Home | California History Section | Discoveries in the Stacks

When you spend most of your days surrounded by primary sources like we in the California History Section do, you’re bound to stumble across documents that cast the history you thought you knew in a different light — primary sources that that make you think, images that make you laugh, and much more. We want to share those moments and those documents with you. In keeping with how we make these discoveries, these posts follow no schedule or particular theme; they are just some of our recently rediscovered things!

Armorial Bookplate

Posted December 2024

In addition to the bountiful materials on the history of California and the many people who have called this land home, the California History Section is also home to Special Collections, which includes a small corpus of rare books unrelated to our eponymous section. Within this curious collection is a small, unassuming book whose re-backed spine veils the antiquity of the item itself. However, venturing past the modest coverings of Les arts de l’homme d’épée, the first thing you’ll find on the inside cover is a rather impressive looking armorial bookplate.

The bookplate features a heraldic achievement — that is the full depiction of heraldic elements. In this case those elements include: the central coat of arms on the escutcheon (shield), supporters (usually animals) on either side of the escutcheon, helmet (or helm), decorative mantling on either side of the helmet, crown atop the helmet, crest also atop the helmet, motto below the escutcheon, and order circling the escutcheon.

The coat of arms in the achievement on our bookplate is quartered with the 1st and 4th quarters bearing the arms of Hamilton: Gules, three cinquefoils ermine, and 2nd and 3rd quarters those of Arran: Argent, a lymphad (ship) Sable, sails furled Proper, flagged Gules. Surrounding the escutcheon is the motto of the order of the thistle “nemo me impune lacessit,” which translates to “no one attacks me with impunity.” Below the arms and order the simple motto “Through” is written on a decorative scroll. On either side of the arms and order are two antelopes with ducal crowns around their necks and chains attached to their ducal collars. Nestled atop the escutcheon is another ducal crown from which emanates an open helmet looking to the left of the bookplate, indicating the achievement belonged to a member of the Peerage, though the ducal crowns certainly already gave that away. Finally, the crest grows out from the helm in the form of an oak tree bearing acorns with a saw cutting across the center of its trunk.

Who knew a simple design could contain so much information! Starting at the Coat of Arms, we see the traditional emblems for Hamilton (flowers) and Arran (ship), the Dukes of Hamilton also bearing the title of Earl of Arran since 1503. Likewise, the motto “through” belongs to the Scottish clan Hamilton. Originally Lairds of Cadzow in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, the Hamiltons became Lords of Parliament in 1445. They were created Earls of Arran in 1503 as thanks for helping arrange King James IV’s marriage to Princess Margaret of England. In 1599 the Hamilton title changed from Lord to Marquess, and in 1643 it was again changed to Duke. This upgraded status is evidenced in the largest ducal crown nestled atop the coat of arms. There are also three other ducal crowns in the achievement: two collaring the antelope supporters and another crowning the helm. From that helm springs the oak tree and frame saw crest of, unsurprisingly, the Hamilton clan. The only aspect of the achievement left to decipher is the additional motto that encircles the coat of arms. “Nemo me impune lacessit” is the national motto of Scotland, part of the Scottish Royal Arms, and, because of the association with Scotland, was chosen as the motto of the Order of the Thistle, a Scottish chivalric order founded by King James VII of Scotland in 1687. Among the founding knights of that order is James Hamilton, 4th Duke of Hamilton.

Equally important to the information present is what this achievement is lacking — notably a second helm with a second crest, this time a Salamander in flames. This helm would have been added to the Hamilton Achievement in 1711 when the aforementioned 4th Duke of Hamilton was created Duke of Brandon. Also absent are the arms of Douglas — a crowned heart under three silver stars on a blue strip. These were quartered to the Hamilton Arms by the 3rd Duke of Hamilton, a younger son of the Marquess of Douglas who married Anne Hamilton, 3rd Duchess of Hamilton in her own right. After the marriage he took her name, changing his from Douglas to Douglas-Hamilton, incorporated her arms into his own, and on Anne’s petition in 1660 he received the title Duke of Hamilton.

The absence of Douglas arms did not deter Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks (1826-1897), from identifying the bookplate as belonging to our friend James Hamilton, 4th Duke of Hamilton.^[1] Franks was a British antiquarian who began his career in museology in 1851 at the British Museum, eventually serving as the Museum’s first Keeper of British and Medieval Antiquities and Ethnography from 1866-1896. Among the many donations he made to the museum is a series of 50,000 bookplates that he meticulously catalogued. One of these bookplates (1897,1231.*551, identical to 1897,1231.13417) is included in the database Book Owners Online with the added description: “The bookplate is identifiable as that of the 4th Duke of Hamilton and datable to 1698–1710: Hamilton and Douglas arms before his creation as Duke of Brandon (1711); shows his Order of the Thistle (1688) and ducal coronet (1698).”^[2]

There you have it! Tucked away on a quiet shelf in an unassuming building in Sacramento, there sits a little 17th-century guidebook on chivalry and warfare that once belonged to a Scottish Duke.

Bibliography

Book Owners Online. James HAMILTON, 4th Duke of Hamilton, 1658-1712. 03 November 2021. 06 August 2024.

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[1] There have been many Dukes of Hamilton named James, so including their order is imperative in keeping them straight.

[2] (Book Owners Online)

La Gente: Chicana/o/x Community Self-Determination

Posted September 2024

In the California History stacks, along with many historical texts, ephemera and photographs, you’ll also find works from contemporary Californians who reflect upon the state’s history. Dr. Lorena Márquez is one such example. Dr. Márquez is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Chicana/o/x Studies at University of California, Davis and the Director of the Sacramento Movimiento Chicano and Mexican American Education Oral History Project.

Our collection holds Dr. Márquez’s first book, La Gente: Struggles for Empowerment and Community Self-Determination in Sacramento (2020). Márquez’s meticulous research analyzes the Chicana/o movement of the 1960s and 1970s from a compelling, on-the-ground perspective. While acknowledging the importance of the leaders and organizations behind the political and social movement on both the national and state level, the author delves into the people and communities — the “everyday folk” — that defined and drove change in and around Sacramento.  

I define la gente as working-class folks, males and females, U.S. born and foreign born, documented and undocumented – whose lives were largely governed and anchored in work and the protection of their families. Indeed, the everyday work of reproducing a viable and enriched life required that they focus on earning a living rather than fully partaking in a social movement.

So how did la gente establish their civil rights and engage in their own meaningful acts of resistance towards the discrimination they faced in their daily lives? In the chapters of her book, Márquez breaks down the factions of the Sacramento-area movement into four categories of analysis: politics, identity, gender, and community. The narrative weaves together stories throughout California’s Sacramento Valley history: from how the Mexicano community was defined during the conquest of their land and socioeconomic standing in the 1840s through the 21st century, when local Chicana/o and Native American groups formed a coalition to establish their own community college called Deganawidah-Quetzalcoatl University (D-QU).  In between those eras more stories of people who have been marginalized describe experiences in challenging desegregation, resistance through labor organization, and cross-ethnic activism.

All the while, la gente will continue to do what they have done for centuries: they will continue to resist and strive to build a better tomorrow for themselves, their families, and their communities as best they can under often hostile and violent racist conditions.

Queen Calafia: Depictions through Art

Posted June 2024

califia’s song

my heart does not sing songs
of hate, fear, or regret

for my name will be braided
into the lightening of time

califia, daughter
of seafaring Mandinka

queen of amazon defenders
tamer of wild beasts

i have ridden the backs of griffins
to come to these rocks

where clothed in sea crystals
draped in gold and in the evening’s wind

i savor freedom’s harvest

devorah major (2020)

Among our most recent acquisitions of works by California Authors, we received a collection of poetry called califia’s daughter by devorah major, San Francisco’s third Poet Laureate. There’s a mythic quality to her poems as the author explores her ancestry and the divine and writes about her experience as a daughter of California, a daughter of Calafia (also spelled Califia). And who is this Calafia? Not only is she the namesake of major’s book, but Calafia is also the namesake of California.

The legend of Calafia, a Black queen who ruled a mythical island of women with an army of gilded griffins, was popularized by Spanish author Garcia Rodríguez de Montalvo in his chivalric romance Las Sergas de Esplandián (1510). In this story, Queen Calafia joins the fight with a Muslim warrior against the Christian armies of Constantinople led by the knight Esplandián, whose adventures form the subject of this novel. She is ultimately defeated and converts to Christianity, bringing her new faith back to the island of California. Cord J. Whitaker of Wellesley College, who studies medieval notions of race and their legacy, explains in an Atlas Obscura article that the story of someone who is dark-skinned and Muslim or pagan being defeated by Christian forces was a common trope in the genre of Crusades or Chivalric Romance. Myths and stories like this helped to advance colonial narratives and ideals during this time. Some scholars believe it is highly likely that Montalvo’s novel was at the forefront of Hernán Cortés’s mind when he named the land California in the 1530s.

Fast forward almost 400 years later and we see other ways, specifically through art, that this myth inspired murals on California’s history:

• The first is at Mark Hopkins San Francisco hotel, painted in 1926 by Maynard Dixon and Frank Van Sloun. It’s one of nine panels displaying images of early California. Both artists had a love for mythology and wanted to incorporate it in the mural. Considered by some to be one of the first depictions of Queen Calafia and the origins of California, the mural shows Queen Calafia standing tall with her warriors by her side and a gold leaf sky behind her.
• Calafia is also seen in Diego Rivera’s The Allegory of California created in 1931. In this version, she is shown with much lighter skin because Diego modeled her after a white woman, Olympic gold medalist Helen Wills. And here she is surrounded not by her female warriors, but by men.
• One last piece created around this time was the California’s Name mural now located at the California Capitol, painted by Lucile Lloyd in 1937. In it, Queen Calafia is depicted as a Mayan warrior surrounded by historic figures from the colonial era.  

Today, some of the different groups of people that make up this state are separating Queen Calafia from Montalvo’s retelling and these early depictions, as they do a re-envisioning of their own. The myth is calling to many modern-day Californians in a way that was not originally intended. In her article for Ms. Magazine on re-appropriating Calafia, Abeni Moreno writes: 

Queen Calafia is a representation of all California women, women of color and women of the LGBTQ community. By recognizing and valuing the original aspects of Calafia’s character: intelligent, thick-bodied, lesbian, biracial, a leader, strong and beautiful, her re-appropriation can reverse the colonized gaze of Montalvo. As a result, Calafia becomes a positive image of women, and we reclaim her as the mother of California.

More recent artworks seek to re-appropriate, re-envision, and re-invigorate how Calafia is represented in artwork. In the past two decades, there have also been exhibits at the State Capital Museum including the aforementioned Lloyd mural; Los Angeles Central Library; and the San Francisco African American Historical and Cultural Society. The latter is where our Poet Laureate, devorah major, first learned about Calafia. And more recently, in October 2021, a theatrical event held in Sausalito with local actors  showed Queen Calafia returning to California.

All of these works of art seek to honor Queen Calafia and her part in the origin story of our state. In fact, major was not the first to name her poetry collection after her. In the California History collection, we also have an anthology of poetry from 1979 called Calafia: The California Poetry with noted author Ishmael Reed as the Project Editor. In his preface, he states that the anthology “attempts to bring together the poetry of different California cultures under one roof” (xiii). This mirrors what we see today with the different cultures and people who make up California seeking to reclaim Queen Calafia as their own.

Both of these poetry collections, califia’s daughter and Calafia: The California Poetry, are circulating and can be checked out directly from us if you’re a state employee or via InterLibrary Loan at your local public library.

To hear more about devorah major’s work, register for our virtual event Words of Liberation: The Exploration of Blackness through Poetry where devorah major will be our guest speaker alongside Robin Coste Lewis and Dr. Kim McMillon.

To read more about if Queen Calafia was based on a real woman, check out this LA Times opinion piece from March 2024 connecting her to Moroccan queen and privateer Sayyida al Hurra.

Century-Old Flowers Pressed Between the Pages

Posted May 2024

Imagine our surprise when, while looking through the library’s wonderful collection of illustrated books about California Flowers and Wildflowers — which includes wood block prints by Elizabeth McClintock and watercolor prints by Mary Elizabeth Parsons and Emma Clock — we open the cover of our most recent find and discover that this book is not filled with illustrations, but has actual flowers pressed between the pages! Such was the case for our most recent discovery: Wildflowers of California. Each specimen page in the pressing album has a label in the lower right corner identifying the flower, though there are other loose specimens interleaved between the pages with handwritten paper labels. There are also three poems amidst the pressings, each corresponding to the flower that follows it in the album. The poems are Wild Poppies and Baby Blue Eyes by Grace Hibbard, a Massachusetts-born transplant to California who became a popular author and poet, and The Mariposa Lily by Ina D. Coolbrith, a prominent figure in the San Francisco Bay Area literary community and California’s first poet laureate.

The flowers on the 14 specimen pages are:

• Eschscholtzia californica (California Poppy)
• Platystemon californica (Cream Cups)
• Nemophila insignis (Baby Blue Eyes)
• Aquelegia truncata (Columbine)
• Limnanthes douglasii
• Hosackia gracilis
• Fritillaria lanceolata
• Lasthenia Godetia (Primrose) and Micropus californicus
• Calochortus elegans (Mariposa Lily) and Cerastium viscosum (Mouse-ear Chickweed)
• Castilleia parviflora (Painted Cup)
• Trillium
• Delphinium decorum (Larkspur)
• Gnaphalium (Everlasting)

The loose specimens include Vicia americana (vetch), Viola sarmentosa, Brodiaea capitata, and viola ocellata.

The album was curated by E. C. Alexander and was published in five editions at the end of the 19th century under the title “A Collection of Wildflowers of California.” The November 1895 issue of Midland Monthly described the published album as “a pretty souvenir composed of California wild flowers pressed and arranged by Miss E. C. Alexander,” details that the pressings are “accompanied by appropriate verses for each flower written by Mrs. Hibbard and Miss Coolbrith,” and affirms what one might expect — that the album “is greatly fancied by tourists.”

The album was published in at least five editions: the first in 1894, the second and third editions in 1895, and the fourth and fifth editions several years later, in 1898. The first through third editions were published by The Popular Bookstore in San Francisco, the fourth edition by the Dodge book and stationary company, and the fifth by Edward H. Mitchell. Our copy is a fifth edition, and we appear to be one of the only institutions that has this edition in their collections!

Because of that, however, it is unclear whether the album was originally published like this, or if some creative individual over the years intervened and made the album their own. Several characteristics make it easy to imagine someone using the original volume as a base to create their own floral Frankenstein. Certainly, the loose specimens were a later addition, but all previous editions are bound in a more traditional way, rather than the loose decorative cords that tie these pages together. For example, a second edition at the British Library was bound in a light blue cloth and a third edition at the Huntington Library was bound in a blue leather. Both had “Wild Flowers of California” impressed in gold on the cover along with a thin bouquet and a pair of lines vertically bisecting the cover. Similarly, the pages in the other editions are also not nearly as cockled as the pages in our copy. This may be because the tighter binding and, in some cases, slipcovers helped keep the pages flat; the plastic sheets covering our pages may have contributed gases which made the pages warp; moisture from the loose specimens may have contributed; or a whole host of other possibilities.

Our copy of the album was donated to the library by Albert Dressler, a cartoonist, author, collector, and writer who made nearly 60 donations to the library between 1924 and 1938. If you’d like to see “Wildflowers of California,” another album of pressed flowers, or any of our other illustrated works on Golden State flora, take a look at our dedicated research guide on flowers or simply stop by our Reading Room. We’re open Tuesday–Thursday, 9:30 am – 4:00 pm.

The Syrian Directory of the State of California

Posted April 2024

The California History Section holds a large collection of directories including city and county directories, phone books, Who’s Who books, and business directories. Whether you are doing historical or genealogical research, directories can be a valuable resource in locating an ancestor or a business or utilized to get a sense of what a community was like at a particular point in time. One example we’d like to highlight in honor of Arab American Heritage Month is the Syrian Directory of the State of California compiled and edited by Reverand Elias Sady. The History Section holds two issues of this directory: the fifth issue of the Syrian Directory (1939–1940) and the sixth issue of the Syrian Directory (1948–1950).

Elias Sady, born in Syria, emigrated to the United States in 1897. He became an ordained minister in the Antiochian Orthodox religion; after helping to establish Syrian Orthodox churches in Wisconsin and Minnesota, Sady and his family moved to Los Angeles in the 1920s, where there was a growing Arab diaspora. He purchased a house at 36th Street and Gramercy Place, where the Sady family lived and hosted religious services for a group of Arabic Orthodox families.

As the congregation grew so did the need for a larger space. In 1924, Rev. Sady purchased a site adjacent to his home and, with the help of the community, built St. George’s Orthodox Church. After the church was established, Rev. Sady published the first issue of the Syrian Directory of the State of California in 1928. For decades these directories were a source of connection for “Arabic-speaking people and their families from Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and the Levant” that lived across the state. Each volume is also replete with advertisements for Arab American owned businesses, which highlight their abundant contributions to California’s economy through industries such as construction, agriculture, food retail, textiles, the arts, and more.

To view these or any other directories in our collection, you can visit our Reading Room, open Tuesday through Thursday from 9:30 am to 4:00 pm. Some of these materials will require an appointment made at least 3 business days ahead of your visit. You can schedule an appointment through our website or email us at cslcal@library.ca.gov.

Relics of the Fight for Women’s Suffrage in California

Posted March 2024

I am first and last a feminist.

Alice Park

Alice Park (1861–1961) was one of the tenacious and creative activists of the women’s suffrage movement in California. Founder of the Votes for Women Club in Palo Alto, Park considered herself a feminist, a socialist, and a pacifist; as an ardent supporter animals rights, she also was a vegetarian (she even wrote a pamphlet advocating for the humane treatment of animals to be included in school curricula). In her unabated campaigning for women’s voting rights, Park used what she called “personal advertising” to spread her message. These advertising methods included buttons, sashes, banners, postcards, and other stationary. By searching the History Section’s Photo File, an analog card file, one can find a citation for a photograph of Park’s suffrage campaign button collection in our archive. Park herself donated this print to the State Library in 1943.

In this photograph, the elliptical arrangement of buttons gives us a look into the material culture and far-reaching organization of the women’s suffrage movement. Park collected buttons from across the United States and abroad. A resume of her work titled “Alice Park of California: Worker for Woman Suffrage and for Children’s Rights” notes that “suffrage buttons and brooches from England were sold by the hundreds before California made its own suffrage buttons.” These small yet bold pins were an accessible form of wearable advertising, which was a key strategy of the movement. By wearing a badge with the statement “Votes for Women” or “I’m a Voter,” a suffragist could herald the cause everywhere they went.

Park was instrumental in other facets of women’s rights in California, such as writing the law that granted women equal guardianship of their own children, which was presented before the California State Legislature in 1909 and 1911 before finally passing in 1913. She was also a supporter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and spoke at one of the San Jose chapter’s meetings in 1919. The California History Section holds many more examples of Alice Park’s writings, letterhead, and postcards, which can be found in our Biographic Information Files, Vertical Files, and general collection. While these materials don’t circulate, you can certainly visit our Reading Room, open Tuesday – Thursday from 9:30 am to 4:00 pm, to view them. Some of these materials will require an appointment made at least 3-business days ahead of your visit. You can schedule an appointment through our website or email us at cslcal@library.ca.gov.

Robin Coste Lewis’s To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness

Posted February 2024

And didn’t we know all this
  was going to happen?
    Didn’t we feel it—all

those decades ago—
  standing together talking
    on the sidewalk?

I remembered you then,
  not from the past, but from
    a bright inkling

inside my body
  that some would later call the future.
    Some part of me expected you, knew

You would arrive—faceless,
  open, hungry. And how the words felt
    then, in our mouths—

all those small-minded Englishes we refused
  to speak—all the countless
    Blacknesses we could.

Stanzas accompanying book cover image, To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness

Winner of the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, Robin Coste Lewis’s To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness (2022) brings poetry and photography together in this stunning exploration of the history and life recorded in a collection of old photographs found under her late grandmother’s bed, rescued just before the house was destroyed. As related through poetry and images (in formats ranging from tintypes to polaroids), we see not only a portrait of family life, but also a story of Black history, of survival and of celebration of life beyond migration from the South — in Lewis’s words, “an origin myth for the future” presented in “Black pages, black space, black time — the Big Black Bang.”

This book is one of our recent acquisitions for our California Authors collection development project. If you’re interested in this title and have a California State Library Card, come by and check it out (we’re open Tuesday–Thursday, 9:30–4:00). If you are ineligible for a State Library Card, don’t worry — just request this or any of our other circulating titles (those from the California History Reading Room) from our interlibrary loan service via your local public library.

An Exploration of Contemporary Native American Art

Posted November 2023

I believe that art is one answer to preventing the emptiness that the loss of culture of the indifference of society will impose. We are still alive.

Frank LaPena, from When I Remember I See Red: American Indian Art and Activism in California

For this installment of Discoveries, we’re featuring When I Remember I See Red: American Indian Art and Activism in California, the catalog from an exhibition of the same name organized by Sacramento’s Crocker Art Museum that ran from October 2019 – January 2020. Edited by the late Nomtipom-Wintu artist, poet, teacher, and writer Frank LaPena (1937–2019) — professor of art and director of the Native American Studies program at Sacramento State University — Mark Dean Johnson, professor of art at San Francisco State University; and Kristina Perea Gilmore, Associate Editor, the book features over 65 artworks created in a wide range of media by over  40 artists. Providing an important overview of contemporary art by California Indian artists or Native American artists with strong ties to California, the catalog features not only earlier pathbreakers such as Harry Fonseca, Rick Bartow, Karen Noble, and Jean LaMarr, but also emerging and mid-career artists; as Crocker Art Museum Director Lial A. Jones states in her Director’s Message, the exhibition “showcase[d] how successive generations of contemporary artists have challenged stereotypes and fought against cultural erasure while at the same time engaging deeply with their respective communities.” Apart from stunning imagery of the artworks, the catalog is rich with information, from LaPena’s introduction and reflections by people including W. Richard “Rick” West Jr., Malcolm Margolin, and Janeen Antoine to a map of California Indian traditional tribal territories and a timeline of governmental policies and visual art milestones. Of special note are the artists’ biographies, each preceded by a quote from the artist; each food for thought. If you’d like to see When I Remember I See Red, stop by our Reading Room (we’re open Tuesday–Thursday, 9:30 am – 4:00 pm) — if you have a California State Library Card, you’re welcome to check out our circulating copy (and, if you’re ineligible for one, you can just request the title via interlibrary loan from your local public library)!

New Acquisitions for National Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month

Posted October 2023

As we’ve been building our collections in the work of California authors, we’ve been bringing in some exciting new acquisitions in the genres of memoir and autobiography, including the following featured books by Latinx and Chicanx writers.

Cherríe Moraga — Native Country of the Heart: A Memoir. Picador, New York, 2020.

Called “a masterpiece of literary art” by the Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), Cherríe Moraga’s memoir focuses not on the author herself, but on her mother, Elvira Isabel Moraga, a working-class immigrant from Mexico who worked in an electronics factory and lived with husband and three children in San Gabriel, just outside of Los Angeles. Describing the fascination her mother has for her, Cherríe Moraga, who co-edited 1981’s seminal This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color with Gloria Anzaldúa, notes that Elvira was perhaps always her subject, “the first and last point of my return,” a complex person whose personality and desire for something more conflicted constantly with her circumstances, especially in the wake of her father’s decision to stop her formal education after third grade so that she could pick cotton in the Imperial Valley. In a book rich with tension, family and social history, and the story of a different trajectory for Cherríe, who was able to reject oppressive institutions and embrace her queer identity, Elvira’s presence burns strong, her tale one of “a great spirit trapped in a tiny life,” one that Cherrie’s “triumph” is it have turned “into great literature” (LARB).

Alice Bag — Violence Girl: East L.A. Rage to Hollywood Stage — A Chicana Punk Story. Feral House, Port Townsend, WA, 2011.

In this memoir, which the LARB calls “a timely reminder of the still under-recognized role of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in shaping punk rock’s early sound and ethos,” the pathbreaking punk frontwoman Alice Bag, born Alicia Armendariz, shares her story of life as lead singer of The Bags; of growing up in East L.A. in the 1970s; of her band’s key role in bridging the Chicanx and Holllywood punk scenes; and of the crucial role music — from ranchera to blues and soul to punk — played in her remarkable life.

Alberto Ledesma — Diary of a Reluctant Dreamer: Undocumented Vignettes from a Pre-American Life. Mad Creek Books/Ohio State University Press, 2017

In this beautifully illustrated autobiography, dubbed “affecting, highly charged, and deserving of broad attention” (Kirkus Reviews), Alberto Ledesma recounts his journey from an undocumented immigrant youth through his student years to his current life as Assistant Dean for Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity at UC-Berkeley.

Rigoberto González — Autobiography of My Hungers. University of Wisconsin Press, 2018.

In what Library Journal has described as a “beautiful, unconventional memoir, infused with poetic language,” American Book Award-winning writer and professor Rigoberto González explores a childhood of hunger, neglect, and desire in this second of a trio, one that “not only aficionados of memoir, poetry, and Latin American and gay literature but also general audiences will enjoy.”

Frederick Luis Aldama, ed. — Tales from La Vida: A Latinx Comics Anthology. Ohio State University Press, 2018.

As writer Angela M. Sánchez notes, Tales from La Vida: A Latinx Comics Anthology, avoids what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has called the “danger of a single story”; rather than write — and illustrate! — as if identity were monolithic, the book offers “a panorama of Latinx narratives” — seventy, to be precise — “a vast range of histories and contemporary experiences” that all offer takes on the prompt, “What is the most significant moment in your life as a Latinx person?”

If you’re interested in any of these titles and have a California State Library Card, come by and check them out (we’re open Tuesday-Thursday, 9:30–4:00). If you are ineligible for a State Library Card, don’t worry — just request any of these or of our other circulating titles (those from the California History Reading Room) from our interlibrary loan service via your local public library. As the evenings grow longer and the weather chills, what better time to curl up with a great book, such as these?

A Labor of Love and Community: Gay Freedom Day Parade (program)

Posted June 2023

“Your friends don’t even bother asking you over for dinner anymore. They know your answer already, ‘Sorry. I’ve got to work on the parade.’”

This humorous (and probably all too accurate) description of working on the Gay Freedom Day Committee is included in our featured item, the event program for the 1980 Gay Freedom Day Parade. This event was clearly a community affair. The program features multiple appeals for volunteers, be it for helping as a medical and security monitor or joining the organizing committee next year. Community advertisements also have a large presence, with ads from companies such as Conceptual Entertainment, l’Uomo, and others, revenue from which doubtless helped to fund the celebration. The ads also convey a sense of how tightly knit the San Francisco LGBTQ community was in 1980, with many companies clearly operated by and for LGBTQ community members. This sense of community is further underscored by the program’s extensive directory of LBGTQ interest groups and social service organizations.

Certainly, the work of an entire community and a very efficient steering committee was a must for pulling an event of this size off. With an expected crowd of 300,000, the 1980 Gay Freedom Day Committee spent months organizing every aspect of this event, arranging permits with the city, working  with BART and Muni to offer extended service, and obtaining  a proclamation from the mayor. They even set up a calendar of events, some of them no doubt organized by the committee or by friends of committee members for the days preceding the parade.

The committee’s hard work paid off: though the turnout was not quite as large as expected, by all accounts the 1980 Gay Freedom Day was a massive success. In a recap published on June 30, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that not only did San Francisco’s LGBTQ community come out to celebrate, they were joined by individuals from as far away as Amsterdam. It was such a success that other California papers in Eureka and Marysville also picked up on the story. The 1980 Gay Freedom Day Parade and Celebration was the ninth such parade in San Francisco, and it definitely wasn’t the last. In fact, the event is still going on today under a different name — the San Francisco Pride Parade.

As for this program? The California State Library keeps it in our Programs vertical files, a large collection of programs and related ephemera from events such as art gallery shows, dinner parties, theater performances, school recitals, and sports events. We encourage you to make an appointment with the California History Section and request to see some of these snippets from California’s past.

Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party

Posted June 2023

“Comrade Sisters: the family we choose,
            a bond that defies location, time and biology,
            a life well-lived.”

Ericka Huggins defines what it means to be a Comrade Sister in her introduction of this book, pg. 25.

When thinking of the Black Panther Party one may immediately think of Malcolm X, whose 1965 assassination helped spark its creation. Founded in Oakland by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton in 1966 as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense with an aim to end police brutality, the party’s goals soon expanded to include combating racism, poverty, and violence as well as meeting the basic human needs of the community. The government and media depicted the party in a negative light as a gang and as a threat to the country, often focusing on the men of the Party and overshadowing the good work the members, especially the women, did for the community as a political and social justice organization. While some women of the Party may come to mind like Angela Davis, Elaine Brown or Kathleen Cleaver, the story of these women largely remains untold. 

Until now. 

Published in 2022, Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party pays tribute to the women who left their mark on the Black Panther Party (BPP). The photobook weaves interviews from the women themselves with photos Stephen Shames took while documenting the Party from 1967–1973. Co-author and former BPP member Ericka Huggins defines Comrade Sisters as “the family we choose, a bond that defies location, time and biology, a life well-lived.”

Comrade Sisters made up more than half of the Party, about 66%, and they played an integral role, especially in community leadership and service, including in over 60 Community Survival Programs focused on providing free education, free food, free healthcare and more to the community. The book’s photos show women like Ericka Huggins, M. Gayle Asali Dickson, and Gloria Abernethy attending and organizing marches, selling Black Panther newspapers, registering people to vote, providing food to those in need, teaching the youth — the list of programs goes on! 

One can argue that one of these programs, the Free Breakfast for School Children Program facilitated by the BPP all over the country, led to national change with the authorization of the U.S. government’s School Breakfast Program, which now feeds 14.57 million students. The Party’s influence also reached internationally, with groups forming in New Zealand, India, Brazil, Africa and more, and applying the BPP community service model and its Ten Point Program to their home countries. The Party continues to have a lasting legacy and influence on the world, serving as a role model for mutual aid and other community service programs. The bravery and love these women had and still have will surely inspire generations to come. Shames and Huggins as well as all of their contributors have ensured that that same love is evident in the publishing of this book. In the words of Angela Davis, may this book “[remind] us that women were literally the heart of this new political approach to Black freedom.” (pg. 21)

A copy of Comrade Sisters is available to view in the California History Section Reading Room. On June 9, the Section hosted a virtual panel discussion with co-authors Stephen Shames and Ericka Huggins as well as former BPP member M. Gayle Asali Dickson, moderated by Susan D. Anderson. A link to the recording of this talk can be found in the Previous Events section of our Events page. Also on view in the Reading Room through August: Please visit our display of books, newspapers, photos, and ephemera, “Power to the People: Black Panthers in the Bay Area.”

The Treatment of the Exempt Classes of Chinese in the US (pamphlet)

Posted May 2023

“The question is not now of the admission of laborers, but whether other Chinese who are entitled to come under both law and treaty shall receive the same courtesies as people of other nations.”

Ng Poon Chew in a 1908 English-language “Statement from the Chinese in America” titled “The Treatment of the Exempt Classes of Chinese in the United States”

In this statement — kept in pamphlet form at the California State Library — Chew advocated for Chinese American immigration rights, citing multiple instances where local officials exceeded their mandate when enforcing the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act which, as the “first significant restriction on free immigration in U.S. history,” excluded Chinese laborers from the country and Chinese immigrants from becoming U.S. citizens (Library of Congress, on Exclusion). Chew was in a somewhat unique position, in that white Americans actually listened to him. Known during his lifetime as the Chinese American Mark Twain, Ng Poon Chew in many ways served as an ambassador for Chinese Americans to European Americans.

Chew was born in the Guangdong province in 1866. After immigrating to California in 1881, he elected to assimilate into American culture as much as possible, adopting western dress, converting to Christianity, and becoming an ordained Presbyterian minister. While on the surface, he appeared to have completely abandoned his background, Chew was an activist for Chinese American rights who gained the ear of European Americans.

Chew started his work to change Anglo Americans’ views towards Chinese Americans within the churches. One of his early sermons, delivered to a white audience, attacked their association of opium with Chinese immigrants, noting that the drug had been introduced to China by the English and suggesting that Chinese immigrants were victims of it in much the same way prohibitionists viewed white men as victims of hard liquor. In an article for the Land of Sunshine, Chew emphasized the work of the churches in Los Angeles’s Chinatown, arguing that Chinatown was a good and friendly place where visitors “are always welcome and treated kindly.”

After working as a minister in San Francisco and then Los Angeles for several years, Chew, in his words, “found the field too narrow,” stating that he “had much work to do for my people” (Interview with M.B. Levick published in Sunset Magazine, May 1912). Accordingly, he left the ministry and founded the first Chinese-language daily newspaper in the United States, Chung Sai Yat Po. Going on as well to become the vice-consul for China at the San Francisco office, he also regularly gave talks at Chautauqua and other adult education events frequented by European Americans, and even engaged directly with immigration politics by writing English-language tracts such as the one we are featuring today.

Chew continued advocating for the rights of Chinese Americans until his death in 1931, work breaking new ground continued by his children: Even as Edward Chew became the first Chinese American commissioned officer in the United States Army, Caroline Chew became a prominent dancer, who playbills state was the first Chinese American dancer in the United States. As for this pamphlet, it is bound with several others in a collection called the “Chinese Immigration Pamphlets,” available online at the Internet Archive; the originals are kept safe in the California History Section collections. This AAPI Heritage Month, please feel free to read this pamphlet online or make an appointment to come into the library and see the original!

A Letter from Pat Brown to Carma Leigh on Library Systems

Posted May 2023

“Tell me about the things that should be done with the libraries. I assure you I regard this as very important.”

Brown, Pat. “Letter from Pat Brown To Carma Leigh.” January 5, 1964. Box 3762 Folder 22

The above quote comes from a letter written in 1962 to Carma Zimmerman Leigh by Governor Pat Brown. Its topic, what should be done for California’s libraries, was a subject near to Leigh’s heart. After all… she was California’s State Librarian and guiding California’s libraries during a period of massive change in library needs and funding.

When Carma Zimmerman took the job of State Librarian in 1952, she stepped into a process of overseeing the modernization of the postwar library system. Though adequate for the pre-war population of California, the county library system established by State Librarian James Gillis was stretched to its outer limits in 1951. The wartime population boom, combined with a lack of funding, meant that public libraries were serving more people than they ever had and on a very slim budget indeed. Seeing this problem, Zimmerman pushed the public libraries to adopt some basic measures to both maximize their services to the public and show the need for more substantial funding.

The first prong of this approach, according to biographer Cindy Mediavilla, was Zimmerman’s library standards and library cooperatives initiatives. Under these programs, Zimmerman worked with public libraries to craft a set of minimum standards for public library services, such as the need for at least one library within 20–30 minutes of California residents. She also championed the need for cross-jurisdiction cooperative library systems and included these as part of the standards. Creating and getting buy-in on these initiatives was a multi-year process. Many library professionals had concerns about the creation of a top-down standard, not to mention concerns about funding structures for multi-county cooperatives. Over the course of a full decade, she slowly persuaded libraries and librarians that cooperative library systems would bring many benefits and that they would need some sort of uniform standard. Finally in 1962, a full ten years after she started as State Librarian, the California Library Association (CLA), working in concert with her recommendations, put out the “Master Plan for Public Libraries” in California.

The second prong of the program was obtaining more funding for libraries. Though the idea of something akin to the modern Library Services and Technology Act had been discussed in the prewar era, it still wasn’t law in 1952. Accordingly, Zimmerman asked the CLA to establish a working group on state legislation that affected libraries… including funding. Though federal funding for libraries in the form of the Library Services Act came into existence in 1956, the need amongst California libraries remained great. After the creation of the 1962 Master Plan though, Zimmerman, now Leigh, after her 1961 marriage to Dr. Robert Leigh, had something concrete to bring to the table: She had spearheaded the passage of AB 590, the Public Library Development Act of 1963. This bill was, as Leigh told Mediavilla, her greatest accomplishment.

As the first time that California directly allocated funds to public libraries, the Public Library Development Act was quite an accomplishment indeed. With Leigh’s encouragement and the advocacy of the CLA, librarians and members of the public gathered at the capital to press Governor Brown to sign the legislation. Her efforts were so integral that in oral histories, contemporaries like Fredric Mosher credit her with the bill’s passage.

Even after obtaining state funding, Leigh did not stop in her push to improve library services statewide. After all, library cooperatives needed to actually be created. By 1967, at the start of a workshop on developing more of them, she was able to announce that thirteen systems were in operation. Cheerfully admitting that she was “hipped on library systems,” she also discussed further developments in funding structures (Speech recorded in News Notes of California Libraries, Fall 1967, pages 363-366). In 1972, twenty years after assuming the post, Leigh retired as State Librarian, having successfully shepherded California libraries through the post-war years and, incidentally, having become California’s longest serving state librarian.

This letter and other snippets of Leigh’s correspondence are kept in the California History Section’s climate-controlled stacks as part of the Carma Zimmerman Leigh Collection. You can see this and many other documents related to the State Library’s history in the California History Section. Even more archival records for the State Library are available at our sister agency, the California State Archives. We encourage you to explore these documents about the history or your State Library and its impact on your local library this month.

Campaign Ephemera: Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, A California First

Posted March 2023

“I always felt that I had three constituencies. I had a constituency of African Americans, a constituency of women, and a constituency that elected me.”

Yvonne Brathwaite Burke to Kathleen Johnson in a 2015 Oral History sponsored by the US House of Representatives.

First African American Assemblywoman in California, first woman to have a baby while serving in Congress, even first African American Los Angeles County Supervisor. Who is the woman behind all of these firsts? Yvonne Brathwaite Burke.

Born to James and Lola Watson in Los Angeles County, Perle Yvonne Watson was exposed to activism at an early age. Her father, who worked as a janitor, was an active member of Building Service Employees International Union (BSEIU) 278 and on at least one occasion went on strike. Funded in part by an SEIU scholarship, Watson attended UCLA and in 1956 graduated from USC with a law degree. Shortly thereafter, she married mathematician Louis Brathwaite.

Despite her qualifications, as an African American woman, Yvonne Brathwaite was unable to find work in area law firms. So, she instead established her own firm; on top of this, she also became very active in the Civil Rights movement, making great strides in fighting housing discrimination in the Los Angeles area by desegregating Real Estate Boards. After the Watts Rebellion, Brathwaite entered politics more directly as an appointed member of the McCone Commission, which was created by Governor Pat Brown to uncover the causes of the Watts Rebellion and recommend reforms. From there, she decided to run for the State Assembly. Though considered by many to be an unlikely candidate due to her race and gender, Brathwaite won the Assembly seat and became the first African American woman to hold office in California’s Legislature.

As a member of the California State Assembly in an era where there were only three women serving in the legislature, Brathwaite was, in her words, automatically “identified with ‘women’s issues.’” She refused to be pigeonholed however, and not only crafted legislation surrounding issues traditionally associated with women but also around broader concerns. Thanks to her efforts, California residents affected by eminent domain are entitled to a package of protections, including reimbursement or government-funded relocation, known as the “Brathwaite Rights.”

After serving in the State Assembly for six years, Brathwaite set her sights on a bigger stage: the U.S. House of Representatives. Brathwaite not only emerged in November of 1972 as the first African American woman west of the Mississippi to hold a seat in the US House of Representatives, but also as a new bride, having married her second husband, William Burke, in between the primary and the general election. As a member of the US House of Representatives, Yvonne Brathwaite Burke made her mark in a number of ways: She was responsible for the inclusion of affirmative action in the Trans-Alaskan pipeline project contracts, which served as a model for affirmative action language in many other government contracts. She also supported a West Coast Mass Transit System and put the Congressional Black Caucus on sounder financial footing by establishing the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. In her personal life, Burke paved the way for future lawmakers: In 1973, she became the first member of the House of Representatives to give birth to a child while in office and to be granted maternity leave.

In 1978, after serving for several years in the House of Representatives, Burke decided it was time to return home to California and made a bid for the Attorney General’s office, running against then-State Senator George Deukmejian. This campaign, which generated the pamphlet we are featuring in this post, was one of Burke’s few losses, an outcome likely aided by Deukmejian’s focus on hot-button issues such as the death penalty. Though Burke lost the election for Attorney General, her political career was far from over. In 1979, Jerry Brown appointed her to the LA County Board of Supervisors, where she was the first African American person to hold a seat. She left this role in 1980, and in 1984 became the vice chair for the Los Angeles Olympics Organizing Committee; she rejoined the County Board of Supervisors in 1992, a position she held until retiring in 2008.

Shortly thereafter, Burke once again stepped onto the national stage, when President Barack Obama appointed her to the Amtrak Board of Directors. She also maintained an active statewide presence as a member of the California Transportation Commission through February 2021.

As for this pamphlet? The State Library houses it in the John Stanton Political Campaign Collection, a trove of political memorabilia covering campaigns from Theodore Roosevelt to Mervyn Dymally. Don’t take our word for it though. Make an appointment to view this collection and see what it contains!

Viva La Lucha: The Royal Chicano Air Force Posters

Posted November 2022

If you are local or have visited Sacramento before, you may have seen colorful murals around town, for example the Golden 1 Center, K Street Underpass Walkway or Southside Park just to name a few. All of these were created by the RCAF. Initially formed in 1970 as the Rebel Chicano Art Front by artists attending Sacramento State University, the group expanded to become the Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF), a collective of artists and activists in support of artistic expression and cultural affirmation as well as Chicano civil rights and labor organizing. The RCAF are known for their aesthetic innovations and powerful messages, which are not only conveyed in murals but also in posters! You can find a number of these in our Chicano Poster collection.

Similar to the murals, the posters are a sight to behold in person. Depending on the artist, each poster could be vastly different from the next, reflecting the diverse ways the collective chose to express themselves. Regardless of the artist, the vibrant colors and textures may be skewed or missed entirely in a photograph of the piece. For instance, you might miss the way the gold paint glitters in the light, or how hidden faces and symbols reveal themselves to the observer, or even how the flecks of yellow paint mimic kernels of corn.

You may have seen some of our food and agricultural-related RCAF posters on display at the 2022 Sacramento Archives Crawl. Come see these for yourself in-person and view recordings of our virtual talks!

• Until April 2023: Exhibit in the rotunda of the California History Room highlighting the women of RCAF
• Viva La Lucha: A Conversation with RCAF Artists — Louie “the Foot” Gonzalez and Rudy Cuellar
• Part 2 of Viva La Lucha: A Conversation with RCAF Artists — Juan Carrillo and Juanishi Orosco

You may also book an appointment at least 3 business days in advance to see any of the posters from our Chicano Poster Collection.

What discoveries will you make upon seeing these posters in person?

New Acquisitions on California Indian History

Posted August 2022

Thanks to a generous gift from the California State Library Foundation, we have been able to acquire a range of books documenting the history, experience, and perspectives of California Indians. If you can’t come by our Reading Room in person to read them (we’re open Tuesdays-Thursdays, 9:30–4:00) or can’t check them out because you don’t have a state library card, don’t worry: Just request them via interlibrary loan from your local public library! Some of the titles that have recently arrived are:

As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock

Dina Gilio-Whitaker, 2019

Dubbed “a masterpiece and a vital road map for the ongoing fight for Indigenous sovereignty” by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Indigenous writer and activist Gilio-Whitaker’s exploration of the history of Native Americans’ resistance to land incursion highlights the leadership of Indigenous women in the struggle against treaty violations and for environmental justice and the protection of sacred sites.

There, There

Tommy Orange, 2018

Named one of the year’s best books by publications including the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, and the San Francisco Chronicle, Orange’s debut novel follows several characters as they come together for the Big Oakland Powwow.

When I Remember I See Red

Frank LaPena, Mark Dean Johnson, Kristina Perea Gilmore, eds., 2019

This catalogue, edited by the late artist, curator, poet, and Sacramento State University professor Frank LaPena, San Francisco State University art professor Mark Dean Johnson, and former Crocker Art Museum (Sacramento) associate curator Kristina Perea Gilmore to accompany the eponymous exhibit at the Crocker, features contemporary art by over 40 California Indian artists and American Indian artists with close ties to California in media including painting, sculpture, prints, photography, installations, and video.

Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir

Deborah A. Miranda, 2013

Winner of numerous awards, including the PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Literary Award, Miranda’s memoir tells stories of her Ohlone Costanoan Esselen family, reflecting also on the history of California Indians. By using a variety of sources, says Leslie Marmon Silko, Miranda takes readers on a “journey to locate herself by way of the stories of her ancestors and others who come alive through her writing.”

Marie Mason Potts: The Lettered Life of a California Indian Activist

Terri A. Castaneda, 2020

California State University Sacramento Professor of anthropology Castaneda’s autobiography of one of the most influential California Indian activists of her generation explores Potts’s life from her school years at Greenville Indian Industrial School and then Carlisle Indian Industrial School through her growing politicization in Sacramento, her work for Federated Indians of America, and her 30-year tenure as editor and publisher of the Smoke Signal newspaper.

Mentley Still’s Song of California

Posted July 2022

July is Disability Pride Month, and to mark the occasion, some California history. In 1915, just 10 years after the State of California first began offering Braille books to people with print disabilities, and in an era when parents sent blind children to specialized boarding schools because local schools couldn’t meet their needs, Mentley Still published his book of poetry “Song of California.” Written for the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition, the poems in the book celebrate the wonders of California from its “salt and tonic sea breeze” and “Sequoia self reliant” to its “oiled well’s dark complexion” and “turbine-wheel, fast pouring.” Each poem, with its rich turns of phrase, is accompanied by beautiful illustrations… that the author never saw. Mentley Still was blind.

Born in 1879 to a farming family in the San Luis Obispo area, Still suffered from an early childhood illness that left him mostly blind, and he lost all of his vision at the age of 13. Though newspaper articles from Still’s life regularly commented on his inability to see, there is no evidence that Still let this slow him down. A gifted mechanical engineer, he submitted at least one patent for improvements to a piece of farm machinery, and he also owned several pieces of farmland in the San Luis Obispo Area. He also clearly valued the written word: In addition to writing and publishing this book, he wrote poems about issues he was concerned about such as prohibition, two of which are in the California History Section’s vertical files. Still also displayed a deep love of music. Internet Archive provides access to several recordings of him playing multiple instruments and singing. Still died on February 5, 1976, leaving behind a loving and proud extended family.

The California History Section is pleased to include the “Song of California” among its extensive holdings, alongside the works of many other distinguished California poets; some of these are available in the Braille and Talking Book Library’s Californiana Collection (for more information and a list of books, go to BTBL’s Ravenous Readers Corner).

Speaking of the Braille and Talking Book Library (BTBL), the State Library’s services for the visually impaired, still in its infancy when Still published this book, have blossomed. From a mere 140 books in 1904, the BTBL at the California State Library now offers access to over 150,000 (and counting) hardcopy and digital braille and audio materials. The Section’s Reader Advisors are happy to help users with print disabilities locate accessible books and resources relevant to user interests and research. If you or someone you love lives with a print disability, contact the BTBL and see what the State Library offers!

M.E. Pleasant: An Ordinary Letter from an Extraordinary Leader

Posted June 2022

Give my love to the boys

Mary Pleasant. Letter to Margaret Blake Alverson, January 2, 1902. Margaret Blake Alverson Collection, Box 714, Folder 39. California State Library

Abolitionist, civil rights leader, and self-made millionaire Mary Ellen Pleasant, according to her own account born in 1814 (researchers differ on her birthplace, birth year, and whether she was enslaved), was raised by an abolitionist Quaker family in Massachusetts, and, as a young adult, played an active role in the Underground Railroad. Eventually, like so many, she came to California during the Gold Rush to start anew, electing initially to work as a cook. According to a May 7, 1899, article about her in the San Francisco Call, when bidding for her services reached $500, she laid down her conditions, among them, no dishwashing. Pleasant proved to be a wise investor blessed with a keen business acumen that bolstered an inheritance left her by her first husband. As writer and documentarian Susheel Bibbs reports, she went on to own multiple businesses in the San Francisco area, including laundries, liveries, boarding houses, and even farms; she also invested in several gold and silver mining interests, along with railroads, restaurants, and more. Pleasant’s charitable activities were widespread and these, combined with her finances, propelled her to such prominence in San Francisco that supporters and detractors alike referred to her house as San Francisco’s Black City Hall.

Even as her stature rose, Pleasant continued to fight against the institution of slavery and for African Americans’ civil rights. In 1858, she hid Archy Lee, who, having been brought as an enslaved person from Mississippi to California, escaped and fought what was ultimately a successful legal battle for freedom, when a federal judge overturned the pro-slavery California Supreme Court’s ruling that Lee remain enslaved and be forced to return to Mississippi. In 1859, she helped to fund militant abolitionist John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia.  Pleasant herself experienced, and fought against, racist treatment, winning her 1866 lawsuit against a San Francisco streetcar company that had refused to let her board a train because of her skin color. The case went all the way to the California Supreme Court, which ruled segregation on streetcars unconstitutional – a landmark victory made no less crucial when this same court reversed the $500 in damages awarded her by a lower court.

While Mary Ellen Pleasant was undoubtedly a giant in California history and in the history of civil rights, documents such as this letter, written to singer and author Margaret Blake Alverson in 1902, show her ordinary human side. Here, after expressing sympathy for Alverson’s recent illness, Pleasant relates that she too had just been sick and was in fact still recovering, after having been laid up for 9 weeks. While Pleasant indeed recovered from this bout, time was taking its toll, and she passed away just a few years later, in 1904. Her epitaph reads, “She was a friend of John Brown.” As for this correspondence, it remains in the Alverson Collection in the California History Section, where it is available to researchers, students and tourists alike to view on an appointment basis. Note: The marginalia, written in a different hand by an unidentified writer, uses derogatory language to which Pleasant strongly objected (an example of the importance of not only body text, but marginalia, in manuscript collections). This correspondence is just one of the many resources in the California History Section’s collections that document the history of African Americans who came to California in the nineteenth century and fought for freedom and equal standing before the law. This Juneteenth, celebrate freedom by learning about the people who did battle for it.

Joseph Hansen’s Fadeout

Posted June 2022

Almost all the folksay about homosexuals is false. So I had some fun turning clichés and stereotypes on their heads in that book. It was easy.

Joseph Hansen, to the St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers (quoted in his obituary, Washington Post, December 7, 2004)

In 1970, when same-sex attraction was considered a mental disorder and people feared arrest if they were found in a gay bar, Joseph Hansen – long an accomplished, if unrecognized, writer and poet – finally found a publisher for his novel, Fadeout. Written in 1967, this book, with its portrayal of gay love as a normal part of everyday life, represented a breakthrough in popular literary fiction. While nonfiction authors such as Isherwood and Branson had worked to reset the popular narrative regarding LGBTQ+ people, negative stereotypes still reigned supreme in fiction. In Fadeout, however, Hansen used the trope of the hard-boiled detective to portray a complex and sympathetic character, Dave Brandstetter, who just happened to be gay. Building on the success of this novel, Hansen went on to write 12 other Brandstetter novels, as well as numerous other works of fiction portraying gay and lesbian main characters.

Hansen’s writings, in turn, inspired other LGBTQ+ writers, including Michael Nava, who, in his 2022 introduction to the re-publication of Fadeout, terms Hansen “a great American writer. Period. Full stop.” In the words of author Katherine Forrest, “He was out there when nobody else was, and we’re all standing on his shoulders” (quoted in Patricia Biederman, “Tough, Smart and Gay Novels,” Los Angeles Times, April 19, 1990).

As for Fadeout and many of Hansen’s other books, they have a place of honor in the California History Section’s fiction collections. Here we keep works by California authors — including Walter Mosley, John Rollin Ridge, William Saroyan, Allen Ginsberg, Fae Myenne Ng, Mary Austin, Jessamyn West, Felicia Luna Lemus, Daniel Olivas, John Steinbeck, and many others — that are central to understanding this state’s rich and complex history. So what are you waiting for? Plan on spending a day curled up in one of our comfortable chairs and lose yourself in fictional works like this one!

A Portrait of Tsuru Aoki: An Issei Star

Posted May 2022

Tsuru Aoki makes an altogether satisfactory heroine, as she has a difficult role, and manages to be convincing and natural throughout.

Review of “The Breath of the Gods” in the Picturegoer, May 1922

In 1913, a young Japanese American woman, Tsuru Aoki, made her screen debut as the lead actress in the silent film “Oath of Tsuru San.” In many ways born to acting, having emigrated to the United States in 1899 as part of her uncle’s theatrical troupe, in 1913, she joined the Japanese Theatre in Los Angeles, where she acted with Sessue Hayakawa, soon to be America’s first Asian American screen idol and then international star.

It was Aoki’s film acting, though, and not her stage career, that made Aoki famous. After “Oath of Tsuru San,” she went on to play roles in over 40 films throughout the silent film era and beyond – some portraying Asian, Native American, and East Indian characters – including high-profile productions such as 1914’s “Wrath of the Gods,” also starring Hayakawa, whom she married that year.

Aoki’s contributions to the film industry went beyond acting. In 1918, she and Hayakawa, frustrated by racial typecasting, founded the first Asian American-owned production company, Haworth Pictures Corporation, in Hollywood. There, they produced and starred in multiple films, including “The Courageous Coward” (1919), in which, per the Women Film Pioneers Project, Aoki “played a Japanese woman who tries to transform herself into a modern [Anglo] American girl in the mistaken belief that this is what her American suitor desires.” That same year, Aoki also played an important role in designing sets for Universal Studios productions.

Yet racist attitudes towards Japanese Americans were on the rise in California in those years as well, buttressed by the California Oriental Exclusion League, the Los Angeles Anti-Asiatic Society, and the Japanese Exclusion League in addition to organizations including the Native Sons/Native Daughters of the Golden West, California State Grange, and many more. Following a filming accident that nearly killed Hayakawa in 1922, the couple left Hollywood, traveling extensively, living in France and New York, and intermittently making films before settling in Tokyo. During World War II, with Hayakawa unable to leave France, Aoki raised their three children on her own in Japan; they reunited after the war. Aoki died in 1961 and Hayakawa in 1973.

As for this image? It resides in the State Library’s massive portrait collection, which also includes photos of other silent film stars including Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Alla Nazimova, Mary Pickford, Dolores Del Rio, Jack Abbe, Anna May Wong, Moon Kwan, and Ramon Navarro, along with Aoki and Hayakawa. These and our many other images are all available for research by appointment only — come visit us to bask in the glow of silver screen glamour (and check out the clothing and makeup details in these photos) today!

Sarah Gualtieri’s Arab Routes: Pathways to Syrian California

Posted April 2022

“Often depicted as new arrivals, as emblems of a crisis-ridden Middle East, or as marginal actors in fields of study dominated by the histories of other immigrant groups, Syrians are deeply layered into the western United States. They have shaped communities from Calexico to Calabasas, and their voices speak through a rich and expansive archive—border-crossing cards, naturalization and census records, newspaper articles, photographs, novels, letters, and the retelling by migrants of their journeys to and through Amairka.”

Sarah Gualtieri, from Arab Routes: Pathways to Syrian California, (Introduction: Arab Amairka)

April is National Arab American Heritage Month, and in commemoration, we are featuring Sarah Gualtieri’s fascinating book, Arab Routes: Pathways to Syrian California (Stanford University Press, 2020). A winner of numerous awards, including the 2021 Evelyn Shakir Non-Fiction Award in the Arab American Book Awards, Arab Routes explores the history of Los Angeles’s Syrian American community, drawing out its deep connections to especially Southern California’s Mexican American and Latinx communities as it helped to shape the global metropolis of Los Angeles.

As Rafael Hernández of The Middle East Journal states, “Through recounting the personal stories of migrants and analyzing an expansive archive of census records, articles, letters, etc.,” Gualtieri, professor of History and of American Studies and Ethnicity and Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Department of Middle East Studies at the University of Southern California, “counters the narrative that Middle Eastern migrants are recent arrivals from a conflict-ridden region,” instead providing “a new story where Syrian Americans are deeply woven into the history of California.”

Campaign Ephemera: March Fong Eu, A California First

Posted March 2022

“There is no argument to the opinion that this nation could benefit greatly by increased participation by women in decision-making positions.”

March Fong Eu, February 22, 1973, from “The Self-Sufficient Woman” (speech delivered at Foothill College)

In honor of Women’s History Month, we thought that we would highlight some of the realia that lies hidden in the State Library’s collections — in particular, this button and pair of pamphlets, pieces of campaign ephemera handed out as swag during March Fong Eu’s various elections.

March Fong Eu (1922–2017) made history in California as a true groundbreaker. The daughter of laundry workers, after earning her PhD in education, she went on to serve as the first woman to hold the Chair of the Department of Dental Hygiene at UCSF (1951); the first Asian American woman elected to the State Assembly (1966); and the first woman elected as California’s Secretary of State (1974) – to name but a few “firsts.”

While her achievements as a trailblazer without a doubt inspired other women and girls from diverse backgrounds to aspire to higher office, what stands out even more is what she stood for. March Fong Eu consistently tried to correct wrongs wherever she found them. While a member of the Assembly, she not only fought against pay toilets in public buildings — which, she argued, discriminated against women, considering that men’s urinals were free — she sought to protect the health of farm workers and urban dwellers alike by serving on committees dedicated to improving air quality and reducing pesticide usage.

As Secretary of State, she promoted the State Archives, launched programs to increase voter registration, and advocated for the expansion of absentee voting. She also helped expand international markets for California agriculture, going so far as to help establish the California World Trade Commission. After serving for 5 terms as Secretary of State and enjoying bipartisan support in this role, Eu became an ambassador to Micronesia. In 2019, in honor of her years of tireless service, the Secretary of State Complex was named after Eu.

As for this button and pair of pamphlets? They are part of the State Library’s John Stanton collection, a massive trove of campaign materials, including papers, t-shirts, mugs, and much more donated to the State Library by Palo Alto Times reporter John Stanton. If you’d like to see the other campaign materials in this collection, please consult the collection finding aid to see what box you are interested in, make an appointment to come in, and have a look!

Moses Rodgers’s Mines: A Survey and a Glimpse of African American History

Posted February 2022

In this post, to commemorate Black History Month, we showcase a document that describes one of the many African American contributions to California’s gold mining past, Moses Rodgers’s mines near Hornitos, California.

“I am credibly informed that Mose [sic] Rodgers always placed the gross yield of the mine at 2¼ million dollars.”

The above quote is from page 14 of this unassuming handwritten survey of the “M.L. Rodgers Group of Quartz Mines” conducted by Dana Harmon in 1903. In it, Harmon, himself a miner and mining superintendent, documents the infrastructure, gold assays, and overall value of the mines owned by one of California’s most respected nineteenth–century gold miners, mining engineers, and mining superintendents, Moses Rodgers.

The State Library does not have any items written by Rodgers himself. However, according to his obituary and to Delilah Beasley’s book Negro Trail Blazers of California, Rodgers, who was born in Missouri in 1835, was enslaved as a child. As a young man, he purchased his freedom and came to California in 1849, at the start of the Gold Rush, as had hundreds of African Americans, some free and some (around 200 to 300) enslaved, accompanying their enslavers.

Rodgers made his mark as a mining engineer in Hornitos (Mariposa County). Widely respected for his expertise in practical mining, he partially owned and ran the Washington Mine and outright owned several other mines.

Rodgers eventually relocated to Stockton to ensure that his daughters received a good education, and died in 1900. His five daughters went on to put their education to good use as nurses, modistes and more. One daughter, Vivian Rodgers, pursued higher education and graduated from UC Berkeley; her image appears in the 1909 UC Berkeley yearbook. Though Rodgers’s family ultimately lost the mine holdings described in this document, the US Geological Survey still calls the Washington Mine one of the top 10 gold mines in all of Mariposa County.

As for this mine survey? It has sat safely in our stacks for decades now, awaiting use by researchers. Come and take a look at it!

Cookbook Unboxing (video)

Posted December 2021

It’s that time of year when people from all over break out traditional recipes and cook amazing meals. In keeping with this tradition, we are sharing an unboxing video featuring one of the History Section’s many historic cookbooks. What are we unwrapping? Watch and find out!