California Museum: Help Wanted / Leave Now: “Operation Wetback” & The Revolving Door of Mass Deportation
The California Museum has a great new exhibit, "Help Wanted / Leave Now: `Operation Wetback' & The Revolving Door of Mass Deportation." If you make to Sacramento, it is worth checking out. The exhibit will be traveling the country and may be coming to a museum near you.
Here is a description of the exhibit:
"For over a century, the story of labor in the United States has been a recurring cycle of `Help Wanted' and `Leave Now.' This first-of-its-kind exhibition explores how generations of Mexican farmworkers, miners, and others were recruited to sustain U.S. industry, only to face mass expulsion during times of economic anxiety and political scapegoating.
Through firsthand accounts, rare photographs, historical artifacts, and interactive elements, the exhibit confronts difficult truths while honoring the individuals whose labor has underpinned American economic growth.
`Help Wanted/Leave Now' will be a fully bilingual display, presented in both English and Spanish."
I checked out the exhibit at the opening last night. UFW legend Dolores Huerta, who served on the advisory group for the exhibit, offered a crowd-pleasing introduction to the opening.
The California Museum has permanent exhibits on the history of Chinese in California and the Japanese internment during World War II.
UPDATE (Aug. 15): From Cal Matters:
"The California Museum in downtown Sacramento this week is unveiling `Help Wanted/Leave Now', its special exhibit on the Eisenhower-era mass deportation campaign named after a racial slur for Latinos, Operation Wetback. It’s showing amid President Donald Trump’s crackdown on unauthorized immigrants, which he promised would exceed the 1950s campaign in scale.
The museum is embracing parallels between the past and present, featuring video testimonies from people who were deported 71 years ago alongside people who were detained and deported just last year."
