SAN FRANCISCO– Shaping San Francisco Public Talk: Popular Front to the Cold War

SAN FRANCISCO– In November 1938, California elected its first-ever liberal Democratic governor Culbert Olson, supported by a state-wide Popular Front coalition of liberals, unionists, communists, and other radicals. But by 1940 the Popular Front forces were already fracturing and from its wreckage emerged key elements of the Cold War. As part of Shaping San Francisco’s Free Public Talks Series historians Chuck Wollenberg, Jonathan Hunt, and Kathryn Olmstead discuss a number of reflective questions: How did Communists help build this social movement, and how did the Communist Party undercut its own principles during WWII? How did African American workers and interned Japanese-Americans fit into the story? And where did that leave California politics at the end of WWII and the beginning of the long post-war economic boom?   At the Eric Quezada Center for Culture & Politics, 518 Valencia Street (at 16^th), San Francisco CA 94110, wheelchair accessible. For more information, go to http://shapingsf.org/public-talks/index.html#coldwar This event is supported by California Humanities through an Humanities for All Quick Grant. To learn more about Quick Grant opportunities, please visit our webpage here.