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Collection: Calisphere - California Digital Library
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- Abstract: Several special fighting forces from the United States, made up of single ethnic groups, made significant contributions during World War II, including the African American Tuskegee Airmen and the Navajo Code Talkers. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team was made up solely of Japanese Americans, some of whom were recruited directly from internment camps. (Some Japanese American men who would later become leaders, such as Senator Daniel Inouye, were members of the 442nd.) The images in this group provide a look at the lives and sacrifices of the men of the 442nd, the most highly decorated American unit in WWII. The photographs in this group were all taken for the government-run War Relocation Authority (WRA) and are meant to portray the proud patriotism of the men and their families. One photo shows three women holding their babies, with photographs of their enlisted husbands. Another is a portrait of an older couple who had five sons in the 442nd. Other photographs reflect the training the soldiers of the 442nd received, their life in the battlefield, and their triumphant homecoming. Other documents in this group show a more personal side of the men of the 442nd. One soldier's photo album depicts his personal experiences as a member of the combat team. A 50-page booklet, The Story of the 442nd Combat Team, compiled by members of the team, has this quote from Franklin D. Roosevelt on the dedication page: "Americanism is a matter of the mind and heart; Americanism is not and never was a matter of race and ancestry." On a more poignant note, oil paintings by Japanese American artist Henry Sugimoto reflect the emotions, pain, and suffering these individuals and their families experienced as a result of the war. In Senninbari (Thousand Stiches), a woman holds a scarf of remembrance as a ghostly Nisei soldier looks down from the sky. And in Send Off Husband at Jerome Camp, an internee family stays behind the camp gates as their soldier father/husband goes off to fight for the United States.
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- Abstract: The government-sponsored Bracero Program was the temporary importation of workers from Mexico to aid the American agricultural economy. This was an important historical event that many Americans are unaware of today. A bracero (from brazo, the Spanish word for arm) was a Mexican worker allowed entry into the United States for a limited time, usually to work on a farm. In 1942, facing an extreme shortage of farm labor workers due to the war, Congress enacted the Emergency Labor Program. It approved the temporary immigration of thousands of Mexican workers to replace the American men who were in the armed services. During the 22 years of the Bracero Program, more than 4 million Mexican workers left their families behind and came to work in the fields of California. This migration had an enormous and lasting impact on the economy and demographics of California. The photograph "Battle for Work" shows hundreds of Mexican workers waiting at the border to be selected for the Bracero Program. The contrast between Mexico and the United States at this time is shown in the photograph of the dusty streets of Mexicali in "Street Scene of Mexicans Awaiting Legal Employment in the United States" and "View from Mexicali Toward the United States." Many Mexican workers were eager to be selected for the Bracero Program. "Battle for Work" shows hundreds of Mexican workers massed at the border, hoping to be chosen. Some of the images in this group show the arrival of the first braceros by train. Some of these photographs were taken by photographer Dorothea Lange as part of a government assignment to document this event.
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- Abstract: The large development projects of the 1930s, designed to serve a growing population, helped shape California in many ways. Most are still integral today. Photographs show the progress of two massive Northern California projects: the Golden Gate Bridge, which links San Francisco and Marin County, and the Bay Bridge, which connects San Francisco with Oakland and the East Bay. The Golden Gate Bridge is one of the most recognized bridges in the world. It is unique not only because of its vermilion orange color: this steel suspension bridge, with a 4,200-foot-long central span and two towers that are 746 feet tall, is the largest ever built. The photographs in this group, taken between 1933 and 1934, show the various phases of construction from different perspectives, looking down, up, and across the span as it was being built. Some photos also show the workers who helped build this famous structure. The Golden Gate Bridge was built under the direction of Joseph Baermann Strauss, an Ohio-born engineer who built more than 400 bridges. The portrait of Strauss also shows the partially built bridge in the background. The Golden Gate Bridge opened to vehicles and pedestrians in 1937. The Bay Bridge construction began in 1933, and the span opened to vehicles in 1936. At 8.25 miles, it is the world?s longest steel bridge. The bridge consists of twin suspension bridges. Many of the photos show workers on catwalks with cables and pulleys, building the bridge. Growing cities also created greater demands for resources, including electrical power. The building of powerhouses like the Pitt River Power House and the Las Plumas Power House near Oroville, shown here, helped to meet this need. Southern California also saw large construction projects. One image in this group shows the San Vicente Dam under construction.A few of these images were taken by Jervie Henry Eastman, who established Eastman's Studio in 1921. His photographs were often turned into picture postcards, such as the one of the oil rigs along Ocean Boulevard in Huntington Beach, in 1935.
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- Abstract: California Cultures documents California's rich history of diversity and multicultural contributions. This collection including photographs, documents, newspaper clippings, political cartoons, works of art, oral histories, and other primary sources draws from Calispheres total content, and also features more than 20,000 specially digitized primary sources from special contributors.
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- Abstract: The 20th century ushered in a change from handcrafting to machine tooling. Henry Ford introduced one of the first moving assembly lines as a way to turn out more cars more quickly, and the emerging auto industry popularized this mode. A photo of the Doble Steam Motors Corporation factory shows a line of workers and car chassis in production. This new technology, and the spread of industrialization, changed forever the way that work was completed. A wide variety of industries all across the country converted to mechanization, and California was no exception. One 1929 image shows young women working in a towel factory in Orange. Photographs taken in San Francisco illustrate that workers used machines to make products as different as Ghirardelli Chocolate and music rolls for automated player pianos. Images also show women working on an assembly line in a soap factory, and men sewing clothes in a shop (at a time when a good suit, cut on machines instead of by hand, retailed for $40 to $50). Automation and mechanization also changed agricultural practices. The combined traction steam harvester built by Stockton J. Barry on his California ranch was one of the machines that changed the way produce was harvested. Mechanized canning changed the way fruit and vegetables were processed and preserved, and made out-of-season produce available year round. Photographs in this group show cannery workers at tables, and cans going through a labeling machine. The introduction of mechanized food processing eventually brought a new awareness of the importance of standards for foods production. The Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act were both passed in 1906. As workers nationwide adjusted to an increasingly mechanized workplace, good working conditions took on new importance. Workers in several industries formed unions (such as the Berryessa Fruit Growers formed in 1920, shown here) to promote safer working conditions and limit maximum working hours.
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- Abstract: Starting with the Gold Rush, Chinese migrated to California and other regions of the United States in search of work. As several photographs show, many Chinese found work in the gold mines and on the railroads. They accepted $32.50 a month to work on the Union Pacific in Wyoming in 1870 for the same job that paid white workers $52 a month. This led to deep resentment by the whites, who felt the Chinese were competing unfairly for jobs. White labor unions blamed the Chinese for lower wages and lack of jobs, and anti-Chinese feelings grew. The cartoon "You Know How It Is Yourself" expresses this sentiment. Several political cartoons in this topic are graphic representations of racism and conflicts between whites and Chinese. "Won't They Remain Here in Spite of the New Constitution?" shows a demonized figure of political corruption protecting Chinese cheap labor, dirty politicians, capital, and financiers. "The Tables Turned" shows Denis Kearney (head of the Workingman's Party of California, a union that had criticized Chinese laborers) in jail, being taunted by Chinese men. In 1880, President Rutherford B. Hayes signed the Chinese Exclusion Treaty, which placed strict limitations on the number of Chinese allowed to enter the United States and the number allowed to become naturalized citizens. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibited immigration from China (The Act was not repealed until 1943). The two-part cartoon from the July-December 1882 issue of The Wasp reflects how some citizens saw the situation. After the Act was passed, anti-Chinese violence increased. One illustration depicts the Rock Springs Massacre of 1885, a Wyoming race riot in which 28 Chinese were killed by British and Swedish miners. The "Certificate of Residence" document illustrates that Chinese individuals were required to prove their residence in the United States prior to the passage of the Exclusion Act. The poster offering a reward for Wong Yuk, a Chinese man, makes it clear that the United States was actively deporting Chinese. Despite discrimination and prejudice, this first wave of immigrants established thriving communities. Photographs taken in San Francisco's Chinatown show prosperous businesses, such as the "Chinese Butcher and Grocery Shop." Wealthy merchants formed active business associations, represented by the image "Officers of the Chinese Six Companies." The Chinese celebrated their heritage by holding cultural festivals, as shown in the photograph from 1896. The photographs "Children of High Class," "Golden Gate Park," and "Chinese Passengers on Ferry" are evidence that some Chinese adopted Western-style clothing while others wore more traditional attire.
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- Abstract: In 1948, President Harry Truman took an early step towards civil rights reform by issuing Executive Order 9981, which eliminated racial segregation in the military. After World War II, African Americans ? then often called Negroes or "coloreds," began to mobilize against discrimination. They demanded an end to segregation and fought for equality in education, housing, and employment opportunities. The images in this topic show that by the 1960s, their struggle ? which began in the segregated South ? had reached California. As a number of photographs in this topic show, many Californians showed their support for Civil Rights activists and victims of racial discrimination in the South by holding marches, rallies, and demonstrations urging equality for African Americans. In one image three white children in San Francisco hold a sign in support of the four young black girls killed in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Photographs also show people in San Francisco boycotting Kress and Woolworth's department stores, sites of racial discrimination in the South. Documents shown here include a flyer urging the boycott of the stores; and a Western Union telegram sent in 1963, stating that Civil Rights activists Roy Wilkins and Medgar Evers were arrested attempting to picket Woolworth's in Jackson, Mississippi. Two photographs of memorials for slain civil rights leaders ? a march in honor Medgar Evers in 1963, in Los Angeles, and a memorial in the San Francisco Bay Area for Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968 ? show racially mixed crowds in attendance. But not all Californians sympathized with the Civil Rights movement. Images of racial hatred and prejudice are reflected in the photograph of an African American woman holding a rock that had been thrown through an office window, and Klu Klux Klan graffiti spray-painted on a home. Various groups formed to fight in the struggle for equal rights. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), formed in 1909, entered a new phase during this period, leading in the organized struggle for civil rights. An example of how the NAACP communicated about events is reflected in a letter from the Alameda County branch of the NAACP on June 13, 1950, which reported segregation on the Southern Pacific Railroad trains leaving Los Angeles. A flyer promoting the boycott of California grapes exemplifies NAACP support for other rights movements, in this case the United Farm Workers. Other flyers urged Californians to fight sharecropper wages and "Keep Mississippi Out of California." Groups such as the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and student groups also protested segregation and incidents of racial discrimination in the South. Several important African American leaders ? including Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Thurgood Marshall, and Ralph Abernathy ? all came to California, as documented by photographs included here. Sometimes, the price of fighting for social justice was high. Two images capture events held for leaders in the social justice movement who were assassinated: the 1963 memorial march in Los Angeles for civil rights leader Medgar Evers; and a crowd attending a Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Rally in honor of the slain civil rights leader.
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- Abstract: The people who came to California in search of gold were faced with the threat of disaster in every step of their journey. Many came by ship, even though shipwrecks were commonplace ? one set of lithographs depicts four shipwrecks that occurred within 60 days. Earthquakes were another fact of life in California. Sensational newspaper illustrations like "Earth Quakey Times," and photographs showing buildings in shambles, helped build the state's reputation as an "earthquake capital." Earthquakes were not the only disasters. Several images show the city of Sacramento flooded and on fire, others show fires that destroyed parts of San Francisco and other cities. As the photograph of the firefighters at the Eureka firehouse show, some services were in place to deal with this constant threat. The popular culture of the time reflected these recurring disasters. Artists drew pictures based on survivors? accounts of train crashes and shipwrecks. Composers wrote music such as the "Flood Mazurka," about a flood in Sacramento, and songs such as "I Do Not Want to Be Drowned," dedicated to survivors of the shipwreck of the Golden Gate. Despite the many potential dangers and risks of traveling to and living in California, new people kept flowing into the state. In many ways, this situation still holds true today.
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- Abstract: The Gold Rush had a tremendous impact on the population and culture of California. Before the Gold Rush, the population consisted mainly of Native Californians and Californios (settlers and landowners of mixed Spanish, Native Californian, and African descent). But gold fever brought people to California from all over the country and world. The Anglo Americans (of English, Irish, or Scots descent), other Europeans (including Italians, Russians, and others), Chinese, Asians, African Americans, and many more who came and stayed changed the ethnic makeup of the state's population. Some images show different ethnic groups working and living side by side: in a saloon, a horse market, and along a riverbank mining for gold. The drawing entitled "A Road Scene in California" depicts social changes ? European American miners drive a wagon, and a group of Native Americans leaves the mining area as Chinese miners enter it. Daguerreotypes show a group of Chinese and European American pioneers panning for gold; and African Americans working alongside European American pioneers at the mines. The Modoc War (1872-73) was a result of the conflict between the interests of the European American pioneers and Native Californians. Photographs of various tribes, some taken by noted photographer Eadweard Muybridge, give a glimpse of how they lived. Three-dimensional stereoscopic views offered people outside of California a glimpse of the West. Stereo views in this topic include portraits of Native Americans and Chinese workers.
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- Abstract: In 1931, a severe drought hit the Southern and Midwestern plains. As crops died and winds picked up, dust storms began. As the "Dust Bowl" photograph shows, crops literally blew away in "black blizzards" as years of poor farming practices and over-cultivation combined with the lack of rain. By 1934, 75% of the United States was severely affected by this terrible drought.The one-two punch of economic depression and bad weather put many farmers out of business. In the early 1930s, thousands of Dust Bowl refugees ? mainly from Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Kansas, and New Mexico ? packed up their families and migrated west, hoping to find work. Entire families migrated together (such as the men shown in "Three generations of Texans now Drought Refugees") in search of a better life. Images such as "Midcontinent ? Family Standing on the Road with Car," "Drought Refugees," and "Untitled, ca. 1935 (Worn-Down Family in Front of Tent)" offer a glimpse into their experience on the road, and show that cars provided many families both transportation and shelter on the road. About 200,000 of the migrants headed for California. The state needed to figure out how to absorb the thousands of destitute people crossing its borders daily. One of their tactics was to document the plight of the refugees. In 1935, photographer Dorothea Lange joined the Rural Rehabilitation Division of the California State Emergency Relief Administration (SERA), a section of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. She was assigned the job of using her camera to document the growing number of homeless Dust Bowl refugees migrating to California. She worked with Paul S. Taylor, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who was researching conditions of rural poverty in order to make recommendations on how to improve the workers' conditions. The work by Taylor and Lange played an important role in helping to raise public awareness of the crisis. The reports they made for the government included both data and striking images that revealed the desperate conditions in which the migrants lived and confirmed the need for government intervention. Stark images such as "Home of Oklahoma Drought Refugees" resonated with the public, and portraits of drought refugees like "Ruby from Arkansas" and others shown in this topic humanized the migrants for more fortunate citizens. In March 1936, Lange took what became one of her most famous images, "Migrant Mother." This image of a 32-year-old woman became an icon for the suffering of ordinary people during Great Depression.
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- Abstract: The modern advertising industry really began in the early 1900s. These early advertising images show how companies approached the business of selling products, places, and ideas in the early 20th century.
Overview
The promotion of products, particularly national brands, began to become more prevalent in the early 1900s. Some categories of advertising shown in this group of images are still with us today: cars, cigarettes, and products aimed at homemakers. In California, car dealers and garages used advertising to promote products and services early on. One photograph shows the Lush Garage in Orange promoting Goodrich Tires as the "Best in the Long Run." In 1936, a photographic postcard for the Chevrolet Garage in Pomona offered 12 lube jobs for $6 in time payments. And as another image illustrates, one still-recognizable brand, Schlitz Beer, got on the advertising bandwagon early at an automobile race in 1908.
Photographs of displays from the Westwood Hardware and Furniture Store in 1936 advertise kitchen stoves and camps stoves from Coleman; and Dr. West's toothbrushes, with bristles that "will not get soggy." A 1929 photo shows a baker and two women in costume advertising Piping Pan Cakery Compound in San Diego.
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- Abstract: The Gold Rush, positive for California in so many ways, had a devastating effect on the state's environment. Many of these problems were directly related to gold-mining technology. The process of hydraulic mining, which became popular in the 1850s, caused irreparable environmental destruction. Two images show California's largest hydraulic mine ? Malakoff Diggings, in Nevada County ? in action. (Malakoff Diggings is now a state park and open to visitors.) Dams (such as the English Dam in Nevada County, shown in one photograph), which were constructed to help supply water to the mines during the dry summer months, changed the course of rivers. The sediment washed away by hydraulic mining clogged riverbeds and lakes, threatening agriculture throughout the Central Valley. Conflicts over water arose between mining and farming interests. Hydraulic mining essentially came to an end in 1884 with the Sawyer Decision, legislation passed to resolve this conflict. The mining industry also needed a great deal of wood, both to fuel the boilers at the mines and to build extensive canal systems. This demand for lumber helped create the logging industry. California's forests had plenty of trees to log, many quite large. The lithograph "The Stump and Trunk of the Mammoth Tree of Calaveras" depicts a society ball at which 32 people danced on the stump of a giant sequoia tree. Photographer Carleton E. Watkins was well known for his images of the grand views of the West. He was the first to capture Yosemite on film, and helped shape how people throughout the country and the world viewed California. He took many of the broad landscape photos in this group. Watkins also made use of the new technology of the day to create stereoscopic views, including the image of the Malakoff Diggings. There are also several Daguerreotypes in this topic. They include a portrait of John A. Sutter (at whose mill gold was first discovered); miners at work; miners with equipment; and general scenes of mining operations.
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- Abstract: The images in this group offer a glimpse of daily life in California during the mid-1800s in big cities like San Francisco and in smaller, rural towns like Dixon and Nevada City. These photographs show some of the everyday people of the time, as well as the shops, saloons, and other establishments that served them.
Many people who came to California to strike it rich eventually abandoned their dreams of gold. They stayed in California and worked as farmers or merchants, relaxing in saloons or coffee houses and marrying and raising families. This group contains several portraits captured in Daguerreotypes and cased photographs that depict a variety of everyday people: a young Gold Rush widow in black mourning attire; a gold seeker with a pick axe, a pan, and a gun; and a farmer and wagon maker (who founded the town of Dixon in 1852), alongside images of his two children.
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- Abstract: The Free Speech Movement (FSM) was a college campus phenomenon inspired first by the struggle for civil rights and later fueled by opposition to the Vietnam War. The Free Speech Movement began in 1964, when students at the University of California, Berkeley protested a ban on on-campus political activities. The protest was led by several students, who also demanded their right to free speech and academic freedom. The FSM sparked an unprecedented wave of student activism and involvement. Many images in this group make it clear that the center of the activity on the UC Berkeley campus was in Sproul Plaza. One photograph shows students occupying the balconies of Sproul Hall, a campus administration building, holding FSM banners and an American flag. Another photograph shows student leader Mario Savio leading a group of students through Sather Gate toward a meeting of the UC Regents. In defiance of the ban on on-campus political activities, graduate student Jack Weinberg set up a table with political information and was arrested. But a group of approximately 3,000 students surrounded the police car in which he was held, preventing it from moving for 36 hours. Photographs show Weinberg in the car, both Mario Savio and Jack Weinberg on top of the surrounded car speaking to the crowd, and the car encircled by protesters and police. Other photographs that portray key people and events of the Free Speech Movement include the eight students (including Mario Savio) suspended for operating a table on campus without a permit and raising money for unauthorized purposes; Mario Savio speaking to a crowd; students signing a pledge; and students sleeping on the steps of Sproul Plaza. Photographs of students being arrested, holding a mass sit-in, and picketing in support of the student-faculty strike as they protest demonstrators' arrests reflect other aspects of the Free Speech Movement. Singer Joan Baez supported the FSM, and a photograph shows her singing to the demonstrators. Bettina Aptheker, who later became a professor of Feminist Studies at UC Santa Cruz, also supported the FSM. A photograph shows her speaking in front of Sproul Hall. Other photographs in this topic demonstrate that groups such as Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the International Workers of the World (IWW) showed solidarity and supported the FSM. Other images in this group include UC President Clark Kerr speaking at the UC Berkeley Greek Theater, and CORE co-founder James Farmer at a CORE rally.
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- Abstract: People from around the world continued to come to California in the early 1900s, many in search of work and a better life.
These images reflect some of the diverse ethnic groups that came to the West Coast from locations around the globe. They also illustrate some of the challenges they faced in assimilating into California society.
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- Abstract: Cities up and down the state of California grew rapidly during the Gold Rush era. Some of these cities were veritable boomtowns: San Francisco, a small village in 1847, was a bustling city by 1849, just two years later. San Francisco's population boom even had an impact on its geography. One image from 1847 shows Montgomery Street on the waterfront; but a photograph taken in 1862 shows that the waterfront had been filled to increase the city's real estate, pushing Montgomery Street inland. Southern California also had its share of rapidly growing cities. Between 1850 and 1870, a span of just 20 years, the population of Los Angeles County grew from 3,530 and 15,309. Lithographs show a bird's eye view of the city and outlying farmland, a vastly different city than the Los Angeles of today. Two photographs of substantial buildings taken in Anaheim in the 1880s ? one of a hotel ? show clear evidence of growth.The cities continued to grow because more and more people migrated to California, despite the long and difficult journey. Many transportation businesses encouraged travel to California, and posters advertising travel fares reflected the different ways that people could travel to and within the Golden State: by ship, by train, or in a horse-drawn stagecoach. Some ads even played to travelers' fears, suggesting that crossing by land was safer than by sea.
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- Abstract: The US stock market crash of 1929 set off the most severe economic depression in the Western world. The so-called Great Depression lasted more than a decade, until approximately 1941. In the United States, the general atmosphere was one of desolation, as expressed in the Dorothea Lange photograph "Thirteen Million Unemployed Fill the City in the Early Thirties," which shows men leaning against a wall in San Francisco. Many photographs in this topic were taken by Lange, one of the primary chroniclers of the Great Depression. Lange had been taking portraits of wealthy individuals in her studio, but she felt compelled to go out on the streets and take photographs of everyday people. In 1933, she marked the start of her documentary career what she called her "first street image": "White Angel Bread Line," a photograph of a man waiting for food at a soup kitchen run by a San Francisco widow. The images in this group reflect the lives of average citizens struggling to get by. Photographs show unemployed men waiting in long lines. One Lange photo shows a man sleeping in a parking lot. Rural areas were also hard hit. As several of these images show, some people lived in "Hoovervilles" ? temporary towns of makeshift housing that got their name from President Herbert Hoover, who was blamed for the problems that led to the Depression. The image captions written at the time (such as "Not much room in this one room shack, but it?s shelter from a trying winter" and "These Hooverville children are ashamed of their home ? can you blame them?") express the conditions that people endured and reveal the way people felt.
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- Abstract: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (photographed in 1935 with his wife, Eleanor) created the New Deal as a solution for bringing the United States out of the Great Depression. The New Deal created a new role for the federal government, one that involved infusing money into the economy largely through the creation of new jobs and social programs. One photograph shows Roosevelt signing the Social Security Act of 1935, which was designed to keep citizens from becoming destitute. The New Deal also created the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which funded artists to create public art projects and others to complete a wide variety of work projects, such as the construction of roads, trails, theaters, and public buildings. Several images show the wide variety of work that the WPA helped fund: an artist painting a mural, a man tending a butterfly collection in the Natural History Museum, and people clipping articles. Not everyone supported the government's new, expanded role. The image of men holding a banner that reads "Against Roosevelt's New Deal" was taken at a Communist demonstration in San Diego in 1933. Still others created their own solution to the Depression's hard times by forming cooperative organizations. The aim of the co-op movement was for people to work together and share the proceeds of their labors. In the early years of the Depression in California, many sorts of self-help cooperatives were formed by individuals (often called "cooperators"). The images in this group show cooperative pie-making, sewing and quilting ventures, and a cooperative barber shop, art studio, construction enterprises, and cannery.
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- Abstract: After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which established 10 internment camps for "national security" purposes. Although most internment camps were along the West Coast, others could be found in Wyoming and Colorado, and as far east as Arkansas. One photo shows Japanese American boys in San Francisco shortly before the evacuation order; another shows a woman waiting for the evacuation bus in Hayward; approximately 660 people being evacuated by bus from San Francisco on the first day of the program; and an aerial image of people sitting on their belongings, waiting to be taken to Manzanar. The government-sponsored War Relocation Authority (WRA) hired Dorothea Lange and other photographers to take pictures of the relocation and internment of Japanese Americans. Lange?s photographs, some of which were suppressed by the WRA and only released later, often capture the irony inherent in the situation. Although internees were allowed to take only what they could carry with them to the camps, one Lange photo juxtaposes a bus poster "Such a load off my mind ? Bekins stored my things" next to a pile of internees' belongings. Another striking Lange image shows a Japanese American-owned corner store with a large "I am an American" banner hanging beneath a "Sold" sign. Another photograph of an engine's distributor, removed from a car owned by an internee, showed that people were truly prisoners at the camp, unable to drive their own cars away. Several paintings by interned Japanese American artists Henry Sugimoto and Hisako Hibi reflect their emotional experiences and give viewers a sense of what life was like for them. The paintings express the pain, suffering, and anger of those subjected to internment. Over 100,000 Japanese American men, women, and children were relocated and detained at these camps. Photographs here show people of all ages, including a grandfather and grandchild, and young children. This internment is now recognized as a violation of their human and civil rights. In 1980, the US government officially apologized and reparations were paid to survivors.
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- Abstract: On December 7, 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. The next day, the United States and Britain declared war on Japan. Two months later, on February 19, 1942, the lives of thousands of Japanese Americans were dramatically changed when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. This order led to the assembly and evacuation and relocation of nearly 122,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry on the west coast of the United States.
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