Railroads Public Programs Preview: 5 Not-to-Miss Exhibition Related Events at CHS

With each new exhibition comes a flurry of public programs designed to help guests dive deeply into the core concepts within them.  Each exhibition provides new opportunities for conversation and interaction between our audiences and our organization, the exhibitions, and each other.  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.

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.

On March 21st, we opened two complimentary exhibitions, Mark Ruwedel: Westward the Course of Empire and Overland to California: Commemorating the Transcontinental Railroad. 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!

Thursday, April 4^th, 6:00PM

Empire’s Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the California Railroad

Professor of American Studies at Barnard University, Manu Karuka, will present on his new book Empire’s Tracks 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. Learn more.

Thursday, April 18, 6:00PM

Chinese and Chinese American Genealogies and the California Railroads

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Wednesday, July 24, 6:00PM

Labor Strikes and Fights and the Transcontinental Railroad

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^th 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.

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. Learn more.

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.

Wednesday, May 15^th, 6:00PM

Exploring the Gilded Age in California and its Reverberations Today

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 Edge of Anarchy). Learn more. 

Thursday, June 27^th, 6:00PM

Women and Their Role on the Rails

On June 27^th, 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. Learn more.

As we move deeper into the summer we will add additional programs, so continue to follow our Society Happenings e-newsletter and check out our online calendar at my.californiahistoricalsociety.org for more information.

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Written by Patty Pforte, Programs & Visitor Experience Manager at CHS. 

The Life of Elaine Black Yoneda, In Her Own Words

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.

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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?

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.

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.” 

Transcript of  Elaine Black Yoneda's oral history, 1978

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.

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.

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. 

The Yoneda family at Manzanar Internment Camp in 1942, credit: TradingCardsNPS 

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. 

Elaine Black Yoneda with “Free the Scottsboro Boys” Activists, 1934

California Historical Society

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:

“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.”

Listen to the full oral history of Elaine Black Yoneda here or visit our North BakerResearch Library to read a transcript of the interview.

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by Katie Peeler, Marketing Associate at California Historical Society

A Night of Tar, Feathers, and Terror: Anti-labor Vigilantism in Sonoma

Each July since 1994, San Francisco has played host to LaborFest, an event established to institutionalize the history and culture of working people in an annual labor cultural, film, and arts festival. As part of this year’s LaborFest, CHS hosted an evening gallery talk entitled A Night of Tar, Feathers, and Terror: Anti-labor Vigilantism in Sonoma.

In the evening of August 21, 1935 a band of vigilantes abducted Sol Nitzberg—a Jewish Sonoma County chicken farmer—along with three other labor organizers. Nitzberg and Silva Green (another organizer) were tarred and feathered and forced by the mob to parade through Santa Rosa. For our event, Barry Nitzberg—grandson of Sol Nitzberg— and historian Ken Kann were present at the CHS galleries to unpack the history of labor organizing in and vigilante terror in Sonoma County, including the 1935 Sebastopol Apple Pickers Strike, the assault on Nitzberg and Green, and the role of ACLU in the subsequent trial.

CHS member Oliver Pollak wrote the following response and event recap in the evening in the San Diego Jewish World:

"Imagine, 1974 was 39 years after the event, and 2018 was 44 years after the book. Who would still be interested 83 years after the event? Well, an over-flow crowd of one hundred fifty people attended, some were sitting on the staircase. These children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and friends of Zionists, Communists, Socialists, the old left, anarchists and some red diaper babies listened intently and then asked questions, some of which recalled the tension between the Rechters (right wing) and Linkers (left wing), echoes of the McCarthy anti-communist inquisition, Israel socialism and Zionism in Israel."

Read more here.

Labor Day in California

Dorothea Lange, Migratory field worker picking cotton in San Joaquin Valley, California, 1938

Courtesy of Library of Congress

As this photograph reminds us, it is the toil of California’s citizens, residents, and migrants that has made our state’s economy the largest in the nation. This Labor Day we celebrate the work of Californians with images of prior Labor Day celebrations, some predictable, others not so.

Labor Day Parade, c. 1919

Courtesy of Coalinga Huron Library District

 

Labor Day Tree-planting Project, 1928

Courtesy of University of California, Davis

© University of California Regents

Downtown Labor Day Parade, 1936

Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library

American Indians Actors on Float in Los Angeles Labor Day Parade, 1937

Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive, UCLA Library

© University of California Regents

Nursery School Children during Labor Day Celebration, Tule Lake War Internment Camp, 1942

Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley

Our Pledge, Labor Day, Sept. 7, 1942

Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley

One-fifth Scale Model of the Air Force Titan III Deep Space Probe Booster, Sun Valley Patriotic Rally, Labor Day, 1963

Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library

200,000 Celebrate Labor Day at Venice Beach, 1982

Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library

Orange County Cruisin’ Association’s Great Labor Day Cruise and Picnic, 1983

Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library

Shelly Kale

Publications and Strategic Projects Manager

skale@calhist.org

An evening with Matt Garcia, author of From the Jaws of Victory

Tuesday, November 13, 2012, 6:00 PM at the California Historical Society, 678 Mission Street, San Francisco

RSVP at http://jawsofvictory.eventbrite.com/.

 

Join us for an evening with author Matt Garcia. His book, From the Jaws of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement is the most comprehensive history ever written on the meteoric rise and precipitous decline of the United Farm Workers, the most successful farm labor union in United States history. Based on little-known sources and one-of-a-kind oral histories with many veterans of the farm worker movement, this book revises much of what we know about the UFW. Matt Garcia’s gripping account of the expansion of the union’s grape boycott reveals how the boycott, which UFW leader Cesar Chavez initially resisted, became the defining feature of the movement and drove the growers to sign labor contracts in 1970. Garcia vividly relates how, as the union expanded and the boycott spread across the United States, Canada, and Europe, Chavez found it more difficult to organize workers and fend off rival unions. Ultimately, the union was a victim of its own success and Chavez’s growing instability.

From the Jaws of Victory delves deeply into Chavez’s attitudes and beliefs, and how they changed over time. Garcia also presents in-depth studies of other leaders in the UFW, including Gilbert Padilla, Marshall Ganz, Dolores Huerta, and Jerry Cohen. He introduces figures such as the co-coordinator of the boycott, Jerry Brown; the undisputed leader of the international boycott, Elaine Elinson; and Harry Kubo, the Japanese American farmer who led a successful campaign against the UFW in the mid-1970s. Copies of From the Jaws of Victory will be available for purchase at the event.