Carey McWilliams

Police Protests in Anaheim Last Night Echo the Citrus War of Yesteryear

Click here for our Anaheim police shooting archivesAs more than a thousand protestors clashed in Anaheim with police in the streets below, several helicopters hovered above the night's sky while Disneyland's fireworks exploded in air, oblivious to it all. The juxtaposition between the virtual and re ... More >>

Canyon High's Mexi-Mocking "Dress Up Day" Scandal Grows; Concerned Students Told to Get Over It in Past

Having a 'Señores and Señoritas' theme during a high school 'cultural dress up' day can have disastrous results, and Canyon High School learned that lesson the hard way. As the Weekly exposed over the weekend, students came to the Anaheim Hills campus on Wednesday wearing Mexi-mocking attire while ... More >>

Leo Carrillo, Gonzalo Mendez, Frank Palomino, Carey McWilliams, and Lame-O Westminster/Garden Grove Unified School Districts

​The recent push by activists to have a school in the Orange Unified School District named after local civil rights pioneer Lorenzo Ramirez reminded me that the Westminster Unified School District still hasn't named a school after its famous civil rights pioneer: Gonzalo Mendez, who along with Ram ... More >>

OC's 1936 Citrus War Goes National--Kinda

​Besides annoying most everyone who reads this paper, I also annoy folks on a national level with my commentaries for Marketplace, airing every weekday at 2:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. on KPCC-FM 89.3. Yesterday, as part of their summer reading series, I recommended that listeners pick up a copy of Care ... More >>

Special Ethnic-Studies Edition

[¡Ask a Mexican!] Historical ignorance leads to hate, hate leads to anger . . .

[¡Ask a Mexican!] Special Navidad Gifts Edition

Mendez vs. Westminster, OC Latino History, and the Ever-Revealing-Itself Genius of Carey McWilliams

McWilliams: The Original Gunkist Historian...​This week's cover story on the controversy in the retelling of the historic Mendez vs. Westminster decision has a brief mention of the case's best chronicler: the great progressive historian Carey McWilliams. The Fullerton College professor quoted in t ... More >>

OC's Famous Desegregation Case Finally Gets Its Historical Due, But One Family Feels Left Out

Beloved OC Historians, Mexicans, and Half-Breeds Tomorrow!

Woman or half-breed?As mentioned in my ¡Ask a Mexican! column this week, I'll be speaking tomorrow to the Anaheim Historical Society at what's now called the Woelke-Stoffel House but which generations of Anaheimers know as the Red Cross House. Address is 418 N. West St., Anaheim, (714) 292-0042, an ... More >>

The Assassination of Sheriff James Barton by the Mexican Juan Flores

What’s the Best Orange County History Book?

This Is Your Life: A Companion Guide/Shameless Propaganda for 'Orange County: A Personal History'

[¡Ask a Mexican!®] More Shameless Self-Promotion (Buy Gustavo's New Book!)

On Thin-Skinned SanTana Historians

Moxley fends off idiot Republicans; Nick Schou battles conspiracy loons; Vickie Chang gets the hipsters riled up. My petty, non-pedo-apologist fights? Local amateur historians. My post last week about SanTana's missing segregationist history in a recent Images of America book about the county seat ... More >>

[Summer Guide] Lisa Alvarez's Summer Reading List

Gunkist Oranges

Wonder why Orange County trembles whenever its Mexicans protest? Welcome to the Citrus War of 1936, the most important event in Orange County history youve never heard of

!Ask a Mexican!

The year in Mexican-bashing

When Capital Becomes the Monster

Does Governor Davis really want Californians reading Steinbeck?!?