The Heart of a Growing City the Salad Bowl

PART 1 Fresnocentric The Heart of a Growing City The Salad Bowl

“I don’t think I know what it is precisely (or even second wave of immigrants came crashing ashore Even more secretive was a series of tunnels the imprecisely) that Fresno has,” William Saroyan at Ellis Island, bringing with it a large number of community built beneath the earth. ey served a wrote. “Certainly I don’t know what it’s got that Italians and Russian Jews. variety of purposes. Residents could hide valuables some other town hasn’t got. I do know, however, there. ey could escape the heat … or the au- that it’s got me, because when I left Fresno in 1926 The Chinese thorities. e second consideration became all the my idea was never to go back. at was a good In Fresno, the rst wave of immigrants came not more important as the area grew into a hub of Fres- idea until I discovered that New York was Fresno by sea, but by rail. ey didn’t ride the rails, they no nightlife, often drawing people from upscale all over again.” built them. Chinese immigrants laid thousands of neighborhoods to the other side of the tracks for Saroyan didn’t expand on exactly what he meant miles of track for the great railroad enterprises of legitimate and illegitimate activities alike. ere by that last comparison, but there’s something to the late 19th century, often settling in neighbor- were boxing matches and burlesque shows. During it. e Big Fig (or the Big Raisin, if you prefer) has hoods called Chinatowns in cities up and down Prohibition, Chinatown was one place you could this in common with the Big Apple: It’s a city of the Golden State. Fresno was no exception, and go to buy a sti drink, no questions asked. Such immigrants. e people who came to Fresno just its Chinatown lay just west of the Central Pacic illicit trade was protable, so it’s hardly surprising came from dierent places than the East Coast im- rail line that got to Fresno in that rival Chinese unions migrants, riding dierent historical waves. 1872. ey ended up there known as tongs rose up to In New York, hundreds of thousands arrived because a group of white “On the whole, Fresno’s made demand a piece of the ac- from Ireland in the mid-19th century on the heels landowners got together and tion, maneuvering for inu- of the potato famine. At the same time, crop fail- agreed not to sell any prop- up of a lot of good people, and ence over the narcotics trade ures in Germany prompted many there to head for erty east of the tracks to Chi- it’s got a lot of ethnic balance. and illegal lottery games. the New World. en, at the turn of the century, a nese buyers. In 1935, rumors of an e heart of Fresno’s Chi- Fresno’s done OK for itself.” impending tong war brought natown wasn’t a street, but – Roger Rocka police with loaded shotguns Fresno population, 1940–1990 a narrow strip of concrete into Chinatown. ere they 1940 60,685 called China Alley, which ran broke down four doors on G 1950 91,669 (+51.1%) between F and G streets, from Inyo on the south Street and took 18 men into custody during a raid 1960 133,929 (+46.1%) up through Tulare. It was, literally, a back alley. But on lottery operations. Other ocers took up po- it was also a place to preserve their culture—and sitions around the neighborhood, with orders “to 1970 165,655 (+23.7%) promote some less-than-legal activities—beyond shoot at the rst sign of open violence,” e Bee 1980 217,129 (+31.1%) the view of those who they knew would not ap- reported. e police chief, Frank Truax, cautioned 1990 354,202 (+63.1%) prove. people without business in the district to stay away

2 THE SALAD BOWL and vowed to keep an armed contingent of o cers patrolling the streets until the crisis had passed. How many people escaped to the underground tunnels is unknown, but it’s a sure bet that many did. e arched tunnels, wide enough for two people to walk abreast, o ered a hidden refuge and, perhaps, also a means of access for the outside world. How far the tunnels went is unclear, but ru- mor has it that they may have extended under the tracks to the downtown area, allowing “reputable” Fresnans covert access to the seedier side of town. In 2013, archaeologists began to dig through the area in earnest, looking to preserve any bits of history buried beneath sidewalks and since forgotten. The Japanese Chinese immigrants weren’t the only ones who lived in Chinatown. Over the years, the neighborhood and the surrounding area became home to The Nippon Building on the northwest corner of Kern and F Streets, former home of the Rex and Cal theaters. 2013. numerous immigrants, including Italians, Basques, Russians, Germans and Greeks. Portuguese settlers the north side of Kern and faced each other across more than 100 of them planted around the park’s came from the Azores, a string of nine islands in F Street. Lake Washington. In the summer of 1939, the lo- the Atlantic colonized by Portugal in the 15th Komoto’s Department store operated for many cal Japanese business association presented the city century. In 1880, Fresno County was home to years just up the block, at the corner of Kern with a stone lantern two times the height of an 449 Portuguese immigrants, nearly half of whom and G streets. Several restaurants owned by Japa- average person. It was placed on an island in the worked as sheepherders. nese-Americans could be found in the area, along middle of the lake at Roeding. But six decades later, on the eve of World War with sh markets and a drug store. ere were also Everything changed less than three years later. II, perhaps the most prominent group in China- two massage parlors, a couple of pool halls, bicycle On December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan town was the Japanese-American community. In- shops, laundries and various other businesses. unleashed an unprovoked assault on the U.S. na- deed, the 900 block of F Street and the adjacent In many ways, the Japanese-American com- val base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, killing more than cross-streets of Tulare and Kern housed a plethora munity seems to have enjoyed a good relationship 2,400 Americans. e United States declared war of businesses owned by Japanese-Americans. e with its neighbors. Roeding Park’s Japanese Tea on Japan the following day. Just over two months twin Nippon buildings each ran half a block along Garden featured an impressive wooden pagoda later, President Franklin Roosevelt issued an exec- and the state’s largest grove of cherry trees, with utive order that authorized the military to set up

3 FRESNO GROWING UP geographic zones from which “any and all persons California Governor Earl Warren. “ e only rea- ose held at the fairgrounds came from closer may be excluded.” son that there has been no sabotage or espionage to home: Fresno, Madera, Kings and Tulare coun- e military used this sweeping power to de- on the part of Japanese-Americans is that they are ties, along with some from around Sarcamento. clare the entire West Coast an exclusion zone for waiting for the right moment to strike,” Warren e American military sought to put the best all persons of Japanese ancestry—foreign or Amer- told Congress. As a Supreme Court justice nine face possible on the situation, declaring that the ican-born. ey would be sent to hurriedly con- years later, this same man would draft the major- internees were being locked up for their own pro- structed assembly centers that served as temporary ity opinion in Brown v. Board of Education—the tection. With most Americans in favor of the pro- barracks while more permanent relocation centers decision that put a dagger in the heart of sepa- gram, the press went blithely along with the story- were being built. e military couldn’t wait. e rate but “equal” education for whites and Afri- line. A front-page story in e Bee, chronicling the army deemed it necessary to separate the ethnic can-Americans. May 11 arrival of the rst internees in Fresno, read Japanese population from the general public as In 1941, he had believed Japanese-Americans as follows: quickly as possible, fearful that those targeted for should be kept separate … and entirely unequal. internment might harm national security interests. As a result of this thinking, thousands of Amer- “Free to come and go as they wish within the is hardly explained why even Japanese-Amer- ican citizens and legal residents were uprooted limits of new abodes provided for them by a con- ican infants in orphanages were included in the from their homes and told to “evacuate,” with only siderate nation, more than 500 evacuated Japa- order, but the nation was in a panic, driven by as much of their belongings as they could carry. nese were in assembly centers near Pinedale and a searing combination of fear and prejudice. e Houses were lost. So were businesses, which at the Fresno District Fairground today. All … fear was perhaps, understandable, in light of the by that time numbered in the hundreds in Fresno appeared pleased with their new surroundings sudden and shocking assault on Pearl Harbor. But alone. In many cases, evacuees had little choice but and began planning for landscaping the grounds the racism it spawned, or perhaps exposed, was to sell their homes and other belongings to oppor- and preparing vacant acreage designated for rec- inexcusable. tunistic neighbors for pennies on the dollar. When reational activities. Several Japanese families Anyone who doubts that racism was in play they returned, one survey indicated, four in ve brought drapes, pictures and other items deco- need only read the words of Lt. Gen. John De- Japanese found their belongings had been “ri ed, rating their quarters.” Witt, the man assigned to oversee the evacuation. stolen or sold during their absence.” DeWitt declared that “the Japanese race is an en- In Fresno, scarcely a month after Roosevelt is- From the description, one might have thought emy race.” Two or even three generations of U.S. sued his order, nearly every carpenter in the city the internees were o for an extended weekend citizenship had no bearing on the situation, he was hard at work building more than 500 build- holiday. e reality was much di erent. said, because “the racial strains are undiluted.” ings at two assembly centers designed to house the Elements of supposed normalcy were publi- When confronted with the fact that not a single families who were about to be uprooted. One was cized. At both Fresno-area centers, for instance, Japanese-American had been accused of sabotage, in Pinedale to the north of town and the other at high school students attended graduation cere- DeWitt resorted to pretzel logic, calling it “a dis- the Fresno County Fairground. For two months, monies, complete with valedictorians. Noticeably turbing and con rming indication that such ac- the Pinedale center housed some 4,800 internees absent: the friends and classmates with whom they tion will be taken.” from the southern end of the Valley and the Paci c had shared all but the nal days of their time in e only thing disturbing was DeWitt’s think- Northwest on an 80-acre parcel of land. high school. Newspapers were published at both ing, which was shared by no less a personage than sites, too ( e Logger in Pinedale, site of an old

4 THE SALAD BOWL

ers. Instead, they were given salt tablets as temper- atures rose as high as 110. By the end of July, residents of the Pinedale camp had boarded trains for Arizona or the Tule Lake relocation camp near the Oregon state line. In late October, the last internees from the fairgrounds had left for a “permanent” camp in Jer- ome, Arkansas. At the time, many in California hoped the situation would, indeed, be permanent. According to a December 1943 poll in the Los Angeles Times, 91 percent of respondents favored excluding Japa- nese-Americans from Paci c Coast states for good. But the end of the war changed things for the bet- Internees dance at the Fresno Assembly Center in 1942. Near-nightly ter … eventually. dances were among activities held to create the illusion of normalcy When the government approved the return of for those who had been rounded up and forced to leave their homes against their will. Library of Congress. “loyal” Japanese-Americans to the region in early 1945, they were hardly welcomed with open arms. In February, shotgun re targeted homes in Fowler lumber mill, and e Grapevine at the fairgrounds), “ e government tried to say in the propa- and Fresno less than a week apart. An arsonist but the stories that appeared on their pages were ganda that it was to protect us, but the tower and burned down a home in Selma, and a gunman subject to o cial censorship. the guns were pointed at us,” Fresno fairgrounds red at a Visalia home. Amazingly, the Supreme Court upheld the internee Saburo Masada told the Fremont Tribune During the war itself, the pagoda at Roeding supposed constitutionality of the internment de- years later. “And you don’t protect innocent people Park had been torn down, and the stone lantern spite such blatant violations of free speech and free by imprisoning them.” had been vandalized and lost. press, not to mention freedom of assembly. In Pinedale, internees spent a few months on a Fortunately, however, public opinion soon be- Stanley Umeda, who was born in Florin near desolate site barren of trees or even ground cover. gan to turn. In subsequent years, Japanese-Ameri- Sacramento, recalled his rst impression of the eir “homes” were wooden shacks covered with cans returned and resettled in the Fresno area with- fairgrounds site in an interview with the Elk Grove tarpaper, guarded by military patrols and sur- out major incident. Uni ed School District: “All the buildings looked rounded by barbed-wire fences. Single men and By the mid-1960s, plans were on the drawing exactly the same,” he said. “ ere was nothing dis- women were housed in dormitories; families had board for another Fresno park on the north side tinctive about them other than the fact that they small apartments. e internees arrived in the late of town. It was suggested that the park include a had addresses stenciled on each of the barracks.” spring and stayed through midsummer, baking Japanese garden as a symbol of the ties between e only way he could remember where he lived beneath the Valley’s unforgiving sun without any Fresno and her sister city, Kochi, Japan. e gar- was to memorize the address: J-10-4. relief from air conditioning or even swamp cool- den, which eventually included a koi pond, wa-

5 FRESNO GROWING UP terfalls and an array of plant life, opened in 1981. The Armenians trait of the iconic “Sun-Maid Girl,” wearing a red Bright and verdant foliage in each of the garden’s About a mile east of Chinatown, another neigh- bonnet and holding a basket of grapes. four areas re ected a di erent season of the year borhood grew up that became home to a group of By 1930, Armenians owned four out of every across the ve-acre site. immigrants who had a major impact on Fresno’s ten acres of raisin land in Fresno County, along Meanwhile, the old stone lantern that was re- history. e rst Armenians to settle in Fresno, with substantial g orchards. Still, like most im- portedly lost during the war turned up in the Hagop and Garabed Seropian, arrived in the 1880s migrants, they often found themselves targets of backyard of an estate. It was later rededicated and and were so enamored of the area that they wrote discrimination in various forms. Ordinances were placed at the Woodward Park site, known as the home to their relatives and friends, comparing it passed restricting land ownership, though these Shinzen Friendship Garden. with their homeland in the Caucasus Mountains. were eventually overturned in court. Organiza- By 1894, a total of 360 Armenians had immi- tions as diverse as fraternal orders, veterans groups grated to Fresno, and many more followed over and even the YMCA banned Armenians from the next few years as the Ottoman Empire em- membership. Some even derided them as “lower- barked on a savage campaign to purge Armenia class Jews” while others referred to them “Fresno of its Christian population. As many as 300,000 Indians.” Armenians were slain in what came to be known Despite that discrimination, the list of well- as the Hamadian massacres, and many more ed known Fresnans of Armenian heritage by no means the country, large numbers nding their way to begins and ends at Saroyan. Fresno. Jerry Tarkanian, who played basketball and later Still more followed in the aftermath of the coached for Fresno State, saw his greatest success as even more brutal Armenian Genocide launched in a coach in Las Vegas, where he led the UNLV Run- 1915. Fresno soon became home to more Arme- nin’ Rebels to a national championship in 1990 nians than any place else outside of Armenia (al- with a savage 103–73 rout of Duke. though the Los Angeles suburbs of Glendale and Saroyan’s cousin, Ross Bagdasarian, co-wrote Burbank later surpassed it). the song “Come on-a My House” with Saroyan, As with many groups who have come to Fresno, and it topped the charts for Rosemary Clooney agriculture was a key component of the Armenians’ late in the summer of 1951. With a melody based story. In Armenian tradition, the grape has long on an Armenian folk tune, it was by far Saroyan’s been styled the “queen of all fruits,” and grapevines most signi cant songwriting e ort. thrived in the Fresno area. Of course, they still do, Bagdasarian, however, would go on to greater with the city taking pride in its identity as “Raisin fame in entertainment as the creator of Alvin and Tom Inouye owned the O.K. Garage at 1402 Kern Street. He is seen Capital of the World.” For many years, Sun-Maid the Chipmunks. He sped up a recording of his own here in 1945 after returning from the Jerome Relocation Center Raisins had its headquarters in Fresno and boasted voice to create the instantly recognizable voices of in Burrington, Ark., where he was sent with his wife and son. the world’s largest dried-fruit packinghouse, just Alvin, Simon and eodore for the rst time in Inouye, who had owned the garage since 1922, had kept about 60 1958, using the professional name David Seville. cars owned by evacuees in storage there. 1945. Hikaru Iwasaki (U.S. south of downtown. Fresno’s own Lorraine Collett government). Petersen was the model for the original 1915 por- In an era when an Armenian name could still mean

6 THE SALAD BOWL losing out on a chance at a job or a contract, it was common for public gures with Armenian ancestry to use pseudonyms. e surname su x -ian (or The Sun-Maid plant in downtown Fresno. 1980. Lance Nix. -yan), meaning “son of,” was so common as to be easily identi able as Armenian—even though it is found in other traditions, as well. Krekor Ohanian went by the stage name Mike Connors when appearing in a succession of lms and the TV series Mannix. Cherilyn Sarkisian, who attended Fresno High School before leaving at age 16 for a music career, went simply by Cher. She would go on to earn an Academy Award for Best Actress (for the 1987 romantic comedy Moonstruck), and her musical career would produce four chart-topping singles among a dozen to hit the Top 10 on the Billboard charts. Sid Haig was born Sidney Mosesian in Fresno but took his father’s given name as his last name. He went on to a career that spanned more than as an owner. His success began as a pilot, earning Barbra Streisand and Elvis Presley for his rst two 50 lms and 350 television episodes, mostly a living rst as a crop-duster and then, more lu- engagements. And four years later, he opened the playing tough guys and villains. (His imposing cratively, by delivering Canadian planes to Scot- even larger MGM Grand, after having purchased 6-foot-4 stature couldn’t have hurt.) A graduate of land and taking on a variety of dangerous mis- famed movie studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Roosevelt High School, he got his start performing sions. He befriended fellow aviation enthusiast Kerkorian’s personal wealth went as high as $16 with other Fresno kids in a Christmas skit in the Howard Hughes and parlayed his savings into a billion in 2008, when he ranked among the 50 display window at the JC Penney store downtown. major investment, the purchase of Trans Interna- richest people in the world. Not bad for a former Armenian success stories extended beyond the tional Airlines. Fresno newsboy. entertainment arena and into the realm of business. Kerkorian’s biggest payo , however, came when Other Armenians never became nationally Sometimes, they combined the two. Kirk Kerko- he plunked down just under a million dollars for known, but contributed immeasurably to the fab- rian grew up in Fresno’s Armenian Town and, like an 80-acre parcel of land on the Las Vegas Strip ric of the city that is Fresno. Among their number Saroyan, worked as a paperboy in his youth for the in 1962. He leased the site to the builders of Cae- is Edward Megerdichian, who came to Fresno in Fresno Morning Republican, hawking newspapers sar’s Palace and, within six years, had multiplied 1956 and attended Fresno State. His impact on near Fresno’s downtown hotels. his investment times 10. Even grander successes my own life became substantial after I enrolled in As an adult, Kerkorian would become con- followed. In 1969, Kerkorian opened the largest his algebra class as a sophomore at Bullard High nected to the hotel industry much more directly hotel in the world, the International, booking School. I had unked the class cold the previous

7 FRESNO GROWING UP year, but “Mr. M” made it seem simple, and it told the newspaper for a 2002 interview marking rode the rails, and still others traveled by foot along wasn’t long before a kid who’d been on the verge of its 95th anniversary. “I have this admiration for the Route 66 to U.S. 99 … if they could get that far. failing an entire grade became a straight-A student. sacri ce of the young people in our organization At one point in 1936, Los Angeles police stationed Megerdichian played no small part in that, but and the admiration for the older generation who themselves at the border as part of a “bum block- his in uence was certainly far greater than that were willing to give us responsibilities. ey were ade” to keep the migrants out. single individual success. Not only did he coach very happy to see the young get involved. ey gave About a third of those who made it through the Bullard soccer team to several championships, us roles to play. ey believed in us.” went to Los Angeles, but the rest branched o he also built a successful career of some three de- ough Fresno is no longer home to the largest northward to Route 99. Most went via the Tehach- cades as a teacher. Although I did well in his alge- Armenian population in North America, the com- api Pass from Mojave, while others headed over the bra class, I subsequently found myself more drawn munity continues to reside at the heart of Fresno’s winding, three-lane Ridge Route that spanned the to English and pursued a career in journalism. I identity and tradition. mountains north of the San Fernando Valley (one was surprised to nd, many years after I graduated Grapes remain important, even today. Each lane in each direction, plus a treacherous shared from Bullard, that Mr. M had gotten his start in year, Holy Trinity Armenian Apostolic Church cel- center lane for passing). journalism, as well. ebrates the Blessing of the Grapes, which marks the eir travels were immortalized by John Stein- Megerdichian had been on the four-person beginning of the mid-August harvest. e 100th beck in e Grapes of Wrath, by Dorothea Lange in sta of a newspaper called Asbarez (“ e Arena”) such celebration in Fresno took place in 2013. a series of chilling photos taken for the federal Re- in a building at the northwest corner of Ventura settlement Administration, by folk singer Woody and M streets—right across from the Holy Trinity The Dust Bowl Refugees Guthrie—an Oklahoma native who made the Armenian Apostolic Church and next door to the If hardship drove many Armenians from their journey himself—and others. Asbarez Club. homeland to Fresno, hardship also drove a group e largest number came from Oklahoma, but e newspaper was founded in 1908 on Fulton of Americans from their homes during the 1930s. others came from the nearby states of Arkansas Street, putting out its rst edition the same month e twin catastrophes of the Dust Bowl and the (“Arkies”), Missouri and Texas, a four-state region Saroyan was born. Asbarez published two Arme- Great Depression reduced a vast swath of the na- consisting largely of people who had migrated nian-language editions a week. Editor Melik Shah tion’s midsection to a virtual wasteland during the from the Old South. would listen to English-language radio broadcasts decade, with giant dust storms and foreclosure no- ey had started moving farther west before and translate the news into Armenian for the news- tices swallowing up once-fertile farmland in equal the Depression began, but ed in droves when the paper, which also ran serialized novels on its pages, measure. bottom fell out of both the regional and national in addition to editorials. Oklahoma was at the heart of the Dust Bowl. economies. e newspaper eventually moved its headquar- During the Depression, the state su ered a net mi- Between 1935 and 1950, the population of ters to Los Angeles in the 1970s because the Arme- gration loss of 440,000 people. One in 10 farmers these migrants in the San Joaquin Valley more nian community there was growing more quickly who owned their land had it taken away by the than quadrupled from 62,300 to 254,800, and by than its Fresno counterpart. banks. Tenant farmers, who worked the majority midcentury they accounted for more than one in “A day doesn’t go by without me looking at the of the acreage, simply picked up and left. Some ve residents of the region. Before their arrival, word ‘Asbarez,’ and ashing back to pictures of what loaded bedrolls, blankets, suitcases and anything Mexican workers had often performed migrant it used to be and what it is now,” Megerdichian else that would t into and onto their cars. Others labor in the California elds, as they would again

8 THE SALAD BOWL once the Dust Bowl migration eased. But the in- Valley were non-Hispanic whites, and half of those Editor of The Bee—Sir: ux of “Okies” (used derisively by their detrac- were from the Dust Bowl and surrounding region. tors but later worn as a badge of honor by some) While agriculture has always driven the area’s Please let me thank the few who write a kind displaced the old Mexican laborers. It also caused economy, it has also served to isolate those who word for the Oklahoma and Texas people. Any greater resentment among those already settled in perform its most physically demanding—and es- one who has enough common sense or human the region because, unlike the Mexicans eldwork- sential—jobs. Earlier Armenian settlers, ostracized charity to think we ought to be allowed to live is ers who returned home after the harvest, the Dust from service clubs and even churches, had often appreciated. … Bowl refugees tended to stick around. lived on the rural fringes of Fresno, harvesting Most had no place else to go. grapes and gs. Now, the newly arrived Ameri- A lot of Californians seem to have a chronic e Mexican migrants didn’t like them because can migrants were similarly marginalized by their grouch. If citizens from other states come here the Okies competed with them for work, and the poverty and social identity. Often destitute, they and take any kind of work and any wages they settled population didn’t like them, either. In 1940, scraped together a living in the elds when they can get to keep from starving, they howl. And if, three-quarters of farmworkers in the San Joaquin could nd work and spent their nights in federal from lack of work, we are forced to ask for relief, labor camps—if they were lucky. (If they weren’t they howl again and accuse us of coming here to and the camps were full, they often slept in tents ask relief. … by the side of the road, underneath billboards in Migrants traveling from Missouri deal with car problems by the side squatter slums, or in irrigation ditches.) We pick cotton half a day at a time when it is of the road along Highway 99 near Tulare. 1938. Dorothea Lange. eir median income in 1939 was a mere $650, not too wet. If we make as much as $6 or $8 below government-de ned subsistence levels. a month, we are supposed to be sitting on top Permanent homes often weren’t an option, not of the world. I would like to find some one who only because of the migrants’ paltry income, but can figure food, clothing, medicines, house rent, because they needed to follow the harvest. Accord- lights and water bills out of that. … ing to a Kern County Health Department report, families would typically “harvest cotton in the fall, Really deserving persons can not get help so go on relief until May, harvest the potatoes in the there are three things they can choose from, spring, work the vegetables and fruit during the starve, commit suicide or plunge into debt and summer and rest on relief until the cotton harvest get on the SRA (State Relief Administration). again.” When one does not want to do any one of the ose who did nd homes often settled into three and has searched the county over to beg “Okievilles”—cheap migrant subdivisions that for work, what is there left to do? sprang up around virtually all the Valley’s commu- nities, including Fresno. Mrs. W.M.R. A letter writer in 1938 addressed e Bee as Clovis, Calif. follows: March 17, 1938

9 FRESNO GROWING UP

When the war ended and the economy im- proved, many of those who had come west from Oklahoma and the surrounding region left the elds and found better-paying jobs. Some, like the Tatham family, found great success. Walter and Cora Tatham moved with their son Oca from Oklahoma to the McFarland area in 1934. ere, Oca Tatham started working the vineyards, turn- ing grape trays for 20 cents an hour. But he soon found a better way to make money: buying 100 potatoes for 50 cents and selling them to fellow farm laborers for twice that price. He quickly made enough to buy a Ford pickup, and his continued success enabled him to purchase a farm east of Fresno and get into real estate—the eld in which son Bill would make his fortune. (He made enough to buy a pro football team in 1983, placing it in his family’s home state of Okla- homa and christening it the Outlaws.) But no matter how far they got from the elds, Children of laborers play outside “homes” in a company housing camp near Corcoran in Tulare County. 1936. Dorothea Lange. the migrants didn’t forget their roots. ey ocked to hear the southwestern brand of country music t. But the less formal, more passionate evangeli- But as they grew in number and left the old that Bob Wills and Spade Cooley played, bring- cal churches often accepted them with open arms. farm labor camps, other aspects of their lives being it to mainstream radio on KEAP in Fresno and ese churches, often ridiculed by mainstream came more integrated into society at large. With KGEN out of Tulare. Protestants for their fervent hallelujahs and prac- more and more migrants and their children mov- ey also brought their brand of evangelical tice of speaking in “tongues,” held an attraction for ing from the elds to the city in the 1940s and Christianity, a faith that had kept them going people who themselves were often ridiculed. ’50s, they began to integrate their own spiritual through the tough times. Cora Tatham, for in- In the beginning, such churches were havens of practices into the larger fabric of Fresno life. stance, was a charismatic Christian who believed refuge. ey were largely isolated from the previ- With the passage of time, the migrants and in the power of prayer to e ect faith healings. ous generations that had settled in the area, and their children ocked to Sunday services in build- e Tathams were hardly alone. Others were that was ne with many migrants. Often, they ings that quickly outgrew their congregations. attracted to the Pentecostal faith, as well. Many lived by a strict moral code that shunned danc- Valley Christian Center, a Foursquare church, old-line Protestant churches weren’t receptive to ing, alcohol, tobacco and “the devil’s music” in the moved out of a modest building on Palm Avenue people who spoke with an accent and couldn’t af- cause of purity and holiness. ey preferred not to and converted the former East Shields Avenue ford anything approximating a “Sunday best” out- become entangled in the ways of the world. Carousel skating rink into a new sanctuary in the

10 THE SALAD BOWL early ’80s. Northwest Baptist (later, just Northwest e area’s politics changed, too, with conserva- placed by a new generation of Mexican eldwork- Church) grew rapidly out on West and Barstow, tive religious values playing an increasing role in ers brought in under the bracero program to take building a large new sanctuary next to its modest elections. As Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority rose to their place. e program, instituted in 1942 under white chapel. Cornerstone Church moved into the prominence nationally, Fresno’s longtime tilt to- a treaty with Mexico, enabled Mexican laborers to Wilson eatre downtown. ward the Democratic Party swung the other way, work on farms north of the border under contract e city’s biggest congregation, which became with Republicans gaining the majority for a time. to U.S. growers. Fresno’s rst “megachurch,” was the non-denom- A former Oklahoma resident summed it up in a In the words of Harvard professor Jorge Domín- inational Peoples Church, which built a 2,000- 1981 interview with Judith Gannon, one of many guez, “It was Mexicans and Rosie the Riveter who seat sanctuary at Cedar and Herndon in 1977. It interviews she conducted with Dust Bowl mi- ran the American economy and enabled American attracted so many churchgoers that it held three grants: “We won—we took over,” he said. “When citizens to go o to war.” Sunday morning services there. I go there (to the San Joaquin Valley) … I feel I am Although the program was initially designed G.L. Johnson, a Texas native who led the church in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas.” to end after the war, the demand for cheap labor through its greatest period of growth, re ected in an in the elds continued … and so did the bracero interview with e Bee on the Okies’ impact on the The Latinos arrangement. In fact, more came into the country Valley landscape: “ eir coming made the Valley e southwestern migrants who came west had after the war ended than before, lling a need cre- as di erent from San Francisco and Los Angeles as one advantage over some of the other groups who ated by the end of the Dust Bowl migrations. Oklahoma is from New York City,” he said. “ ey’re came from abroad to populate the great Central e number of braceros peaked at more than conservative and Bible-believing people. ey have Valley. ey were, by and large, of European stock. 400,000 every year from 1956–59, and eventually a traditional ethic, and they have not only a ected e color of their skin made it easier for them to totaled more than 4 million by the time the pro- our churches, but our whole Valley culture.” blend in than the Chinese, Latinos, Filipinos and, gram ended in 1964. e workers were, unfortu- e extent of that e ect could be seen in 1962, later, the Hmong who found new homes in Fresno. nately, exploited at both ends. U.S. farm owners when evangelical preacher Billy Graham drew Mexican migrants had been working the elds wrote the bracero contracts in English, and many 172,000 people during one of his crusades—more around Fresno before the Dust Bowl crisis and con- of those who signed them didn’t know what they than the city’s entire population at that time. He tinued to do so, even as migrants from the nation’s were agreeing to. ey couldn’t return to Mex- returned for another crusade in 2001, four years southern plains came to compete with them for ico, except in an emergency, and even then only after an evangelical men’s group known as the jobs. In 1931, Fresno had the Valley’s largest Mex- with employer approval. en, when their con- Promise Keepers staged a two-day event at Bulldog ican population at 6,000, a gure that swelled to tracts were up, they had to go back. To ensure they Stadium that drew a crowd of 44,000 men. 10,000 at harvest time. At the same time, the fed- would, in fact, return, the Mexican government e city also became a frequent stop for Chris- eral government was promoting a mass expulsion took 10 percent of whatever they made north of tian entertainers favored by evangelical audiences of Mexican immigrants via “repatriation trains.” the border. Many who returned never received that in the ’70s and ’80s, such as Larry Norman, Andre eir place was taken, in large measure, by the 10 percent from their government. Crouch and Keith Green. Barry McGuire, who Okies. e bracero program was awed in other ways, had a No. 1 pop hit with the protest anthem “Eve But when the Depression ended and the Okies as well. Most signi cantly, it failed to meet the of Destruction” in 1964, became an evangelical left the elds—often to ght overseas or work demand of Mexican migrants seeking work … or Christian and lived in Fresno for several years. in factories during World War II—they were re- of U.S. farms looking for cheap labor. In scarcely

11 FRESNO GROWING UP three months during the winter and early spring Still, it was more than they could have made With more and more foreign workers crossing of 1952, four Border Patrol o cers stationed in back home. Arrestees told the Border Patrol that the border from the south, the U.S. government Fresno arrested more than 1,700 Mexican nation- they had saved more in four months working launched a deportation program in 1954 known als for deportation. in the U.S. than they could have made over the as “Operation Wetback.” ( e name employed an “ e need for harvest workers here, plus the course of three years in Mexico. It was worth the ethnic slur rst used to denigrate migrants who en- fact wages are higher than in other sections of price of $100 for a false birth certi cate and the tered the country by crossing the Rio Grande.) e the country, makes the Valley a mecca for illegal risk of a felony charge for a second o ense. It was Border Patrol sent more than a million migrants aliens,” said inspector James York, one of the four. even worth living with as many as 13 other people back across the border in the rst year of the pro- “Very frequently, we nd cases in which American in a room designed to house just two. gram alone. citizens of Mexican descent have been forced from In just one week during 1953, authorities ar- When the bracero program ended eight years jobs to make way for the nationals who will work rested more than 1,100 people illegally in the U.S. later, the need for farm labor didn’t. U.S. farmers longer and for less money.” at was in Fresno County alone. continued to employ eldworkers illegally, most often for a pittance. Illegal immigration outside the bracero program had already been an issue, with many foreign workers crossing the border and ignoring the authorized program. “ e problem of Mexican illegal immigration is born at the moment that the bracero program ends,” Domínguez told Harvard Magazine. Mexi- cans, he said, “keep coming, because the demand is still there.” As the demand grew, so did the number of people attracted to eld jobs. eir persistence spoke to their desperation. One described being caught near the border three times in one day, sneaking back across each time. He nally made it on the fourth try and stayed in the country for nearly two years before he was caught again. It wasn’t against the law to hire men and women labeled as alambristas, or “fence jumpers,” and growers had long resisted any penalties for doing so. It simply wasn’t in their interest to pay more than they had to for labor, and by the mid-’60s, immigrants who were in the Valley legally had A sign advertises for cotton pickers on the Hotchkiss Ranch near Fresno. 1933. Dorothea Lange.

12 THE SALAD BOWL begun to organize for better wages under Cesar of a “Secret Army” supported by the CIA against order to “appease an evil spirit.” To Chia ai Chavez and the United Farm Workers. the communists in the Vietnam War. When the Moua, the act seemed perfectly rational. He had In 1965, the UFW began a ve-year-long grape American-backed South Vietnamese lost the war, already tried sacri cing a chicken and a pig, yet boycott to demand that they be paid the fed- many among the Hmong became targets of a his wife’s illness had continued unabated. A dog’s eral minimum wage. But even though the union genocide that claimed as many as 400,000 lives. heightened sense of smell, he reasoned, would en- reached a collective bargaining agreement in 1970 Others became political refugees, and those who able it to track down the evil spirit in the other that covered more than 10,000 farmworkers, those had been part of the Secret Army were brought to world. e animal, he said, was helping him, and laborers faced competition from others pouring the United States after the war concluded. he would return the favor in a special ceremony into the country illegally. In 1980, legislation was passed allowing their that would release its spirit to be reborn. It was One farmworker residing legally in 1968 put it family members to emigrate, as well, with large not, to his way of thinking, cruel. A neighbor who this way: “When the alambristas come into a job, numbers heading for Minneapolis and the Central found out about the incident, however, reported the regular workers are out”—he snapped his n- Valley—speci cally, Fresno and Sacramento. the shaman, who was charged with animal cruelty. gers —“just like that.” ere were some di culties. e new land to e case generated headlines beyond Fresno e population of Latino immigrants became which the Hmong had migrated was far di erent and signi cant publicity, but it was far from the even more substantial than that of the Dust Bowl than their traditional home in the highlands of norm. e shaman himself stated that his actions migrants years earlier. Whereas the Dust Bowl mi- Southeast Asia. One Hmong didn’t understand the were a last resort, and the lead investigator for the gration had lasted roughly a decade, the in ux of meaning of a ashing red light, so he made his way Fresno Humane Society stated he could “count on migrant workers from Mexico and Central Amer- across the intersection in front of him by repeat- my hand the actual cases” of Hmong dog sacri ce ica continued far longer than half a century. edly accelerating, then braking. Another thought he knew about. Most of the complaints, he said, By 1980, the Hispanic population of Fresno the picture of a chicken on a Crisco can meant that were false accusations fueled by racism. had surpassed the one in ve gure for Dust Bowl a chicken could be found inside the container. Indeed, most Hmong were willing to comply refugees in the Valley at their peak. at year, 23.5 Naturally, many customs were di erent, too. with local ordinances by taking their animals to percent of Fresno’s population was classi ed as Practices such as paying a “bride price” to the fam- processing plants for slaughter. Hispanic, with the gure jumping to three in ten ily of a groom-to-be and engaging in shamanic rit- While retaining their own cultural heritage, at the close of the decade. uals were foreign to other Fresnans. Hmong migrants and their children have inte- During the same period, another ethnic group Some raised and slaughtered swine or fowl on grated themselves into the larger social structure also saw dramatic growth. e Hmong people their property, as they would have done in Laos quickly, becoming professors, business owners and from Laos in Southeast Asia saw their population without a second thought. But sensibilities (and politicians. Blong Xiong, who left Laos with his increase from 2,392 in 1980 to 44,275 ten years ordinances) in the San Joaquin Valley were very family in the early 1970s, was seated as Fresno’s later—an astonishing 602 percent jump. di erent, and longtime residents viewed them as rst Hmong city council member in 2008. either unsanitary or cruel. Animals were, in some And by the new millennium, the Hmong New The Hmong cases, killed as part of shamanic rituals. Year celebration—an annual event featuring tradi- e Hmong immigrants, like the Mexican brac- Many were shocked in 1995 to nd out that tional clothing and food, dancing, and entertain- eros, had helped the United States during wartime. a Hmong shaman in Fresno had clubbed a three- ment—had become more than a Hmong custom. In the case of the Hmong, they had fought as part month-old German shepherd puppy to death in It was a Fresno tradition.

13 FRESNO GROWING UP

The African-Americans for re-election. e campaign committee has signed ical facility and pharmacy, it eventually became Other groups contributed to Fresno’s diversity, as 200 members of the Fresno Forum who state they home to several African-American physicians. well. A thriving African-American community de- cannot and will not support the Republican ticket.” Mattie Meyers would take her civic involve- veloped on the West Side around the old China- e shift was part of the process during which vast ment beyond the medical practice and even ran town area, dating back to the early 20th century. numbers of African-Americans left the “Party of for mayor in 1965—becoming the rst woman in Among its early leaders was a man named Jesse Lincoln” and realigned with the Democrats, soon to more than two decades to seek the o ce. She also E. Cooley. Cooley, who studied mortuary science become the “Party of Roosevelt” and the New Deal. served as president of the local NAACP branch. in Cincinnati, opened a mortuary in 1928 in Mis- Jesse Cooley’s wife also played a signi cant role In her role as social activist, she fought against de sissippi, where he married Beatrice Gray. ree in the community. Beatrice Cooley taught black facto segregation of Fresno’s schools and, in 1964, years later, they moved to Fresno. ey founded history courses at the Fresno Adult School, worked helped arrange an evening appearance by Dr. Mar- a funeral parlor called Valley Funeral Home that to improve health care for migrant workers, and tin Luther King Jr. at Ratcli e Stadium. e event served the city’s west side—the rst black-owned helped spearhead the creation of the Kearney-Coo- was attended by some 3,000 people. mortuary in the San Joaquin Valley. (His son and ley Plaza as a trustee for the Carter Memorial Af- An excerpt from King’s speech that night: namesake later established funeral homes in Ba- rican Methodist Episcopal Church. e church, kers eld and Stockton.) founded in 1882, was a focal point for the com- “The law cannot make a man love me, but it can In addition to running his business, Jesse E. munity, sponsoring numerous social events and keep him from lynching me, and I think that is Cooley Sr. served as president of the West Fresno encouraging political involvement. pretty important also. The law doesn’t change the Forum, a group that was active in social and po- As time passed, other leaders emerged in the hearts of men, but it changes the habits of men litical advocacy for the African-American commu- community. Hugh Goodwin, a Harvard Law and, pretty soon, they change the hearts of men. nity. e group held candidate forums, took posi- School graduate, became Fresno’s rst black at- … I still have faith in the future and in America. tions on issues and scheduled speakers on issues of torney in the early 1950s and, in 1976, its rst We have the resource to solve this problem.” the day. African-American Municipal Court judge via an e board, however, wasn’t always united. appointment by Governor Jerry Brown. e problem was segregation based on preju- When it convened to endorse a presidential can- Les Kimber, who founded the California Advo- dice. It was, in King’s words, “the Negroes’ burden didate in 1932, the forum backed incumbent Her- cate newspaper in 1967, later served on the Fresno and America’s shame,” and it had long been felt in bert Hoover, but several members of the executive City Council. Fresno. committee disagreed with that choice and formed In the eld of medicine, Willie Lee Brown One example: In January of 1941, ve Afri- the Negro Progressive Republican Club, which interned at Fresno County Hospital and began can-American men from West Fresno led suit endorsed the Democratic candidate, Franklin private practice as an obstetrician/gynecologist in against the Last Chance Café in Friant after being Roosevelt. 1962, becoming the rst black specialty board-cer- refused service there because of their race. When A statement by the new group declared that a ti ed physician in the county. In doing so, he fol- they entered the place to buy sandwiches, the “majority of the colored people of this section, lowed in the footsteps of physician Earl Meyers waitress told them, “It’s just too bad. We cannot who are virtually all Republicans, refuse to follow and his wife, Mattie, who together founded the serve colored folks here.” e justice of the peace the party any longer while it is under the leader- rst medical center to serve the black community awarded each of the ve $100 in damages, the ship of Herbert Hoover and do not endorse him in West Fresno. Complete with an X-ray lab, clin- minimum amount allowable by law.

14 THE SALAD BOWL

Five years later, Fresno State star halfback Jack Many of the challenges the community faced Some of those who did nd homes outside Kelley and teammate Millard Mitchell were told were a matter of false perception … and prejudice. West Fresno also found welcoming neighbors, they couldn’t make the trip with the Bulldogs for In 1963, an estimated 95 percent of Fresno’s Af- while others faced discrimination. e Mosley a game at Oklahoma City University because the rican-American population lived in West Fresno, family, who had moved into a home near Ashlan home team refused to guarantee the two black and some feared an exodus of blacks from the west and Millbrook, faced something worse: violence. It players’ safety. Oklahoma City did agree to play side would lower property values in the suburbs. started with milk bottles being thrown through the the Bulldogs’ full team in Fresno the following But it simply wasn’t true. windows of their home and threatening telephone year, but that didn’t help Kelley, a senior in his - In fact, one study found that home prices were calls warning them to leave the neighborhood. nal season of eligibility. It didn’t help the rest of the actually higher in 45 percent of integrated neigh- ose threats were backed up by a shotgun blast ’46 Bulldogs, either: ey took it on the chin from borhoods than in segregated white suburbs; they that tore through the windows of Ward and Nellie OCU, 46–7. were lower in just 15 percent of the cases. Still, Mosley’s garage. Kelley had originally joined the team in 1942, some real estate agents weren’t interested in show- e Mosleys didn’t give in to the pressure. Ward only to have his football career put on hold while ing houses to West Fresno residents looking to Mosley, a college student at the time, said he re- he served in the Army during World War II. When move out. ceived hundreds of supportive letters after the in- he nished his playing career with the Bulldogs, he Many residents, meanwhile, weren’t interested cidents, some of which o ered his family a place thought about going pro, but instead decided to in moving. “ e mass of Negroes—especially the to stay until the trouble stopped. He went on to stay in Fresno, joining the police force in 1949 and older ones—never will move,” said Guy Sherman, complete his degree in sociology and got a job with becoming the city’s rst African-American police president of Fresno’s NAACP branch, in 1963. the California Youth Authority. His wife became a sergeant two decades later. He went on to found “ eir roots, their friends, their churches, their so- schoolteacher, and they raised two daughters. the African American Historical and Cultural Mu- cial organizations all are in West Fresno.” seum of the San Joaquin Valley.