Posts by Mike McPhate

“He was a hero — the Jackie Robinson of Black politics.” William Byron Rumford, the first Black person elected to the state Legislature from Northern California, was born in February 1908. A pharmacist by training, Rumford became a pivotal figure in the fight to extend California’s prosperity to people of all races. Housing inequity had been cemented over decades…

Born in Cairo, Georgia, in 1919, Jackie Robinson was still a toddler when he moved with his family to Pasadena, where his single mother believed they would have more opportunity. But the affluent, mostly white city had its own version of Jim Crow. Minorities were only allowed to swim at the municipal pool Tuesdays, designated…

Jackie Robinson was born in Cairo, Georgia, in 1919; while still a toddler, his family moved to Pasadena, where his single mother believed they would have more opportunity. But the affluent, mostly white city had its own version of Jim Crow. Minorities were only allowed to swim at the municipal pool Tuesdays, designated “International Day,”…

Kobe Bryant seemed capable of summoning greatness at any moment. He could be a streaky player, but when he was hot, he was unstoppable. There was the outing in 2003 when he set an NBA record with 12 threes in a single game, nine of them consecutive. Or the nine-game tear he went on that same year,…

Above is a fantastic image of the Pike from its 1910 heyday, when a day at the seaside in Long Beach was an occasion for tailored suits and lavish, floral hats. In the early 1900s, it was boom times in Southern California, and the place to be on the weekend was the boardwalk in Long…

Junior Seau, football great and favorite son of San Diego, grew up in a tough neighborhood of Oceanside. The great-grandson of a Samoan village chief, he became a multisport phenom at Oceanside High, an All-American linebacker at USC, and, drafted by his hometown Chargers, a sports legend in San Diego. Spectacularly agile for his big…

It was an unknown photographer from New York, as much as anyone, who saved Yosemite from commercial exploitation. Carleton Watkins had come to California during the Gold Rush to seek his fortune, but turned instead to photography. In 1861, he strapped nearly a ton of camera equipment onto 12 mules — including giant glass plate…

If PG&E had its way, it would have built a nuclear plant atop the San Andreas Fault along a pristine stretch of the Sonoma coast. It was in 1961, a time of boundless optimism about the potential of nuclear energy, that the utility revealed plans for one of the world’s biggest nuclear generators on a…

In 1850s Los Angeles, justice stood little chance. Forged in violent conquest and riven by racial animus, the frontier city recorded a murder rate 50 times greater than that of New York City. Yet killers and thugs often escaped accountability as the city’s fledgling legal system was simply unable to keep up with the carnage.…

In the last few years, historians have explored parallels between President Trump and one of California’s native sons, Richard Nixon. The only president to ever resign from office was born in rural Yorba Linda in 1913. Like Trump, Nixon despised the press. Both men savaged their perceived political enemies, Trump in public lashings and Nixon mostly…

In the 1930s, a large dam proposal in Northern California promised a fresh bounty of power and water. But it was the labor required to build Shasta Dam, approved during the heart of the Depression, that captured the imaginations of workers across the West. Thousands of impoverished families flocked to the Redding area, where they…

The Gold Rush saw rates of homicide never equaled in American history. The reasons were myriad, among them feeble law enforcement, ethnic strife, and a bachelor cult of masculinity. Young men armed themselves to the teeth and died in brawls and raids by the thousands. In December 1854 one of the bloodiest bursts of violence erupted. Jonathan…

“As the heart is kindled and ennobled it pours out feeling and interest, first upon family and kindred, then upon country, then upon humanity. The home, the flag, the cross, these are the representatives or symbols of the noblest and most sacred affections or treasures of feeling in human nature.”— Thomas Starr King California was…

“It’s really where California began.” Few places teem with so much California history as Monterey. It’s where the drafting and adoption of the state’s first constitution was hosted in 1849. It’s where the American flag was first raised in California in 1846. And it’s where the Spanish explorer Sebastian Vizcaino arrived in December 1602, inspiring the European colonization…

Jim Morrison, Lizard King of Venice Beach, represented an outburst of individualism not only across society, but within his own family. His father, George Morrison, a Navy rear admiral and veteran of three wars, was mystified by the long-haired poet in leather pants. He urged him to abandon music, citing “a complete lack of talent.” The rebuke…

Charles Schulz, who spent much of his life in Santa Rosa, created a childhood world for Charlie Brown and the gang that became among the most influential comic strips in history, with more than 355 million daily readers worldwide. But one element of the strip always bothered Schulz. He hated the name. “Peanuts” was chosen…

In November 1978 Leo Ryan, a U.S. congressman from California, was murdered along with four others on a remote airstrip in Guyana. Ryan had traveled there to follow up on concerns from his constituents that their family members were being sexually and mentally abused at the People’s Temple compound led by the Rev. Jim Jones.…

The General Sherman, a giant sequoia in California’s southern Sierra Nevada, is as wide as a three-lane highway, nearly as tall as the Statue of Liberty, and older than Christ. It’s the champion of big trees, recognized as such for decades by American Forests, a nonprofit that has been ranking the world’s biggest trees since…