The wave of mass migration of Filipinos to the United States occurred on the cusp of what is known as the greatest economic crisis in U.S. history, the Great Depression. As Filipinos began to migrate to the Pacific coast in search of work and housing, they were also having to compete with white working-class laborers who were also migrating to California from the midwest’s “dust bowl” in search of work. 

 

The economic climate only served to cultivate tensions between white and Filipino laborers. Filipinos began to be characterized as violent, uncivilized, disease riddled, and predatory. Fears surrounding the settlement of Filipinos in the US began to circulate, and these characterizations upheld  sentiments pronouncing Filipino exclusion from US political, social, and economic life. This characterization also acted as a catalyst for 1930 Watsonville anti-Filipino race riots.

 

In January of 1930, there was a rise in local  anti-Filipino sentiment due to an inflammatory resolution, drafted by Judge W. D. Rohrback, calling the Filipino population of Watsonville unhealthy and claiming that Filipinos were infringing upon the wages of other people who wanted to work in the agricultural and industrial sectors. The resolution only helped to fuel tensions between white laborers and Filipinos, as white laborers struggling during the depression felt as if Filipinos were stealing their wages. On January 19, 1930, the first attack against the Filipino community occurred when a large group of men marched to the Palm Beach Dance Hall with the intent to confront the hall’s mostly Filipino clientele. Attacks against the Filipino community continued for days until January 23, 1930 when white rioters, armed with shotguns, fired several shots into a bunk house at John Murphy Ranch, killing Filipino farm laborer Fermin Tobera. The murder of Tobera marked the end of rioting in Watsonville and the return of ostensible peace to the town.

 

The newspaper, Evening Pajaronian was the main source of information that locals read to learn about the riots as they were happening. Articles from Evening Pajaronian discuss Filipinos living in Watsonville in racialized terms, perhaps inadvertently upholding the stereotypes that were common around the portrayal of Filipino migrants living and working in the United States at the time.  Newspapers like  Evening Pajaronian published  in a manner that appealed to the people who read them, at times leading to partial or incomplete depictions of historical actors.

 

This is a word bubble showing the frequency of various words used in the Evening Pajaronian’s coverage of the 1930 anti-Filipino Watsonville race riot.

There were biases in the mainstream media source Evening Pajaronian that were used to construct a narrative around the race riots. This is best shown through the words used by the paper surrounding the actions of police officers, white rioters, and Filipinos. Word clouds help in showing the most used words that the paper uses to describe these historical actors.

 

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