Link: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/Exhibits/onexhibit.html

February 7 - August 30

From the gold country of Northern California to major metropolitan areas of Southern California and beyond, Chinese of California tells the story of the Chinese American fight for civil rights and the unique challenges that characterized the formation of Chinese communities in California.

As the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and further legislation removed the constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the law for people of Chinese descent, discrimination and violent attacks intensified. Since the Gold Rush to the building of the transcontinental railroad to the modern civil rights struggle, Chinese Californians have faced the challenge of organizing to fight for basic human rights - and for the very existence of their communities.

A joint project of The Bancroft Library, the California Historical Society, and the Chinese Historical Society of America, this exhibit features historic documents, manuscripts and artifacts that are the evidence of the Chinese American fight for civil rights and the unique challenges that characterized the formation of Chinese populations in California.

Link: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/events/calendar.html#1

February 6th
California Historical Society
678 Mission Street, San Francisco
6:00pm - 8:00pm

The Bancroft Library, the California Historical Society, and the Chinese Historical Society of America are hosting an opening reception for the exhibit, The Chinese of California: A Struggle for Community.

For more information or to RSVP, please contact CHS at (415) 357-1848 x 217 or dlevine@calhist.org

Link: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/friends/keepsakesdetail.html#personalmemoranda

Personal Memoranda: Samuel Hopkins Willey: The Journal of His Voyage to California, 1848-1849
By Samuel Hopkins Willey
Edited by James M. Spitze

In mid November of 1848, a 27-year-old Congregational Minister was "informed" by the American Board for Home Missions that he had been called to California and was to board a steamer leaving from New York City on December 1st. Less than three months later, on February 23, 1849, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Hopkins Willey stepped ashore in Monterey from the steamer California. From that moment till his death sixty-five years later, Sam Willey was a leading force in the founding of our state's educational structure. The institutions that he helped to found include today's San Francisco Public School System, Mills College, The Hamlin School, and — certainly his supreme achievement — The University of California.

For over a hundred years, the Bancroft Library has possessed both his on-the-spot diary of the voyage on the steamer California and a much longer recollection (written in 1877) of his entire trip to California — first on the steamer Fulton, then on canoe and mule-back across the Isthmus of Panama, and then via the steamer California up the coast to Monterey. The recollection ends with a wonderful description of his first several months in Monterey, mentioning the many now famous people he worked with — Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, William Tecumseh Sherman, and thirty or so more.

Our Friends Keepsake 52 publishes for the first time these two fascinating documents along with an extensive introduction and numerous period illustrations — all from the Bancroft Library's collections. Surely, our Keepsake is a long overdue tribute to Cal's long-forgotten founder.

To purchase a copy of our non-Keepsake soft cover version, please visit the Bancroft Store

Link: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/info/hours.html

From January 2nd - 20th, The Bancroft Library will have limited hours of operation. The intersession hours will be as follows -

Monday through Friday: 1 - 5 p.m.

Our regular hours will resume Tuesday, January 21st.

Link: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/collections/loyaltyoath/

A new digital collection documenting the Loyalty Oath Controversy at the University of California has been released by The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

The California Loyalty Oath Digital Collection website brings together a selection of 3,500 pages of fully-searchable electronic text and 30 images drawn from the holdings of the institutional archives of three University of California campuses – Berkeley, Los Angeles, and San Diego – and the Office of the Secretary of the Regents. The site also includes 15 audio clips taken from interviews with some of the controversy’s participants and observers.

The Loyalty Oath Controversy erupted in 1949 when hundreds of University employees refused to sign a special anti-communist oath mandated by the Regents. The protest spread to every campus, attracted international attention, and was supported by faculty at universities across the country. Many faculty and staff, as well as students and alumni, viewed the oath as an attack on academic freedom. The Regents, many of whom believed that the threat of rampant international Communism required the oath, refused to back down. Eventually, dozens of tenured faculty and staff were fired and the reputation of the University was severely damaged. The oath was negated, and the terminated employees reinstated, by order of the California Supreme Court in 1952.

The documents include correspondence, administrative directives, minutes, newsletters, and committee reports representing the debates, positions, and activities of the Regents, administration, faculty and staff, students and alumni, and as well as many individuals and groups beyond the University. Some materials, such as “closed session” minutes of Regents’ meetings, have not been publicly available until now. Supplemental materials on the website include a timeline, bibliography, and links to additional resources for study and research. The website was funded in part by a gift from UC President Emeritus David P. Gardner.