Salinas
A History of Race and Resilience in an
Agricultural City
CAROL LYNN MCKIBBEN
A
n ambitious history of a California city that
epitomizes the history of race relations in
modern America.
Although much has been written about the
urban–rural divide in America, the city of Salinas,
California, like so many other places in the state and
nation whose economies are based on agriculture,
is at once rural and urban. For generations, Salinas
has been associated with migrant farmworkers
from diff erent racial and ethnic groups. This broad-
ranging history of “the Salad Bowl of the World”
tells a complex story of community-building in a
multiracial, multiethnic city where diversity has
been both a cornerstone of civic identity and, from
the perspective of primarily white landowners and
pragmatic agricultural industrialists, essential for
maintaining the local workforce.
Carol Lynn McKibben draws on extensive
original research, including oral histories and
never-before-seen archives of local business groups,
tracing Salinas’s ever-changing demographics
and the challenges and triumphs of Chinese,
Japanese, Filipino, and Mexican immigrants, as well
as Depression-era Dust Bowl migrants and white
ethnic Europeans. McKibben takes us from Salinas’s
nineteenth-century beginnings as the economic
engine of California’s Central Coast up through the
disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on communities
of color today, especially farmworkers who already
live on the margins.
Throughout the century-plus of Salinas
history that McKibben explores, she shows how the
political and economic stability of Salinas rested
on the ability of nonwhite minorities to achieve
a measure of middle-class success and inclusion
in the cultural life of the city, without overturning
a system based in white supremacy. This timely
book deepens our understanding of race relations,
economic development, and the impact of changing
demographics on regional politics in urban California
and in the United States as a whole.
Carol Lynn McKibben is a lecturer at Stanford University. She is director of the Salinas History Project and the author of two previous books on the history of Monterey County: Beyond Cannery Row: Sicilian Women, Immigration, and Community in Monterey, 1915-1999 (2006) and Racial Beachhead: Diversity and Democracy in a Military Town (2012).
For discounts on event orders and bulk purchase of 50+ copies, please contact [email protected].
A
modern America.
Although much has been written about the
urban–rural divide in America, the city of Salinas,
California, like so many other places in the state and
nation whose economies are based on agriculture,
is at once rural
has been associated with migrant farmworkers
from diff erent racial and ethnic groups. This broad-
ranging history of “the Salad Bowl of the World”
tells a complex story of community-building in a
multiracial, multiethnic city where diversity has
been both a cornerstone of civic identity and, from
the perspective of primarily white landowners and
pragmatic agricultural industrialists, essential for
maintaining the local workforce.
Carol Lynn McKibben draws on extensive
original research, including oral histories and
never-before-seen archives of local business groups,
tracing Salinas’s ever-changing demographics
and the challenges and triumphs of Chinese,
Japanese, Filipino, and Mexican immigrants, as well
as Depression-era Dust Bowl migrants and white
ethnic Europeans. McKibben takes us from Salinas’s
Carol Lynn McKibben is a lecturer at Stanford University. She is director of the Salinas History Project and the author of two previous books on the history of Monterey County:
**JANUARY 2022**
$30.00 paperback, 432 pages
Receive 20% off
at www.sup.org with code
MCKIBBEN20
“This important and engaging study of Salinas tells a vital story of racial divides—of how they have at times been exacerbated, but also often crossed, and at times even dissolved. This is a major contribution to California history, the history of race relations, urban history, agricultural history, and oral history. What is more, this book is instructive for the state and the nation. ”
—David Wrobel, author of America’s West: A History, 1890-1950
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS