The Second Gold Rush

Marilynn S. Johnson

More than any event in the twentieth century World War II marked the coming of age of America's West Coast cities. Almost overnight, new war industries prompted mass urban migration and development, producing social, cultural, and political changes that would persist well beyond 1945. For the San Francisco Bay Area, Marilynn S. Johnson argues, World War II was to the twentieth century what the gold rush was to the nineteenth. Focusing on Oakland, Richmond, and other shipyard boomtowns in the East Bay, The Second Gold Rush chronicles the defense buildup, labor migration from the South and Midwest, the development of federal migrant communities, and the social and racial conflicts that pitted newcomers against longtime Bay Area residents. Johnson follows this story into the postwar era, showing how struggles between conservative and liberal forces over employment, housing, and civil...

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