Hist473-Timeline

  • 31,000 BCE

    First Beringia Migrations

    People from Siberia merging with East Asians going across and populating North and South America
  • Period: 31,000 BCE to 2500 BCE

    California Before the Spanish

    The region's human diversity was exceeded only by that of New Guinea. California tribal people spoke indigenous languages representing 18 major language families, representing over half of the linguistic root families of all spoken languages in the pre-contact Americas, north and south. Linguistic heritage, cultural practices, and prehistoric migration patterns all contributed to the different lifeways of California's indigenous people before the arrival of Europeans.
  • 13,000 BCE

    Undisputed Sites in Northern California

    Undisputed sites established along the Santa Barbara Channel
  • 13,000 BCE

    North American has been found along the Santa Barbara Channel

  • 7000 BCE

    Algic Speakers (Yurok, Wiyot)

    Controversy about Algic speakers arrived as early as 7000 YBP or as late as 850 YBP
  • 6000 BCE

    Chumash Tribe

    First language that emerged in 6000-8000 BP
  • 6000 BCE

    The Yukian Tribe

    Yukian tribe was the language that emerged in 6000 BP.
  • 4500 BCE

    Hokan-Speaking people arrived in California

    Shastan, Atsugewi, and Pomo, groups that settled along the Colorado River
  • 4000 BCE

    Late Holocene Era

    Aridification of low elevation coastal areas, slightly cooling temperatures in most of North American continent
  • 3000 BCE

    Penutian Invasion

    BP: Yokuts are the most numerous, Maidu, Patwin, Wintun, Miwok, Ohlone
  • 2500 BCE

    Tongva Arrival

    Los Angeles Basin, Long Beach
    Arrived in Southern California
  • 2500 BCE

    Uto-Aztecan-Athabaskan, and Algonquian Subfamily

    Language groups arrive later
  • Period: 1492 to

    Spanish Empire Rise

    Herman Cortes incursions into Central Mexico
  • 1520

    Smallpox Pandemic

    Super pandemics of the 1520s that spread in Northern California
  • 1551

    Debate at Valladolid

    Debate at Valladolid where Spain determined that Indians should be civilized, human, and not slaves. It was the duty of the Spanish to protect Indians until they became civilized.
  • 1577

    Sir Francis Drake

    Queen Elizabeth I orders Sir Francis Drake to "go harass the Spanish in the Great Lake"
  • Jun 17, 1579

    Sir Francis Drake Boat

    Drake puts his boast to rest on a tidal flat at present-day Point Reyes which is located in present-day Marin County, California
  • Six Companies

    Six Companies is a consortium of Chinese mutual assistance associations based on country of origin, which non-Chinese misconstrued as commercial organizations.
    1. the Sam Yup Company
    2. the See Yup Company
    3. the Ning Yuen Company, t
    4. the Yeung Wo Company,
    5. the Hop Wo Company
    6. the Hip Kat Company
  • Period: to

    Expulsion of the Jesuits

    In California, the expulsion of the Jesuits as missionaries throughout the New World
  • Junipero Serra Arrivial

    In 1769, the Spanish sent a Spanish Franciscan priest, Junipero Serra, to establish a mission in California to extend the Spanish hold into "Alta California."
  • Kumeyaay Tribe

    Within 5 weeks of the Fransicans' arrival in 1769, the Kumeyaay tribe in San Diego burned to the ground and killed the local father as well. This was done as a result of many things, one being the mistreatment of the native women, who were used as property of the Spanish militia.
  • Period: to

    Arrival of the Spanish Overland Expeditions

    Yumansm Chemehuevis and others along the Colorado River exerted geopolitical dominance over the region.
  • Period: to

    Spanish Colonial Period

    Spanish settlers arrived on California's coast during this time, most of whom were priests and soldiers. Spanish missions were being established by Franciscan priest Junipero Serra. This would cause a major shift in Native American's lives and change California into what it is today.
  • Mission San Diego de Alcalá

    Founded by Father Junipero Serra on July 16, 1769, it is here where the Spanish religious and political dream to begin an Alta California mission chain first became reality.
  • San Carlos Borroméo de Carmelo

    Mission Carmel, is the second of the mission chain and the personal favorite of Father Junipero Serra.
  • Mission San Antonio de Padua

    Established and founded in Alta California by Father Junípero Serra.
  • Mission San Gabriel Arcángel

    Mission San Gabriel was founded fourth in the chain on September 8, 1771, by Father Serra.
  • The Nationality Act

    This was the first law to define eligibility for citizenship by naturalization and establish standards and procedures by which immigrants became US citizens. In this early version, Congress limited this important right to “free white persons".
  • Spain Convences Cortes of Cadiz

    Cortes of Cadiz helped establish the Spanish Constitution of 1812 and supported the American Independence process.
  • Period: to

    Mexican War of Independence

    Mexico achieved its independence. The new Mexican republic was determined to move to "secularize" the missions, to remove the natives and the mission property from the control of the Franciscan missionaries.
  • Fort Ross

    Fort Ross was established by the Russian-American Fur Company in 1812 for the threefold purpose of exploiting the rich fur hunting grounds of the California coast, opening trade with Spanish California, and providing an agricultural depot to supply Russian settlements in Alaska.
  • Santa Barbara Mission Collapsed

    A strong earthquake struck the Santa Barbara Mission. The shaking was so intense that the mission's church bells rang out, the adobe walls of the mission buildings were shattered, thrown out of plumb, and, in some instances, collapsed.
  • Mission San Rafael Arcángel

    Mission San Rafael Arcángel, founded as an Asistencia on December 4, 1817, by Jose Vicente de Sarría, is the second to last in the chain of twenty-one California missions.
  • Period: to

    The Mexican Period

    After Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821, Mexican rulers took over California. Not only were Californians allowed to trade with foreigners, but foreigners could also now hold land in the province once they had been naturalized and converted to Catholicism. The new Mexican republic was determined to move to "secularize" the missions, to remove the natives and the mission property from the control of the Franciscan missionaries.
  • The Mexican Republic

    In 1823, the Mexican Republic replaced the Spanish with the rule over the area. Colonial citizens had permits to the parts of the land, which claimed about 1/6 of the territory. Even though the original missions were only supposed to be in place for 10 years, missionaries continued to fight against surrendering their lands back to the natives.
  • Mission San Francisco Solano

    Mission San Francisco Solano was the only mission founded after Mexico’s independence from Spain and the only mission founded without the church's prior approval.
  • Chumash Indian Uprising

    The Chumash Indians revolted against Santa Barbara Mission in 1824 against the "Padres" who were running this mission. During this time, Mexico had just gained its independence from the Spanish.
  • Period: to

    Status of Estanislao

    Estanisalao was a Yokuts tribal leader famous for leading armed bands of Native Americans in revolt against the Mexican government and Mission establishments.
  • Indian Slave Trades in Northern California

    • Most enslaved were children
    • Californio families sought baptism
    • Almost all families in the Bay Area had Indian servants by 1846
  • First Gold Discovery

    Gold was first discovered in the San Bernardino Mountains
  • Second Authorization Act

    The second Authorization Act stipulated that neo-fight families, indigenous Christianized families, were to get mission lands in this excellent land red should be red distribution project
  • Secularization

    Missions formally begin the secularization process.
  • Ranchero Society and Indian Peonage

    After secularization, Neophytes return to villages (Northern California) and migrate to pueblos (Southern California) to stay away from the grasp of the rancheros but many became "Ranch hands"
  • Preemption Act

    Permitted "squatters" who were living on the federal government-owned land to purchase up to 160 acres (65 ha) at a very low price (not less than $1.25 per acre,
    or $3.09 per hectare) before the land was to be offered for sale to the general public.
  • Major John C. Fremont

    Major John C. Fremont makes his third trip to California, though he had been banned by the Mexican government in 1842
  • Period: to

    Pio Pico Overthrows Governor of California

    Regional Revolts When the war began, Pio Pico raised a force to try to overthrow Juan Castro, the governor of California, which was stationed in Monterey, California.
  • Bear Flag Revolt

    In California, residents were largely unaware of the start of the war until the military commander of northern California, General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, was captured in June 1846 in what is now known as the Bear Flag Revolt.
  • Donner Party

    Donner Party disaster of the winter of 1846-1847. When the Donner Party left Missouri, the Mexican war had just started; when the remnants of the migrant party arrived at Sutter's Fort in New Helvetia in March 1847, the war was over in California.
  • Period: to

    La Frontera and the End of Mexican California

    The experiences of tribal people, Californios, and foreigners (visitors, traders, and residents) during this period anticipate the events that lead to the end of Mexican rule in California. At the height of the war, American troops occupied Veracruz, then marched on and eventually captured and occupied Mexico City. In California, residents were largely unaware of the start of the war until General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo was captured in June 1846 in what is now known as the Bear Flag Revolt.
  • Treaty of Cahuenga

    In California, the war was over by January 1847, after combatants on both sides signed the Cahuenga Capitulation.
  • Phase 2: Gold Rush

    News of the Gold Rush begins to reach parts of the Pacific Rim
  • Phase 3: Gold Rush

    James K. Polk gave a draft of the State of the Union Address in December 1948 and received word by ship by late fall 1848 and began the 49ers.
  • Phase 1: Gold Discovery

    People drop what they're doing and "rush" to these gold regions. The port of Monterrey, California, was empty to find gold. Only local Californians were pursuing gold. In fact, some settlers had Indian slaves search for gold on their behalf.
  • Period: to

    Gold and Genocide

    The discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill on January 24, 1848, unleashed the largest migration in United States history, drawing people from a dozen countries. The gold also fired up the U.S. economy and fueled wild dreams like the construction of a cross-country railroad line. A fall of the Native population declined from disease, genocide, and starvation.
  • Gold Rush: Discovery

    Gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill in Northern California.
  • Gold Fever: Gold Rush Era

    People from all over the world come to California and get obsessed with the idea of getting wealthy and obtaining gold.
  • The 49ers: Gold Rush Era

    James K. Polk gave the State of the Union address in Dec. 1848 and received work by ship. and reached in late fall of 1848 and noted that there was a large gold discovery in California. this excited the nation, and this began the 49ers. The rush of people began in Earnest 1849. This group constitutes less experienced miners, primarily from the U.S. but mainly from China, Europe, South America, and elsewhere.
  • Clear Lake Massacre

    As many as 200 Pomo were killed on the island and in the surrounding area. Many women and children were stabbed with bayonets. “Bloody Island” also known as the “Clear Lake Massacre,” was one of many government-sanctioned slaughters of Native Americans under California’s official policy to exterminate Native Americans.
  • John C. Frémont: California Senator

    Frémont served as California's first U.S. senator from 1850 to 1851. Frémont and his men moved farther north, where he is said to have attacked Indians first in the Sacramento River valley (pictured), and later at Klamath Lake, Oregon. Re-entering California some days later, Frémont is said to have again attacked Indians at Sutter Buttes.
  • Chinatown- San Francisco

    San Francisco Chinatown is the largest Chinatown outside of Asia as well as the oldest Chinatown in North America. It is one of the top tourist attractions in San Francisco.
  • California enters the union as a free non-slavery state

    California enters the union as a free non-slavery state. California became the 31st state. Pressure mounts from citizens, businesses, and miners alike for its elected U.S. government representatives to get faster communication between the East and the West.
  • Levi's Strauss and Co. Founded

    Levi Strauss & Co. was founded in San Francisco, CA. After working with his brothers in their dry goods wholesale business in New York City, Levi emigrated to Gold Rush San Francisco. He opened his own dry goods business to serve the small general stores of the American West.
  • Period: to

    Pony Express

    The firm sets out to establish the Pony Express mail service under the name of the Central Overland California & Pikes Peak Express Company. In March it had been announced the rider would leave St. Joseph and Sacramento on April 3rd and deliver the mail in a record ten days.
  • Pony Express- Discontinued

    The Pony Express is discontinued. Many Californians preferred the Pony Express as opposed to the slower stagecoach service. Unfortunately, the government contract stipulated the service be discontinued after the Overland Telegraph Company completed its construction of the telegraph line. Many claimed the new service was unreliable when breaks occurred in the line.
  • 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights

    The 14th Amendment, passed by Congress on June 13, 1866, and ratified on July 9, 1868, extended the liberties and rights granted by the Bill of Rights to formerly enslaved people. A major provision of the 14th Amendment was to grant citizenship to “All persons born or naturalized in the United States,” thereby granting citizenship to formerly enslaved people".
  • The Civil Rights Act of 1866

    Ratified in 1868, it sought to ensure "birthright citizenship" to African Americans who had been born in America, but in 1970, the act was not revised to address the naturalization of other non-whites.
  • Transcontiental Railroad

    By connecting the existing eastern U.S. rail networks to the west coast, the Transcontinental Railroad (known originally as the "Pacific Railroad") became the first continuous railroad line across the United States. It was constructed between 1863 and 1869.
  • Period: to

    The Gilded Age

    During the Gilded Age, the United States became the leading industrial nation in the world, built a powerful navy, defeated a world power, and acquired a large overseas empire. It was also transformed by the values of a new industrial and urban society.
  • The Chinese Massacre of 1871

    The Chinese Massacre was a racial massacre that occurred in Los Angeles, California killing about 500 Anglo and Latino men. There was also lynched at least 17 Chinese residents, some as young as 18. This Reconstruction-era riot started after a police officer was wounded and a white civilian was killed in the middle of a local dispute. It was one of the largest mass lynchings in U.S. history. The rioters also plundered and destroyed property in the Chinese community.
  • Kindergarten coming to America

    The idea of kindergartens was transported to the U.S. from Germany, but more importantly, the distinct forms that kindergartens took on here. In California, social reformers viewed kindergartens as a crucial tool in Americanizing immigrant children by removing them from the influence of their mothers at home.
  • Yellowstone Becomes a National Park

    Yellowstone is located at the convergence of the Great Plains, Great Basin, and Columbia Plateau. For more than 10,000 years before Yellowstone’s designation as a park, Native American people lived, hunted, fished, gathered plants, quarried obsidian, and used thermal water for religious and medicinal purposes. The first people who called Yellowstone home throughout history were the land’s first conservationists, protecting it for its important resources and cultural significance.
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    Chinese Exclusion Act

    It was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States. In the spring of 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Chester A. Arthur. This act provided an absolute 10-year ban on Chinese laborers immigrating to the United States. For the first time, federal law proscribed entry of an ethnic working group on the premise that it endangered the good order of certain localities.
  • Malakoff Diggins State Historical Park

    Malakoff Diggins is a contemporary view of the environmental impacts of hydraulic mining in northern California. The place is now a state historical park with campgrounds and hiking trails. The erosion caused by hydraulic mining in this video is replicated elsewhere in the Sierras, in giant slashes in the earth that are still evident 150 years later. They are some of the few human-caused environmental features visible from space.
  • Native Americans Conversions to Catholic Faith

    Missionaries became much less heavy-handed, direct, and willing to accept different degrees of Indian conversion or acceptance of the Catholic faith. There were 101,000 Native American Catholics in the United States. The Native Americans were served in at least 154 Catholic churches and 68 Catholic schools.
  • Sequoia becomes a National Park

    On September 25, 1890, President Benjamin Harrison signed legislation establishing America's second national park. Created to protect the giant sequoia trees from logging, Sequoia National Park was the first national park formed to protect a living organism: Sequoiadendron giganteum. One week later, General Grant National Park was created and Sequoia was enlarged.
  • Yosemite Becomes a National Park

    Yosemite National Park was designated by an Act of Congress on October 1, 1890, making it the third national park in the United States, after Yellowstone (1872) and Sequoia (1890).
  • Massacre in Wounded Knee

    Violent conflicts between Native American groups and the U.S. military were common throughout many territories. The massacre site became a place of remembrance for Native Americans, and decades later Wounded Knee would be a rallying cry in struggles for Native American rights.
  • The Great San Francisco Earthquake

    The California earthquake of April 18, 1906, ranks as one of the most significant earthquakes of all time.
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    World War I

    World War I was an international conflict that lasted from 1914 to 18. It involved most of Europe's nations, as well as Russia, the United States, the Middle East, and other regions. The war ended with the defeat of the Central Powers. The slaughter, carnage, and destruction it caused were virtually unprecedented.
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    Magnetic California - The Great Depression and World War II

    California experienced a net in-migration of Americans from other states, seeking work and better living conditions. In the 1910s and 1920s, great numbers of Americans came to California. During the Second World War, California grew in its agricultural and industrial might and population.
    Chinese Americans from California, among others; vast numbers were women. Mexico developed a guest worker scheme that brought Mexicans to work in California and other states.
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    Great Depression and World War II

    The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us even today.
  • Stock Market Crash

    The Stock Market Crash occured when Wall Street investors traded some 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors. In the aftermath of that event, sometimes called “Black Tuesday,” America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression, the deepest and longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the Western industrialized world up to that time.
  • Climate Migrants of the 1930’s Dust Bowl

    Nearly half a million people (sometimes referred to as Okies) migrated out of Oklahoma, many of them tenant farmers who were forced to abandon their farms. About half of them ended up migrating to California during this period, seeking jobs in places such as the profusely agricultural San Joaquin Valley.
  • Golden Gate Bridge

    The Golden Gate Bridge came to be recognized as a symbol of the power and progress of the United States, and it set a precedent for suspension-bridge design around the world.
  • Social Security Act

    An act to provide for the general welfare by establishing a system of Federal old-age benefits, and by enabling the several States to make more adequate provisions for aged persons, blind persons, dependent and crippled children, maternal and child welfare, public health, and the administration of their unemployment compensation laws; to establish a Social Security Board; to raise revenue; and for other purposes.
  • The Grapes of Wrath

    This is the history of John Steinbeck's iconic novel The Grapes of Wrath, which detailed the experience of Dust Bowl migrants to California. This book would be one of the most controversial books of all time and become one of the most celebrated books of American Literature.
  • Hewlett-Packard Enterprise

    One of the Packards of Hewlett-Packards who founded Hewlett-Packards begins a semiconductor computer industry manufacturing industry on Palo Alto land jump starts Silicone Valley, CA.
  • Pearl Harbor Attack

    Pearl Harbor is a U.S. naval base near Honolulu, Hawaii, that was the scene of a devastating surprise attack by Japanese forces on December 7, 1941. More than 2,400 Americans died in the attack, including civilians, and another 1,000 people were wounded. The day after the assault, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan.
  • Japanese-American Incarceration During World War II

    The attack on Pearl Harbor also launched a rash of fears about national security, especially on the West Coast. In February 1942, just two months later, President Roosevelt, as commander-in-chief, issued Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the internment of Japanese Americans. The order authorized the Secretary of War and military commanders to evacuate all persons deemed a threat from the West Coast to internment camps, which the government called "relocation centers," further inland.
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    Bracero Program

    The U.S. and Mexico signed this formal agreement, the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement, which established a guest worker program that allowed Mexican citizens to work in California in jobs that Americans didn’t want to do, including hard labor occupations.
  • Executive Order 9066

    In an atmosphere of World War II hysteria, President Roosevelt, encouraged by officials at all levels of the federal government, authorized the internment of tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry and resident aliens from Japan. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, dated February 19, 1942, gave the military broad powers to ban any citizen from a fifty- to sixty-mile-wide coastal area stretching from Washington state to California and extending inland into southern Arizona.
  • The Chinese Exclusion Act Repealed

    In 1943, Congress passed a measure to repeal the discriminatory exclusion laws against Chinese immigrants and to establish an immigration quota for China of around 105 visas per year. As such, the Chinese were both the first to be excluded at the beginning of the era of immigration restriction and the first Asians to gain entry to the United States in the era of liberalization.
  • Zoot Suits Riots

    The Zoot Suit Riots were a series of violent clashes during which mobs of U.S. servicemen, off-duty police officers, and civilians brawled with young Latinos and other minorities in Los Angeles. The June 1943 riots took their name from the baggy suits worn by many minority youths during that era, but the violence was more about racial tension than fashion.
  • Mendez v. Westminster

    Mendez v. Westminster's final ruling in the landmark case of Mendez v. Westminster struck down the legal justification for forced school segregation in California and paved the way for the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board decision.
  • Lakewood, CA : The Future City

    Eight square miles, eighteen thousand homes, one hundred forty miles of streets, and over seventy thousand people—Lakewood would be known as "Tomorrow's city today." It became world-famous. Thousands of houses were sold before they were built. People from Maine, New York, Texas, Canada, England, and Germany. People from all over the world enjoy the super-modern shopping centers and become that of modern suburbia.
  • Bay Area Rapid Transit

    It began not by governmental fiat but as a concept gradually evolving at informal gatherings of business and civic leaders on both sides of the San Francisco Bay. Facing a heavy post-war migration to the area and its consequent automobile boom, these people discussed ways of easing the mounting congestion clogging the bridges spanning the Bay.
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    Vietnam War

    The Vietnam War was a long, costly, and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The conflict was intensified by the ongoing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. More than 3 million people (including over 58,000 Americans) were killed in the Vietnam War, and more than half of the dead were Vietnamese civilians.
  • Fair Employment Practices Act

    California enacted civil rights laws in 1959 to prohibit discrimination in employment and housing based on a person's race, religion, national origin, and ancestry.
  • Freeway and Expressway Act

    In 1959, California established its own freeway and expressway system to meet the state's future highway needs and passed a $10.5 billion transportation system.
  • The Unruh Civil Rights Act

    The Unruh Civil Rights Act provides protection from discrimination by all business establishments in California, including housing and public accommodations, because of age, ancestry, color, disability, national origin, race, religion, sex, and sexual orientation.
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    Governor Edmund G. “Pat” Brown

    Governor Edmund G. “Pat” Brown ushered in a golden age, making California famous for having the biggest water system, the best higher education, the longest highways, and an economy exceeding that of nations.
  • Water Provisions

    Water provisions to improve a patchwork of systems that have developed in Southern California accidentally created the Salton Sea and re-routing of the Colorado River.
  • Donohoe Act

    The Donahoe Act provided a broad policy framework for California higher education, including the creation of a coordinating board and mission statements that assigned specific functions and responsibilities to each postsecondary segment. Collectively, the segments were to provide access to higher education for all Californians. Governor Brown called the Donahoe Act “the most significant step California has ever taken in the planning for the education of our youth.”
  • Rumford Fair Housing Act

    The Rumford Act law prohibited discrimination in all housing assisted by public financing and private housing and increased the membership of the Fair Employment Practice Commission.
  • Berkeley voted “Best Distinguished University”

    The American Council on Education rates Berkeley the “Best Distinguished University” in the country, and it continues to be the top public university in the world.
  • The Alcatraz Indian Occupation

    On March 9, 1964, five Sicangu Lakota Indians landed on Alcatraz and declared it Indian Land. They cited the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, which deserted federal land that could return to the Sioux.
  • Watts Riot

    The riots were motivated by anger at the racist and abusive practices of the Los Angeles Police Department, as well as grievances over employment discrimination, residential segregation, and poverty in L.A.
  • Hart-Cellar Act

    The Hart-Cellar Act, a 1965 immigration reform measure that eliminated the old national origins quotas of the 1924 act. This law opened immigration to the U.S. on an annual per capita basis: 20,000 people could immigrate each year from each country in the nation. The Hart-Cellar Act, more than any other federal law, resulted in the changing demographics of California in the modern era.
  • East Los Angeles Walkouts

    The East Los Angeles Walkouts represented a call to action for civil rights and access to education for Latino youth in the city. Even with the rejection from the Board of Education, the event remains one of the largest student protests in United States history. In bringing together so many organizing groups. The walkouts also represented a strong group commitment to the Chicano identity, which continued to develop afterward.
  • Ronald Reagan v. UC Berkeley

    The American Council of Education chose Berkeley as the nation’s “best balanced distinguished university.” But for Reagan’s gubernatorial campaign, campus radicalism was a goldmine. Rhetorically, he tied the “rioting” and “anarchy” of Berkeley students to academic freedom run amok and communist professors indoctrinating the next generation.
  • Chicano Moratorium

    20,000 to 30,000 demonstrators formed the National Chicano Moratorium Against the Vietnam War and marched through East Los Angeles, with thousands of individuals organized by local Chicano moratoriums from the Southwest and California. This national coalition was one of the largest Mexican-American anti-war demonstrations.
  • Proposition 187

    California’s voters passed Proposition 187 (also known as the Save Our State referendum), a ballot initiative proposed by anti-immigrant organizations, which restricted undocumented immigrants from the state’s public services, including access to public education and healthcare.
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    Great Recession

    Lasting from December 2007 to June 2009, this economic downturn was the longest since World War II. The Great Recession began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, which makes it the longest recession since World War II.
  • The Ghosts of Rodney King and Watts Rise

    With America seized by racial unrest, as protests convulse cities from coast to coast after the death of George Floyd, Los Angeles is on fire again. As peaceful protests in the city turned violent, many Angelenos were pulled back to the trauma of 1992.
  • California's Population Today

    One in eight US residents lives in California, the nation's most populous state. Its population is much larger than that of second-place Texas (31 million) and third-place Florida (23 million). California's population growth has slowed dramatically in the 21st century. California lost 433,000 people. Most of the loss occurred during the first year of the pandemic and was driven by a sharp rise in residents moving to other states.