Bakersfield, the Factory in the Fields
Dr. Oliver Rosales | Bakersfield College
Tuesday, March 31, 2026 | 6:00 pm
Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos
211 Lee Street, San Marcos, TX 78666
Registration Required
California’s Central Valley has been at the heart of three processes reshaping the United States. First, the internationalization and industrialization of agriculture and its work force, represented by the remarkably multiethnic communities in the Central Valley. Second, an increasingly assertive push by rural residents demanding to be treated like other workers across the more urban United States, embodied by the NFWA and the UFW. Third, a remarkable cultural effort to make rural California relevant to the rest of the United States, represented by the work of artists and advocates like John Steinbeck, Larry Itliong, Esther Hernandez, Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. Understanding a place that can pair Richard Nixon and Ernesto Galarza as well as Dolores Huerta and Kevin McCarthy can help us all understand the importance and power of “the factory in the fields.”
Oliver Rosales’ award-winning book, Civil Rights in Bakersfield: Multiracial Activism and Segregation, examines the many ways Black, Asian and Latino communities linked to Bakersfield organized to challenge segregation in rural California after World War II. By understanding rural conditions, Civil Rights in Bakersfield makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of the living constitution in the United States. Professor Oliver Rosales will share insights generated by working with farm labor and civil rights communities across the Central Valley.
Dr. Oliver A. Rosales is a Professor of History and Ethnic Studies at Bakersfield College, where he previously served as Faculty Coordinator of the Social Justice Institute. His teaching and research focus on Chicano/a, California, United States, and World history. Dr. Rosales has held appointments as a Visiting Faculty member at Bard College and as a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Studies. He is the author of Civil Rights in Bakersfield: Segregation and Multiracial Activism in the Central Valley (University of Texas Press, 2024), which received the Outstanding Book & Media Award from the Association of Ethnic Studies, the 2025 Ambassador Julian Nava Best Ethnic Studies Book award, and an Honorable Mention for the Norris Hundley Book Award from the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association. A former Board Chair for California Humanities (2022–2024), he is a recipient of the Whiting Foundation’s Public Engagement Fellowship and multiple grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Most recently, he served as a historical consultant for the National Parks Service to help reshape the public history of the National Chavez Center in Keene, California, contributing to a revised exhibit experience forthcoming for the 2027 César Chávez Centennial.
Civil Rights in Bakersfield: Segregation and Multiracial Activism in the Central Valley
A multiracial history of civil rights coalitions beyond the farm worker movement in twentieth-century Bakersfield, California.
In Civil Rights in Bakersfield, Oliver Rosales uncovers the role of the multiracial west in shaping the course of US civil rights history. Focusing on Bakersfield, one of the few sizable cities within California’s Central Valley for much of the twentieth century in a region most commonly known as a bastion of political conservatism, oil, and industrial agriculture, Rosales documents how multiracial coalitions emerged to challenge histories of racial segregation and discrimination. He recounts how the region was home to both the historic farm worker movement, led by César Chávez, Dolores Huerta, and Larry Itliong, and also a robust multiracial civil rights movement beyond the fields. This multiracial push for civil rights reform included struggles for fair housing, school integration, public health, media representation, and greater political representation for Black and Brown communities. In expanding on this history of multiracial activism, Rosales further explores the challenges activists faced in community organizing and how the legacies of coalition building contribute to ongoing activist efforts in the Central Valley of today.
