Paul Radin Papers

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the "Second New Deal," in which the Social Security Act, the Works Progress Administration, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Rural Electrification Administration were enacted. In honor of this anniversary, and with a nod to this year's One City One Book selection, Zeitoun, today's post features a New Deal-era archival collection about immigrants: the Paul Radin Papers.

This four-box collection consists mostly of survey files from a State Emergency Relief Administration of California project headed by anthropologist Paul Radin in 1934-1935. More than 200 workers interviewed people from dozens of ethnic groups living in San Francisco. Known as SERA project 2-F2-98 (3-F2-145), the survey's abstract was published in 1935 as The Survey of San Francisco's Minorities: Its Purpose and Results. Interviewers wrote up their findings variously as stories, narratives, correspondence, analysis, and autobiography.

The files include both typed and handwritten notes and cover all aspects of immigrants' lives, including their circumstances in coming to San Francisco and what their lives were like once they got here. There is also quite a bit of folklore;  Radin's assistant Jon Lee compiled extensive materials on Chinese immigrants and Chinese folklore, which was later published in his book The Golden Mountain: Chinese Tales Told in California.

For more information about the Paul Radin Papers, you can read the finding aid on the Online Archive of California, then visit the San Francisco History Center to look at the surveys themselves.

Images are from Series 1: Radin Ethnic Surveys (General), folder 2/20: Miqueton; and Series 4: Italians Survey Cards, in the Paul Radin Papers (SFH 23), San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.