Big museums can sometimes be overwhelming, or need to be taken in reasonable bite-sized doses, but while smaller ones are easier on the time and attention budget, they can be full of wonderful surprises.
The Sonoma County Museum in Santa Rosa, California is one of those. Its handsome building, originally a Post Office, holds memories of the area’s long and varied history, as well as special exhibitions, and in a separate building it is home to exhibits of modern and contemporary art by local and national artists, including an annual exhibit of fine-art woodworking.
Upstairs is the permanent local history exhibit, which begins with notes on the indigenous peoples who were there when the first Europeans arrived, and the holders of Spanish and Mexican land grants who moved into their territory. One of those grants was the beginning of the town that’s Santa Rosa today.
The transition to European settlement—not only from Spain and Mexico, but also Russian fur traders—was not an easy or peaceful one; in the early decades of the 19th century the encounters were often violent, and native peoples were forcibly removed to reservations, even before new settlers arrived from the U.S. and in many cases dispossessed the Mexican grantees as they had dispossessed the tribes before.
Santa Rosa’s first big growth spurt came with the California Gold Rush of 1848-49; San Francisco, across the bay, was the port of entry for the ’49ers,’ and Sonoma County’s farmers provided crops that fed the fast-growing city. In the early 20th century, Sonoma County’s agriculture grew even more, and in a different direction from the food crops, especially potatoes, of the past. Grapes and wine came to the fore along with chicken-and-egg farms and orchards.
Bits and pieces of the county’s social and commercial development are presented in a long wall of exhibits, some of them dedicated to Luther Burbank, the botanical pioneer who spent much of his career in the area created many of the varieties grown there and across the country.
Grape growers in Sonoma County relied on migratory workers from Mexico under the ‘bracero’ program in the 1950s and 1960s. After that program ended in 1964, workers in vineyards in many areas of California, including Sonoma County were active in organizing the United Farm Workers and striking for union recognition and better wages and conditions. That struggle became a national one, with supporters boycotting grapes until the union was recognized.
Another small reminder of labor-management relations issues is this door, seemingly marooned in space above a stairway in the building. It enabled the Postmaster or inspectors, using a ladder, to enter a viewing gallery where they could surreptitiously observe the mail sorters and clerks from above.
In one corner of the ground floor, there are more exhibits about Sonoma County’s wine industry.
Take Me to the Water: Histories of the Black Pacific
The museum’s ‘Easter Egg’ of an exhibition occupied the rest of the ground floor with history and images of Black sailors, fishers and others who made their living from the sea, specifically from the West Coast. Curated by Prof. Caroline Collins of UC Irvine, it takes its name from an old spiritual, and points out that the history goes back into the 1500s, though it is seldom mentioned.
Some of the earliest were among the crews of Spanish ships reaching the Pacific, including a number of navigators. Africans were also among the crew of Sir Francis Drake’s ships. The exhibit points out that water is central to many African cultures, and there was a history of deep-sea fishing and coastal trade in Africa.
In later centuries, African-Americans were widely involved in Pacific fishing and whaling; crews were often multi-cultural and multi-racial, and at points, were nearly half the crews in Alaska whaling. In the first part of the 19th century, the sea, and the Pacific became what was called part of the Underground Railroad, where former slaves could find work or escape to Canada.
In World War II, many African-Americans served in the then-segregated Navy, often facing discrimination on shore as well as at sea. But merchant marine ships often had mixed crews; some referred to them as ‘checkerboards.’
Similar situations—participation and discrimination—were common in West Coast ports before and during the war. Discrimination was also an issue in the shipbuilding and other war industries, and led to new organizing.
Also in the exhibit, a small exhibit on Black music and maritime music, including the surprising fact that the first three leaders of the Royal Hawaiian Band, formed in 1836 by King Kamehameha III, were African-American who had made their home in the islands.
