How did Catholic religious activism shape the language and outcome of San Francisco's debates about the common good?
Please join us at the Main Library on Tuesday, December 18 when Bill Issel will discuss the complex ways the San Francisco Catholic Church and its lay men and women developed relationships with local businesses, unions, other community groups, and city government, and mobilized on this faith-based vision of the public interest. The San Francisco History Center invited Bill Issel to be our guest blogger so that he could share his inspiration and research for his new book Church and State in the City: Catholics and Politics in 20th Century San Francisco.
Researching in the San Francisco History Center - notes from Bill Issel
For historian Bill Issel, the San Francisco History Center was “a home away from home” for many years – first in the Old Main and then after 1996 on the Sixth Floor of the New Main Library. Bill recalls how, with the help of patient and tireless staff members, he and many of his San Francisco State University graduate student research assistants found archival gold in one collection after another as they dug beneath superficial myths and misleading stereotypes to uncover the stories of long-forgotten men and women whose efforts created modern San Francisco. The San Francisco Biography Collection and Freeway subject files in the San Francisco Ephemera Collection; the San Francisco Mayoral Papers; San Francisco Election Returns; and the San Francisco Historical Photographs were some of the most important files that Issel used in researching his new book Church and State in the City: Catholics and Politics in 20th Century San Francisco.
Some of the “untold stories” that Issel and his students uncovered in research for the book came from photographs that corroborated documentary evidence of the competition between Catholics and Communists in San Francisco life from the 1930s to the 1970s. Dramatic examples of this are two photographs from 1935:
Above are 50,000 Catholics filling Seals Stadium to overflowing during a “Christ the King” celebration in 1935.
Below is the Young Communist League contingent marching up Market Street in the May Day parade.
Roger Lotchin, University of North Carolina professor and author of The Bad City in the Good War: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Diego, wrote this about the book:
"Church and State in the City is a tour de force by a master historian. It places the Catholic Church at the forefront of an analysis which shows how San Francisco developed a moderate liberal political culture after the 1890s. The story is one of patient consensus building amongst a set of political actors which included the Church, the Communist Party, regular labor unions, business spokesmen, Republicans, Democrats, builders, planners, and neighborhood activists. Issel’s book is especially apt at describing the myriad demographic and cultural forces which formed a new politics that replaced this essentially New Deal politics, post 1980."
Your official invitation to the book talk. The event begins at 6pm in Latino/Hispanic B on the lower level. A book sale and signing will follow the talk.
Please join us at the Main Library on Tuesday, December 18 when Bill Issel will discuss the complex ways the San Francisco Catholic Church and its lay men and women developed relationships with local businesses, unions, other community groups, and city government, and mobilized on this faith-based vision of the public interest. The San Francisco History Center invited Bill Issel to be our guest blogger so that he could share his inspiration and research for his new book Church and State in the City: Catholics and Politics in 20th Century San Francisco.
Researching in the San Francisco History Center - notes from Bill Issel
For historian Bill Issel, the San Francisco History Center was “a home away from home” for many years – first in the Old Main and then after 1996 on the Sixth Floor of the New Main Library. Bill recalls how, with the help of patient and tireless staff members, he and many of his San Francisco State University graduate student research assistants found archival gold in one collection after another as they dug beneath superficial myths and misleading stereotypes to uncover the stories of long-forgotten men and women whose efforts created modern San Francisco. The San Francisco Biography Collection and Freeway subject files in the San Francisco Ephemera Collection; the San Francisco Mayoral Papers; San Francisco Election Returns; and the San Francisco Historical Photographs were some of the most important files that Issel used in researching his new book Church and State in the City: Catholics and Politics in 20th Century San Francisco.
Some of the “untold stories” that Issel and his students uncovered in research for the book came from photographs that corroborated documentary evidence of the competition between Catholics and Communists in San Francisco life from the 1930s to the 1970s. Dramatic examples of this are two photographs from 1935:
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| Feast of Christ the King, Seals Stadium, 1935 |
Below is the Young Communist League contingent marching up Market Street in the May Day parade.
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| Young Communist League, May Day, 1935 |
Roger Lotchin, University of North Carolina professor and author of The Bad City in the Good War: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Diego, wrote this about the book:
"Church and State in the City is a tour de force by a master historian. It places the Catholic Church at the forefront of an analysis which shows how San Francisco developed a moderate liberal political culture after the 1890s. The story is one of patient consensus building amongst a set of political actors which included the Church, the Communist Party, regular labor unions, business spokesmen, Republicans, Democrats, builders, planners, and neighborhood activists. Issel’s book is especially apt at describing the myriad demographic and cultural forces which formed a new politics that replaced this essentially New Deal politics, post 1980."
Your official invitation to the book talk. The event begins at 6pm in Latino/Hispanic B on the lower level. A book sale and signing will follow the talk.
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