Josefina Fierro de Bright served as a political and social activist in the 1930s and 1940s through her participation in the Mexican Defense Committee, El Congreso (the National Congress of Spanish-Speaking Peoples), and the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee, as well as her important efforts to end the violent attacks on ethnic Mexicans in Los Angeles during the Zoot Suit Riots. Fierro participated in organizations focused on human, civil, women’s, and labor rights. She contributed to a cross-cultural “politics of opposition” determined to create a world where true equality might flourish. She used American nationalist and transnationalist approaches. In the United States, Fierro networked with activists, celebrities, and political leaders who supported many of the same causes that she did. Her transnational approach materialized in the form of collaboration with the Mexican consulate, which also sought to secure the human rights of ethnic Mexicans living in the United States during a time of strong anti-Mexican sentiment. In order to understand why and how Fierro emerged as a leader willing to challenge the racism undergirding the segregation and mistreatment of ethnic Mexicans in California in the 1930s and 1940s, this study examines her family’s history of social activism, the fluid sociocultural environment of an American Left in which women played central roles, and her bold and charismatic leadership style.

My research highlights little-known aspects of African American participation in the mobilization on behalf of women’s suffrage in California, an issue of vital importance to African Americans. The history of suffrage in the United States is marked by varying degrees of denial of voting rights to African Americans. In California, African Americans were pivotal participants in three major suffrage campaigns. Based on black women’s support for the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted black men the right to vote, black men and women formed a critical political alliance, one in which black men almost universally supported black women’s suffrage. Black women began and continued their activism on behalf of male and female voting rights, not as an extension of white-led suffrage campaigns, but as an expression of African American political culture. African Americans—including black women suffragists—developed their own political culture, in part, to associate with those of similar culture and life experiences, but also because white-led suffrage organizations excluded black members. Black politics in California reflected African Americans’ confidence in black women as political actors and their faith in their own independent efforts to secure the franchise for both black men and women.

The traditional narrative of the women’s suffrage movement has presented a “respectable” version of suffrage history primarily focused on the prominent role of elite, cisgender, heterosexual white women in fighting for the vote. Scholars are currently challenging that narrative. The story of California suffragists Gail Laughlin and Dr. Mary Austin Sperry “queers” our understanding of suffrage history by revealing the ways that suffragists transgressed normative boundaries of gender and sexuality not only in their norm-defying gender expressions, but in their non-heteronormative domestic arrangements.

This essay describes the efforts of Selina Solomons, a San Francisco suffragist, and her perspectives on two California suffrage campaigns, the failed 1896 effort and the success in 1911. Born to a distinguished Jewish family that had fallen on hard times, Solomons felt the suffrage movement was hindered by its reliance on elite society women. She organized the Votes for Women Club and took bold public action to bring working-class women into the movement and to secure the votes of immigrant and laboring men.

California’s first four assemblywomen began their historic tenure in 1919 in the state’s Forty-Third Session of the Legislature. They joined a growing number of women elected to state legislatures before ratification of the federal suffrage amendment. Entitled to run for office when enfranchised by the state in 1911, and elected in 1918, Esto Broughton (Stanislaus County), Grace Dorris (Kern County), Elizabeth Hughes (Butte County), and Anna Saylor (Alameda County) challenged the all-male exclusivity of the legislature by creating political space for women’s equal inclusion and bringing the value of their diversity as women into lawmaking. Intersectionality informs this history, because assemblywomen’s status as white, middle-class women enabled them to ally with men of similar status and to focus on progress for women of their race and class. Contributing to the history of early women in elective politics, and drawing on newspaper and state legislative records, this article explores how the assemblywomen downplayed their gender in self-presentation but focused on it in legislation. The first four women, moreover, voted on two amendments to the U.S. Constitution, beginning the legislative session with ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment and concluding the year with a vote for the Nineteenth Amendment. Their efforts as California’s first legislators solidified the value of women’s diversity in the legislature and, by voting to extend woman suffrage nationwide, they ensured women’s continued inclusion in elective politics.

March Fong Eu (1922–2017) was a talented California politician who broke barriers as the first Asian American and first woman elected to serve as California’s secretary of state (1975–1994). Previously, she served on the Alameda County Board of Education (1956–1966) and was the first Asian American and one of few women in the California State Assembly at mid-century (1967–1974). Known for a 1969 toilet-smashing publicity stunt to call attention to her legislation establishing free public restrooms in California, Eu skirted many of the obstacles that mid-century women politicians faced by creating her own political networks, building personal relationships with colleagues, and gathering public attention on her own terms. The progressive Eu gained a foothold in California politics during a time of conservative control, yet she also served during a pivotal moment in the state’s history when women and people of color were advancing in California politics. She was ambitious but never reached the pinnacle of her political abilities. As such, Eu’s life and work highlight the momentum of mid- to late-twentieth-century political women leaders in California, but also point to the historical limits of political success for women at all levels of government.

From 1974 to 1984, Democrat Lilly Fong (1925–2002) served on the Nevada Board of Regents, the first Chinese American woman to win an election in Nevada and to hold that position. Fong laid the foundation for Republican Cheryl Lau (b. 1944) to be elected as Nevada’s secretary of state (1991–1994), the first Asian American to hold a major statewide office in Nevada. This study focuses on how and why these women emerged from the shadows into Nevada politics and suggests why they failed in later attempts to win an office. As second- and later-generation Chinese American women, they shared the strong Chinese cultural traditions, beliefs, and prejudices and were products of the changing role of education for women and the emergence of women in Chinese and Chinese American public life. They also were affected by the women’s movement in the United States and the Chinese emphasis on education, which led them both to advanced degrees and teaching. Gender and racial discrimination, anti-Chinese legislation and attitudes, and history and cultural traditions, especially the belief that women should be confined to domestic activities, were among the many barriers they had to overcome. They became active at a time when Chinese American political organizations became more influential and widespread, especially in cities with large Chinatowns. They, like many of their generation, had historical role models and contemporary ones, including Democrats Patsy Mink (1927–2002) of Hawaii and March Fong Eu (1922–2017) of California (to name just two). They shared similar backgrounds, including parents who were active in the community, the financial support of their husbands, a concern for U.S.-China relations, and, from time to time, their appeal to the mainstream community. They both believed in the Confucian adage that “education is the equalizer of mankind.” What they both lacked in their later campaign efforts were mentoring on tactics and the ability to quickly challenge negative media publicized by their opponents. They needed strong pan-Asian support, but, until 2000, Nevada had a small Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) population. They also needed broader support among voters of other races and ethnicities. Both women, who had female challengers at one point or another, lost to Euro-American women, which suggests that gender was not the major factor in those reelection failures. They had responded to the call for AAPI involvement in politics and, by their efforts, laid the foundations for recent successes of other AAPI women in Nevada and the West.

The California Legislative Women’s Caucus has been a strong bipartisan and bicameral advocate for women and children since its founding in 1985. In 2020, more women have been elected at one time than ever before, making up 31.6 percent of the legislature, and they are working to increase the representation of women and advocate on their behalf. The Caucus has fought, and continues to fight, for change in policy areas such as childcare and prison reform, and on behalf of survivors of domestic violence, sexual harassment, and sexual assault. The Legislative Women’s Caucus has passed successful legislation that protects women at home and in the workplace. It has focused on helping women shatter glass ceilings and worked to create equitable employment environments for women and girls—working continuously to ensure that the state attends to matters that are important to California.

In 1912, one year after women won the right to vote in California, Luella Johnston became the first woman elected to Sacramento’s city council, and to any city council in the state. She played an integral role linking the local clubwomen, progressive, and suffrage movements in California’s capital city. Her remarkable life provides a case study of how women in the early 1900s acquired and used political power, and in doing so changed their own and public perceptions of a woman’s role in the public sphere.

Organized alphabetically by city name, the selected catalog describes more than one hundred California memorials dedicated to women and men who served and died during World War I. Memorials include flagpoles, fountains, statues, sculptures, plaques, Veterans’ Buildings, groves of trees, roads, and bridges. It also includes a preliminary record of seventeen U.S. cemeteries where California's World War I soldiers are buried and nineteen European monuments and cemeteries honoring Californians.

The First World War was seminal to the development of military aeronautics and aircraft/aerospace manufacturing in California. While flight innovators Glenn L. Martin and Glenn H. Curtiss made key prewar contributions to military aviation within the state, it was America's entry into the war that was the primary catalyst to the establishment of military air facilities as well as a constellation of small, federally contracted airplane factories within California. Using Sacramento's aviation training school at Mather Field and the airplane factory at North Sacramento's Liberty Iron Works as case studies, this article details the ways that World War I was an early catalyst to the statewide embrace of the seemingly limitless potential of aviation, what many then referred to as “air-mindedness.” An intimate look at both Liberty Iron Works and Mather Field reveals how World War I made Sacramento a martial city, strongly committed to a century of pursuing, and playing host to, military aeronautics and aircraft/aerospace production, as manifested by today's Mather Airport (until 1993, Mather Air Force Base) and aerospace giant Aerojet-General, an early innovator of jet-assisted take-off (JATO) and the indirect progeny of Liberty Iron Works. Several factors related to the advent of World War I—most notably, the promise of economic growth, the allure and mystery of flight, and the local prestige that comes with contributing to national defense—inculcated Sacramentans (and Californians) with an adoration for the military, a sense of regional independence, a reverence for the economic promise of the aircraft and aerospace industry, and an aviation-centered mentality that would endure into the twenty-first century.

This essay discusses how the community in Oakland, California, in the 1920s considered and erected memorials to those who served and died in World War I, including plaques, flagpoles, proposed fountains, and the Veterans’ Memorial Building, as well as dozens of city streets renamed as WWI memorials.