UC Santa Cruz

This dissertation explores the development of the multi-racial community in Fresno, California. Particularly, this study focuses on the process of racialization, which coincided with the development of Fresno as a key agricultural site in California from its inception in the 1870s until the end of the 1940s when the racial climate shifted as a result of World War II. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Fresno emerged as a leader in agriculture within the state and the nation, due to the sophisticated irrigation systems and ideal climate. I argue that the growth in the region initiated two racial projects for Fresno: the creation of a multi-racial/multi- ethnic segregated enclave and the commodification of workers of color in the agricultural industry. Both of these processes worked together to mold Fresno into an important hub city within the Central Valley of California while also priming the condition for the economic success of Fresno locally, regionally, and nationally. My project maps this process from the beginning of Fresno as a small town founded primarily by white migrants who brought their own racial assumptions about their position of power to the historical moment of World War II, which serves as a key example of how Fresno's everyday racial dynamics and social interplay both eliminated and created opportunities for non-whites in West Fresno. The events of World War II, particularly the removal of Japanese peoples from the West Coast, highlights the various ways in which whites "raced" people of color and also how non-whites understood and defined their own racial position within Fresno. I use this particular historical moment as an example that reflects the conditions of the Nation in wartime, where shifts occurred in national understandings of citizenship, accountability, responsibilities, and also power and autonomy.

This project makes important interventions in the historical scholarship of race as well US history in two ways. The first is in the focus of study on a dynamic rural community in California. Fresno has a rich and important history that lends much to the understanding of race/racism, labor, and racial/spatial segregation. And yet, the San Joaquin Valley, especially its hub city, Fresno, has garnered limited academic inquiry. My project is highlighting the importance that rural California communities bring to macro-narratives of race and racism in the US. The second contribution of this project is that it seeks to understand multi-racial/multi-ethnic relationships within segregated neighborhoods. I focus on the importance of looking at communities of color, not as monolithic one-dimensional entities, but as fluid and active participants who worked and lived in relationship with and in reaction to other members, individuals, and racial groups in their physical spaces. My project flushes out those relationships in racially segregated Fresno to present a nuanced multi-racial picture of the community, highlighting the process of racialization and commodification of non- white people as laborers, while also demonstrating the negotiation of each group's position within Fresno.