‘Welcome to old times’: inserting the Okie past into California's San Joaquin Valley present

Abstract

Collective, or social memory describes how societies draw upon the events of the past to make sense of contemporary circumstances. Because collective memory is both temporal and spatial, it tethers the past to place and recognizes that as social circumstances change, collective memory is subject to reinterpretation as the needs of society change. This paper explores how the Okie migrant heritage has been incorporated within the collective memory of California and the San Joaquin Valley. Initially excluded both socially and spatially, Okie migrants to the San Joaquin Valley and their contemporary descendants have since climbed the socio-economic ladder and begun to assert and promote their identity. Key to this identity is the notion of a generalized Okie heritage of migrant success despite adversity. Such a tale has since been adopted by state agencies and has been used in attempts to unify a diversifying population under the banner of ‘the California Story.’ The Okie Story has become the archetypal California story. The result has been a continued acceptance and promotion of a universalized Okie story that Okie migrants, their descendants and other Californians continue to embrace and promote today.

Keywords:

• Dust Bowl
• collective memory
• migrant
• heritage
• California
• Oklahoma

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Dydia DeLyser, Conner Bailey, Joshua Inwood and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Notes

1. Although blacks did participate in the Depression-era migration from the Western South to California, scholarly estimates of their relative impact suggest that they represented less than 5% of the overall migration stream. The most significant increase in black in-migrants from the Western South did not occur until the 1940s when an estimated 125,000 arrived seeking work in the urban-based defense industries (Gregory 1989).

2. The current name of California State College, Bakersfield is California State University, Bakersfield.

3. While Manies does not make reference to specific minority groups when describing his students, US Census Bureau statistics suggest that he was referring to Hispanic students as persons of ‘Spanish origin’ made up approximately 28% of the Tulare population in 1980 when the Census Bureau began tracking such information.

4. When appropriate, pseudonyms have been used.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Toni Alexander∗

∗Toni Alexander is Assistant Professor at the Department of Geology and Geography, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, USA