Picture This
About Picture This: California's Perspectives on American History is a resource for teachers and students to learn about the experiences of diverse peoples of California by using primary source images from the Oakland Museum of California's collections. Organized into eleven time periods spanning from pre-1769 to the present, more than 300 photographs, drawings, posters, and prints tell stories from the perspectives of different ethnic groups. Historical contexts are provided to offer a framework of California's role in relation to American history.
The National Archives state that primary sources, "fascinate students because they are real and they are personal: history is humanized through them." Picture This invites students to examine the historical record, encouraging them to connect history with real people and explore how images tell stories and convey historical evidence about the human experience. History becomes more than just a series of facts, dates, and events.
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1937
A typed caption is glued underneath the photo which says "Paul Mantz, Amelia Earhart, Harry Manning and Fred Noonan at the Oakland Airport in 1937. Several months later Miss Earhart and navigator... |
26-May-69
Depiction: People stand around plants which have been planted in a large dirt field in Berkeley, called the People's Park. A few hold gardening tools. Bongo drums sit on a saw horse. Pine trees... |
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20-May-69
Highway Patrolmen and National Guard soliders block a crowd of demonstrators at the intersection of Oxford and University west of the Berkeley campus. |
4-Jul-34
Oakland Tribune clipping on the back, July 4, 1934-- "...mounted police escorting rioter to jail after charging mob obstruction truck movement." Photo shows a man wearing jeans, a short jacket,... |
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4-Jul-34
Oakland Tribune clipping on the back, July 4, 1934-- "Police with clubs and guns charge mob (upper right) to clear way for first trucks moved from San Francisco's piers in 56 days of... |
Jul-34
Photo shows the sidewalk in front of the hardware store where the two strikers were killed. On the sidewalk, written in chalk, "Police Murder. 2 ILA men killed- shot in the back," written several... |
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Jul-34
Photo shows the two men who were killed during the waterfront workers strike. The two men are laying on the sidewalk in front of a hardware store. The one man lying in the middle of the sidewalk... |
11-May-34
Oakland Tribune clipping on the back, May 11, 1934-- "These scenes, taken along the San Francisco Embarcadero, shows mobs running here and there, both in flight and in pursuit, as the 'fortunes of... |
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July 13-18, 1934
Handwritten on the back, "Strike, San Francisco, Calif." Photo shows a large crowd walking down a sidewalk in San Francisco. In the background is the Ferry Building. The crowd is walking down a... |
6-Jul-34
The caption on the back, July 6, 1934-- "Warfare in which no quarter was given or taken raged in the strife-torn Embarcadero area as 6000 strikers clashed repeatedly with 700 police armed with... |
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19-Oct-89
Photograph shows a policeman and several other rescue workers lowering a man on a stretcher down a fire ladder which is leaning up against the collapsed Cypress Structure which they are standing... |
23-Aug-65
Caption reads, "Peace Picket John Seltz leaps from path of troop train. Locomotive thundered through Berkeley amid cloud of steam." |
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18-May-69
Caption on back "Showdown: A solitary azalea symbolized the protest movement in Berkeley as National guardsmen stand by." Photo shows National Guardsmen, wearing gas masks and holding rifles with... |
30-May-69
Caption on back "The Berkeley park the masses fought so hard for in the '60's, right, has now become an eyesore to those who are opening their eyes to golf. Even rock 'n' rollers like Greg Kihn,... |
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31-Mar-72
Photo shows Bobby Seale standing among grocery bags. Two trucks in the background and several people and members of the Black Panthers. According to the Oakland Tribune, March 31, 1972, article... |
30-May-69
A woman in a floral sun dress and carrying a bouquet of daisies stands pensively next to a National Guardsman, who carries a riffle and bayonet. Behind them both is a military truck. |
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1968
Caption reads: "Chavez 1968 Hunger Strike -- Cesar Chavez, farm labor leader, center, eats a piece of bread to end his 25-day fast while Sen. Robert F. Kennedy looks on in Delano, Calif. in a 1968... |
10-Jul-39
Caption, verso: "Bridges Embarks for Hearing -- Harry Bridges, West Coast CIO leader, is shown with his daughter, Jacqueline Betty Bridges, 14 (left) and his defense counsel, Miss Carol King, as... |
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5-Jul-37
One photo of a cotton field with a farmer standing guard with a gun watching over four workers bent over in parallel rows picking cotton with long cloth bags trailing behind them. There is also... |
14-Jul-64
Typed above the image, "San Francisco, July 14--- Californians Demonstrate for Goldwater-- Members of California's delegation, 86 strong, wave gold-colored balloons imprinted with their candidates... |
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ca. 1906
April 19, 1906. Mission and Third streets. Aronson Building on the right. Snapshots of San Francisco. Earthquake and fire, 1906. |
Photographs of S.F. fire & earthquake |
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8/29/88
Image of Dolores Huerta, wearing a United Farm Workers of America t-shirt (with its Phoenix logo design) that has a phrase printed across it: "Fast for Life," underneath which is printed, "[Ju]l.... |
President Theodore Roosevelt on Glacier Point |
