Voices from the Underworld: The Barbary Coast

By Ivy Anderson and Devon Angusrsovon Angus

In Alice: Memoirs of a Barbary Coast Prostitute (winner of the California Historical Society 2015 Book Award), we have brought to light the personal account of a sex worker’s life in Progressive Era California for the first time in over a century.  Alice’s story, which moves through various landscapes of vice across the state of California, reveals much about poverty, crime, and sex, and how people managed these aspects of life in the public sphere in 1913. While citizens around the state argued the benefits and drawbacks of the Red Light Abatement Act, a law that aimed to end the quasi-legal brothel system, which had flourished in California since the days of the Gold Rush, the voices of sex workers themselves were for the most part ignored or manipulated for use in propaganda. By publishing  sex worker Alice Smith’s memoir “A Voice From the Underworld,” and 114 letters written by other self proclaimed sex workers during the summer of 1913, the San Francisco Bulletin newspaper became a platform for society’s pariahs to voice their stance on a question that would significantly impact their lives and livelihoods: what shall we do with the infamous vice districts of California, such as the Barbary Coast? And what shall happen to the women of the vice districts?

Pacific Street, 1913. SAN FRANCISCO HISTORY CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY

The Barbary Coast, which today is the downtown district situated between Chinatown, North Beach, the waterfront and the Financial District, was San Francisco’s primary center for vice by the 1860’s. Named after a notorious stretch of North African coastline famous for piracy,  the Barbary Coast developed a reputation that rivaled any vice district in the United States, and like Storyville in New Orleans or New York’s Bowery, this jumble of gambling halls, brothels, and saloons was tacitly accepted as a necessary aspect of the urban landscape. But in San Francisco, this vice district made up almost the entirety of the urban landscape, which developed in a number of haphazard stages spurred by the immediate influx of money and single men during the gold rush years. Men seeking their fortunes, far from the social constraints of their families, spent freely on gambling and prostitution. Outnumbering women 50 to 1 in the early years of the Gold Rush, men would turn to the prostitutes of the city to fulfill important social roles, and for a few years prostitutes and madams could acquire both money and status, though this varied widely: women of color, especially Chinese and Native American women, faced exploitation in ways that white women simply didn’t. All of this happened throughout the city; gambling and prostitution could be found in almost any corner of San Francisco. This laissez faire approach to morality began to shift as “proper” women began moving in, serving their role as “civilizers” to the rough and tumble shantytown metropolis. During the 1860’s, as families and businessmen began conceiving of San Francisco as a city of global importance, moralizing forces attempted to sequester all gambling, sex, crime, and lascivious entertainment into the the newly segregated district of the Barbary Coast.

Interior of the Moulin Rouge nightclub in the Barbary Coast, 1911. SAN FRANCISCO HISTORY CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY

The development of the Barbary Coast differed from other vice districts in other American cities. In other cities, vice districts were created to deflect the uncontrollable passions of male sexuality away from “proper” women towards the “fallen” women of the brothels and the street corners. According to popular belief, prostitutes were born flawed and irredeemable. They were to be kept in vice districts to serve as safety valves, keeping “proper” women safe from sexual assault. San Francisco, on the other hand, didn’t create a vice district so much as it shrunk the morality of the Gold Rush days into a district: the Barbary Coast. Thus the ‘Coast, as it was nicknamed, was both an unsavory symbol of the lawless days of ‘49 that had been “civilized” by the good people of the city and a center of nostalgia for those romantic and tumultuous early years. This nostalgia seems to live on even in today’s San Francisco; in North Beach alone, a number of new businesses have adopted names and decor reminiscent of that lawless time: the Belle Cora wine bar, for instance, and the Devil’s Acre, named after a particularly notorious stretch of the neighborhood.

Women in the Barbary Coast, 1890's. SAN FRANCISCO HISTORY CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY

During the Progressive Era, major changes in the American political landscape created new ideas about vice and how to manage it. A new concept of prostitution emerged informed especially by idealistic Progressive reformers, eugenicists, feminists, clergy, and journalists and the mass media, and prostitutes were suddenly seen not as a necessary evil, but as either victims in need of rescue or a disease in need of eradication. Supporters of the Red Light Abatement Act argued that dismantling the California’s segregated districts, like the Barbary Coast, would destroy the undesirable industry of prostitution while allowing its denizens an opportunity for a new reformed life. But what we find when we read the letters written by sex workers themselves, their relationship to the Barbary Coast was much more complicated than these reformers could have imagined. While many prostitutes that wrote into the Bulletin sought out assistance, several bristled under the label of “victim,” seeking to keep their own sense of dignity and agency within the confines of their life in the “underworld”. Alice Smith was one of these women. 

The following excerpt is from Alice: Memoirs of a Barbary Coast Prostitute. Having been a freelancer,  a brothel worker, and a madam throughout California, Alice Smith looks at the Barbary Coast through a critical lens:

I’m just going to draw a few pictures of what I saw in the San Francisco segregated district.

Never will I forget my first night in the house. My great memory is of the crowd that kept reeling and surging through the parlor, where we girls sat waiting. It was a morbid mob—boys from the high school, kids in their teens, who were probably office boys, well dressed men, hoboes, old diseased wrecks; failures and fun seekers, clubmen and criminals, the foul-minded young and the foul-minded old, all mixed together in one unhealthy, sickening mass.

Not one in twenty came to stay. Not one in fifteen came even to spend money on drinks. I felt that I had ceased to be just a prostitute, and had become an animal in a menagerie, to be stared at and called foul names.

Most of the men and boys would stand there in the doorway and stare slowly around at each of the girls in turn, with grins on their faces and that beastly look in their eyes that makes you hate all men. And the talk they would use! I was accustomed to hearing cursing and swearing, in a certain amount and degree, but before I had sat in that parlor an hour I heard things said that I had never heard before. When I had learned the filth that dropped from the lips of those men and boys—the boys hurt the worst, to hear mere kids talk that way—I began to understand a little more what prostitution really was. We were the men’s big show; put there by men; kept there for the use of by men, to be used as they chose and talked to as they chose, meant forever to be the satisfaction and the victims of their worst hours. Our business in life was to help men when they were at their lowest. Our trade was not our own; it wasn’t even invented by us; it was created by the men when they had a mind to be lower than animals.

And they were lower than animals. I don’t know whether animals have speech; but if they have, they don’t use it as men do. And animals don’t have prostitution. It took men to achieve that.

The house I was in wasn’t one of the worst in the district. We had a locked front door, and the men and boys had to knock before they could come in. many of the places in the district just have a swinging door, and the crowd that looks the girls over is, of course, just so much worse. I don’t like to picture what it is for the girls in those places.

Ivy Anderson and Devon Angus will be publicly presenting their research on two occasions this week. They will be speaking at UC Berkeley on Thursday, November 17th as a part of the California Studies Department Dinner Series. On Saturday, November 19th they will be leading a free walking tour through San Francisco’s Barbary Coast; this tour is hosted by City Lights Booksellers and Publishers. Both events require RSVPs. For more information on upcoming events, where to purchase the book, and more, visit www.voicesfromtheunderworld.com

For more information, see this new article from the SFGate: 

This Day: November 12, 1936 - Opening of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge

Ted Huggins, Central Anchorage and Towers, San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, August 1934

California Historical Society

Today marks the 80th anniversary of the opening of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge. In celebration, we offer this account about an intrepid photographer and his images of the bridge during its construction (1933–37).

Inspired by the photograph above, the following essay originally appeared as the Spotlight feature in California History (vol. 93, no. 4). The author has further illustrated it to provide a visual sense of time and place in the story of the bridge.

By Shelly Kale

“The Titan of Bridges” is how Popular Mechanics Magazine described the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge in January 1933 as it neared the start of construction. Nearly four years later, at opening ceremonies on November 12, 1936, former president Herbert Hoover, an engineer himself, recognized the new bridge as “the greatest bridge yet constructed in the world.”(1)

Like the Golden Gate Bridge to the north, the Bay Bridge was built in the throes of the Great Depression. Providing work for thousands of laborers, the two gigantic bridge projects connected San Francisco with communities across San Francisco Bay, boosting the economy of the region, unifying it, and preparing it—perhaps prophetically—for the population explosion and transportation needs of the postwar years.

Line-up in front of “The Kitchen,” San Francisco, c. 1930–31

Courtesy San Francisco Chronicle; photo by R. Hass, Jr.

Both bridges faced engineering challenges. With a Depression-era “can-do” spirit and an ingenuity “never before demanded in bridge construction,” bridge designers overcame the obstacles presented by the bay. Addressing water depth, strong tides, fierce winds, and the long span lengths required to connect the city with its northern and eastern neighbors, they actualized a decades-long dream of bridging the bay. (2)

Aerial View of Oakland, California: Oakland Harbor Areas, c. 1930

Courtesy Library of Congress

Approximate Location of Bridge across the Bay, c. 1933

Popular Mechanics Magazine (January 1933) 

Both bridges were, in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s words, “marvels of the century.” At the time of its completion, the Bay Bridge—at 8.4 miles long—was the largest and most expensive steel bridge ever built; the Golden Gate Bridge was heralded as the longest suspension span in the world, at 4,200 feet. (3)

And both bridges were photographed under construction by an amateur photographer who—with innovation and diligence, and at personal risk—chronicled history in the making. A public relations executive at Standard Oil Company of California (or Socal, now Chevron), Theodore (Ted) Huggins (1892–1989) recognized the significance and impact these “symphonies in steel” would have in the Bay Area, across the region, and throughout the state. (4)

A Split Second

From the perspective of this “consummate public relations man,” Huggins’ photographs draw attention not only to the bridges themselves but also to bridge workers. His dizzying array of publicity campaigns and activities to promote Socal appear to be matched only by the dizzying heights from which he photographed. Notes California historian Kevin Starr: “As Ted Huggins’ contemporary, Ansel Adams, another great American photographer, pointed out, a good photographer often had about one-thirteenth of a second to find the image that released the narrative. Ted Huggins had a genius to use that split second to find the story of brave men battling the fog, the wind, the dangers of working at such heights.” (5)

Huggins photographed the bridges from 1933 to 1937, when “the heroic age of American bridge building” was at its peak. His journals record his many bridge outings at all times of day and night and the occasions on which his publicity photographs were published locally and nationally. With a 3A Kodak, a $100 Rollieflex camera, and a $60 infrared Recomar camera, and with company planes at his occasional disposal, Huggins captured all facets of bridge construction, with images ranging from underwater to aerial shots. As his daughter Carol Huggins Trabert recalled, “My father scrambled all over, up and down cables, in construction buckets. . . . He took thousands of pictures.” Huggins was in good company: many renowned photographers of the day aimed their cameras on the bridges, including Peter Stackpole, George Dixon, and Gabriel, Irving, and Raymond Moulin. (6)

Ted Huggins, Construction of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, East from Yerba Buena Island, c. 1934–35

California Historical Society

Ted Huggins, Construction of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, Eastern Span, c. 1934–35

California Historical Society

California Dreaming

Huggins had been a proponent of the Bay Bridge since 1923—“my dream of 10 years ago,” he wrote in 1933 as construction began. He actively pursued civic and public agencies connected with the bridge on behalf of Socal, whose petroleum products were used “for utmost mechanical efficiency” on both bridges. He was committed to the growth and prosperity of the region and was an integral part of planning for its future. He was one of the first—if not the first—to propose the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition. (7)

Ted Huggins, Diary Page, January 6, 1934

Courtesy John C. Harper, Chevron Corporation Archives

In 1934 Huggins wrote with great satisfaction on the progress of the Bay Bridge:

Mar 7. A milestone in the history of the Bay Bridge—that structure that I started to promote just about 11 years ago and which efforts for a 2 or 3 yr period were ridiculed by most people who said “It can’t be done—it’s too big a job.” But today the first steel erection was commenced—on Pier 2 at the outer end of Dock 24. It makes a grand sight from my office window. (8)

The enormity of the bridge’s construction also was not lost on the public. Numerous publications brought the task to a scale a layperson could understand. As one author noted, “The principles involved [in suspension bridge construction] are probably the most difficult to grasp.” Popular Mechanics Magazine explained: “Enough concrete for forty Tribune towers will go into the Bay Bridge”; “For the cables of the bridge enough wire will be used to go around the world three times”; and “The Bay Bridge requires enough steel to build twelve battleships.” Standard Oil Bulletin offered: “Thirty-five full moons would be able to equal the average intensity of the artificial light” on the bridge’s upper deck.” (9)

Cover, San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge: A Technical Description in Ordinary Language

(San Francisco: E. Cromwell Mensch, 1936)

How to Use the New Bridges (Standard Stations, Inc. and Authorized Distributors, c. 1937)

Courtesy John C. Harper, Chevron Corporation Archives

Creativity and Innovation

Primarily known for his images of the Golden Gate Bridge, Huggins “used innovative techniques including experimenting with black and white infrared film to darken the sky,” according to an employee of the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District. “One of those photos made the May 31, 1937 cover of Life magazine. . . . His support team often worked nights and weekends to keep up with the media’s demand for construction photos of the bridge.”10
Writing on February 20, 1934, about that art deco masterpiece, Huggins described one of his photographic adventures:

Clay Bernard of the Golden Gate Bridge District took Frank Vail, Universal News Reel cameraman, and myself to the Marin Tower. First we photographed scenes from the “cage” as we were pulled up midway between the columns almost to the Top of the Tower. After lunch we climbed on a railed platform 10 ft square and were hoisted by the boom on the traveler to a point 30 ft above the Top of the Tower, or elevation 550’. It was a unique, thrilling experience which I recorded on 22 photos. (11)

(Detail) Ted Huggins, Central Anchorage and Towers, San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, August 1934

California Historical Society

Six months later, on August 23, 1934, Huggins made the Bay Bridge photograph that is featured in this essay [detail above]. “With a bridge engineer and another correspondent,” he wrote, “I inspected the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge.”

We took pictures at the Central Anchorage which now has its bottom concrete seal. Then we went to the “stepping-stone” nearest the [Yerba Buena] Island where I took more pictures. East of the Island we stopped at the caisson 1400’ from its shore. It has been sunk deeper than any other in the world, 183 ft. below the surface, I think. Our next stop was at an open excavation pier. . . . We gazed upon workmen spreading concrete about 50 ft below the water-level. Finally we stopped at the end of the key fill and climbed up the bridge’s 1st steel span. (12)

Huggins’ enthusiasm for his bridge work carried into his publicity campaigns and speaking engagements. Just a few years before his retirement from Socal in 1957, he addressed the Lions Club at Lodi, California, on the myriad uses of petroleum. The Lodi News-Sentinel reported on his humorous presentation of a “Magic Barrel” of petrochemical products: “Huggins introduced his show in a manner slightly remindful of Gypsy Rose Lee—only slightly because he is a somewhat baldish male. He stripped off various articles of clothing to demonstrate what can be done by combining crude oil with chemicals, retaining just a few essential garments.” (13)

This inherent flair for theatrics no doubt reflected the creativity and vision that brought the Berkeley native’s images of the bay’s bridges to millions of people.

Ted Huggins (1892–1989) Explores the World in 1934 and in 1977, 1977

“Retire—For Fun and Profit!,” Standard Oiler (February 1977)

Notes
The author thanks John C. Harper, Chevron Corporation historian, for his invaluable assistance and for sharing primary sources from the Chevron Corporation Archives.

1. Tom White, “The Titan of Bridges,” Popular Mechanics Magazine 59, no. 1 (January 1933), 13. Karen Trapenberg Frick, Remaking the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge: A Case of Shadowboxing with Nature (London: Routledge, 2016), 21.
2. “Up Goes the Steelwork!” Standard Oil Bulletin (February 1935), 3–4. E. Cromwell Mensch, San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge: A Technical Description in Ordinary Language (San Francisco: Standard Oil Co. of California, 1936), 3.
3. The American Presidency Project, “Message Opening the Golden Gate Exposition in San Francisco,” February 18, 1939; http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15716, accessed August 6, 2016. 
4. John B. McGloin, “Symphonies in Steel: Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate,” Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco, http://www.sfmuseum.net/hist9/mcgloin.html, accessed August 8, 2016.
5. Collections of Huggins’ bridge images are housed at the California Historical Society in San Francisco and at the Chevron Corporation Archives in San Ramon, California. Chevron Corporation, Picturing a Masterpiece—Ted Huggins and the Golden Gate, YouTube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jgW0KnWUMQ, accessed August 5, 2016.
6. Richard Dillon, Thomas Moulin, and Don DeNevi, High Steel: Building the Bridges across San Francisco Bay (Millbrae, CA: Celestial Arts, 1979), 6, 7. Ted Huggins, 1933 and 1934 diaries, Chevron Corporation Archives. Chevron Corporation, Picturing a Masterpiece. 
7. Huggins, 1933 diary. Standard Oil Company of California, Standard Oil Bulletin (February 1935), 7. John Harper, email exchange, August 10, 2016.
8. Huggins, 1934 diary.
9. Mensch, San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge, 1. White, “The Titan of Bridges,” 13. Standard Oil Company of America, Standard Oil Bulletin (November 1936), 5.
10. Allan G. Smorra, “Ted Huggins’ Split-second Decisions,” blog entry, December 2, 2012, https://ohmsweetohm.me/2012/12/01/ted-huggins-split-second-decisions/, accessed August 7, 2016.
11. Huggins, 1934 diary.
12. Ibid.
13. “Petroleum Uses Told Lions Club,” Lodi News-Sentinel, February 18, 1954.

Shelly Kale is Publications and Strategic Projects Manager at the California Historical Society. Formerly Managing Editor of California History, she has held editorial and administrative positions in academic, museum, educational, electronic, and trade and mass-market publishing.

______________________________________________________________________________

This article originally appeared in Spotlight, a feature of the California History journal (Vol. 93, #4), pp. 67–70, electronic ISSN 2327-1485. © 2016 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Published by the University of California Press in association with the California Historical Society. Conceived by former journal editor and historian Janet Fireman as a last-page photographic feature that itself would evoke a lasting image for the journal’s readers, Spotlight draws from CHS’s vast and diverse collection of California photography and photographic history.

50 Years Ago: Counterculture Riots on the Sunset Strip

1,000 Teenagers Riot on the Sunset Strip, November 13, 1966

Herald-Examiner Collection, Los Angeles Public Library

At over 1.5 miles long, the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles is a landscape of billboards, shops, boutiques, and trendy restaurants, bars, and clubs. And so, it seems, it’s always been. But look back fifty years to 1966 and you will see that the Strip was a hub for the counterculture movement that captivated America’s youth and transformed a society.

As CHS begins the countdown to our commemoration of one of the counterculture’s most memorable events, the Summer of Love, we remember the series of 'riots'—from November 1966 to February 1967—that turned the Sunset Strip from a colorful street scene into a wave of protests.

At the first “happening” on November 12, 1966, just prior to an imposed 10pm curfew for minors, a crowd gathered at Pandora’s Box, a club popular with teenagers, with “bell bottoms, tied dyed shirts, marijuana smoke, and loud rock and roll—it was small and cramped, full of energy that spilled out on to the Strip.”

Interior, Pandora’s Box, 1966

Courtesy Tommy McLoughlin

As explained in the public events brochure for WeHo Arts’ There’s Something Happening Here. . . On the Sunset Strip 1966:

To walk down Sunset Strip in 1966 was to see a sidewalk thronging with groovy guys, Beatle-haired teens, and flower children. Teenagers came to catch a glimpse of their favorite musicians, many of whom lived in Laurel Canyon, in part because of its close proximity to the Sunset Strip clubs.

The Strip Goes Teen, 1966

Courtesy Ugly Things Magazine

Fashion on Sunset Strip, 1966

Courtesy Alison Martino, “Vintage Los Angeles”

Some businesses and residents were unhappy with the traffic and crowds. By late 1966, authorities began imposing a decades-old 10pm curfew law for those under age 18. Seeing this as an infringement on their rights, “Striplings” as they were called invited people to demonstrate at Pandora’s Box. 

Reports vary, but perhaps between 900 and 3,000 demonstrators, including celebrities Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda, erupted in protest. . . . As Cecilia Rasmussen wrote in an August 5, 2007 LA Times article, “the confrontation with police also inspired musician Stephen Stills of Buffalo Springfield to write “For What It’s Worth,” . . . Stills’ song, with its famous line “There’s something happening here” debuted during a short-lived truce on Christmas Day at Pandora’s Box and eventually became an anthem of the protest era.”

Oratory in front of Pandora’s Box, November 15, 1966

Herald-Examiner Collection, Los Angeles Public Library

Youth Being Searched by Police during Crackdown on the Sunset Strip, November 20, 1966

Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA

In front of Pandora’s Box on the Sunset Strip, November 26, 1966

Herald-Examiner Collection, Los Angeles Public Library

As noted above, Buffalo Springfield's song, "For What Its Worth," was written in response to the crackdowns on the Sunset Strip. As noted in this article in Rolling Stone, the song grew to be one of pop music's most covered protest songs. You can hear the familiar song below:

As things quieted down on the Strip in early 1967, Los Angeles established itself as the Southern California haven for Human Be-ins, Love-ins, rock ‘n’ roll, and counterculture communities—particularly in the Laurel, Topanga, and Malibu Canyons. Experimentation and creativity ruled the dynamic L.A. scene. It would not be long before the generation of the Sunset Strip Riots at the dawn of the Summer of Love would stun the world with protests against a far-away and unpopular war.

Shelly Kale
Publications and Strategic Projects Manager
skale@calhist.org

Sources

1. Gordon Alexander oral interview, April 23, 2012, Glendale College, Glendale, CA. In Andrew Ernest Ligeti, Spatial Empowerment and the Los Angeles Counterculture, 1965-1967: The Search for Hallowed Ground in the City of Angeles, Master’s Thesis (December 2012), California State University, Northridge
2. Mike Che, Domenic Priore, There’s Something Happening Here. . . On the Sunset Strip 1966, project brochure, WeHo Arts, October 2016.

Learn more about WeHo Arts Project, There’s Something Happening Here… On The Sunset Strip 1966.

Additional articles reflecting on the 50th Anniversary of the Sunset Strip riots are here:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/11/sunset-strip-riot-hippie-los-angeles
http://www.laweekly.com/music/what-were-the-1966-sunset-strip-riots-really-like-eyewitnesses-look-back-7587386

Learn more about CHS’s 50th Anniversary Summer of Love celebration.

Wearing White: Historic Election Recalls Women’s Suffrage Movement

The Berkeley Independent
BANC MSS C-B 595 Carton 4

As reported in many online media outlets, from the The Today Show to Harper’s Bazaar to Business Insider many women (and some men) voting in the 2016 election today are wearing white. The color is a nod to the women’s suffrage movement, which resulted in ratification of the 19th Amendment (1920) granting women the right to vote. During their lengthy campaign, with origins in the mid-19th century, women wore white. Along with gold and purple, white became one of the official colors of the 1916 National Women’s Party.

Suffragettes on Parade in Downtown Los Angeles, before 1920

Courtesy Los Angeles Public Library

Women won the right to vote in California in 1911. Proposition 4 of 1911 (or Senate Constitutional Amendment No. 8) granted women the right to vote in state elections almost a decade before the 19th Amendment provided women's suffrage throughout the United States. California was the 6th State to do so. You can read more about this at this online exhibition. 

Source: https://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2014/10/06/october-6-1911-as-california-suffrage-vote-nears-activists-remain-positive/

Among the prominent women at the forefront of the suffrage movement in California was Phoebe Apperson Hearst, whose lifetime, 1842–1919, also spans women’s fight for the right to vote. One of California’s and the nation’s most prominent philanthropists, Hearst was the widow of Senator George Hearst, mother of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, and one of the wealthiest women in America. 

A staunch supporter of education for girls and women, she was the first female regent of the University of the California and founder of the University’s Lowie Museum of Anthropology, later renamed the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology. She was a member of the national advisory council of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage and served as vice chairman of the National Woman’s Party. 

In honor of Phoebe Hearst's historic contributions to California, particularly in education, the California Historical Society launched the Phoebe Hearst Educational Fund in 2015 (as part of the Centennial of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, the 1915 World's Fair that Hearst played a critical role in organizing).  You can read more about this effort by clicking HERE.

Phoebe Apperson Hearst (1842–1919), undated California Historical Society

Suffragettes on Parade in Downtown Los Angeles

,

before 1920

Courtesy Los Angeles Public Library

Looking Back: 50 Years Ago, Ronald Reagan Launched Political Career with 11th Commandment

Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty (right) Congratulates Governor-Elect Ronald Reagan, November 9, 1966Courtesy Los Angeles Public Library, Herald-Examiner Collection

2016 is the 50th anniversary of the transformative year of 1966 in California, and since the beginning of the year, this blog has been looking at the different ways events in 1966 changed the Golden State (and nation). We have taken a particular look at two diametric forces that began to reach their apex 50 years ago: the rise of the hippie counterculture, particularly in san Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, and the rise of Ronald Reagan. Our very first post of the year spelled out this historical dichotomy.  

Continuing this focus, today is the exact 50th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's victory in the race to be California Governor, a race that defined Golden State and National politics for decades to come. We asked longtime California political journalist, Steve Swatt, lead author of Game Changers: Twelve Elections that Transformed California (winner of the 2014 CHS book award) to offer his reflections on Reagan's first victory. 

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Looking Back: 50 Years Ago, Ronald Reagan Launched Political Career with 11th Commandment

By Steve Swatt

As Donald Trump – the brash reality star – attracted monster television ratings and brutally ridiculed and carved up sixteen Republican opponents to win his party’s nomination, how many times did we hear, “What would Ronald Reagan think?”  

A half-century ago in his inaugural run for California governor, Reagan had adopted the party’s so called “11^th Commandment,” which said, “Thou shalt not speak ill of any Republican.” The commandment pertained to personal – not policy – attacks and actually was created by state party chairman Gaylord Parkinson after the bitter and divisive 1964 GOP presidential primary campaign between Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater and New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. 

Reagan had dipped his toes into politics by famously delivering a rousing defense of Goldwater and conservatism. In response, he received thousands of letters, many urging him to run for governor, even though party officials had lined up in support of San Francisco mayor George Christopher. “The farthest thing from my mind was running for political office,” Reagan recalled in an oral history conducted by the UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library. “It didn’t look attractive to me at all. I liked my life.”

Reagan, however, agreed to test the waters and interviewed potential campaign specialists. At first, consultants Stu Spencer and Bill Roberts had their doubts. “We wanted to know, is this a right-wing nut or what?” Roberts remembered. In the primary campaign, Reagan vanquished the moderate Christopher by articulating his vision of conservatism and criticizing what he called bloated government and wasteful spending. Christopher later said Reagan had “no depth” but acknowledged he had “an actor’s ability to steal the scene.” 

During the general election, when Gov. Pat Brown – seeking this third term as chief executive – suggested that Reagan was nothing more than an actor regurgitating rehearsed lines that had been written for him, Reagan turned the tables. He insisted that his standard stump speech be shortened and that each speaking engagement include a question-and-answer session. “Someone may think that someone else wrote that short speech,” Reagan said, “but they’ll have to know that nobody could write the answers to those questions.”

Fifty years ago today, Reagan’s million-vote victory over Brown launched him on his presidential trajectory. He’d run for the White House twice (1968, 1976) before enjoying success in 1980. Looking back, Reagan’s campaign style was quaint and decorous by today’s standards. In this season of electile dysfunction -- with a sensory overload of belligerent, bellicose and personal attacks -- we’ve witnessed a sea change in campaign tactics and behavior tailored to twenty-four-hour cable news and Twitter. An anomaly? Or will they now become de rigueur in future campaigns?

Steve Swatt is lead author of Game Changers: Twelve Elections that TransformedCalifornia, winner of the 2014 CHS book award.

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Other posts about 1966:

http://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2016/01/1966-year-that-hanged-california-and.html
http://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-rise-of-ronald-reagan-50-years-ago.html

California: General Election Bellwether?

Bear Voting California

Courtesy All-len-All

As this election season comes to a close, the two major party candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are seldom seen in the Golden State. Since 1992, a general election victory for the Democratic Party has been a foregone conclusion in blue California. And with the exception of two anomalous year (2000 and 2004), since 1980 California has been a bellwether, with the victor in this state mirroring the outcome of the General Election. Prior to that, since 1964, Californians also voted for the winning candidate. Between 1964 and 2016, Californians have predicted the winner 84.6% of the time.

The election of 1964 bears some interesting similarities to the wild, rancorous, and unpredictable election season of 2016. In that year Barry Goldwater was the outlier Republican nominee, with Democratic Party stalwart, incumbent President Lyndon Johnson the Democrat’s choice. As with this year, the views of Republican nominee Goldwater were seen by many to be too extreme to achieve victory. Prior to the convention, which was held at San Francisco’s Cow Palace, the previous Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, initially stumped for a Goldwater alternative, the moderate Sen. William Scranton of Pennsylvania. (This year, of course, the last two Republican presidents have refused to endorse their party’s nominee.) That year also saw a first: Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine became the first woman to have her name placed into nomination at a major party convention. Both would go on to lose to Goldwater at the Republican convention. In the end, Lyndon Johnson trounced Barry Goldwater, winning 486 Electoral College votes to Goldwater’s 52. In California Johnson beat Goldwater 59.1% to 40.8%.

By 1968, however, with Americans weary of civil unrest and the Vietnam War, California voted Republican, helping to hand victory to Richard Nixon over the Democrat, former Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Also in that year, as a backlash to the Civil Rights Movement, American Independent Party candidate and segregationist, Gov. George Wallace of Alabama, received 45 electoral votes, sweeping five southern states.  (Wallace would run again as a Democrat in 1972, but an assassination attempt ended his campaign during the primaries.) In November 1972 Californians again voted for the victor, the incumbent President Richard Nixon who trounced Democrat George McGovern with 520 Electoral College votes to McGovern’s 17.

In this presidential year there is little doubt that California will go blue, with Hillary Clinton the overwhelming favorite of voters. As this turbulent airplane ride of an election arrives at its November 8 destination, the question is: Will California continue to be the oddsmaker’s best friend?

From our archives, a look back at some of the personalities of elections years 1964, 1968, and 1972:

Margaret Chase Smith Airport Arrival, July 12, 1964

Photo by John McBride, San Francisco Chronicle Collection, California Historical Society

Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, George Murphy, and Dwight Eisenhower, July 14, 1964

Photo by Ken McLaughlin, San Francisco Chronicle Collection, California Historical Society

Former President Dwight Eisenhower and Mamie en Route to the Republican National Convention, 1964

San Francisco Chronicle Collection, California Historical Society

Lyndon B. Johnson and Unidentified Man, date unknown

Photo by Del Ankers, San Francisco Chronicle Collection, California Historical Society

Richard Nixon and Cousin Sally Milhous Fase, date unknown

Photo by Art Frisch, San Francisco Chronicle Collection, California Historical Society

Keith Greene and Pat Dever at George Wallace Campaign Headquarters, May 17, 1972

Photo by Joseph J. Rosenthal, San Francisco Chronicle Collection, California Historical Society

 

Senator Eugene McCarthy Speaking at the University of California's Greek Theater in Berkeley, April 4, 1968

Photo by Peter Breinig, San Francisco Chronicle Collection, California Historical Society

Alison Moore

Strategic Initiatives Liaison

amoore@calhist.org

Sources

University of California, Santa Barbara, “The American Presidency Project,”

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/index.php

Boyle Heights: Its current tensions and its history

The national and Los Angeles media (see: Here, Here, Here, Here and Here) is filled today with articles about rising tensions around gentrification in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. According to these reports, the Los Angeles Police Department has opened a hate crime investigation after several new Boyle Heights art galleries have been the targets of vandalism amid anti-gentrification protests. These issues have flared on the East Side of Los Angeles over the past few years, including a significant flare up in Boyle Heights this past Summer (see: Here and Here). 

From Los Angeles Times

The recent focus on ethnic tensions in Boyle Heights around displacement, particularly this week, has obscured some historical facts about the neighborhood, once known as Ellis Island of the West Coast. While the community is now nearly all Latino (anywhere between 90%-95%), just 60 years ago the neighborhood was home to a diverse population of Jews, Latinos, Russians, Portuguese, and Japanese-Americans. And, perhaps just as relevant given today's news, during the 1950s, the community was a hotbed of radical activism, with socialist, communist and anarchist thinkers and labor organizers living there. 

UCLA Exhibition (above)

Part of the history of Boyle Heights will be on display starting tomorrow (Nov. 6) when the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies celebrates its formal renaming and dedication with a pop-up exhibition devoted to the Jewish community of Boyle Heights from the 1920s to the 1950s. Called “From Brooklyn Avenue to Cesar Chavez: Jewish Histories in Multiethnic Boyle Heights," the exhibition will be open at UCLA’s Royce Hall for a short run from Nov. 6-9.

The pop-up exhibition will include a screening of the recent documentary “East LA Interchange” on Nov. 6. This important documentary  follows the evolution of working-class, immigrant Boyle Heights, the oldest neighborhood in East Los Angeles from multi-ethnic to predominately Latino and a center of Mexican-American culture in the U.S. The documentary tells the story of how one this neighborhood managed to survive the construction of the largest and busiest freeway interchange in the nation and explores the shifting face of community in the United States today. You can read reviews (that include good historical overviews of Boyle Heights) of the film here, here, here, and here.  

From EastLA Interchange

Celebrating El Día de los Muertos / The Day of the Dead

Diego Rivera, El día de los muertos: La oferta/The Day of the Dead: The Offering, 1923–24 
Secretaría de Educacíon Pública, Mexico City

Candles. Crucifix. Flowers. Incense. Fruit. Calaveras. These and other elements comprise the ofrenda, or offering—an essential component of Day of the Dead celebrations. Originally a traditional family observance in Mexico, the Day of the Dead is widely celebrated in the United States in both public and private places.

Honoring and welcoming the spirits of the dead, the ofrenda, a ritual altar, is a personal expression of love for those who have died, a feast for the spirits that visit. Both children (November 1) and adults (November 2) are honored. The festivities and rituals of El Día de los Muertos also reflect communal forms of honoring the dead, thus making the act of remembering a collective one.

Diego Rivera’s Ofrenda
In the fresco panel above, the renowned painter and muralist Diego Rivera offers both a conventional and suggestive ofrenda. As the art historian David Craven explained in his book Art and Revolution in Latin America, 1910–1990:

The upper register of his fresco contains an unusual, Indo-Christian cross that is similar to the early sixteenth-century Cruz atrial (Atrial cross) at Acolman . . . . This image attests to the persistence of Native American traditions and the imposition of Hispanic institutions. Precisely because this “dialogical” configuration remains a repository of repressed cultural forms, it has become a stimulus for contemporary Latin American artists seeking to reconstruct their regional identities, thus synthesizing new visual forms with fragments from a splintered past.

Yreina Cervántez’ Ofrenda

Yreina D. Cervántez’ 1989 mural La Ofrenda, painted under a bridge in downtown Los Angeles, embraces this concept of honor and identity. In it, Cervántez—an artist and Chicana activist—pays homage to Dolores Huerta, co-founder with César Chávez of the United Farm Workers of America.

Yreina D. Cervántez, La Ofrenda, 1989 

Courtesy Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC)

The Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC), a collaboration between communities and artists, observed:

The offerings come in form of candles, calla lilies, a god’s eye, and images of the workers for whose rights [Huerta] fought for. On the right side of the piece, open hands display a poem by Gloria Alvarez. The mural is an homage to the strength of Latina women. It brings attention to the hardships of war and immigration, while highlighting the life and hope that endures through these struggles.

In a recent interview, Cervántez recalled the mural’s numerous intents:

Everything in this mural is really a kind of a dedication, an ofrenda, an offering to the community. It speaks about spirit as well and Native American practices in terms of spirituality and how we reclaim that as a form of decolonizing ourselves.
This mural was done in 1989 and it was done to create a kind of bridge of solidarity between the Chicana/Chicano community and the Central American/Latin American community in regards to all of the immigration that was happening because of the wars in Latin America and Central America.

It was also meant to be a homage to of course the struggles of working people here and everywhere and in particular the Farmworkers Union which is why Dolores Huerta is prominent in the mural.

Also it was meant to be an homage to the fact that it is women many times that are at the forefront of creating positive change.

Restored for the first time in 2012, La Ofrenda was continually vandalized over time. By 2015, the CityWide Mural Program’s (CWMP) had added it to its list for conservation with the support of the Department of Cultural Affairs. Instead, the mural was completely covered by another mural. Finally, on July 20, 2016, CWMP led a new restoration effort.

Restoration of Yreina Cervántez’ La Ofrenda, Los Angeles, September 2016
Courtesy of Oscar Castillo

Murales Rebeldes / Contested Murals

The neglect, defacement, destruction, and censorship of murals that promote Hispanic/Latino identity and activism have been troubling and ongoing occurrences in the Los Angeles communities for whom these artworks were created and for the artists who created them.

Destruction of the Filling Up on Ancient Energies (1981) mural by East Los Streetscapers

In Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, May 24, 1988
Courtesy East Los Streetscapers

In September 2017, LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes and the California Historical Society will address the subject of contested murals with the exhibition and related publication ¡Murales Rebeldes!: Contested Chicana/o Public Art, part of the Getty Foundation’s region-wide Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, opening September 2017.

The project features murals by Barbara Carrasco, Yreina Cervántez, Roberto Chávez, Ernesto de la Loza, East Los Streetscapers, Willie Herrón, and Sergio O’Cadiz; photographs by Oscar Castillo; and essays by journalist Gustavo Aurello.

Shelly Kale
Publications and Strategic Projects Manager
skale@calhist.org

Sources

• David Craven, Art and Revolution in Latin America, 1910–1990 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002 and 2006).
• Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC), Iconic LA mural SAVED: “La Ofrenda” by Yreina Cervantez Returns, Sept. 2, 2016; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQxggxE_7mU

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Read more about ¡Murales Rebeldes!: Contested Chicana/o Public Art on the CHS Blog:

• http://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2016/03/murales-rebeldes-contested-chicanao.htm
• http://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2016/10/murales-rebeldes-contested-chicanao.html
• http://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2016/10/giving-voice-through-art-national.html