S1: Welcome in San Diego , it's Jade Hindman. On today's show , Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and L.A. times columnist Michael Hiltzik writes about the history of California and joins the show. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. The second annual KPBS San Diego Book Festival is happening this Saturday , where authors and book lovers will come together over their shared love of the written word. One of those authors appearing at the festival this year is Michael Hiltzik. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning author and columnist with the Los Angeles Times. His most recent book is called Golden State The Making of California. California has long been famous as a land where people come to remake their lives and to achieve big dreams. But the postcard picture of California doesn't tell its full story , and it's something that Hiltzik tackles head on. Michael , welcome to Midday Edition.
S2: Well , thank you for having me on.
S1: Glad to have you here. So in the prologue of the book , you call California a land of contradictions. You also write about your own personal experience of coming to California and having your own California dream , being challenged by reality soon after your arrival. Can you tell us more about your own personal California history and how it ties into the history of California? You tell us about in the book. Sure.
S2: Sure. Well , that dates back to 1981 , when I was hired by the L.A. times , actually , to be a business writer in Orange County when they were starting up an Orange County business page. And I moved into an apartment in Long Beach. I had my own visions of what life was going to be like in California. Um , you know , free freedom. Free love , Free drugs. All these things. That we think about. Um. And within a few days of moving into my apartment , I decided to take a walk down to the down to the ocean. Uh , not realizing from the the maps that the closest ocean was actually the Long Beach Harbor. Uh , actually , the Long Beach port. So when I tried to dip my toes into the water , they came back sort of , uh , grubby. And the point I made then was that dreams of California often did not survive their first contact with reality , and that certainly happened for me. But that being said , I lived in California for a couple of years. The time sent me to New York and then overseas , and I came back with my family , my wife and two young children in 1991 , and we've been here ever since. So the the lure of California for outsiders is something that I felt viscerally.
S1: So very interesting. I mean , also you write about the arrival of Spanish missionaries in California. San Diego is the site of California's first mission. How does the actual history of that period conflict with the mythology from that time? Sure.
S2: Sure. The mythology of the mission era is one in which the missionaries , chiefly Franciscan missionaries like Junipero Serra , came to Mexican California and lifted up the indigenous population. They they brought , uh , Catholicism. They brought um , they they brought Western religion. Um , they brought all sorts of ideologies like that. And we celebrated them for that for a long time , uh , when we were , uh , basically Celebrating the mission era now in recent years. Recent decades , maybe. We've learned that things were not quite that cut and dried , that , in fact , the missionaries were often punitive toward their their Indian charges. They brought disease. They brought , um , they brought illness because of the way they housed the Indians , who they were exploiting to to raise crops. And I think that the the view that we have in California , the view that was taught to , in fact , my kids when they were growing up as California pupils , it needed a lot of upgrading. We don't think of things the way we did then. We don't think of the missionaries as entirely uplifting personalities. We see them as as punitive and exploitative.
S1: How did you handle that with your kids growing up? learning one thing while you're understanding of what actually happened was different.
S2: Well , by the time by the time this reconsideration took place , my kids were actually , uh , they were already adults. You know , they had come up in fourth grade , like , I think every , uh , California , uh , student of their era. Uh , they , they , they built , uh , model missions. They went to visit the nearest mission to our home or to their schools , and they sort of were infused with this , this impression. I'm not sure it , uh , it had much purchase that they were that interested in it , but that's the way they were taught. Um , but but we all know and they know that things were not like that. And it was a realization that came to them , really , by the time they were in , uh , you know , uh , late high school and even college. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. I mean , indigenous populations were decimated after the arrival of Europeans. And sometimes that that gets glossed over. Uh , often , in fact. Now , some of what you write about really examines well-remembered moments in the history of our state , but others are less well known. What was the Bear Flag revolt? Yes.
S2: Yes. Well. Well , as I've said many times , you know , a book like this , a history of of a place , uh , there's a combination of stories that readers expect to see. In this case , they expect to see a treatment of the gold rush and the San Francisco earthquake and a few other things. And then there were stories that they may have heard about or learned sort of , um , dimly in school. So they were aware of it , but don't really know the full story. The Bear Flag revolt. This occurred in 1846 before the Gold rush , and it was a basically a gang of settlers who had moved into California from , uh , from the East and the Midwest , and they took it upon themselves to invade the Mexican garrison in Sonoma , from which they were going to raise a flag and declare the California Republic. And that has been handed down to us through the California state flag , which is based on this sort of jury rig flag that these rebels , uh , raised over the , uh , the Sonoma Square. When they got to Sonoma , they discovered that it was such a sleepy town , they expected to have to fight their way in , but it was such a sleepy town that the Commandante had sent the garrison home two years earlier. So they didn't really have much to do. They took the Commandante prisoner. They brought him to , uh , Sutter's Mill , uh , which , uh , we now know of as Sacramento. Um , they brought them to , uh , John Charles Fremont , who was hanging out at the time , and Fremont , really didn't want any part of this , but eventually , um , he could see , uh , things developing. The Mexican War was about to start. He decided to get in front of the of the parade , and he led , um , uh , troops in the Mexican War. Once it once it broke out.
S1: You mentioned California's gold rush. What do you think we miss about that period?
S2: Well , I'm not sure that we give a full credit for how transformative the gold rush was. In fact , I write in the book that you can safely divide California history into the pre gold rush and the post gold rush eras. Um , it basically , um , gave people in the rest of the country the impression that this was a land of gold , that riches were just there to be taken. It it provoked a huge migration of , uh , of foreigners and easterners Midwesterners into California. And I think it really launched in a real sense. The idea of California as a place to remake yourself , to shed your old life and start over again , because there were thousands and thousands of people who came into California thinking that just they could prospect and make their fortunes and make more of themselves than they were able to do , competing with others at home.
S1: Um , also , you know , California became a state in 1815. This is before chattel slavery was abolished. And though California joined the Union as a free state , its relationship , though to chattel slavery , was much more complicated. Tell me about that. Sure.
S2: Sure. Well , in the original , uh , California , uh , Constitution , which was written before California had statehood , um , slavery was banned , uh , across the territory. And we have a tendency , I think , to think of that as sort of as an expression of a moral uplift that the Californians who who helped to write that Constitution had a moral detestation of slavery. That's really not what , uh , what happened basically. The anti-slavery provision of the California Constitution was put in by the dominant group , uh , among the , uh , the Constitution drafters , and they were essentially miners. They were gold miners. And their concern was that slaves who were brought in , uh , to California would have some sort of preternatural ability to compete with them in mining and for gold. And they didn't want that to happen. So not only did that Constitution say slavery was banned , but it also said that it was going to be illegal to import freedmen , freed slaves or or other slaves into into the territory. And I think you have to look at those things together to get a sense of what what the , um , the racial attitude toward , uh , toward blacks was among the settlers who were , uh , more and more coming into control of what soon became the state.
S1: You also write about the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War Two. What stands out to you about that period of California's history?
S2: Well , I think the most shocking thing it may be the most shocking thing that I learned at all the things I learned in researching and writing this book , was the identity of the California politician who really drove the incarceration of the Japanese. Um , he he sold the idea to the federal government. He brought other California politicians together to , uh , to publicize the need for the incarceration of the relocation of Japanese , uh , to to journalists and others. And that man was Earl Warren , who was attorney general of the state at that time. And of course , we now think of Earl Warren as one of the great liberal lions of the US Supreme Court. Um , but that's not the stance that he took when he was attorney general and even later when he was governor of California. So I think we need to to have perspective about Warren , who never really expressed , uh , any any regret and never apologized for his role in this episode. Um , and tried to avoid talking about it to the end of his life.
S1: You also write about , you know , the Central Pacific Railroad and the railroad barons it created , you know , thinking about some of those figures from 19th century California , I can't help but think about Silicon Valley , where a small number of tech executives have amassed vast wealth from technology innovations like social media and artificial intelligence. What threads do you see between the robber barons of the railroad age and today's tech leaders?
S2: Yeah , I see a lot of parallels , both in the way they manage their new technology and the way they've been thought about by the public. I think in both cases , um , you find that , um , the , uh , the public esteem , uh , of , of these individuals , uh , evolves over time. And at first the railroad barons were seen as great figures as , uh , builders of this new state , just as Silicon Valley entrepreneurs were seen originally , or some of them still are as builders of a great technology and again , as builders of a new California. But over time , I think the public becomes aware that the interest of these entrepreneurs isn't entirely the same as the public interest. In fact , it often conflicts with the public interest. And I think we saw in the railroad era and again , in the high tech era , we've seen some of these entrepreneurs have to defend themselves sometimes before Congress and sometimes in court. So I think there is a continuum of the way we as as laypersons and as citizens of a state like California , of the regard that we have and the regard that we tend to lose over time for these figures who start off as popular figures and end up as , um , you know , in some people's minds , enemies of the state. Hmm.
S1: Hmm. Briefly , you know , before we go , how did writing this book change how you look at California today?
S2: Well , you know , I my my original theme for the book was that it was going to be about how California , what California taught the rest of the country , and indeed the rest of the world. And that was basically based on the California , um , values that that we saw , that we've seen over the last decade or so. And what I learned was that there was a lot that California taught the rest of the world and the rest of the country , that maybe we would prefer the rest of the country and the rest of the world didn't know there were outbreaks of violent racism throughout California history. There was the genocide of the Indian tribes that took place in the 1860s and 70s there were there was the anti-Chinese movement , followed by an anti-Japanese movement that culminated , as we've talked about , in the incarceration of Japanese , including Japanese-American citizens. So I think we have to take sort of a three dimensional view of California. It's , uh , it's a place that draws people from all over the world , and I think we can understand why that is. But it's a place where , um. Uh , sometimes what people find isn't what they expected. And what we know about California isn't the reality.
S1: I've been speaking with Michael Hiltzik , author of Golden State The Making of California , out now on paperback. Michael , very interesting book. Thanks so much for joining me.
S2: Thanks for having. Me.
S1: Me. And Michael will be appearing at this year's KPBS San Diego Book Festival , happening this Saturday. More information can be found on our website , KPBS. That's our show for today. I'm your host , Jade Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
