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1. A Big Listening Project

1. A Big Listening Project

1. A Big Listening Project

1. A Big Listening Project

9. Is This Land Your Land?

Episode Summary

This episode features two more stories of outsiders remaking themselves and California history. 

 

Eluard McDaniel left the Jim Crow South for California as a boy, and remade himself as an activist and writer on the West Coast. His account of his life brought him national attention when it appeared in American Stuff, a book of creative works by members of the Federal Writers’ Project and Federal Art Project selected by Henry Alsberg.

 

Miné Okubo was a rising artist with the Federal Art Project who drew on her art and her life story to depict a hidden history of injustice during World War II in her book Citizen 13660. Even decades later, a culture of silence surrounded that experience – until her book won an American Book Award and became testimony that sought redress for Japanese Americans incarcerated during the war.

Okubo drawing - Citizen 13660.jpg
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Speakers

Seiko Buckingham, niece of Miné Okubo

Jeanie Tanaka, niece of Miné Okubo

David Bradley, novelist

David Kipen, journalist and author

Further Reading

California in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to the Golden State with introduction, by David Kipen

Citizen 13660 by Miné Okubo

Miné Okubo: Following Her Own Road by Greg Robinson

The Dream and the Deal by Jerre Mangione

The Chaneysville Incident: A Novel by David Bradley

"Bumming in California" by Eluard McDaniel, in On the Fly: Hobo Literature and Songs, 1879-1941, PM Press 

Dear California by David Kipen

Black California edited by Aparajita Nanda

Credits

Hosted by: Chris Haley

Directed by: Andrea Kalin

Producers: Andrea Kalin, David A. Taylor and James Mirabello

Writer: David A. Taylor

Editor: Ethan Oser

Assistant Editor: Amy Young

Story Editing: Michael May

Additional voices provided by:

Jared Buggage, Mariko Miyazaki, Kate Rafter and Amy Young

This episode also uses excerpts of Eluard Luchell McDaniel's words from an oral history dated August 26, 1985 in the Manny Harriman Video Oral History Collection, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, NYU Special Collections.

Featuring music and archival material from:

Pete Seeger

Joseph Vitarelli

Bradford Ellis

Pond5

Library of Congress

National Archives and Records Administration

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

Produced with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and California Humanities

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