ABOUT THIS BOOK

2024 Outstanding Book Award, National Association for Ethnic Studies
2025 Honorable Mention, Norris & Carol Hundley Award, Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association
2025 The Ambassador Julian Nava Best Ethnic Studies Book, International Latino Book Awards

A multiracial history of civil rights coalitions beyond the farm worker movement in twentieth-century Bakersfield, California.

In Civil Rights in Bakersfield, Oliver Rosales uncovers the role of the multiracial west in shaping the course of US civil rights history. Focusing on Bakersfield, one of the few sizable cities within California’s Central Valley for much of the twentieth century in a region most commonly known as a bastion of political conservatism, oil, and industrial agriculture, Rosales documents how multiracial coalitions emerged to challenge histories of racial segregation and discrimination. He recounts how the region was home to both the historic farm worker movement, led by César Chávez, Dolores Huerta, and Larry Itliong, and also a robust multiracial civil rights movement beyond the fields. This multiracial push for civil rights reform included struggles for fair housing, school integration, public health, media representation, and greater political representation for Black and Brown communities. In expanding on this history of multiracial activism, Rosales further explores the challenges activists faced in community organizing and how the legacies of coalition building contribute to ongoing activist efforts in the Central Valley of today.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Oliver A. Rosales is a professor of history at Bakersfield College.

REVIEWS

Civil Rights in Bakersfield is an excellent history of a neglected region. From Bakersfield’s original sins of conquest in 1870 and segregation at the turn of the century, Oliver Rosales charts the city’s multiracial civil rights and political movements of the mid-twentieth century, culminating in battles over school desegregation that extended into the 1980s. Along the way, Rosales presents one of the first comprehensive social histories of any urban locale in California’s interior. His deep, careful research uncovers a long buried, ignored, and politically dangerous history that illuminates trends echoing across the Southwest and charting pathways to justice in our own time.

— Max Krochmal, University of New Orleans, co-editor of Civil Rights in Black and Brown: Histories of Resistance and Struggle in Texas

In revealing the neglected history of civil rights activism in Bakersfield, Rosales helps us understand the struggle against racial segregation in the West. This carefully researched case study challenges the notion that the civil rights movement was primarily a Southern phenomenon.

— Kathryn S. Olmsted, University of California, Davis, author of Right Out of California: The 1930s and the Big Business Roots of Modern Conservatism

[This book] contributes to the growing body of city-level social histories on the U.S. West, and it helps move scholarship on civil rights in California beyond César Chávez and farmworkers…Rosales convincingly uses the history of Bakersfield to shed light on both [multiracial civil rights activism and rural white conservatism].

— Pacific Historical Review

Rosales’s work also suggests that for every gas station bigot, there was a coalition ready to fight back. This is a timely reminder. Hostilities toward immigrants, challenges to anti-poverty programs, and police violence against minority communities persist. In the postwar period, civil rights organizers in Bakersfield knew that these issues cut across race. What lessons can contemporary movements learn from the successes and failures of these coalitions?

— California History

Rosales offers a nuanced exploration of the Civil Rights Movement in Bakersfield, arguing that insufficient recognition of the various civil rights reforms that shaped the region has obscured the legacy of civil rights in the Central Valley...Rosales’s analysis is crucial to demonstrating the importance of interracial coalitions in the midst of local and national opposition...Civil Rights in Bakersfield stands out for its interdisciplinary character and use of original methods.

— Journal of African American History

A meticulously researched book...Civil Rights in Bakersfield is a tour de force not only in the field of Chicana/o studies but also US civil rights history. It is a requisite read for students and scholars interested in how multiracial activism at a local level contributed to the formation of larger movements.

— American Historical Review

[This book is a] groundbreaking study, one that should be widely read, taught, praised, and celebrated.

— Western Historical Quarterly

A tour de force.

— Amercan Historical Review

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
1. “A Laboratory of Races”: Racial Segregation in Greater Bakersfield, 1870–1950
2. Civic Unity: Mexican Americans, African Americans, and Civil Rights Activism in Bakersfield, 1947–1964
3. “Maximum Feasible Participation” and Opposition: The War on Poverty in Kern County, 1964–1967
4. Agrarian Chicanismo: Jesus “Jess” Nieto and the Chicana/o Student Movement in Bakersfield
5. “Hoo-ray Gonzales!”: Civil Rights Protest and Chicana/o Politics in Bakersfield, 1968–1974
6. Police Violence, Fair Media, Rural Health Care, and Civil Rights Activism in Greater Bakersfield
7. A New Battleground for Civil Rights: The Desegregation of the Bakersfield City School District, 1969–1984
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index