1st shift
I’m posting this a little late, but better late than never I suppose. My first shift was actually a very interesting one, because the assignment I was given working downstairs in the museum was to research the ethnic history of a local city. I am from Atascadero, which for those of you who don’t know is about a 15 minute drive over the grade, so it was really interesting to be able to do research on my own town. It turns out Atascadero was founded to be a “white utopia” essentially, which really doesn’t surprise me considering the white population there, but it was definitely disappointing to discover this. One of the people doing research downstairs as well was from a museum in Santa Margarita, which is right next to Atascadero, and she was telling me how the founder of Atascadero once threw a Japanese man in jail, and when he was asked why the man was sent to jail, he responding, “For being a Jap.” Through my research all I could really find was similar stories confirming the founder’s racism, against more than just the Japanese, and also that there were active members of the Ku Klux Klan present in Atascadero at one point. This was, as you might expect, very upsetting to hear about my hometown.
-Tyler Hushing-Kline
