but we welcome elementary and high school students as well! CHS is the source of material for lots of research that turns into books. So many of the books on our library shelves are by authors who came to the library seeking material from our collections in order to write their book. We also see a lot of documentary film makers here, as well as architectural historians, and journalists who are usually covering some aspect of local history.<br />
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<i>How do we get our collection material? </i><br />
Our original collection came from C. Templeton Crocker who, in 1922, donated his collection of rare books, manuscripts, maps, newspapers, and periodicals emphasizing overland travel, California’s transition from a Mexican province to statehood, and the Gold Rush. CHS has continued collecting with a focus on the documenting the diverse history of California.<br />
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When we acquire material to be added to our collection, it goes through a very stringent process because we want to make sure that we can take care of it, preserve it, and that it fits into our collection scope and policy. Unfortunately, we can’t take everything and that means we do have very specific criteria for accepting things. <br />
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<i>What is your role at the library? </i><br />
I see my role as one of public service. I am part of the public face of the library and the first person people come across if they have a question they need to find an answer to, whether in person or by phone or email. I am the person that they can talk about their project with and discuss what they are hoping to find. I am able to show them how to use our catalogs or let them know more about the items they are interested in, and if we don’t have anything that meets their needs, I can let them know about what other institutions and archives might be able to help them. So it is my job to connect people to the right institution and the best place in order to find what they are looking for – whether that be the history center at San Francisco Public Library, the archives at UCSF, or one of the many wonderful special collections held at the University of California libraries or the California State University libraries. For many people, they need to go to more than one place if they want a variety of information because much of it is scattered across different archives.<br />
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<i>Can you highlight something interesting from our archives that you’ve been working with recently? </i><br />
We are constantly digitizing and cataloging and finding items in our collection that we didn’t necessarily know were there. The goal is that everything that we keep here ultimately has a description that people can see through the catalog on our website. We have a rare book cataloger, we have a manuscripts archivist, someone who works exclusively with photographs, etc.<br />
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A few items recently came to me through our rare book and printed material cataloger. He stumbled upon this pamphlet of Camp Curry in Yosemite from 1912. This is so timely, because right now we have an exhibition up about the Transcontinental Railroad, which made Yosemite easier to get to and more accessible that it is now in many ways. In the pamphlet they have a bit about how you can go by rail and then by stagecoach - “people may obtain stopover privileges on their transcontinental tickets at Merced. Then they changed to Yosemite Valley Railway or take a Pullman Car directly from either San Francisco or L.A.” So that’s how they got there in the olden days which makes it a lot more accessible in some ways than it is now.<br />
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Other things we might have had in our collection for a long time but because we have so many items, I don’t know them all. Sometimes when a researcher requests something, it’s the first time I’ve seen it. This is occurred recently and I was surprised to discover the original drawings by Donald Graham Kelley of the official California Bear design for the CA state flag. These are the original illustrations from 1952. It’s so cool because it allows you to follow the design process. You see that Kelley was commissioned by the government to create this and then you see scientific feedback on the bear figure from Tracy Storer, professor of zoology<span style="text-align: left;"> at UC Davis, based on the initial sketches that were sent over.</span><span style="text-align: left;"> </span><br />
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Every now and then we discover material within our vaults that we didn’t realize even existed because it was hidden inside another collection. Thus was the case with this one last item I am intrigued with – it is a photographic album of images of <a href="https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8c2534j/">Clark’s Waterworks</a> from 1890-1891. This company existed before all of the other waterworks systems in San Francisco. It was a private enterprise from really early on. Clark owned a bunch of Eureka Valley and Glen Park and started his own waterworks business, damning and pumping water from that area and supplying it to the people around him, before the city owned the water systems. <br />
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We invite you to visit us at the North Baker Research Library at 678 Mission Street in San Francisco, Wednesday through Friday, 1PM to 5PM. You can access our digital library <a href="http://digitallibrary.californiahistoricalsociety.org/object/root">here</a> and our online catalog <a href="https://c95040.eos-intl.net/C95040/OPAC/Index.aspx">here</a>. The University of Southern California has also digitized and maintains images from our collection which can be found <a href="http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/p15799coll65">here</a>.
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California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-20076596766358974582019-05-13T15:24:00.001-07:002019-05-29T14:12:57.218-07:00California Historical Society's 2019 Gala, Featuring the Honorable Edmund G. Brown, Jr. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: 11.5pt;">The California Historical Society celebrated
forty years as the State’s official historical society at its annual Gala, with
more than 200 guests coming together to honor the person responsible for its
official designation, the Honorable Edmond G. Brown, Jr.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 11.5pt;">The Gala took place exactly
40 years to the day, when on May 9, 1979, then Governor Jerry Brown signed SB
63, authored by Senator Jim Mills, which established the California Historical
Society as the official state historical society.</span><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;">It is just one example of the exemplary
leadership, vision and fortitude demonstrated by Governor Brown throughout his
more than forty years of public service.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB531bR6BpQBHBlsqoEz7NORFUUyLIM-rYqkYU1H74pcDKXa6iaSupDoIXJNo8KESn_j0DXtLrBuB8eZkv8jqNJEK9nWfn1pO2TS7eoj7YqGk9v98IDR8CsgpziucMkAX5aj6xpA/s1600/0171-CAHS-190509.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB531bR6BpQBHBlsqoEz7NORFUUyLIM-rYqkYU1H74pcDKXa6iaSupDoIXJNo8KESn_j0DXtLrBuB8eZkv8jqNJEK9nWfn1pO2TS7eoj7YqGk9v98IDR8CsgpziucMkAX5aj6xpA/s640/0171-CAHS-190509.jpg" width="640" /></a><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.5pt;">“Time and again, regardless of his title, governor, mayor, or attorney
general, Governor Brown demonstrated his unique his ability to work alongside
Democrats and Republicans in the legislature to be an important steward of
California, its people and policies to build a brighter, lasting future,” said
Michael Sangiocomo, Board Chair, California Historical Society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“We are honored to pay tribute to Governor
Brown’s life-long accomplishments and applaud the legacy he has left the Golden
State.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.5pt;">The
highlight of the evening was an intimate conversation with Governor Brown that
was moderated by Professor Bill Deverell, Director, Huntington-USC Institute on
California and the West, and Miriam Pawel, Author, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Browns of California: The Family Dynasty that Transformed a State
and Shaped a Nation.</i> Professor Deverell and Ms. Pawel engaged the Governor about
a myriad of issues, including his insights about his legacy, his favorite
California past times, personal reflections and his outlook for the future.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"><o:p>The Governor was given a standing ovation and presented a special gift on behalf of the Historical Society that was a special book made for him about the history of his maternal grandfather, Evan Brown, that included rare photos and never-before-known biographical information unearthed by archivists.</o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.5pt;">“We are here tonight trying to see the relationship between the past and
how that past informs the present,” Governor Brown said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The past is a very rich source of ideas,
values, our whole existence, our whole identity. How do we both begrudge the
past but be open and resilient and ready to the changes that are occurring at a
very accelerating rate.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.5pt;">A distinguished group of leaders in business, education, government, and
philanthropy came together to plan and support the Gala in honoring the
Governor and one of California’s true civic legends, in one of the West’s most
significant historic buildings, the Old U.S. Mint.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.5pt;">The
Honorary co-chairs for the event were George P. and Charlotte M. Shultz, Mayor
London Breed, John Laird, Greg Lucas, Tribal Chairman Greg Sarris, Mayor Libby
Schaaf, Mrs. Kevin Starr, Richard C. Blum, the Honorable Dianne Feinstein and
Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon. The Chair of the Host Committee was CHS
Trustee Linda Elliott.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-guBU5m57OfaLQK66o80neYrHkyNWf75mIjEPpUKxpA57rOAFL6sb9nNOIsQFSZOnbMwlk4Laey48kY53GANEw9RoJ6YvRa60MZJq78h3E-qJggDIz3lFdSdINSs5KB_J86sj5Q/s1600/0326-CAHS-190509.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-guBU5m57OfaLQK66o80neYrHkyNWf75mIjEPpUKxpA57rOAFL6sb9nNOIsQFSZOnbMwlk4Laey48kY53GANEw9RoJ6YvRa60MZJq78h3E-qJggDIz3lFdSdINSs5KB_J86sj5Q/s640/0326-CAHS-190509.jpg" width="640" /></a><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;">Sponsors of the Gala include Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, </span><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;">Annenberg Foundation, Diane B. Wilsey, Recology, Anthea M. Hartig and Family, AT&T, Ralph Walter and Dorothy Fleisher. Proceeds from the Gala support California Historical Society programming and youth history education. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Enjoy the following photographs from our Gala evening at the Old U.S. Mint.</div>
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California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-50699614778636203672019-04-22T09:00:00.000-07:002019-04-29T15:18:04.630-07:00Curating Overland to California: Commemorating the Transcontinental Railroad<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">When I set
out to curate a visual history of the railroads in California, the majority of
the materials I found had been produced by the railroad companies themselves.
From brochures and guidebooks to stereographs and playing cards, it would seem
that the visuals of the railroad infiltrated every corner of American life in
the nineteenth and early twentieth century. As it happens, the Central Pacific
and Southern Pacific—the two largest railroad companies in California at this
time—were expert self-promoters, relying on images to publicize their companies
and promote their growing lines.</span><br />
<div class="m2420088218942980371gmail-msolistparagraph" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjtd5-mH2TKPiVxy5YRryzmg6zSIN3qd-MP1lQ07ulp5-aZe8nUZ0Qf0690Blv9KBhciiETKHSsotioxCO2ZIxJ7NTAEd56merGo7d_Iq6k0biJMiKt0uYXuCG4OAaQ7AOkz6QZw/s1600/California+for+the+tourist.tif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1134" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjtd5-mH2TKPiVxy5YRryzmg6zSIN3qd-MP1lQ07ulp5-aZe8nUZ0Qf0690Blv9KBhciiETKHSsotioxCO2ZIxJ7NTAEd56merGo7d_Iq6k0biJMiKt0uYXuCG4OAaQ7AOkz6QZw/s640/California+for+the+tourist.tif" width="450" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">California for the Tourist, Southern Pacific Company, 1910</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="m2420088218942980371gmail-msolistparagraph" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;">But if
using images for marketing seems like an obvious move today, it was a novel one
in the nineteenth century. In 1865, the Central Pacific Railroad Company became
the first US corporation to hire a full time staff photographer, purchase
negatives, and build a corporate photographic archive—practices that are
ubiquitous today. In </span><i style="color: #222222;">Overland to
California</i><span style="color: #222222;">, I wanted to show how companies like the Central Pacific used
images to obscure their corporate corruption and use of violent labor practices,
instead projecting a vision of their company as ethical, stable, and modern. In
so doing, they set a precedent for corporate marketing that continues in the
present.</span></div>
<div class="m2420088218942980371gmail-msolistparagraph" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh92y7p7A7lmqVLNMlJtxfve_NsjA6LHkgQqi5KSFNZWRrW6jBZRDyVpeCQNLV1EUx-4X6mgiEz0eKLvVX-l9AniwquMjtyNkmepk5fwl-ziVYST-kEo6avk1vi7w-1pvijvK9fEA/s1600/poetry+and+prose.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="779" data-original-width="1000" height="492" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh92y7p7A7lmqVLNMlJtxfve_NsjA6LHkgQqi5KSFNZWRrW6jBZRDyVpeCQNLV1EUx-4X6mgiEz0eKLvVX-l9AniwquMjtyNkmepk5fwl-ziVYST-kEo6avk1vi7w-1pvijvK9fEA/s640/poetry+and+prose.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Poetry and Prose, Scene at Monument Point, North end of Salt Lake, Alfred Hart, 1869</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="m2420088218942980371gmail-msolistparagraph" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;">At the same
time, I didn’t want to give these companies the last word. As such, I made sure
to include images made by the people who worked on or lived alongside the
railroad, at a time when photography was becoming newly accessible and
affordable for the average American. What follows is a sampling of works from
the exhibition </span><i style="color: #222222;">Overland to California</i><span style="color: #222222;">,
currently on view at the California Historical Society. Together, these images
and objects tell a story of corporate corruption and promotion at the turn of
the twentieth century, while also providing a visual history of those who
resisted their hegemony.</span></div>
<div class="m2420088218942980371gmail-msolistparagraph" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJHAbY65NSf3fUr2VcozWaUWaGb1ffZi2iniLWubHWxbUTZNNUL0oWP1iDLRdT4wZ8hYPeP14Nfq2Ef3p77-IGo1113XO1aA15jnw4yuS1_oHgpu0h8PsRukeRto7Llj3KKhuBzg/s1600/loma.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="796" data-original-width="1001" height="508" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJHAbY65NSf3fUr2VcozWaUWaGb1ffZi2iniLWubHWxbUTZNNUL0oWP1iDLRdT4wZ8hYPeP14Nfq2Ef3p77-IGo1113XO1aA15jnw4yuS1_oHgpu0h8PsRukeRto7Llj3KKhuBzg/s640/loma.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Building the Loma Prieta Railroad, Photographer unknown, 1882</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRNKEtC4MOt-pj79YIKtnUGv0PPgO0z9IWjjLniTX1KPcl2ESKFkVgH8kuib6pohhshVf6BDskwDYEK3998bgeqBE6uG02YnzFYP0FBBMEJ2nwrZFYyosKJePIfkkmzs0_OvJX7g/s1600/rr+bridge.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="714" data-original-width="1101" height="410" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRNKEtC4MOt-pj79YIKtnUGv0PPgO0z9IWjjLniTX1KPcl2ESKFkVgH8kuib6pohhshVf6BDskwDYEK3998bgeqBE6uG02YnzFYP0FBBMEJ2nwrZFYyosKJePIfkkmzs0_OvJX7g/s640/rr+bridge.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Railroad Bridge near Gold Run from The Central Pacific Railroad: A Trip Across the North American Continent from Ogden to San Francisco, Nelson's Pictorial Guide-Books, 1870</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWFpawBEZDpvGHKz-Nz8grWjsM563A8UZq37CfLAMG3cfwtV1fjp_Kr3PNtywCwid5-rf7pf-W65mDNcawmcz_JokiY22zQqNjeOHFFu8N7HdR6e94PIHTwwl2cYHtIw8UMosP-w/s1600/Central+Pacific.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="547" data-original-width="1131" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWFpawBEZDpvGHKz-Nz8grWjsM563A8UZq37CfLAMG3cfwtV1fjp_Kr3PNtywCwid5-rf7pf-W65mDNcawmcz_JokiY22zQqNjeOHFFu8N7HdR6e94PIHTwwl2cYHtIw8UMosP-w/s640/Central+Pacific.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Indian Viewing R.R. from top of Palisades, 435 miles from Sacramento, Alfred Hart, c. 1869</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="m2420088218942980371gmail-msolistparagraph" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjllUv1DtXW7W-VmTqnyS3pWk0SVbYRvl2y-WYl-ANtvGNyKLNmGR3USwa5pbN2uyKfcxEAQpa-mRfIKxFk23GRqI_-j8rlHfWLzv7Lm5HJX86KR5WseHxpdDNFsoKzxTaQrAKt3A/s1600/croffuts.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="792" data-original-width="549" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjllUv1DtXW7W-VmTqnyS3pWk0SVbYRvl2y-WYl-ANtvGNyKLNmGR3USwa5pbN2uyKfcxEAQpa-mRfIKxFk23GRqI_-j8rlHfWLzv7Lm5HJX86KR5WseHxpdDNFsoKzxTaQrAKt3A/s640/croffuts.JPG" width="442" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Great trans-continental tourist's guide, George A. Crofutt and Company Publishers, 1871</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5N0DREGFXT8KRAuhAHVbMeOOTPdC1CpLOilqVRorFSWQ06QSY9sYUR-jVjNOcJuhd1idhFC3zWyNYBHu1CIDFeTYWHMFz0Sst7HhHvPqqS7Vfmw8kkNRPEy3gq0x-AfA9MFCGww/s1600/olive+oil+train.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="788" data-original-width="988" height="510" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5N0DREGFXT8KRAuhAHVbMeOOTPdC1CpLOilqVRorFSWQ06QSY9sYUR-jVjNOcJuhd1idhFC3zWyNYBHu1CIDFeTYWHMFz0Sst7HhHvPqqS7Vfmw8kkNRPEy3gq0x-AfA9MFCGww/s640/olive+oil+train.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Loading Boxes of Sylmar Brand Olive Oil onto Freight Cars at the Olive Growers Association, Putnam & Valentine, c. 1905</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFyij1rWCkIhcVRfOgvOzXiDOsQT49blU03kuEUew9aYvFI5Uyz-EgZHiPDEQF2yfv5G8IbHG0X7deKzZILWMCSX1U_pGAIK8tP_21aegdp23Z3Pqkd2ThLowJhRLrg2cnKoZ4FQ/s1600/RR+assesment.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="552" data-original-width="1115" height="312" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFyij1rWCkIhcVRfOgvOzXiDOsQT49blU03kuEUew9aYvFI5Uyz-EgZHiPDEQF2yfv5G8IbHG0X7deKzZILWMCSX1U_pGAIK8tP_21aegdp23Z3Pqkd2ThLowJhRLrg2cnKoZ4FQ/s640/RR+assesment.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Central Pacific Rail Company Stock Certificate, Central Pacific Rail Road Company, 1861</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="m2420088218942980371gmail-msolistparagraph" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO9dR_2cFPsijaSerkQiiKRbkCNHXr091IXWVZJloR5UtkebFwPgp0UMiO0Q5vBSzp7DtYRKeM8KohdPyon7XsFG14x3ax8kyieugle0-pP-Die645jnZjRE48yqCzihJHZo7-oA/s1600/RR+Crash.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="753" data-original-width="1111" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO9dR_2cFPsijaSerkQiiKRbkCNHXr091IXWVZJloR5UtkebFwPgp0UMiO0Q5vBSzp7DtYRKeM8KohdPyon7XsFG14x3ax8kyieugle0-pP-Die645jnZjRE48yqCzihJHZo7-oA/s640/RR+Crash.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Men at Site of Rail Car Accident, Photographer unknown, c. 1900</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrmFBAd24G2XExDltqi4MOt70X01_SPaOkOWEY7b2GyWNsno3KCMet6KpqMQzTXVzejwtWWPShJUILQZMxwLk9qwvtvUjt9NvJhdmOxUTtsWsJZMSqqHti0nVMvlzXFKbeCJM-mA/s1600/RR+dog.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="795" data-original-width="1016" height="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrmFBAd24G2XExDltqi4MOt70X01_SPaOkOWEY7b2GyWNsno3KCMet6KpqMQzTXVzejwtWWPShJUILQZMxwLk9qwvtvUjt9NvJhdmOxUTtsWsJZMSqqHti0nVMvlzXFKbeCJM-mA/s640/RR+dog.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Man and Dog Sitting in Front of Railroad Stop Crossing Sign, Photographer unknown, c. 1900</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>Overland to California: Commemorating the Transcontinental Railroad</i> and <i>Mark Ruwedel: Westward the Course of Empire</i> will be on view through September 8, 2019.</div>
<span style="color: #222222; text-align: left;">--</span></div>
<div class="m2420088218942980371gmail-msolistparagraph" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;">Written by Natalie Pellolio, Assistant Curator at California Historical Society </span></div>
<br /></div>
California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-73582566146575992902019-04-17T15:38:00.005-07:002019-05-30T17:12:11.276-07:00Children’s Voices from the Archives: Remembering the 1906 Earthquake and Fire<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The 1906 earthquake and fire was a defining moment in San Francisco history. It was a disaster that changed the city’s social, economic, and cultural fabric, and to this day we often think of its history as divided into pre-earthquake and post-earthquake eras. <br />
<br />
Photography, including the technology to produce outdoor shots, was gaining popularity by 1906, and CHS is fortunate to have a number of surviving images that document both the destruction and reconstruction of the city. Of equal importance are surviving personal diaries, journals, and letters that describe how residents coped with the aftermath of the disaster. One such document is the correspondence of Elsie Cross, a 12-year-old girl living in the Western Addition of San Francisco when, on April 18th 1906 at 5:12 a.m., an earthquake of massive force shook the city. Two letters to her friend Ruth, dated May 17-18 and May 28, give us a rarely explored child’s perspective of this event. The letters provide a firsthand account of the quake itself, the family’s escape from the house to the Sunset, and their eventual relocation to Oakland<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKqsO6FG-HtXJ1CHW7hT9VJWehtihTTW6QHMOg740NXfbu2VZJQyUPF96FL6KHSs4VnOpPOqQfc6GDrPCzP4qhMQf_FoqvfsUWCx06h0BYqxHqCuZShlO0wAn61tmCQgWkT6-Nng/s1600/IMG_8158.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKqsO6FG-HtXJ1CHW7hT9VJWehtihTTW6QHMOg740NXfbu2VZJQyUPF96FL6KHSs4VnOpPOqQfc6GDrPCzP4qhMQf_FoqvfsUWCx06h0BYqxHqCuZShlO0wAn61tmCQgWkT6-Nng/s640/IMG_8158.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>
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Elsie’s description of the earthquake is notably poetic: “Things fell right & left, brick-a-brack flew around, furniture danced a jig,” and her strength and sense of humor shines through: “My brother could not stand so my brother had to hold him and, Ruth, I laughed when it knocked our beautiful Regina down and it played “Whistling Rufus” all the way through the earthquake.” <br />
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Through her words, however, the reader can also sense the fear and worry of Elsie’s parents as they flee, holding their children tight, wondering if the fire will reach them or if the earth will shake again: <br />
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“Wednesday afternoon with a few blankets, a canvas, and an eiderdown we went way out in the Sunset where the fire could never reach & slept part of the night on the front doorsteps. It was bright as day & you could have read a book in the house it was so light. About ten o’clock, the fire having died down, my brother & I both slept on one side of my mother. Both my mother & father did not sleep. The next day in the morning my mother & father & I packed in a steamer trunk old family laces, miniatures, & clothing. In the afternoon my father drove us in his buggy & we put the silver, jewelry, family pictures, & blankets in & went out into the Sunset…I felt very sorry to leave this and my piano, but as nothing else could be done I did not say anything.”<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoK46DkbMnoenk7fmIVOYUVzDCHB_AQkFAn9u4r64ZKOdF0Or2LyJKKOazZ5ra5wgiIyQ6orfT0q1DI2s_O3dCG_rCfC-ZkbuCSWgfqYb88Jczkdv9qbhQFtPTSldF6OiA3MrDcA/s1600/IMG_8159.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoK46DkbMnoenk7fmIVOYUVzDCHB_AQkFAn9u4r64ZKOdF0Or2LyJKKOazZ5ra5wgiIyQ6orfT0q1DI2s_O3dCG_rCfC-ZkbuCSWgfqYb88Jczkdv9qbhQFtPTSldF6OiA3MrDcA/s640/IMG_8159.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2HNnT3Uij7LSgS7S5NOl2dkgWnzfAtDMJP_mRz4XXQ7H7FUrwPCmyn2qVJVNnTBXSu4u_gQAowo_JZhpK1yV8S8jHjKyDFvE-F__D3MZW2vncZ2Izd7c-wqVLnKHcQ-l27hV02Q/s1600/IMG_8160.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2HNnT3Uij7LSgS7S5NOl2dkgWnzfAtDMJP_mRz4XXQ7H7FUrwPCmyn2qVJVNnTBXSu4u_gQAowo_JZhpK1yV8S8jHjKyDFvE-F__D3MZW2vncZ2Izd7c-wqVLnKHcQ-l27hV02Q/s640/IMG_8160.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>
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Elsie Cross’s letters and other earthquake material can be accessed at the <a href="https://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/research/about.html">North Baker Research Library</a> at the California Historical Society during public hours, Wednesday through Friday from 1PM to 5PM. Full transcript below. Additional photos of the 1906 earthquake and fire can be viewed on <a href="http://digitallibrary.californiahistoricalsociety.org/object/2988?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=ba2b8a09592cb24663a8&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=1&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=8">CHS’s digital library</a>.<br />
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Oakland, May 11, 1906<o:p></o:p></div>
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Dear Ruth,<o:p></o:p></div>
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As you will see by the heading I am no longer in Frisco. I
received your parcel the week after that “gentle zepher” struck us. Ahem!
Ahem!!!<o:p></o:p></div>
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Wednesday morning I was awakened by a slight shaking. Now as
earthquakes are usually gentle and mild I waited for it to pass away. Instead
of that it began to wrench & by that time I was in my door way. (That being
considered the safest place). Then it began to go just up & down as a cat
shakes a rat and I (thinking the world was coming to an end) said a prayer
& waited for results. I saw my father in the front room try to get to my
mother and also saw him thrown twice across the floor. I could see my mother
& brother standing in their doorway. My brother could not stand so my
mother had to hold him. And, Ruth, I laughed when it knocked our beautiful
Regina down and it played “Whistling Rufus” all through the earthquake. Our
chimney went through to the basement, my [ ] was thrown on my table and the
drawers & their contents thrown on the floor. Things fell right & left,
brick-a-brack flew around, and [ ] danced a jig. As soon as it was over (& it
only lasted (? ) 48 seconds…<o:p></o:p></div>
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…my father told us to dress as quick as we could and if
another shake came to finish in the street.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Continued as I have to go downtown to get a Pineapple Smash
& a library book. See “World [ ] Illustrations of Shock”<o:p></o:p></div>
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CONTINUED<o:p></o:p></div>
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May 18, ‘06<o:p></o:p></div>
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After we got out of the house my father said that the only
trouble now, was fire. All that day there were shocks and the sun was a ball of
purply red from the smoke. It was very hot. You could hear building after
building being blasted. People passed in all kinds of wagons and some on foot with
what possessions they could take. I forgot to tell you that a house across the
street was moved over 9 ft. and the house next to that went down into the earth
10 ft. I will send you the pictures my father took of them and also some other
places. Wednesday afternoon with a few blankets, * a canvas & a eiderdown
we went way out in the Sunset where the fire could never reach and slept part
of the night on the front doorsteps. It was as bright as day and you could have
read a book in the house it was so light. About ten o’clock, the fire having <o:p></o:p></div>
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died down <span style="color: #ed7d31; mso-themecolor: accent2;">after
& Ill</span> my brother and I each slept on one side of my mother. Both my
mother and father did not sleep. The next day in the morning my mother and I
packed in a steamer trunk old family laces, miniatures, and clothing. In the
afternoon my father drove up in his buggy and we put the silver, jewelry,
family pictures, & blankets in & went out in to the Sunset. My room is
all old fashioned furniture of mahogany and my wall, bedspread, and other trimming
is old rose. I felt very sorry to leave this & my piano, but as nothing
else could be done I did not say anything.
Where we went was out by the park, & the place was a grocery store
& saloon. They had their own cow and chickens and also liquors & grocery
provisions, the latter being stored in the house. There were 4 little children
and a baby one month old. The first night we slept outdoors and they did not
stop blasting when night came on but blasted all through the night. In the morning I was awakened by a dreadfully
loud blast and heard my mother say that she had watched the fire all night and
it was now, she thought, under control.<br />
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Written and transcribed by Frances Kaplan, Reference Librarian at California Historical Society.</div>
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Citation:<o:p></o:p></div>
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Elsie H. Cross letters to Ruth, Oakland, California, May
17-28, 1906; MS 3469; California Historical Society<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_662352">https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_662352</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/events/1906calif/virtualtour/earthquake.php">https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/events/1906calif/virtualtour/earthquake.php</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-82590442303427524912019-04-17T09:00:00.000-07:002019-04-18T11:12:57.068-07:00Photographing Disaster, Part 2: Notre Dame<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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“There can be no image that is not about destruction and survival...” <br />
—Eduardo Cadava, “Lapsus Imaginis: The Image in Ruins”<a href="file:///C:/Users/katie/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/INetCache/Content.Outlook/N2UDW22M/Blog_Notre%20Dame%20(00000002).docx#_ftn1">[1]</a> <br />
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On Monday, I posted a blog entitled “Photographing Disaster: Depicting the Aftermath of the 1906 Earthquake,” in which I tried to imagine what it would be like to see the visual landscape of a city change so dramatically in a matter of minutes. Within the hour, news about the calamitous fire at Notre Dame began to spread throughout the office. It was in this moment that I found myself looking at two disparate images side by side—an experience familiar to the art historian. In this case, however, one of the images was from 1906 while the other was alive, mutating before my eyes as I traced the fire’s ebb and flow in real time on my screen.
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stockton Street between Geary and Post Streets. San Francisco Subjects, Photography Collection, PC-SF-EQ (1906), California Historical Society </td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">AP Photo/Kamil Zihnioglu</td></tr>
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I find it hard to put into words how I feel about the cathedral and the fire, but that doesn’t surprise me. When I think about Notre Dame, I think mostly about its silence. Despite the throngs of noisy tourists that swarm around it, the outside of the building can feel as quiet as the chapels inside. Quiet like the Seine at night. Quiet like the gargoyle who rests his head in his hands as he gazes across the city, ignoring the statue of the bird who seemingly squawks in his ear. Quiet like stone. <br />
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When I studied abroad in Paris, I lived just three blocks from Notre Dame. I felt lucky to be in France but also lonely, having left the US for the first time to live in a place where I barely spoke the language. I loved walking to the park behind the cathedral and looking up at the strange flying buttresses that stretched up to support its body like lanky arms. I remember thinking how this was the oldest building I had ever seen, and feeling comforted by how small that made me feel. Quiet like the trees that grow up around it. Quiet like me, not speaking the language. <br />
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Writing for the New York Times in the wake of the fire, Michael Kimmelman called Notre Dame “a kind of palimpsest of French history,” referring to a manuscript page that has been washed so that it can be reused but where traces of older writing still remain. I like that description. What I think he means is that Notre Dame bears the physical traces of the religious, political, and social groups who have, throughout time, modified and coopted it for their various causes. For Kimmelman, Notre Dame is reflective of French history only insofar as its historical significance is always shifting. His description reminds me that written history is chatty, but physical histories—the objects, works of art, and buildings that endure—are eerily quiet. This makes historical objects and buildings susceptible to appropriation, as Kimmelman notes. But it also imbues them with a subtle poetic power. Their quiet humbles me.<br />
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Ultimately, though, I find the quiet power of Notre Dame to be a motivating, and not a silencing, force. Reflecting on photographs of ruins, the scholar Eduardo Cadava has described how such an image “shows and bears witness to what history has silenced, to what, no longer here…haunts us, and encourages us to remember the deaths and losses for which we remain, still today, responsible.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/katie/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/INetCache/Content.Outlook/N2UDW22M/Blog_Notre%20Dame%20(00000002).docx#_ftn1">[1]</a> Like the photographs taken in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake, visuals of Notre Dame do not evoke permanence but instead remind us of just how precarious our world can be—and of the work we need to do to take responsibility for the violent histories these objects, images, buildings, and ruins represent.<br />
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I think many of us found the fire on Monday to be too pointed as a symbol for the rampant degradation of our cultural commitments to liberty and equality, or as reflective of the fact that these commitments were hollow to begin with. Many of us also felt dismayed as we realized that other such atrocities, including the catastrophic fire at the National Museum of Brazil in 2018, garnered less attention. I’m not sure what to make of it all. But I feel some small comfort knowing that so many eyes were focused on something ancient, and on the importance of preserving it. My hope is that the quiet power of such an event will encourage us to reflect on these losses, and to do what we can to prevent them in the future.</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/katie/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/INetCache/Content.Outlook/N2UDW22M/Blog_Notre%20Dame%20(00000002).docx#_ftnref1">[1]</a> Eduardo Cadava, “Lapsus Imaginis: The Image in Ruins,” October Vol. 96 (Spring 2001): 35. <br />
<a href="file:///C:/Users/katie/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/INetCache/Content.Outlook/N2UDW22M/Blog_Notre%20Dame%20(00000002).docx#_ftnref1">[1]</a> Cadava, 36. <br />
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Written by Natalie Pellolio, Assistant Curator at California Historical Society<br />
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California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-31903191881913158502019-04-16T17:32:00.000-07:002019-04-18T17:48:00.313-07:00A Phoenix Rises: Art Goes On<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
We are once again upon the anniversary of the Great Earthquake that erupted underneath San Francisco in the early morning hours of April 18, 1906, with an estimated 7.7 to 7.9 magnitude. Along with the earthquake, multiple fires ignited that destroyed much of the city over the next three days taking with them over 3,000 lives. The loss of cultural heritage was staggering: artists, photographers, and other craftsmen lost decades of work held within their studios, shops, and homes. Photographer Carleton Watkins, elderly and largely blind, was pictured being led away from a darkened, burning street, mere days before much of the contents of his studio would have shipped to Palo Alto for permanent transfer to the museum at Stanford University. Inestimable numbers of fine artworks, antiquities, and other objects of cultural, historic, and scientific value were also lost when the homes of patrons and residents, and other cultural institutions and libraries were reduced to ruins and ash. <br /><br />And still, San Francisco was being creatively documented. Photographers, who largely captured the ongoing devastation, were joined by fellow artists who drew and painted the structural wreckage left behind and the subsequent reconstruction of a port town that had burgeoned to some 400,000 population by early 1906. In History’s Anteroom – Photography in San Francisco 1906-1909, by Rodger Birt and Marvin Nathan (2011), the intense transformation is surveyed.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Within their book is a photograph of a man quietly seated at his easel and painting the remains of City Hall. The artist, Charles Albert Rogers (American, 1848-1918), trained in New York and later in Europe. He arrived in San Francisco in the late 1870s where he began producing regional landscapes, portraits, and city scenes. Some 150 works were lost when his studio was destroyed in the fire, yet within a very short time he was already back at work. The canvas, shown here, is in the collection of the California Historical Society. While small in size it clearly delineates the distinctive entablature supported by two surviving columns and towering above the bulky ruins behind it. Though initially unknown, Rogers was ultimately identified within the photograph when CHS displayed this painting in the exhibition, A Century of Landscapes: Selections from the California Art Club (July-September, 2011).<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBxSJYp81QvLlX6wxq4tmJ2r-ltvYYdlRiypmVo3U1P1qQGde7UCq2o1mdCAbc-2g3mdmwdOXMgGxBmpUo37rDXJoNQGHNbj6aL29tuqUZl88Ep6dgcHCL7bcVF9dvGS7O7h09tg/s1600/68-75-1-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="642" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBxSJYp81QvLlX6wxq4tmJ2r-ltvYYdlRiypmVo3U1P1qQGde7UCq2o1mdCAbc-2g3mdmwdOXMgGxBmpUo37rDXJoNQGHNbj6aL29tuqUZl88Ep6dgcHCL7bcVF9dvGS7O7h09tg/s640/68-75-1-2.jpg" width="342" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption">Charles Albert Rogers (American, 1848-1918)<br />S.F. [San Francisco] – City Hall, May 1906<br />Oil on canvas, 20 x 11 -1/2 inches</td></tr>
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The photographer who captured Rogers at work remains unidentified. A copy of History’s Anteroom is available for viewing in CHS’s Reference Library.<br />
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Sources:<o:p></o:p></div>
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1. https://seismo.berkeley.edu/outreach/1906_quake.html<o:p></o:p></div>
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2. Photograph of <i>Carleton
E. Watkins [with cane, during aftermath of earthquake, April 18, 1906]</i> is
in the collection of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Please see: <a href="http://cdn.calisphere.org/data/13030/bh/hb6h4nb5bh/files/hb6h4nb5bh-FID4.jpg">http://cdn.calisphere.org/data/13030/bh/hb6h4nb5bh/files/hb6h4nb5bh-FID4.jpg</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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3. Nickel, Douglas R. <i>Carleton
Watkins: The Art of Perception.</i> NY: Harry N. Abrams / SFMOMA, 1999. “<i>The Art of Perception</i>.” p. 33 (Note 1).<o:p></o:p></div>
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4. http://www.sfgenealogy.org/sf/history/hgpop.htm<o:p></o:p></div>
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5. Birt, Rodger C., and Nathan, Marvin. <i>History’s Anteroom – Photography in San Francisco 1906-1909.</i> San
Francisco: William Stout Publishers, 2011 (p.36). Image of [Charles Albert
Rogers] painting the ruins of San Francisco City Hall is featured online by <a href="https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/artist-san-francisko-earthquake-1906/">https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/artist-san-francisko-earthquake-1906/</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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Written by Cheryl Maslin, Registrar at California Historical Society</div>
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California Historical Society; accession 68-75-1-2<o:p></o:p></div>
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California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-47222658883251646772019-04-15T09:00:00.000-07:002019-04-15T14:56:30.186-07:00Photographing Disaster: Depicting the Aftermath of the 1906 Earthquake<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>This blog post originally appeared in <a href="http://ch.ucpress.edu/">California History Journal</a>, Vol. 96 No. 1, Spring 2019</i><br />
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An earthquake is a visual event. Photographs taken in San Francisco in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake reveal an almost unrecognizable image of the young city, showing piles of rubble and coils of melted iron swirling serpent-like from the hollow frames of collapsed buildings. One such image shows the charred remains of the Dana Building—the first Art Nouveau building in San Francisco—juxtaposed against the steel skeleton of the unfinished Union League Building. The façade of the Dana Building stands like a ghostly shell, its shattered windows and collapsed walls producing the effect of a building turned inside-out. The building’s sleek white surface is dappled not with light but with ash, a vestigial trace of the flames that had licked its walls and left the building in ruins. The building looks like it was destroyed in a flash. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stockton Street between Geary and Post Streets. San Francisco Subjects, Photography Collection, PC-SF-EQ (1906), California Historical Society </td></tr>
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What would it be like to wake up and find your city unrecognizable? To find unstable ground not only beneath your feet, but in front of your eyes? The philosopher William James described how in the aftermath of the earthquake, his students at Stanford University slept outdoors in order to “get the full unusualness out of the experience.”1 The photographer Arnold Genthe remarked that the streets “presented a weird appearance . . . many ludicrous sights met the eye: an old lady carrying a large bird cage with four kittens inside . . . a man tenderly holding a pot of calla lilies, muttering to himself; a scrub woman, in one hand a new broom and in the other a large black hat with ostrich plumes; a man in an old-fashioned nightshirt and swallow tails, being startled when a friendly policeman spoke to him, ‘Say, Mister, I guess you better put on some pants.’ ”2<br />
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But these “unusual” and “ludicrous” sights were not the visuals that San Francisco’s civic leaders sought to promote. Intent on rebuilding the city as quickly as possible, pol- iticians, boosters, and industrial magnates propagated an image of San Francisco as re- silient and organized—a phoenix worthy of modern development and international investment. Compare the photograph of the Dana Building to an image better aligned with this booster rhetoric, taken by the photographer George Lawrence. Entitled “San Francisco in Ruins,” it is an aerial view of the aftermath, taken from a kite suspended 2,000 feet above the city. Lawrence’s panorama is perhaps most impressive in its ability to show the fire’s devastation not as ruinous, but as a contained event. Buildings may be smoldering, but the city’s roads and ports—symbols of industrial potential—remain. In the upper righthand corner, the clouds part to reveal the sun shining brightly on the city below, symbolizing its ordained rebirth. <br />
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By contrast, the photograph of the Dana Building depicts the aftermath as a period of precariousness and uncertainty. If the intact frame of the Union League Building conveys the city’s industrial ambition, the crumbling remains of the Dana—with its Art Nouveau walls standing jagged like loose teeth, ready to fall at any moment—read as a humbling reminder of the city’s fragility. The piles of rubble, brush, and planks lining the street symbolically dis- mantle the city before our eyes. Even the man riding through on his cart evokes a sense of contingency, his blurred face reminding the viewer that this photograph, and the landscape that it depicts, could look completely different if it had been taken in any other moment. The photograph compels the viewer to conceptualize the earthquake not as a propelling and productive force of modernization, but as a harbinger of uncertainty and radical possibility. <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid-pKT73WcKqEqA7rz85DMGcFj4HRg4iMS4I2Z9qlmZTCobz-_QyT9OGyaLVtGDQbY_DXRvC-wlgOMFIsmf0yVHXnFbPGTjei5huc0f81-Q28k-RRjTcU_eXyDWtTLa1PaFHAsJQ/s1600/CHS+George+Lawrence+Airship.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="620" data-original-width="1600" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid-pKT73WcKqEqA7rz85DMGcFj4HRg4iMS4I2Z9qlmZTCobz-_QyT9OGyaLVtGDQbY_DXRvC-wlgOMFIsmf0yVHXnFbPGTjei5huc0f81-Q28k-RRjTcU_eXyDWtTLa1PaFHAsJQ/s640/CHS+George+Lawrence+Airship.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">San Francisco in Ruins from Lawrence Captive Airship, 2,000 feet above San Francisco Bay. PC-PANO_001 <br />
California Historical Society</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Reflecting on the 1906 earthquake on its centennial, the writer Rebecca Solnit suggests that images of ruins and decay help us to remember that history is not teleological, but rather <span style="color: #231f20; text-align: justify;">an<span style="letter-spacing: -1.45pt;"> </span>ebb<span style="letter-spacing: -1.4pt;"> </span>and<span style="letter-spacing: -1.4pt;"> </span>flow<span style="letter-spacing: -1.45pt;">
</span>of<span style="letter-spacing: -1.4pt;"> </span>progress<span style="letter-spacing: -1.45pt;"> </span>and<span style="letter-spacing: -1.4pt;"> </span>decline.<span style="letter-spacing: -1.4pt;"> </span>She<span style="letter-spacing: -1.35pt;"> </span>writes:<span style="letter-spacing: -1.4pt;"> </span></span><span style="color: #231f20; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">“</span><span style="color: #231f20; text-align: justify;">[Decay]<span style="letter-spacing: -1.4pt;"> </span>is<span style="letter-spacing: -1.4pt;"> </span>the<span style="letter-spacing: -1.4pt;"> </span>negative<span style="letter-spacing: -1.35pt;">
</span>image<span style="letter-spacing: -1.45pt;"> </span>of<span style="letter-spacing: -1.45pt;"> </span>history and<span style="letter-spacing: -1.1pt;"> </span>a<span style="letter-spacing: -1.05pt;"> </span>necessary<span style="letter-spacing: -1.05pt;"> </span>aspect<span style="letter-spacing: -1.05pt;">
</span>of<span style="letter-spacing: -1.1pt;"> </span>it.<span style="letter-spacing: -1.1pt;"> </span>To<span style="letter-spacing: -1.1pt;"> </span>erase<span style="letter-spacing: -1.05pt;"> </span>decay<span style="letter-spacing: -1.1pt;">
</span>or<span style="letter-spacing: -1.15pt;"> </span>consciousness<span style="letter-spacing: -1.05pt;"> </span>of<span style="letter-spacing: -1.1pt;"> </span>decay,<span style="letter-spacing: -1.05pt;"> </span>decline,<span style="letter-spacing: -1.05pt;"> </span>entropy,<span style="letter-spacing: -1.05pt;"> </span>and ruin<span style="letter-spacing: -1.1pt;"> </span>is<span style="letter-spacing: -1.1pt;"> </span>to<span style="letter-spacing: -.95pt;"> </span>erase<span style="letter-spacing: -1.0pt;">
</span>the<span style="letter-spacing: -1.05pt;"> </span>understanding<span style="letter-spacing: -1.05pt;"> </span>of<span style="letter-spacing: -1.05pt;"> </span>the<span style="letter-spacing: -1.0pt;"> </span>unfolding<span style="letter-spacing: -1.05pt;"> </span>relation<span style="letter-spacing: -1.0pt;"> </span>between<span style="letter-spacing: -1.05pt;"> </span>all<span style="letter-spacing: -1.0pt;"> </span>things,<span style="letter-spacing: -1.05pt;"> </span>of<span style="letter-spacing: -1.05pt;"> </span>darkness<span style="letter-spacing: -1.05pt;"> </span>to light,<span style="letter-spacing: -1.25pt;"> </span>of<span style="letter-spacing: -1.2pt;"> </span>age<span style="letter-spacing: -1.2pt;"> </span>to<span style="letter-spacing: -1.15pt;"> </span>youth,<span style="letter-spacing: -1.25pt;"> </span>of<span style="letter-spacing: -1.25pt;"> </span>fall<span style="letter-spacing: -1.25pt;"> </span>to<span style="letter-spacing: -1.3pt;"> </span>rise.</span><span style="color: #231f20; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">”</span><sup style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #231f20; mso-font-width: 105%;">3</span></sup><span style="color: #231f20; letter-spacing: -1.2pt; text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="color: #231f20; text-align: justify;">Read<span style="letter-spacing: -1.25pt;"> </span>alongside<span style="letter-spacing: -1.25pt;"> </span>this<span style="letter-spacing: -1.2pt;">
</span>photograph<span style="letter-spacing: -1.25pt;"> </span>of<span style="letter-spacing: -1.25pt;"> </span>the<span style="letter-spacing: -1.15pt;">
</span>ruins<span style="letter-spacing: -1.25pt;"> </span>of<span style="letter-spacing: -1.2pt;"> </span>the<span style="letter-spacing: -1.2pt;"> </span>Dana
Building,<span style="letter-spacing: -1.25pt;"> </span>Solnit</span><span style="color: #231f20; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">’</span><span style="color: #231f20; text-align: justify;">s<span style="letter-spacing: -1.2pt;"> </span>description<span style="letter-spacing: -1.3pt;"> </span>allows<span style="letter-spacing: -1.25pt;">
</span>us<span style="letter-spacing: -1.25pt;"> </span>to<span style="letter-spacing: -1.2pt;"> </span>see<span style="letter-spacing: -1.25pt;"> </span>the<span style="letter-spacing: -1.25pt;"> </span>structure<span style="letter-spacing: -1.3pt;"> </span>as<span style="letter-spacing: -1.25pt;"> </span>its<span style="letter-spacing: -1.25pt;"> </span>own<span style="letter-spacing: -1.25pt;">
</span></span><span style="color: #231f20; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">“</span><span style="color: #231f20; text-align: justify;">negative<span style="letter-spacing: -1.2pt;"> </span>image<span style="letter-spacing: -1.25pt;"> </span>of<span style="letter-spacing: -1.3pt;"> </span>his- tory,</span><span style="color: #231f20; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">”<span style="letter-spacing: -.7pt;"> </span></span><span style="color: #231f20; text-align: justify;">its<span style="letter-spacing: -.35pt;">
</span>exterior<span style="letter-spacing: -.45pt;"> </span>melding<span style="letter-spacing: -.35pt;"> </span>visually<span style="letter-spacing: -.45pt;">
</span>with<span style="letter-spacing: -.35pt;"> </span>the<span style="letter-spacing: -.45pt;"> </span>interior<span style="letter-spacing: -.4pt;">
</span>to<span style="letter-spacing: -.45pt;"> </span>form<span style="letter-spacing: -.45pt;"> </span>a<span style="letter-spacing: -.35pt;"> </span>negative<span style="letter-spacing: -.4pt;"> </span>image<span style="letter-spacing: -.4pt;"> </span>of<span style="letter-spacing: -.45pt;"> </span>a<span style="letter-spacing: -.4pt;"> </span>building
designed to symbolize modern progress and<span style="letter-spacing: -.3pt;"> </span>aesthetics.</span><br />
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In this way, the photograph also evokes a different sort of negative: a 35-millimeter film neg- ative, a technology that would be patented in America just two years later. Notice how the empty window frames are stacked neatly in rows resembling a film strip, as if to suggest the myriad ways in which the disaster could have been pictured and remembered. This photo- graph was likely taken by an amateur photographer, newly able to photograph their city after the first affordable snapshot camera was introduced by the Eastman Kodak Company just six years prior. It is through such amateur photographs that we are able to see a different view of the earthquake’s aftermath, one taken not from the point of view of a booster but from that of a citizen processing the realities of the disaster. Looking through the window frames—depicted within the frame of this forgotten photograph—we can crane our necks to imagine what it would have been like to experience the disaster as a citizen, the visual landscape of the city changing before our eyes.<br />
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-- </div>
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Written by Natalie Pellolio, Assistant Curator at California Historical Society</div>
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California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-36092275927808888172019-04-01T09:30:00.000-07:002019-04-01T13:42:32.692-07:00Railroads Public Programs Preview: 5 Not-to-Miss Exhibition Related Events at CHS<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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With each new exhibition comes a flurry of public programs
designed to help guests dive deeply into the core concepts within them. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each exhibition provides new opportunities for
conversation and interaction between our audiences and our organization, the
exhibitions, and each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In order to
better understand the final programmatic product let’s go back a bit and share
how we design our exhibition-related public programs.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Around six to eight months before an exhibition opens,
departments from across CHS sit down and discuss the exhibition and its core
concepts. The curator(s) will present on the conceptual framework, key themes,
and topics. Staff have the opportunity to pose questions as well as provide
suggestions and insights. The Public Program Manager (me) then begins drafting
program ideas to present to curators in a follow-up meeting. During that
follow-up meeting, drafted ideas begin to harden and afterward I am able to
begin reaching out to speakers and partners, further developing those ideas
based on what the speakers’ expertise is and how they envision their place
within the event. The collaborations between partners, speakers, and CHS staff
are integral to the vibrant final product. <o:p></o:p></div>
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On March 21st, we opened two complimentary exhibitions, <i><a href="https://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/exhibitions/current_exhibitions/">Mark Ruwedel: Westward the Course of Empire</a></i> and <i><a href="https://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/exhibitions/current_exhibitions/">Overland to California: Commemorating the Transcontinental Railroad</a></i>. Below is a brief rundown of some of our upcoming
exhibition-related programs. We hope that you mark them on your calendar, as they are
not to be missed!<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Thursday, April 4<sup>th</sup>,
6:00PM<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Empire’s Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese
Workers, and the California Railroad<o:p></o:p></i></b></div>
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Professor of American Studies at Barnard University, Manu
Karuka, will present on his new book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Empire’s
Tracks</i> while focusing on indigenous experiences in relation to the
transcontinental railroad. He and Professor of American Indian Studies at San
Francisco State University, Joanne Barker (Lenape), will be in conversation
about indigenous history and counter sovereignty. A book signing will close the
event. <a href="https://my.californiahistoricalsociety.org/single/EventDetail.aspx?p=1467">Learn more.</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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<img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1068" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYCT_LAgHTPAjeV1xUnPPZTJtITMVwliEMUg7SAWPYqelwz09HtKsYP1ae3SRLx34RjZm7MPyvVydSkGsf0GQp6b7ZqEWSFx95gOhRWgtuOaM-ydeUMAN5N18L_VASglwjxwnzlQ/s640/Empire%2527s+Tracks+hi+res.jpg" width="426" /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Thursday, April
18, 6:00PM<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chinese and Chinese American Genealogies and
the California Railroads<o:p></o:p></i></b></div>
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&<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Wednesday, July 24, 6:00PM</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Labor Strikes and Fights and the
Transcontinental Railroad</i></b></div>
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<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
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In 1969, during the 100th anniversary of the
transcontinental railroad, Chinese American communities and descendants of
railroad workers felt a disconnect and articulated that there was a lack of
focus on their ancestors’ history and contributions. This year, during the railroad’s
150<sup>th</sup> anniversary, organizations and individuals from across
California will be highlighting the important contributions of Chinese and
Chinese Americans to the building and maintenance of the railroads. <o:p></o:p></div>
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CHS will be hosting several events to honor this
important history, the first being on April 18th with presentations by Al
Cheng, Grant Din, Sue Lee, and Paulette Liang. They will focus on how and why
Chinese and Chinese Americans are seeking to find their connection to this work,
examples of individuals who have found genealogical connections, as well as
those who have sought out but did not find a connection. <a href="https://my.californiahistoricalsociety.org/single/EventDetail.aspx?p=1488">Learn more.</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJEGbqOR6qmvk4hAHHO6nDGA2yhnm4_COzrekDnGcLZXzi5-xnnC6TqYJODdN5-wEMjVernxXJ3Kh3fWdYwMQGAr-gbZuYvr3ogxlPLeL6yXZZJ8-Fi5eIbrGFBhLoW6jeG3HNBw/s1600/Poetry-and-Prose-at-Monument-Point-%25281%2529_forweb.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="198" data-original-width="250" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJEGbqOR6qmvk4hAHHO6nDGA2yhnm4_COzrekDnGcLZXzi5-xnnC6TqYJODdN5-wEMjVernxXJ3Kh3fWdYwMQGAr-gbZuYvr3ogxlPLeL6yXZZJ8-Fi5eIbrGFBhLoW6jeG3HNBw/s400/Poetry-and-Prose-at-Monument-Point-%25281%2529_forweb.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
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The second event will be held July 24th and focuses on
key labor battles which involved Chinese railroad workers, including the
historic eight-day strike in 1867. Gordon Chang and Lawrence Shoup will present
on this event and other important labor battles in celebration of Laborfest,
which occurs each July.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Wednesday, May 15<sup>th</sup>,
6:00PM<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Exploring the Gilded Age in California and
its Reverberations Today</i></b></div>
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On May 15th we will explore the Gilded Age in California
and its relationship to the Big Four, labor, and the railroads. How has the
Gilded Age influenced what California is today? Learn more with moderator,
William Frances Deverell (USC), panelists Richard White (Stanford), Margarite
Shaffer (Miami University), Barbara Berglund Sokolov (Presidio Historian), and
Jack Kelly (historian and author of <i>Edge
of Anarchy</i>). <a href="https://my.californiahistoricalsociety.org/single/EventDetail.aspx?p=1513">Learn more.</a> </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYnFBdIW84nJ3ch6K3uoqMzbroJsvLsDyik6HQxt-l8-isp6iyjCKK0YAJJEZNbC_aY4UTpnMplzOwt-_-Jrc7OvwkL8U4saMhX0ikqdSyxYkSHQJu8EqkQFdZqwFVyKeelB3IuQ/s1600/Great-Trans-continental-Tourist%2527s-Guide.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="357" data-original-width="250" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYnFBdIW84nJ3ch6K3uoqMzbroJsvLsDyik6HQxt-l8-isp6iyjCKK0YAJJEZNbC_aY4UTpnMplzOwt-_-Jrc7OvwkL8U4saMhX0ikqdSyxYkSHQJu8EqkQFdZqwFVyKeelB3IuQ/s400/Great-Trans-continental-Tourist%2527s-Guide.gif" width="280" /></a></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Thursday, June 27<sup>th</sup>,
6:00PM<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Women and Their Role on the Rails<o:p></o:p></i></b></div>
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On June 27<sup>th</sup>, we explore the role women played
(or did not play) in the railroads. How did imagery of wealthy white women tell
a particular story about the railroad? How were women of color and people of
color generally excluded from the transportation system? Professor Amy Richter
of Clark University and Julia H. Lee of U.C. Irvine will present on these
questions and be available to discuss other related topics after their
presentations. <a href="https://my.californiahistoricalsociety.org/single/EventDetail.aspx?p=1470">Learn more.</a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCT1gIOsY8SRuQdR9SBdxKM7yXwq2wsRcCV5Bo4G3UMfoI8SPHed8NCvPIfx0Dz8GrWArGB26faWzFlPFXwKjp-DR3B1ijnymEeDmz-SrP3v7TkQz4xbe0h0ioU9KpVxT5CYuIFA/s1600/California+for+the+tourist.tif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1134" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCT1gIOsY8SRuQdR9SBdxKM7yXwq2wsRcCV5Bo4G3UMfoI8SPHed8NCvPIfx0Dz8GrWArGB26faWzFlPFXwKjp-DR3B1ijnymEeDmz-SrP3v7TkQz4xbe0h0ioU9KpVxT5CYuIFA/s400/California+for+the+tourist.tif" width="281" /></a></div>
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As we move deeper into the summer we will add additional
programs, so continue to follow our <a href="https://my.californiahistoricalsociety.org/account/shortreg.aspx?_ga=2.42717606.2033997113.1553539407-1616691753.1530305572">Society Happenings e-newsletter</a> and check
out our online calendar at <a href="http://my.californiahistoricalsociety.org/">my.californiahistoricalsociety.org</a><span id="goog_230388412"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a><span id="goog_230388413"></span> for more
information. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Written by Patty Pforte, Programs & Visitor Experience Manager at CHS. </div>
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California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-25300251134432142532019-03-29T10:55:00.000-07:002019-03-29T11:57:47.317-07:00The Life of Elaine Black Yoneda, In Her Own Words<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>The concept for Women’s History Month was born in California, beginning as a local, week-long celebration in Santa Rosa in 1978. The idea quickly spread across the country as other communities adopted their own versions of the celebration, and in 1980 President Jimmy Carter issued a proclamation instituting a nationwide “Women’s History Week.” This eventually evolved to encompass an entire month, observed annually, and designated each year by Presidential proclamation. Every March, we take the opportunity to recognize the achievements, struggles, and experiences of women by telling their stories and exploring individual contributions to history as well as contemporary life.</i><br />
<div>
<i><br /></i>
<br />
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<i>--<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Examining the past can allow us to understand and appreciate the people, places, and events that have made up our history, inform our present, and inevitably shape our future. Studying what came before can help route the course for a world that is more inclusive and equitable. It’s common to learn the stories behind well-known names, the key players in text books, interpretations of the past that are well-loved and often repeated. These stories are important, yes, and their reappearance in our lives in no way diminishes their significance, but what about the other, less talked about stories? <br />
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Recently I made a trip downstairs to visit CHS’s North Baker Research Library, feeling a bit overwhelmed by my task of identifying a source around which to compose a Women’s History Month blog. There are a lot of women of gumption ingrained into the story of our state…so where to begin? Luckily, my colleague, Lynda Letona, had recently stumbled upon the oral history of Elaine Black Yoneda, a gem in our collection because of the figure behind the name but also unique because the history is oral and publicly available online. <br />
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A complete typed transcript of Yoneda’s oral history is stored in our vaults as well, so Lynda hauled the thick volume up for me to peruse. Within a few minutes I was entranced by this woman and elbows deep in her life. Across 7 days and 14 hours in the late 1970’s, at Elaine’s apartment in the Outer Mission District of San Francisco, the interviewer proceeds with a purpose to “obtain Yoneda’s background, schooling, early life, marriages, and involvement in the left wing movement of the thirties. Then to develop her activities and motivations as an official of the International Labor Defense, and as a member of the Communist Party, particularly her thinking and opinions as a woman leader during that period.” </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Transcript of Elaine Black Yoneda's oral history, 1978</td></tr>
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The thing I love about Elaine’s oral history is that it’s told from her first person perspective and speaks to her political activism, but also includes descriptions of her personal life, things she experienced as a woman, daughter, sister, and mother, as well as how those experiences affected and were affected by her public life and work. It is compelling because so much of it is relatable and provides insight into the little things that make up a life, the things that make us human and connect us across time and diversity of experience. Her work was radical for her era, especially as a woman, and echoes battles still being waged across the nation and world today. <br />
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Elaine Black Yoneda was born in 1906 in New York City to Russian Jewish immigrant parents. Her family moved to California in the 1920's and Elaine’s political awareness emerged after she experienced police brutality at a mass unemployment demonstration in Los Angeles. From there she quickly became a civil rights leader with the International Labor Defense (ILD), an organization for the defense of political and trade union prisoners, including deportees. She earned the nicknames “Red Angel” during the 1934 waterfront strike and General Strike in San Francisco, and “Tiger Girl” in Salinas during an agricultural strike. She was arrested many times, and used the courtroom as a forum to bring to light civil rights violations, including the right of free speech and the right to assemble.<br />
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Like many good stories, this one includes love and drama. Yoneda’s oral history outlines both of her marriages, including her second marriage to a Japanese American activist named Karl “Hama” Yoneda, whom she met when she bailed him out of jail as part of her duties working for the ILD. (He changed his name in honor of Karl Marx). They married in Seattle, as anti-miscgenation laws still in place at the time made it illegal for them to marry in California. As Japanese Americans, Karl and their son Tommy were sent to Manzanar Interment Camp following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Elaine insisted on joining them. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Yoneda family at Manzanar Internment Camp in 1942, credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/tradingcardsnpsyahoocom/">TradingCardsNPS </a></td></tr>
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Throughout her oral history one can garner a sense of Elaine’s passion for the labor movement, her convictions about civil liberties, tenderness towards her children and family, and snippets of wisdom gleaned from 70 years of life experience. She discusses her childhood as a second generation American with revolutionary parents, her hopes for her daughter, and her participation in the Salinas Lettuce Strike, National Scottsboro Week, and the Spanish Civil War relief. She discusses being the only woman on the steering committee of the 1934 San Francisco Strike, her unsuccessful campaign for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1939, and examples of male chauvinism within the Communist Party in the 1930’s. It’s engaging, informative, inspiring. </div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Elaine Black Yoneda with “Free the Scottsboro Boys” Activists, 1934</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">California Historical Society</span></div>
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Elaine Black Yoneda died on May 29, 1988, one day after attending a longshoreman’s rally in support of Reverend Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign. She leaves us with some wisdom to be passed on to future political activists:<br />
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“Sometimes some of them have a tendency (perhaps I did at that age) to think that the revolution should have happened yesterday. There may be many tomorrows. You have to work with the people, and you have to discuss their needs, not just your own needs, and see it from a wider perspective than just a narrow path. Things do not happen overnight. It takes a long period of working for an objective and if it’s the right one, eventually you’ll get it.” … “ I think for a while they tended to disregard everything that is so-called history. 'We don’t need history, that’s ancient.' But more and more, are beginning to see the need to at least know that history so that they don’t commit some of the same errors that others committed.”
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Listen to
the <a href="https://archive.org/details/chi_000015">full oral history of Elaine Black Yoneda here</a> or visit our <a href="https://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/research/about.html">North BakerResearch Library</a> to read a <a href="https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt3h4nf3b9/entire_text/">transcript of the interview</a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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by Katie Peeler, Marketing Associate at California Historical Society</div>
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California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-64549783654718084932019-03-26T17:02:00.000-07:002019-03-26T17:07:50.468-07:00Celebrating the start of two railroad exhibitions with our San Francisco community<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
One hundred and fifty years ago, the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in North America signaled the closing of the American frontier and the ability to travel from coast to coast quickly and with more ease than ever before. In recognition of this anniversary, the California Historical Society (CHS) presents two simultaneous exhibitions that examine the history of the railroad in California and beyond: <i>Mark Ruwedel: Westward the Course of Empire</i> and <i>Overland to California: Commemorating the Transcontinental Railroad</i>. Last week all of us at CHS had the pleasure of celebrating the opening of these two exhibitions with our members, VIP guests, and staff!<br />
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In his series <i><a href="https://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/exhibitions/current_exhibitions/">Westward the Course of Empire </a></i>(1994–2008), photographer Mark Ruwedel documents the physical traces of abandoned or never completed railroads throughout the American and Canadian West. Built in the name of progress as early as one hundred and fifty years ago, these now defunct rail lines are marked by visible alterations to the landscape. Ruwedel catalogues eroding cuts, disconnected wooden trestles, decaying tunnels, and lonely water towers in quietly powerful images that point to the contest between technology and the natural world. Using a large-format view camera, Ruwedel treads the same territory as nineteenth century survey photographers, but his contemporary perspective brings a sense of loss to landscapes once viewed as exploitable resources.<br />
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<i><a href="https://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/exhibitions/current_exhibitions/">Overland to California: Commemorating the Transcontinental Railroad</a></i> draws from the California Historical Society’s vast archival and photographic collections to consider the railroad’s impact on the industry and culture of California. Featuring photographs, stereocards, historical objects, and ephemera, this exhibition explores how the major railroad companies used marketing images to bolster their reputations and promote their lines in a period of rapid growth and social unrest. Overland to California will also examine the railroad’s complex labor history, taking into consideration the immigrant populations who built its infrastructure, as well as the scandals surrounding the monopolistic practices of the so-called “Big Four” railroad executives: Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins.<br />
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The exhibition features important archival material from CHS’s permanent collection including a mammoth plate photograph by Carleton Watkins of a helix-shaped stretch of track known as the Tehachapi Loop, as well as a first edition copy of Frank Norris’ 1901 novel, The Octopus. Also being exhibited on select viewing days is a 9.25 ounce gold spike, the last to be driven into the railroad that connected Los Angeles and San Francisco on September 5th, 1876, thereby joining Los Angeles to the East Coast. The spike was donated to CHS by an heir of railroad magnate Charles Crocker in 1956. It will be on view during special events throughout the exhibition.<br />
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Last Thursday night's opening included remarks by Managing Curator, Erin Garcia, as well as CHS’s Director of Library, Collections, Exhibitions, and Programs, Susan Anderson. Food was provided by <a href="https://www.strawsf.com/">Straw Carnival Fare</a>, with refreshments from <a href="https://www.fortpointbeer.com/">Fort Point</a>. Guests also enjoyed jazz by <a href="http://www.franciswong.net/">Francis Wong </a>and <a href="https://www.karlevangelista.com/bio.html">Karl Evangelista</a>.<br />
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Westward the Course of Empire and Overland to California will remain on view at CHS’s headquarters at 678 Mission St. in San Francisco until September 8, 2019. Please visit californiahistoricalsociety.org or call us at 415 357-1848 for more information.</div>
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Want to hang out with us at fun history events like this one? <a href="https://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/support/give.html">Join today!</a><br />
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California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-22631063652803306532019-03-25T17:14:00.000-07:002019-03-25T17:14:01.729-07:00Teaching California at California Council for the Social Studies conference 2019<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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On March 15th, California Historical Society Reference Librarian (and super colleague) Frances Kaplan and I traveled to the annual California Council for the Social Studies (CCSS) conference to promote CHS’s new curriculum project, <a href="http://teachingcalifornia.org/">Teaching California</a>. Each year, the CCSS conference aims to deliver professional development for educators focused on new scholarship, research-based strategies, and networking -- all designed to improve the teaching and learning of history/social studies across the state. Held in San Jose this year, CCSS 2019 was filled to the brim with presentations, workshops, and exhibitors, and was well-attended by educators from across the state. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIs66jktzgqAtEthb9KfDMihPJnd6tE-QlZMtOxQVs1gzA8JCO8aINuQRLlRt_E4cNfLXqhbBASPBwiluWWbH0whs_EPajpE8-YsNLQJlHbvjKvqb-swqeylxXRXY3roHDPVgc4g/s1600/20190315_114136.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="583" data-original-width="1600" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIs66jktzgqAtEthb9KfDMihPJnd6tE-QlZMtOxQVs1gzA8JCO8aINuQRLlRt_E4cNfLXqhbBASPBwiluWWbH0whs_EPajpE8-YsNLQJlHbvjKvqb-swqeylxXRXY3roHDPVgc4g/s640/20190315_114136.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-7c3f2350-7fff-e290-1b41-3db417a435fd"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shelley Brooks, California History-Social Science Project (CHSSP) Program Coordinator, previewing student and teacher resources found in </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Teaching California’s </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">instructional materials focused on the California Missions (taught in 4th grade).</span></span></td></tr>
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Frances and I presented at two separate sessions (one aimed at the elementary school-level and one at the high school-level), each together with members of our Teaching California curriculum partners at the <a href="https://chssp.ucdavis.edu/">California History-Social Science Project</a>. In these sessions, titled “Teaching CA: Bringing Archives into the Classroom,” we introduced teachers and administrators to our project, a joint collaboration between archivists, librarians, educators, and subject specialists.<br />
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Our goal is to empower teachers to engage in inquiry instruction that is aligned to California’s new <a href="https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/hs/cf/hssframework.asp">History-Social Science Framework</a>, improves student literacy, and supports civic learning and engagement. In both sessions, teachers practiced the historical investigation process and, excitingly, previewed some of the inquiry-based lessons (and primary sources!) that we are creating for the project. Here are more scenes from our sessions:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHYyPHuiSdgQkZmkwbgvXDSFtP-n6HkdeE6xrnv-celyHlUT8YFWgpTJ1ZAeB8Ja7LWsz7SYl3GF-ov7bAitVqENTIyHgA-DVEZHCZEYfkY5ABTSKczmjoFzfcYd8AcXLlKhgrjQ/s1600/20190322_101430.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1083" data-original-width="1600" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHYyPHuiSdgQkZmkwbgvXDSFtP-n6HkdeE6xrnv-celyHlUT8YFWgpTJ1ZAeB8Ja7LWsz7SYl3GF-ov7bAitVqENTIyHgA-DVEZHCZEYfkY5ABTSKczmjoFzfcYd8AcXLlKhgrjQ/s640/20190322_101430.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1db41854-7fff-496a-e8a3-ad41d7ea80b9"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tuyen Tran, Assistant Director of CHSSP, going over the basics of California’s new </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">History-Social Science Framework</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Teaching California </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">will create Framework-aligned materials that will aid in school and classroom implementation.</span></span></td></tr>
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“I just think this is planting beautiful seeds for the power of using primary sources.” Overheard in the elementary <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TeachCa?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TeachCa</a> intro session with <a href="https://twitter.com/CAHistory?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CAHistory</a> here at <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CCSS19?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CCSS19</a>. <a href="https://t.co/MtUSMHoWtH">pic.twitter.com/MtUSMHoWtH</a></div>
— CHSSP (@CHSSP_SO) <a href="https://twitter.com/CHSSP_SO/status/1106618231643504641?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 15, 2019</a></blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="435" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/6qfrGHUBrQL62M7ihmfB4hi1OzxUQRbhRxzDoxoyL0Pn0iaBSiNstXs-3sBx6kQRKZAuVg5SRShwffUHsy4CB4SKLTCcJG0LH3BpuCuiqrV9-Lz7-LGHFqhrKaE3YCTzOGV5qsDf" style="border: 2pt solid rgb(230, 145, 56); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="624" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-16a7c8d2-7fff-926a-80ab-74cc78193094"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A closer look at a draft of one of our </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Teaching California</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> lessons, called “inquiry sets,” for the second grade, which includes both primary sources and contextual information aimed at both students and teachers. This set includes a handwritten note on a collar produced during the 1906 earthquake and fire, from CHS's collections of California history.
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZB7l9G0i9GE-ZgdXLrfU0BNwO27VWwpV749nNFpoTwuVwBmrWgYX-5sIjOM-9_1wDoUpihJ-Fv-jvsdl69YnNrhwH_iJeyrDTUMZMyEK96IG_6NwfWpx3-Oxr5g9QGndQk5Mtsw/s1600/20190315_105521.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="778" data-original-width="1600" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZB7l9G0i9GE-ZgdXLrfU0BNwO27VWwpV749nNFpoTwuVwBmrWgYX-5sIjOM-9_1wDoUpihJ-Fv-jvsdl69YnNrhwH_iJeyrDTUMZMyEK96IG_6NwfWpx3-Oxr5g9QGndQk5Mtsw/s640/20190315_105521.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4c6dca2-7fff-0a5e-0a5b-a8c145ef592b"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Elementary school teachers review drafts of </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Teaching California’s </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">second-grade instructional materials, which includes never-before-seen objects and photographs from CHS’s collections.
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Taking back so many AMAZING resources from <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CCSS19?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CCSS19</a> to use with preservice teachers in my upcoming Teaching H-SS class at CSUSB! Thanks for sharing resources <a href="https://twitter.com/CHSSP_SO?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CHSSP_SO</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/lcccarrillo?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@lcccarrillo</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/historytechie?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@historytechie</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/UCBHSSP?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@UCBHSSP</a> and, especially, <a href="https://twitter.com/r10CLIC?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@r10CLIC</a>! <a href="https://t.co/x4qdZxIJKJ">pic.twitter.com/x4qdZxIJKJ</a></div>
— Michelle Lorimer (@LorimerHistory) <a href="https://twitter.com/LorimerHistory/status/1107488004929548288?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 18, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Learning about the exciting partnership between <a href="https://twitter.com/CHSSP_SO?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CHSSP_SO</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/CAHistory?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CAHistory</a>. Teaching CA: Bringing the Archives into the Classroom (U.S. High School) at California Council for the Social Studies 58th Annual Conference <a href="https://t.co/iWR8Y4FNLH">https://t.co/iWR8Y4FNLH</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/CAsocialstudies?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@casocialstudies</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ccss19?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ccss19</a> <a href="https://t.co/4rTKA97wot">pic.twitter.com/4rTKA97wot</a></div>
— Wendy Rouse (@WendyLRouse) <a href="https://twitter.com/WendyLRouse/status/1106607446133399552?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 15, 2019</a></blockquote>
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First glimpse of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TeachCa?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TeachCa</a> with <a href="https://twitter.com/CAHistory?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CAHistory</a> here at <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CCSS19?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CCSS19</a>! HS teachers check out cholera source set. <a href="https://twitter.com/CaEdHSS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CaEdHSS</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/UCDHistProject?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@UCDHistProject</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/UCBHSSP?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@UCBHSSP</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/UCLAHGP?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@UCLAHGP</a> <a href="https://t.co/V0EJcG5WrA">pic.twitter.com/V0EJcG5WrA</a></div>
— CHSSP (@CHSSP_SO) <a href="https://twitter.com/CHSSP_SO/status/1106615840093298688?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 15, 2019</a></blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic7RampL8VI-xgE8tw_yGSQROgofkyEYRBpxaiQ2-tFu78MtWEVUwXGFmlFIhLUUwMwXVYiBW87d3pGDGeNR6m2p7ko2HSIQL1i8SI6wojll-QJhnBd8U20OMBZTQRY0jNAat3cQ/s1600/20190322_101035.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic7RampL8VI-xgE8tw_yGSQROgofkyEYRBpxaiQ2-tFu78MtWEVUwXGFmlFIhLUUwMwXVYiBW87d3pGDGeNR6m2p7ko2HSIQL1i8SI6wojll-QJhnBd8U20OMBZTQRY0jNAat3cQ/s640/20190322_101035.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-0235a371-7fff-9974-9a0d-091797ae2ea4"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To view the slides for one of our CCSS sessions on </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Teaching California, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3A44d5921b-8d90-4435-92eb-2c5f8f19e537">visit this link</a>.</span></span></td></tr>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-a1016d83-7fff-03c4-9bdd-2d25f03f0b1f"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This post comes from Kerri Young, Teaching California Project Manager. You can reach out to her at kyoung@calhist.org </span></span><br />
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California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-43073711440771958062019-03-18T09:00:00.000-07:002019-05-30T17:12:52.306-07:00Glimpses of Paradise<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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There is a church a block away from where I live. I go there to visit a tree. One of its branches has descended upon the earth, bending heavily from its weight; a forked stick helps support it and hold it up. I also go there to see a spirit mural. It is a beautiful mosaic of a white-tailed dove crowned with what I imagine is intended as a symbol of the holy spirit. Some may interpret it a phoenix rising. Its tail spreads across four columns of the church, spawning various symbols—hearts, shells, angels, and my favorite, a couple - the silhouette of a man and a woman. My idealist self places her fingers on the shadowy figures and yearns, wishing for these symbols to materialize into existence. This idealist yearning, this ideal is something like the glimpses of paradise that I see in the eyes of the believers in Peoples Temple, particularly in the photographs of the children, the dancers, and the older women who believe in the possibility of healing, of all races coming together as a unit under the banner of love. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTibSoyTXHa3mkNg9nHBXQjMOAjLklREG7IZ0MGi8H4f0C_nuYyRso8qJPrsEW71L1c5ZXEL7S5-Vugbx9vDGJcM0HCpAnFzQ2XMYxMYk25YeqiCcxbouNM-DXPoypez6QPqnxaA/s1600/PeoplesTemple_006.tif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1163" data-original-width="1600" height="464" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTibSoyTXHa3mkNg9nHBXQjMOAjLklREG7IZ0MGi8H4f0C_nuYyRso8qJPrsEW71L1c5ZXEL7S5-Vugbx9vDGJcM0HCpAnFzQ2XMYxMYk25YeqiCcxbouNM-DXPoypez6QPqnxaA/s640/PeoplesTemple_006.tif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-7d0eb1c3-7fff-dbe5-f631-a9961df921ab"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Child with baby sloth, circa 1974-1978; Peoples Temple Publications Department Records, MS 3791; Box 30, folder 6; California Historical Society. </span></span></td></tr>
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What is Peoples Temple? Difficult question. Difficult and perhaps impossible to answer. The more you learn about Peoples Temple, the more questions begin to multiply and answers become hazy. Working on the Peoples Temple Publication Department records, a project funded by the National Historical Records and Publications Commission (NHPRC), has provided me with some insights into this important time in history. It’s worth keeping in mind the context of the photography prints--they were designed to serve the Publications Department’s purposes including fundraising, church member activities, public relations, and community outreach. <br />
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Working on the Peoples Temple photographs and some of the textual material gives one a glimpse into the ideal that was sought from its conception. Perhaps you come upon a beautiful child taking a stroll in the jungle at Jonestown, discovering a flower and pausing for a moment to consider it and hold it with care. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlt0hK_UQvS61Y5ljNZ-vREumcxET1valy30zmieZx6SW8P_ysrzeafO3z_1-5q4KwhVjkef6_ALrGNYsaWV_o41iudhXhTmiLppU_F2h6yfTCwIom_mMq1xZ9oUP-pTuXMlZDqA/s1600/PeoplesTemple_005.tif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1159" data-original-width="1600" height="462" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlt0hK_UQvS61Y5ljNZ-vREumcxET1valy30zmieZx6SW8P_ysrzeafO3z_1-5q4KwhVjkef6_ALrGNYsaWV_o41iudhXhTmiLppU_F2h6yfTCwIom_mMq1xZ9oUP-pTuXMlZDqA/s640/PeoplesTemple_005.tif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-93d8321a-7fff-55ed-39c4-49fbd8b5ebf0"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Child with flower, circa 1974-1978; Peoples Temple Publications Department Records, MS 3791; Box 30, folder 6; California Historical Society.</span></span></td></tr>
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One might come upon an image of a troupe of African American dancers in exuberant dress, striking a pose with raised fists, a symbol for Black power. Their youthful energy electrifying you and making you remember what it was like to yearn for equality, making you still yearn for it like the dream lives on.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeqJmvlsRBszRWrxCceJ4PnyCc878QSdErWIsaNuxC7FsZAZS9zzkf_hiTy-rOXpnyxZV4ZksD-Va0sCyXdpgubPu9rGFse0hI0f6CWSTtjNcUOEgmHfpDAeBPOAfnLxU5hb6nEg/s1600/PeoplesTemple_001.tif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1153" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeqJmvlsRBszRWrxCceJ4PnyCc878QSdErWIsaNuxC7FsZAZS9zzkf_hiTy-rOXpnyxZV4ZksD-Va0sCyXdpgubPu9rGFse0hI0f6CWSTtjNcUOEgmHfpDAeBPOAfnLxU5hb6nEg/s640/PeoplesTemple_001.tif" width="460" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-cae43522-7fff-ac05-1f04-e3b8f898e5e5"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">African dancers, circa 1975-1976; Peoples Temple Publications Department Records, MS 3791; Box 30, folder 2; California Historical Society.</span></span></td></tr>
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Then there is the look that the woman at church gives her pastor, in whom she places her complete trust. So what if he is forged from another clan, another color? He has embraced you and accepted you and welcomed you in this space that you believe is your new home. Your history is a heavy tree branch that needs holding up a bit.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlGOJQiQGM8pe1by56l3srwcQBYUkM_s8Xprh2c6aBfrwfwSv1Iu6KDnF-d-yvLkLBjRpIF723nimP7YUJmKZyQkqOmtQflM0f48hgREpItCaqCNJ8D-KmoGFrOP_LiU4dbBG-9Q/s1600/PeoplesTemple+7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1297" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlGOJQiQGM8pe1by56l3srwcQBYUkM_s8Xprh2c6aBfrwfwSv1Iu6KDnF-d-yvLkLBjRpIF723nimP7YUJmKZyQkqOmtQflM0f48hgREpItCaqCNJ8D-KmoGFrOP_LiU4dbBG-9Q/s640/PeoplesTemple+7.jpg" width="514" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c832c6c6-7fff-768d-1123-3d4064d977e0"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Woman at church service with Jim Jones, circa 1974-1978; Peoples Temple Publications Department Records, MS 3791; Box 31, folder 2; California Historical Society.</span></span></td></tr>
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Some observers like to fixate on the end, but sometimes forget to consider or question the beginning and the ensuing journey. What impetus drove this engine? We cannot dismiss the importance of symbols and the meaning they carry in our frail vessels. We yearn for community and company. The photographic prints and textual material in the newly processed Peoples Temple Publications Department records are a testament to such yearning. Whether one considers the tragic end, regarding it as a warning not to trust those who claim benevolence and promise protection then betray such a trust, or whether one suspends their disbelief and allows the yearning to take hold through the eyes and deeds of the beholder, one may catch a glimpse of paradise. A glimpse of paradise in the sense that, look—it can be all simple, we can all work together under the same roof, share the same land and space, dance to the same drum beat. Yet this simple thing eludes us continually so we are always just catching glimpses of what could be.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw34OOPbCwcMTh7GoIF5-PlxadNPeoOdNSLu-eJf2dFlNZAa3xOavqiK1Qog7UH5bkdZe1NJZCUQzMba_RX-Gk43m37l2DR4lJzA5E4lXklm23DVpBqXnyP6ySb4bpZLKERBZyWg/s1600/PeoplesTemple_003.tif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1161" data-original-width="1600" height="464" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw34OOPbCwcMTh7GoIF5-PlxadNPeoOdNSLu-eJf2dFlNZAa3xOavqiK1Qog7UH5bkdZe1NJZCUQzMba_RX-Gk43m37l2DR4lJzA5E4lXklm23DVpBqXnyP6ySb4bpZLKERBZyWg/s640/PeoplesTemple_003.tif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-bc5c60a1-7fff-bf6e-72c2-2fed5246ee58"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Two youth in Jonestown, circa 1974-1978; Peoples Temple Publications Department Records, MS 3791; Box 30, folder 4; California Historical Society.</span></span></td></tr>
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But ... what if we were to reframe the question? What if we were to temper our idealism with a dose of realism? As I was contemplating the Peoples Temple after processing the photo prints, a play titled Tetecan: An Aztec Tragedy, from another of CHS’s collections caught my eye in the vault. I opened it to the foreword, which besides some anachronistic observations on the Aztecs, had something interesting written there: <br />
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“Each of us in his destined hour, in hope or extremity, mounts the steps of idealism. In all times and places, fervid youths have climbed in search of idealism, driven upward by sight of the seething plain of life across which the light of brotherhood appears at times to burn fitfully. Too many of them have climbed in vain.” <br />
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Sometimes the young of spirit desire to undo the imperfect system that keeps the light of brotherhood from burning with a peaceful flame. We dare give birth to hope and begin to climb the mountain of idealism, leaving the plain of life behind; almost obliterating it and starting anew with our own thoughts, on our own terms, seeking like-minded people. We want paradise on earth, now. We tire of waiting for elusive promises. This, however, can be a dangerous proposition. Humans are imperfect beings embedded with foibles and faults, often drawn to extremes. Often reacting to others’ extremes—from greed to idealism. The lessons imparted to us in the narratives of the Peoples Temple and those who seek to explain the church are often extreme, understandably mirroring such narratives. But what about the lessons imparted in the brief glimpses of the promise of paradise the eye may draw from some of the photographs? Can anything be extracted from these? Even if there’s a strong possibility that some of it was curated to fit the purpose of publication? <br />
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I think there is something important to be extracted from these brief glimpses. I think part of the lesson lies in contemplating the extremes, sure, but also, considering the journey in between, the fissures where love was let in. This is a quiet journey that involves reflection, pause, and silence. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisN96FJ98rVwPo9kFeqdnvoDHQM25RwYvX4WKchrRuXAVxLUT_bWZD-Z6Gzx_7ayjY0VndZTLDQLbO1cD0WjQNz5XUnfgsrqipOvq34q97rFgeLxzvk7B4wVew34wSe_-yd3jJIQ/s1600/PeoplesTemple_002.tif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1130" data-original-width="1600" height="450" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisN96FJ98rVwPo9kFeqdnvoDHQM25RwYvX4WKchrRuXAVxLUT_bWZD-Z6Gzx_7ayjY0VndZTLDQLbO1cD0WjQNz5XUnfgsrqipOvq34q97rFgeLxzvk7B4wVew34wSe_-yd3jJIQ/s640/PeoplesTemple_002.tif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-68d60128-7fff-c38f-56f1-c0bbfaa34cec"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Church members praying during service, circa 1965-1978; Peoples Temple Publications Department Records, MS 3791; Box 30, folder 9; California Historical Society.</span></span></td></tr>
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Processing the Peoples Temple photo prints was something we took our time with. We sleeved some of the larger prints, housing them in new folders while keeping categories labeled by the publication department or creating new folder categories if they reflected a theme such as with the “African Dancers” folder. For some of the smaller prints such as passport photos or member photos we opted to house these in envelopes to keep them from falling from their folders…. I wanted to contain the photographs as if I could contain the spirit of the lives reflected there. I wanted to keep a level of privacy and respect to Temple members photographed even though their lives have become very public. Sometimes it’s the smallest details that show people we care. <br />
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The Peoples Temple photographs give us glimpses of a paradise the youth in us has yearned to see. But did many of them climb in vain? I like to think that the climb was not in vain. I like to do a challenging thing—to turn from the sensationalized end and pause a bit to study the faces of the people whose life held meaning and the potential for a longer, better life. The idealist in me keeps searching for these glimpses, hoping they bloom and multiply and one day materialize like during my yearning by the spirit mural. The realist in me, however, reminds herself to also temper such yearning given the nature of man and its excesses. It’s a challenging task—to both acknowledge the end, to grasp the fitful yearning of utopia so as to temper it and prevent it from happening again, but also to not forget the fissures and glimpses of paradise where life and love seeped through. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5POH9MouLMF4dDZ1vJAbhlliYj3YAUmTLBv-2_j1_0nQKFtmtFSiWC154ySp7OsBk0N3vXr9gY7G7Ahxb6U13WGF7m69H_dMlN1zYV81BvRLCS9sjQuWFpFDd91mnVp8Hjq7zHg/s1600/PeoplesTemple_004.tif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1147" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5POH9MouLMF4dDZ1vJAbhlliYj3YAUmTLBv-2_j1_0nQKFtmtFSiWC154ySp7OsBk0N3vXr9gY7G7Ahxb6U13WGF7m69H_dMlN1zYV81BvRLCS9sjQuWFpFDd91mnVp8Hjq7zHg/s640/PeoplesTemple_004.tif" width="454" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-d28f8384-7fff-b813-4355-47b06a7300c9"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Woman with baby girl, circa 1974-1978; Peoples Temple Publications Department Records, MS 3791; Box 30, folder 4; California Historical Society.</span></span></td></tr>
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Written by Lynda Letona, Assistant Archivist & Reference Librarian at California Historical Society (CHS).<br />
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Photos digitized by Marissa Friedman, Imaging Technician and Cataloger at CHS. <br />
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A finding aid for the People Temple collection can be found <a href="http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8df6xx8/entire_text/">here</a>.<br />
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<u>References:</u><br />
Brown, Hugh. 1950. Foreword to Tetecan: An Aztec tragedy. San Francisco: Bohemian Club.<br />
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Photographic Prints, circa 1965-1978; Peoples Temple Publications Department Records, MS 3791; California Historical Society.<br />
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The processing of this collection was made possible by
funding from the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/nhprc">National Historical
Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC)</a>. <o:p></o:p></div>
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California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-91008637968598845772019-03-14T12:21:00.000-07:002019-03-14T15:48:27.164-07:00California Historical Society's Recently Cataloged Maps<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Among the 5,000 to 6,000 maps in the California Historical Society’s collection are many examples of rare and unique titles. Below is a sampling of a few recently cataloged items: <br />
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1. An interesting manuscript <b>Map of St. Louis</b>, surveyed and drawn by Asa F. Bradley, dated 1850. The developers of the proposed settlement had grand plans for a relatively large (103-block) town which included wide diagonal streets and a central plaza. It was located south of the City of Sonoma and is currently of much more modest in size. Over the years it was known as Saint Louis, Saint Louis Landing, San Luis, and currently Embarcadero. The map is in pen-and-ink. <br />
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2. <b>Plan of Marysville</b> lays out all the city blocks, lots and squares. It was published in Marysville by Eddy Brothers, Stationers, and was beautifully lithographed by Alexander Zakreski in San Francisco. Zakreski (or Zakrzewski, 1799-1863) was a Polish emigrant and skilled mapmaker and lithographer. The map is on indefinite loan to CHS from the De Young Memorial Museum. <br />
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3. A <b>Map of a Portion of the Hock Farm</b> surveyed by Nelson Wescoatt in 1857 and drawn in 1860. Sutter Hock Farm, north of Sacramento on the Feather River, was the first non-Indian settlement in Sutter County and was established in 1841 by early settler John A. Sutter. The hand-drawn map, in pen-and-ink and watercolor on cloth, includes a beautifully decorated north arrow. It was given to CHS by F.S. Hudson in 1946. <br />
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4. Another colorful manuscript map entitled <b>Map of All the Swamp and Overflowed Lands in Santa Clara County … 1868 to 1872</b> was drawn by the County Surveyor A.H. Parker. It shows lots, land owners, land grants and watercourses. The map includes a table of surveyor’s courses and distances and is drawn in pen-and-ink and watercolor on cloth. </div>
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5. <b>An Outline Map of Southern Central California Showing Railroad and Steamboat Routes</b>, although undated, was probably published in the 1880s by Wallace W. Elliott & Co. in San Francisco. Counties are hand colored. <br />
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6. <b>Hill Street, 6th to 10th St[reet]s, Los Angeles, California</b> is one of about 130 blueline print maps covering business districts in Southern California, Arizona and Nevada drawn by Coldwell, Cornwall & Banker (later Coldwell, Banker). This one is dated July 1938 and shows individual businesses with lot sizes. Firms shown include The May Company and Bullocks department stores and the Los Angeles Theater. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj02MIBXTpxCCWeb1eeiDWP6ZNsU7bq9tDAYtYhxpC_VVePdz7JXlI4V4l-iPR-7XG7rCwWD96hd8GcgW3SIXU6ynGga9pDm1ZcEwSMR2DElK56FLZc8U2q48r21-lTYAIZL2pzXQ/s1600/Map+1341.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="802" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj02MIBXTpxCCWeb1eeiDWP6ZNsU7bq9tDAYtYhxpC_VVePdz7JXlI4V4l-iPR-7XG7rCwWD96hd8GcgW3SIXU6ynGga9pDm1ZcEwSMR2DElK56FLZc8U2q48r21-lTYAIZL2pzXQ/s640/Map+1341.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Slightly over half of the CHS maps that have been cataloged over the last three years are unique to <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/">WorldCat</a> (the world’s largest library catalog). That is, at the time of cataloging no other library had created records for these maps. To date 3,200 maps (or about two-thirds of the collection) have been cataloged. Records for them may be found in <a href="https://c95040.eos-intl.net/C95040/OPAC/Index.aspx">our online library</a> catalog as well as in WorldCat. <br />
<br /></div>
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-- <br />
<br />
Written by Philip Hoehn</div>
</div>
California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-28626817293564109122019-02-11T10:15:00.000-08:002019-02-11T16:37:26.069-08:00Reading Pictures<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
“Stare. It is the way to educate your eye and more. Stare, pry, listen, eaves-drop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.” <br />
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—Walker Evans, ca. 1960 <br />
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Looking is hard work. For many of us, sight is the most obvious tool we use to experience our world; it feels easy, automatic, almost like breathing. But to look—to take time, to probe, to take seriously the ways in which images shape our worldview—is a different matter. <br />
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As children, we are taught to read words when we are only a few years old. And yet, modern technologies make it so that we are increasingly inundated by pictures more than text, be it on our screens, in print media, as family photographs, or as advertisements. Moving through the world, it is tempting to merely glance at the pictures we encounter, letting them coalesce into a sort of landscape or wave that washes over us and passes us by. But pictures are made by people, and so often convey the ideals, biases, and political views of their makers. However subconsciously, the images that we see every day combine to shape our own biases and political views. “What you see often becomes a part of your memory,” explains Ana-Christina Ramón, the assistant director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA, “and thus a part of your life experience.” <br />
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When we look closely and think about what we see, it allows us to be less immediately manipulated by the visual rhetoric of the media that we consume. But as with any good book, reading images closely can bring us an immense sense of pleasure and empathy. Imagine standing in front of your favorite painting, and taking the time to think about what emotions or forms its brush strokes evoke. Try to imagine what the artist was thinking and feeling when she put the brush to canvas, and where she was standing; think about what the painting conveys about the era or place in which it was made. With these thoughts, we do not lose sight of the work’s initial beauty. Rather, we can take in this beauty, or pain, or anger and confusion, while also asking ourselves what it is that allows the art to make us feel so strongly. We can come to the work with a sense of humility, but also thoughtfully. <br />
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I’m going to walk you through some questions I ask myself when I first look at a photograph, painting, or illustration, in the hopes that you will continue to look closely at the pictures that you encounter—be it in the museum, or on your phone’s screen. For example: </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjk1N2neiB3bykmA78Q63v4KbvONtYC5imifVMCfTSXYjTKAlUYg5KdaDuL93X_A9Z0F_YNSFWkHZl7JxcIPr4wVEDfrOS1crJR_Go8elj_2ZRDjLMPLyJxgSbUf03wyskeUHwMA/s1600/Buddhist+temple%252C+Terminal+Way%252C+Terminal+Island.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1175" data-original-width="1600" height="468" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjk1N2neiB3bykmA78Q63v4KbvONtYC5imifVMCfTSXYjTKAlUYg5KdaDuL93X_A9Z0F_YNSFWkHZl7JxcIPr4wVEDfrOS1crJR_Go8elj_2ZRDjLMPLyJxgSbUf03wyskeUHwMA/s640/Buddhist+temple%252C+Terminal+Way%252C+Terminal+Island.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">[Buddhist temple, Terminal
Way, Terminal Island, Los Angeles, 1932-33]; by Anton Wagner, CHS, PC 017</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
First, take a minute or two to really look closely at every part of the photograph. What do you see? I find it helpful to speak out loud, or at least to organize my thoughts into coherent sentences so that I don’t miss anything; language helps me to process what I’m seeing. No observation is too small or too obvious. In this photograph, I see four little girls standing on a dirt road. The girls stand in front of two buildings, one built in a midcentury American ranch style, and the other built in an Asian architectural style and surrounded by a fence with an elaborate entryway. On the left hand side of the image, I see a large white water tower on big metal stilts. On the right, a tree leans into the frame. The trees, combined with the fluttering of the girls’ hair and coats, suggest that it was windy out that day. There are statues in the garden behind the fence, and telephone poles in the distance. In fact, one telephone pole leads my eye to another building that I didn’t initially see. <br />
<br />
What is the image made of? This work is obviously a photograph; knowing what I know about photography, I know that it is a black and white gelatin silver print. This information can help me to determine when the image was made: gelatin silver prints were most commonly made between 1900-2000, which is a fairly broad range, though we have other context clues to help us determine the date, such as clothing and architecture styles. If I can hold the image, I like to think about who else might have held it, and why, and how it might have circulated or travelled. This photograph could have been a family photograph, or a journalist’s image, or a photograph made by a documentarian. Maybe it was stored in an album, or printed in the newspaper. <br />
<br />
If I’m looking at a photograph, I ask myself where the photographer was standing when they took the picture, and why. In this case, the answer is not particularly complicated: the photographer is standing in the road, and photographs the children from an angle. But this simple observation can actually tell something about the photographer’s intentions. Why didn’t they take the photograph head on, and from a closer vantage? What does the angle afford us that a more direct composition would lose? And what do we lose from this perspective? <br />
<br />
However simple, the last question can tell me so much about this picture and the person who made it. I can guess that because the photograph is not a close up view of these children’s faces, it was composed specifically to show them in the context of their surroundings. Rather than frame the image so that we can only see the Asian-style building, however, the photographer chose to juxtapose it against the adjacent ranch-style house and water tower, both of which suggest to me that the photograph was taken in the United States. This isn’t a close up portrait of four children; it’s a photograph of four children shown living in a diverse neighborhood, likely in the United States. Their clothing and the architecture surrounding them suggest that this photograph was made before or during World War II. They look like they are of Japanese descent, which makes me wonder if they were impacted by Executive Order 9066. I think about the immigrant experience in the United States, now and throughout this country’s history; I think about my grandfather who was detained by the United States government during World War II because he was an Italian immigrant, and how he never told his children, or spoke Italian in their presence. <br />
<br />
You can see here how an unassuming image without any text or caption can still say so much. <br />
<br />
I’ll show my hand, which is that we are fortunate to have some information about this photograph. The photograph is titled [Buddhist temple, Terminal Way, Terminal Island, Los Angeles, 1932-33], and was taken by the German photographer Anton Wagner. As an art historian, I’m lucky when I have this much information to go off of: knowing the photographer allows me to probe deeper into his background and intentions, and the title can tell me so much, not least the fact that the building shown is a Buddhist temple, and that the photograph was taken ca. 1932-33 on Terminal Island—a Japanese American fishing community that, as it happens, was the first to be evacuated following Executive Order 9066. But I believe that pictures can tell us so much more than any caption can. <br />
<br />
My last piece of advice is to try to look with a close but curious eye. Pictures do not exist solely as a record of the past, or as a container of information and data. A picture is not a question to be answered; we do not look so that we can be “right.” We look because photographs and works of art have things to tell us about what it felt like to live in an earlier time, and about how we relate to people with whom we have seemingly little in common—be it these four little girls, or a painter, or a sculptor living in Athens in 500 BCE. They allow us to admit just how much we don’t know, and to feel vulnerable when they elicit emotion. I believe that looking closely at pictures make us more human, in increasingly technological times. <br />
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--</div>
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<div>
Written by Natalie Pellolio, Assistant Curator at California Historical Society<br />
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California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34090149.post-4751856291804847412019-02-04T09:30:00.000-08:002019-02-04T09:30:04.411-08:00Pioneering Black Urbanites in San Francisco and Los Angeles <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In the 1850s the new medium of photography, along with written and oral transmissions sent all over the United States, began to shape impressions of the new state of California and its two most prominent and rapidly growing cities, San Francisco and Los Angeles. As this new visual, oral, and textual image making was occurring, African Americans such as Mifflin W. Gibbs and Robert Owens were negotiating their rights as citizens to shape the region’s development as they pursued greater opportunities for economic advancement, social freedom, equity, and self-reinvention in San Francisco and Los Angeles, respectively. <br />
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Like many white Americans, Gibbs and Owens were lured to the state for its opportunities and “the good life” imagery produced by writers, painters, and photographers, and used by various boosters promoting migration to the state. The stories and imagery of Gibbs, Owens and other African Americans who participated in various phases of the western migration and settlement continue to remain largely absent from the dominant mythologies and history surrounding the western migration, notwithstanding investigations of the black West published during the last 50 years. <br />
<br />
Although slavery was not allowed, the 1850 California constitution limited voting and the right to testify in court to whites, excluding African Americans, Native Americans, and Asians despite the fact that —San Francisco, the gateway to California—was one of the most racially and ethnically diversity cities in the world. By 1860, 75% of the black population in the North American West would reside in California, mostly in the northern part of the state. By 1900, this distribution would change and Los Angeles would become home to the largest black population center in the North American West. Despite their nominal freedom in California and racially discriminatory legislation they confronted, African Americans found refuge in western urban life which was abundantly more congenial than the places they left behind. <br />
<br />
<b>Mifflin Wistar Gibbs (1823-1915) </b><br />
<div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvWmdBZkBZyq-xxfXj-1Q_ttSGAdY1qVFmatJSZI5-vJQ09rGWqK9KbzI4etKIDapWNOKwl7CPvUhREESq0aYd5dUcr-ebMXhBPCdn0S7lZBC5mYiu7vYH61G9oWf0t-BXbZmlDQ/s1600/PC-PT_00283.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1005" data-original-width="697" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvWmdBZkBZyq-xxfXj-1Q_ttSGAdY1qVFmatJSZI5-vJQ09rGWqK9KbzI4etKIDapWNOKwl7CPvUhREESq0aYd5dUcr-ebMXhBPCdn0S7lZBC5mYiu7vYH61G9oWf0t-BXbZmlDQ/s640/PC-PT_00283.jpg" width="442" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal">
Mifflin Wistar Gibbs (1823-1915). A black entrepreneur and
civic activist in California and the North American West.<o:p></o:p></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Born to a free black family in Philadelphia, Mifflin Wistar Gibbs’ life experience in his formative years, carpentry training, a literary society education he gained with the successful businessmen, leaders, and elites of the black Philadelphia community appear to have provide him with a good foundation for his life. After developing as a self-employed carpenter and contractor, voting rights activist, and member of the anti-slavery movement which included public speaking engagements with William Lloyd Garrison and Fredrick Douglass, in 1849, Gibbs realized he was at a crossroads in his young adult life. In 1850 he sailed to San Francisco from New York to join the gold seekers in northern California. Gibbs joined many other black men who immigrated to California from New York and Massachusetts that year, all of whom would become involved with resolving black issues across the state. In the antebellum period these men and others—including Robert Owens and his family—comprised the first voluntary African American migrants to the West. These black Americans migrating to California from the mid-nineteenth century to the early 1940s would have been courageous, ambitious, resourceful, and adventurous.</div>
<div>
<br />
After arriving in San Francisco, Gibbs worked as a bootblack. Though trained as a carpenter, he could not find work because white employees on these jobs refused to work with him. He eventually partnered with Peter Lester, an expert bootmaker and fellow Philadelphian who Gibbs had known from abolitionist movement work, in a successful retail and wholesale business called Pioneer Boot and Shoe Emporium at 638 Clay Street. Servicing patrons from Oregon into Mexico’s Lower California, the successful venture sold fine boots and shoes imported from Philadelphia, London and Paris. <br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMv8wqN7iSzODurSxZpleJBCIfhnye65203Fy2EynTx8t8ID5_L3AA48ikJOQWmmx8O9gkD9Si6monorKAehSGhVIyLrCA1iasQmDIoMvxs-mSSkwlgvIj4AmSqZs1Lu7gLLJbbg/s1600/IMG_9531.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1150" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMv8wqN7iSzODurSxZpleJBCIfhnye65203Fy2EynTx8t8ID5_L3AA48ikJOQWmmx8O9gkD9Si6monorKAehSGhVIyLrCA1iasQmDIoMvxs-mSSkwlgvIj4AmSqZs1Lu7gLLJbbg/s640/IMG_9531.jpg" width="454" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Book cover of <i>Shadow
and Light: An Autobiography</i> by Mifflin Wistar Gibbs. He was a black
entrepreneur and civic activist in California and the North American West</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
By 1856, Gibbs co-founded the Mirror of the Times, the first black-owned newspaper in California and west of St. Louis. As a leading member of San Francisco’s black community, he became an influential voice in the fight for African American freedom and full civil rights. Gibbs and Lester found good financial opportunities in San Francisco, he recounts in his autobiography, Shadow & Light (1902), but they continued to contend with ostracization, assaults where they had no redress, disenfranchisement and were denied the right to vote, sit on a jury or testify in a court of law. In the 1850s, he became a leader of the statewide California Colored Conventions, the first organized, civil rights protest and petition campaigns in the West with the goal to overturn the discriminatory laws that had been passed by the California legislature since 1849. Although not successful, regionally and nationally, Gibbs and his fellow travelers helped raise the social political consciousness about black and other nonwhite groups’ struggles for equality, civil rights, and the benefit of just government. The discriminatory laws and the increasing hostility towards black Californians during this era pushed Gibbs to join a mass migration of African Americans from San Francisco to Victoria, British Columbia in 1858. Once there, they developed businesses and supplied labor during the Cariboo Fields gold rush near the Fraser River. Significant resolution of the discrimination issues occurred in the 1860s due to California and federal legislation, and African Americans’ emancipation at the end of the Civil War in 1865.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDN3TMCIyTHhJXdqxqO0zbRAn30km85b63yM-P-eVjLX-MzGMEBYRCkIdsVhL8IIYV2R_hyp-dnQDYUNI9Y1M1TiFCkELknlPAkoVOievuJsRfkP9QL-Mg7bm8GLJ5xLDXy-ljow/s1600/Cover+of+Proceedings.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="786" data-original-width="473" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDN3TMCIyTHhJXdqxqO0zbRAn30km85b63yM-P-eVjLX-MzGMEBYRCkIdsVhL8IIYV2R_hyp-dnQDYUNI9Y1M1TiFCkELknlPAkoVOievuJsRfkP9QL-Mg7bm8GLJ5xLDXy-ljow/s640/Cover+of+Proceedings.JPG" width="384" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal">
Cover of the <i>Proceedings of the First State Convention of
the Colored Citizens of the State of California </i>held in Sacramento, CA
November 20-22, 1855. At the first statewide Colored Conventions in Sacramento
in 1855 and 1856 (followed by San Francisco in 1857), in addition to other
objectives, black Californians pushed for reform in the court testimony laws
for nonwhites. Education and a black press were also discussed intensely at the
Convention in 1856. In the first two Conventions, Thomas Rix (or Thomas J.
Ricks) was appointed to collect signatures in Los Angeles County.<o:p></o:p></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b><br /></b>
<b>Robert Owens (abt. 1806-1865)</b><br />
<br />
As Gibbs was settling in and exiting San Francisco, Robert Owens and his family were thriving in Los Angeles. Born enslaved in Texas, Robert Owens earned money to purchase his freedom along with that of his wife Winnie, and their three children: Sara Jane, Martha, and Charles P. They migrated to Los Angeles and became residents in 1852-1853. Initially in Los Angeles, Owens worked odd jobs, and Winnie as a laundress. Eventually he won government contacts with the local U.S. Military post to supply cut wood, mules, and cattle that provided resources for him to open a livery stable and cattle sales venture that employed ten vaqueros (cowboys). Owens sold his products to the public on San Pedro Street, near what is today is known as the Little Tokyo neighborhood. He also invested in real estate throughout Southern California.<br />
<br />
The Robert and Winnie Owens home became an early gathering place for religious, social, and business activities of the African American community in Los Angeles. Robert and Charles Owens, the Rowan family of San Bernardino, and white allies facilitated the important emancipation struggle of Bridget “Biddy” Mason (1818-1891) and her family. Fourteen people were freed from enslavement by a January 1856 court case overseen by Judge Benjamin Hayes in Los Angeles, unlike many other enslaved people who attempted to attain freedom through the courts and lost. <br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiS0Xp3HQiepfiVrxatpGhj1n4zcDBpW6G_paXZYF8nNVcFa1ZB3KQi2PtE5P8OR5YsPTDoYUSCq_cVWdSxBwobM7JNCfmZrYTz1xY1kMdI-mWaIpFjTYt4OAXaCVbBWdS8MGxTA/s1600/Robert+Curry+and+fam.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="324" data-original-width="579" height="354" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiS0Xp3HQiepfiVrxatpGhj1n4zcDBpW6G_paXZYF8nNVcFa1ZB3KQi2PtE5P8OR5YsPTDoYUSCq_cVWdSxBwobM7JNCfmZrYTz1xY1kMdI-mWaIpFjTYt4OAXaCVbBWdS8MGxTA/s640/Robert+Curry+and+fam.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Robert Curry Owens
with his wife Ann, and daughters Gladys and Manila L. in a 1905 in the <i>Colored
American</i> magazine. Robert C. Owens was the child of Charles P. Owens and
Ellen Mason Owens (later Huddleston after she remarried following Charles P.’s
death in 1882). The Owens-Mason clan was one of the wealthiest and most
influential African American families in Los Angeles from the 1850s to 1920s</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Charles Owens (d. 1882) and Ellen Mason (b. 1838), the eldest children in their respective families, married shortly after Ellen was freed in August 1856. Their union bore two children, Robert Curry (b. 1858) and Henry L. (b. 1860). Charles saw to it that his wife Ellen and their sons received formal education in the public schools of California with the highly regarded African American leader and educator Jeremiah B. Sanderson in Oakland and Stockton. Charles worked with his father and carried on the family business ventures after Robert Owens died in 1865 at the age of 59. It was noted at the time of the elder Robert Owens’ death that he was respected by all sectors of the multiethnic and mixed race city, and considered the wealthiest African American in Los Angeles. Upon Charles’ death, his wife Ellen and son Robert Curry Owens carried on the family business in conjunction with her mother and his grandmother, Bridget “Biddy” Mason. The family would continue to reap financial gains in the Los Angeles real estate booms, and became one of the wealthiest and most prominent African American families in California and the West into the 1920s, with Robert C. Owens being described as the most influential black man in California and the West. By the early twentieth century, stories of the Owens-Mason clan’s business success and philanthropy had a favorable impact on attracting African American migrants seeking better lives from across the U.S. Despite racism and discriminatory obstacles from 1850 to the twenty-first century, successive members of the Owens-Mason clan have survived, thrived, and shaped Los Angeles, California, and the West to this day.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiDGLizB9nJKLiufUE71mFuLQCTqD8e3brAgwvcSMKfb5jyQ1y7nmSt0C8IGth8jj2irVHTbyV3t8Drdrn97Xi37B2l78qcXd_YjLIU7POOU42Y_sAQ8qNvG6p9JNrHzpyp4BwXQ/s1600/Six_men_stand_ouside_of_the_Magnolia_Saloon_at_New_High_Street_and_Marchessault_Street_Sonora_Town_18851887.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="962" height="446" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiDGLizB9nJKLiufUE71mFuLQCTqD8e3brAgwvcSMKfb5jyQ1y7nmSt0C8IGth8jj2irVHTbyV3t8Drdrn97Xi37B2l78qcXd_YjLIU7POOU42Y_sAQ8qNvG6p9JNrHzpyp4BwXQ/s640/Six_men_stand_ouside_of_the_Magnolia_Saloon_at_New_High_Street_and_Marchessault_Street_Sonora_Town_18851887.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: black;">An early photograph of Los Angeles: Six men stand outside of the Magnolia Saloon at New High Street and Marchessault Street, Sonora Town, 1885-1887</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The stories of Mifflin W. Gibbs and Robert Owens and his clan expand the narrative of California’s early statehood to include the diversity of people who contributed to its development and to American society. Their stories should become part of the collective memory of the nation.<br />
<br />
<b>Bibliography </b><br />
Beasley, Delilah. The Negro Trail Blazers of California. Fairfield, CA: James Stevenson Publisher, Reprinted 2004. <br />
<br />
Bond, J. Max .“The Negro In Los Angeles,. Ph.D. diss University of Southern California, 1936. <br />
<br />
Campbell, Marne L. Making Black Los Angeles: Class, Gender, and Community, 1850-1917. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2016. <br />
<br />
Daniels, Douglas Henry, with forward by Nathan Irvin Huggins. Pioneer Urbanites, A Social and Cultural History of Black San Francisco. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. <br />
<br />
De Graaf, Lawrence B., Kevin Mulroy and Quintard Taylor, ed. Los Angeles/Seattle: Autry Museum of Western Heritage/University of Washington Press, 2001. <br />
<br />
Gibbs, Mifflin Wistar, with an Introduction by Booker T. Washington and an Introduction to the Bison Books Edition by Tom W. Dillard. Shadow & Light, An Autobiography. 1902 edition inscribed by the author; Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, Bison Books Edition, 1995. <br />
<br />
Lapp, Rudolph M. Blacks in Gold Rush California. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977. <br />
<br />
Nash, Gary B. Forging Freedom, The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720-1840. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. <br />
<br />
Taylor, Quintard. In Search of the Racial Frontier, African Americans in the American West, 1528-1990. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1998.<br />
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--</div>
<div>
Written by <a href="http://alisonrosejefferson.com/">Alison Rose Jefferson</a>, MHC, Phd</div>
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California Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287516435203937663noreply@blogger.com0