Exploring The More Than 400 Years Of Filipino History In Southern California

Filipino communities have a deep and rich history in Southern California — dating back centuries.

To learn more about that story during Filipino American History Month this October, we talked to historians on our daily news show AirTalk with Larry Mantle. And we learned some key takeaways:

All the way back to 1587

“The first recorded landing of Filipinos in what we now know in the United States was in Morro Bay, California, in 1587,” said Joy Sales, assistant professor of Asian American Studies at California State University, Los Angeles.

According to Sales, they were part of a crew that came to scout the land and make contact with the indigenous people of California. At the time, the Philippines was a colony of Spain.

“There's actually a longer history of Filipinos coming to Spanish colonial America, to California, to what we now know as Louisiana, to colonial Mexico…It goes far back, even before the founding of the United States,” Sales said.

A legacy of working the land

Spain sold the Philippines to the United States at the turn of the 20th century, a decision that was made without input of Filipinos.

Americans saw their new colony as a source for cheap labor.

“There was still a need for farm labor here, especially in California, because California is the breadbasket of America," Sales said. “There's records and sources of labor recruiters…going to the Philippines and specifically recruiting those with a farm working background or peasant background. And they would flash American dollars."

Filipino workers would go on to become crucial to the farm labor movement, with prominent organizers like Larry Itlong, who led strikes and formed the United Farm Workers with César Chávez.

Finding a place in Los Angeles

A rendering of the Historic Filipinotown Eastern Gateway. The archway was designed by Filipino American artists Eliseo Art Silva and Celestino Geronimo Jr.

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Courtesy City of Los Angeles

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While about two-thirds of Filipinos who emigrated to California worked in the agriculture industry, the other third ended up in cities.

In downtown Los Angeles, “Filipinos actually developed and created a kind of small Little Manila around First and Main Street,” said Joseph Bernardo, adjunct professor in the Asian and Asian Pacific American Studies Department at Loyola Marymount University.

According to Bernardo, Little Manila developed as “a result of really racial and class segregation. [Filipinos] were subject to much overt discrimination at that time. A lot of harassment, particularly from the LAPD.”

Eventually, Little Manila gave way to what is now Historic Filipinotown.

“After World War II, when whites were fleeing the suburbs as part of white flight, Filipinos were able to start raising families, and they were able to purchase homes in what is now present-day Historic Filipinotown,” Bernardo continued.

Spreading out to the suburbs

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 brought a new wave of Filipinos to the U.S. Often skilled professionals who already spoke English due to America’s colonization, these immigrants didn’t create ethnic neighborhoods in the same ways as many Asian American immigrant groups. That's because they weren't dependent on an ethnic economy to survive.

In the 1960s, suburbs were booming across the U.S., including the Sunbelt cities like Los Angeles. And immigrants wanted in on it.

“Suburbs like Northridge and West Covina and Walnut, Cerritos, Carson, and all the other communities, even into the Inland Empire, like Rancho Cucamonga, Corona, and Chino Hills…offered that piece of the American dream,” said James Zarsadiaz, associate professor of history and director of the Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program at the University of San Francisco.