California's 'Bum Blockade'

Speaker 1 Support for NPR and the following message come from 20th Century Studios with Ella McKay, a new comedy from Academy Award-winning writer-director James L.

Speaker 1 Brooks, starring Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis with Albert Brooks and Woody Harrelson. See Ella McKay only in theaters December 12th.

Speaker 2 Hey everyone, before we start the show, you may have heard that President Trump has issued an executive order seeking to block all federal funding to NPR.

Speaker 2 This is the latest in a series of of threats to media organizations across the country.

Speaker 3 Millions of people, people like you, people like me, depend on the NPR network as a vital source of news, entertainment, information, and connection. We are proud to be here for you.

Speaker 3 And now, more than ever, we need you to be here for us.

Speaker 2 It's time to join the movement to defend public media. Visit donate.npr.org.
And if you already support us via NPR Plus or another means, thank you.

Speaker 3 Your support means so much to us now more than ever. You help make NPR shows freely available to everyone.
We are proud to do this work for you and with you.

Speaker 2 Now on to the show.

Speaker 7 The only time that I really remember that I was scared was that dark Sunday.

Speaker 2 Oklahoma, April 14th, 1935.

Speaker 8 We could see it clear.

Speaker 7 It rose in like smoke almost.

Speaker 2 On the horizon, a wall of black dust over 500 feet tall, stretching as far as the eye could see.

Speaker 11 It'd be just that quiet.

Speaker 7 The neighbors said there was birds flying ahead of that storm.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 11 that storm hit. hit.

Speaker 2 60 mile per hour winds.

Speaker 6 You couldn't see your hand in front of your face.

Speaker 2 The storm ripped through six states, from Nebraska to Texas. In some places, total darkness lasted an hour.

Speaker 7 Black, cold black.

Speaker 6 It was as black as the age of space.

Speaker 3 It was a day that haunted the minds of those who lived through it. They called it Black Sunday.

Speaker 7 You just felt like you were going to choke, you know, that desperate was just, you couldn't hardly breathe.

Speaker 11 If you knew anything about the scripture, you know what it says: that the moon will turn dark, and this, that, and the other. So, we just had the feeling that this is the end of time.

Speaker 11 I thought that was the end of the world.

Speaker 3 The very next day, a journalist coined a new term to describe what was happening across the Great Plains. He called it the Dust Bowl.

Speaker 3 What you just heard were oral histories conducted with people who lived in the heart of it.

Speaker 11 But those dust storms storms just devastated the country.

Speaker 11 They were perpetual, and you can depend on it.

Speaker 2 The dust was relentless and inescapable. It covered every inch of people's homes.
It choked the crops. It filled people's lungs, causing hundreds, maybe thousands of people to die from dust pneumonia.

Speaker 2 The dust bowl made the Great Plains nearly uninhabitable.

Speaker 6 So many of them left

Speaker 6 California.

Speaker 15 Lots of folks back east, they say, is leaving home every day. Feeding the hot old dusty way to the California line.

Speaker 2 Woody Guthrie, the Dust Bowl troubadour, immortalized this time in song. Across the desert,

Speaker 15 Now the police at the port of entry say

Speaker 15 you're number 14,000 for today.

Speaker 15 Oh, if you ain't got the do-ray me,

Speaker 15 folks, you ain't got the do-ray me.

Speaker 2 I'm Randabde Fekta.

Speaker 3 And I'm Ramteen Arabloui.

Speaker 2 Today on the show, producer Anya Steinberg tells the story of one of the largest internal migrations in American history and the rogue police chief who tried to close California's borders to stop it.

Speaker 15 California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see.

Speaker 15 But believe it or not, you won't find it so hot if you ain't got the no-rainy.

Speaker 17 Hi, this is Kyle from Boystown, Nebraska. You are listening to ThruLine from NPR.

Speaker 18 This message comes from Schwab. Everyone has moments when they could have done better, like cutting their own hair or forgetting sunscreen, so now you look like a tomato.

Speaker 18 Same goes for where you invest. Level up and invest smarter with Schwab.
Get market insights, education, and human help when you need it. Learn more at schwab.com.

Speaker 1 This message comes from BetterHelp. Most FSA dollars expire at the end of the year, so it's time to use them or lose them.

Speaker 1 With BetterHelp, you can invest those funds in taking care of your mind with online therapy. Join today and you can be matched with a licensed therapist in as little as 24 hours.

Speaker 1 Visit betterhelp.com slash npr to get 10% off your first month.

Speaker 18 This message comes from Solventum.

Speaker 18 For decades, healthcare professionals have trusted their solutions to help provide exceptional care, from wound care therapies that can accelerate healing to dental restoratives that preserve smiles.

Speaker 18 Today, Solventum is building on that legacy by listening to your needs and imagining new possibilities, ushering in a new era of better, smarter, safer health care to improve lives.

Speaker 18 See how they're shaping the future of care at Solventum.com

Speaker 6 Part 1. The Great White Spot.

Speaker 6 It's a balmy February day in Los Angeles, California.

Speaker 6 The year is 1926.

Speaker 6 Just a few years before the Dust Bowl begins.

Speaker 6 And Detective Lieutenant James Davis, otherwise known as Two two-gun Davis because of his incredible marksmanship is sitting at his desk at the Detective Bureau office.

Speaker 16 A very proper man.

Speaker 6 Just then

Speaker 6 a reporter barges through

Speaker 6 and informs the 36-year-old Davis that he's just been named the Interim Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Speaker 6 Davis blinks in surprise as he realizes that he's now in charge of all police officers in the nation's so-called Wonder City that's quickly becoming a shining metropolis, driven by the riches and glamour of Hollywood, oil, and real estate for whoever can afford it.

Speaker 16 Davis started his life very poorly.

Speaker 6 Born in 1889 in Texas.

Speaker 16 To a strict Methodist mother.

Speaker 21 Once, as a youngster, I found a pack of playing cards. I took them home and asked my mother what they were.

Speaker 18 She told me, and hurtly threw them in the fire.

Speaker 6 Davis's upbringing shaped his worldview.

Speaker 16 He lived a lifetime of sobriety.

Speaker 6 This is Bill Lasher, author of The Golden Fortress, California's Border War on Dust Bowl Refugees.

Speaker 16 He was a very brusque, very authoritarian man.

Speaker 6 At age 16, he ran away from home. For a while, he farmed and worked hard labor jobs.
Then, he joined the army and was stationed in the Philippines.

Speaker 16 The army brought discipline to his life, a sense of order and stability.

Speaker 6 The military was a good fit, but once he left the army, his future was less clear. So, like many others, he migrated to California.

Speaker 16 And arrived in Los Angeles penniless and unsure what he was going to do next.

Speaker 6 He was so poor that all he had to wear was his army uniform until he heard about a new opportunity with the LAPD.

Speaker 16 He signs up and gets work as a

Speaker 16 beat officer.

Speaker 6 But it doesn't go well.

Speaker 6 He gets kicked out. He drifts for a while, traveling across the U.S.
doing odd jobs.

Speaker 16 But then he writes a letter to the then police chief asking for another chance.

Speaker 6 And he gets it.

Speaker 6 In 1912, he returns to the LAPD.

Speaker 6 After a while, he's placed on the Vice Squad.

Speaker 16 He was an early drug warrior. He saw it as a moral contagion to be a drug addict.

Speaker 23 The underworld fears, but does not hate him.

Speaker 22 He'll play square, his victims tell you.

Speaker 6 Close your eyes and imagine a cop from a film noir movie. Well, that's pretty much James Tougon Davis.

Speaker 16 He is known for sort of daring raids on things like drug dens and vice vice dens.

Speaker 24 His friends call him Jim, and his enemies give him lots of elbow room.

Speaker 16 At one point, he like swung through a window to arrest some criminals.

Speaker 6 And the local papers, like the LA Times, eat it up.

Speaker 25 He's got guts is the consensus of opinion among the gentry that ought to know.

Speaker 6 The press is obsessed with him. They wax poetic about his, quote, eyes blue and keen and his, quote, thick, wavy hair.

Speaker 24 He knows what it is to have the muzzle of a revolver crushed against his rib.

Speaker 16 People use maybe there's some fights, maybe there's some people hurt, but if he gets those criminals, it's okay.

Speaker 6 In 1921, after years of paying his dues in the rank and file, the higher-ups at the LAPD finally start to take notice of Davis. They give him his first promotion.

Speaker 16 Then it's like wildfire.

Speaker 6 Davis moves fast.

Speaker 25 Bust after bust after bust.

Speaker 6 He becomes head of the Vice Squad.

Speaker 16 Promotion after promotion after promotion.

Speaker 6 Until that fateful day in 1926, when he learns that he's been chosen as the interim chief of police.

Speaker 6 Shortly after, Davis gets the job for good, and he immediately starts to reshape and modernize the force into a more professionalized, standardized, uniformed police force.

Speaker 6 Under his watch, LAPD officers have to look a certain way.

Speaker 16 T in enforces wearing the uniforms a certain militaristic style.

Speaker 6 And they have to know how to use their guns.

Speaker 16 He insists that members of the LAPD are top marksmen.

Speaker 6 Davis is a showman when it comes to his raids, but he's making all these other changes quietly.

Speaker 16 He is what the LA Times describes as soft-spoken and hard-fisted. This is the picture that his friends will paint to you of the youngest chief of police in the history of the city.

Speaker 16 That soft-spokenness, that idea that he's not saying anything, but he's taking action, is the image that he wants the entire police force to promote.

Speaker 6 LA civic and business leaders, as well as the press, like the LA Times, applauded his efforts.

Speaker 6 He was exactly the kind of police chief they wanted running LA because they had plans for what this up-and-coming city should look like and be like

Speaker 6 new friends and their money

Speaker 16 its resources are unlimited its wealth untold its possibilities unsurpassed especially through the 1920s a lot of the leadership of the city is wanting to be a sort of a beacon that literally they articulate as the quote white spot of the United States.

Speaker 6 Yeah, you heard that right. The white spot.

Speaker 27 The The prosperity of this great white spot is the talk of the country.

Speaker 6 Even though LA was formerly part of Mexico and continued to be a vibrant multi-ethnic city, a lot like it is today, it didn't matter. It was about the image of what it could be more than the reality.

Speaker 27 Los Angeles is the great white spot on the industrial map of the United States.

Speaker 6 Cash in on this great era of prosperity.

Speaker 14 Los Angeles very quickly recognized that its key to prosperity lay in advertising and promoting images.

Speaker 6 This is Mark Wilde, a history professor at Cal State Los Angeles.

Speaker 14 The Los Angeles Times put out something called a midwinter edition.

Speaker 14 Every late January, early February, right in the teeth of the winter for the Northeast and the Midwest, and they would send it out and it would be full of pictures of people sitting in their gardens growing these huge oranges, these huge fat babies on the lawn.

Speaker 14 and they'd say, you know, it's 75 and sunny here in Los Angeles. Why don't you come out?

Speaker 16 This image becomes produced of a city of empty land, of a place where anyone, the right kind of person, and there is a, there's a very clearly articulated idea of people with money already who can come and invest and build on this quote unquote empty land that's in Los Angeles.

Speaker 14 The business plan is to promote it as a place of prosperity, to promote it as a place place of good investment.

Speaker 14 And a corollary to that is that there is a docile, willing workforce that's not going to cause trouble.

Speaker 6 Which was an important bit of marketing because in recent years, labor organizers had taken aim at big business across the country.

Speaker 6 There were headlines about unrest, disruptions, sometimes even violence. LA was like, no, no, none of that here.

Speaker 14 And the city government is really in tune with promoting those interests and making sure that the image persists and that it's not threatened by working class communities, immigrant communities that might be engaged in activities that would undermine it.

Speaker 6 And Davis, the crusader against vice, becomes a symbol of this effort.

Speaker 16 And he's constantly talking about the threat, about the external threat to Los Angeles, whether it's from drug users or quote-unquote vagrants or communists or perceived communist labor agitators, this idea that people

Speaker 16 with ill intent are coming from one source or another to harm the safe and orderly process of life in Los Angeles.

Speaker 6 For Davis, that threat had to be dealt with by any means necessary.

Speaker 24 As one columnist put it, Davis quite honestly and sincerely believes that the country would be better off if the whole question of constitutional rights was forgotten.

Speaker 6 To do this, he ramped up the work of the LAPD's nascent Los Angeles Intelligence Squad, better known as the Red Squad, which, as its name implies, engaged in a number of activities, including surveillance.

Speaker 22 Red squad of police in city augmented.

Speaker 14 They would spy on people who were suspected of radical activities and keep tabs on suspected communists and labor organizers.

Speaker 23 Reds arrested after rioting.

Speaker 6 But it wasn't all in the shadows. The squad also knew how to put on a show to make it clear who did and didn't belong in LA.

Speaker 22 Quick arrests have been ordered to forestall any anti-American move.

Speaker 14 They would engage in public intimidation. They would clear demonstrations.
They would bully people. They'd like to pull out their batons and crack heads.

Speaker 6 Police Chief James Davis had his critics, but they didn't slow him down.

Speaker 16 Until there's a kidnapping in early 1928.

Speaker 6 Mother believes her son kidnapped.

Speaker 12 The mystery surrounding the case of Walter Collins, nine years of age, remains impenetrable, police say.

Speaker 6 In March 1928, A young boy named Walter Collins goes missing. And for months, the LAPD cannot find him.
It's a bad look.

Speaker 6 And the pressure on the LAPD keeps growing.

Speaker 6 But then one day, the boy shows up in Illinois.

Speaker 12 Collins' youth found in East.

Speaker 6 Mother hears good news. His mother immediately sends the money to have Walter brought back to her in Los Angeles.
But when they reunite, she looks at the child and says, that's not my son.

Speaker 6 And the LAPD is like, yes, he is.

Speaker 16 And when she insists that he's not, they arrest her and commit her to a mental institution.

Speaker 16 This causes eventually a tremendous scandal when it turns out that they haven't caught the kidnapper.

Speaker 6 And they haven't found Walter either. The boy they brought back is an imposter, a runaway pretending to be Walter.

Speaker 6 There's a huge fallout. People are angry at the LAPD.

Speaker 26 Removed from office, Chief of Police James E. Davis on the grounds of incompetency, inefficiency, and failure to properly enforce the laws.

Speaker 6 Tensions continue through 1929.

Speaker 12 And then

Speaker 6 the stock market crashes.

Speaker 16 And that begins the Great Depression.

Speaker 6 Everything is in chaos.

Speaker 6 And shortly after the market crash, Davis loses his job as the police chief.

Speaker 5 But before long,

Speaker 6 he'll get another chance.

Speaker 6 This is Jose Hernandez from California, and you're listening to Tulein from NPR.

Speaker 18 Support for this podcast comes from GMC. At GMC, ignorance is the furthest thing from bliss.

Speaker 18 Bliss is research, testing, testing the testing, until it results in not just one truck, but a whole lineup.

Speaker 18 The GMC Sierra lineup, featuring the Sierra 1500, the Sierra Heavy Duty, and the all-electric Sierra EV. Because true bliss is removing every shadow from every doubt.

Speaker 4 GMC, we are professional grade.

Speaker 18 Visit gmc.com to learn more.

Speaker 18 This message comes from Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort.

Speaker 19 Journey through the heart of Europe on an elegant Viking longship with thoughtful service, destination-focused dining, and cultural enrichment on board and on shore.

Speaker 18 And every Viking voyage is all-inclusive with no children and no casinos.

Speaker 19 Discover more at viking.com.

Speaker 18 Support for this podcast comes from GMC. At GMC, ignorance is the furthest thing from bliss.

Speaker 18 Bliss is research, testing, testing the testing, until it results in not just one truck, but a whole lineup.

Speaker 18 The GMC Sierra lineup, featuring the Sierra 1500, the Sierra Heavy Duty, and the all-electric Sierra EV. Because true bliss is removing every shadow from every doubt.

Speaker 4 GMC, we are professional grade.

Speaker 18 Visit gmc.com to learn more.

Speaker 6 Part 2.

Speaker 20 California is closed.

Speaker 11 I remember it blew every day.

Speaker 11 Sometimes in the mornings, you could see the imprint of your head on the pillow. It would have been that dusty.

Speaker 6 In the 1930s, the Dust Bowl and the economic devastation of the Great Depression wreaked havoc on the lives of people across the country, but particularly the Great Plains.

Speaker 14 It's the south, it's the northern plains. Lots of farmers lose their farms or become convinced not to farm anymore because prices crash.

Speaker 29 I think there's a lot of desperation.

Speaker 6 This is Elisa Minoff. She's Director of Economic Security and a senior fellow in policy history at the Center for the Study of Social Policy.

Speaker 6 And she wrote her PhD dissertation all about internal migration during this time period.

Speaker 29 By the mid-1930s, there have been so many bad years that people sort of lose hope in being able to sustain themselves on the farms.

Speaker 6 Once bustling family farms fell silent. And nearly a quarter of the country's workforce was unemployed.

Speaker 7 So many people were down on their luck and didn't have anything to eat and no job. You couldn't buy a job.
You couldn't get a job.

Speaker 6 By 1940, two and a half million people had moved out of the plains states and over 300,000 of them made their way to California. Entire families packed up their belongings and hit the road.

Speaker 29 What would strike us about it today is that the journey was long.

Speaker 29 Much longer than, you know, driving down Route 66 today.

Speaker 6 Route 66

Speaker 6 In 1930, the Mother Road, as John Steinbeck would later dub it in his novel The Grapes of Wrath, was over 2,400 miles long and stretched from Chicago all the way to Los Angeles.

Speaker 14 You had a steady stream of people coming across, and oftentimes these broken down-looking jalapies with all their life's possessions piled on top of them, families with kids, and that

Speaker 14 procession was real.

Speaker 6 The journey was difficult and lonely.

Speaker 29 As people passed from one town to the next, they were likely to have experienced a xenophobia.

Speaker 29 Local sheriffs in these towns that people passed through were very intent on ensuring that families moved on and did not stay.

Speaker 25 All a transient hears is no work.

Speaker 4 No relief.

Speaker 19 Keep moving.

Speaker 29 And that really only sort of foreshadowed the difficulties they would have once they arrived in California.

Speaker 30 Is this the dumping ground for the country's unemployed? LA Times, 1932.

Speaker 14 In overall terms, migration to California slows.

Speaker 6 But people are still coming in. It's just not the kind of people Los Angeles city leaders wanted to attract.

Speaker 14 From the perspective of the LA civic leadership,

Speaker 14 the character, the makeup of that population changes dramatically. There's a lot more folks coming in looking for work without capital.
They're not going to be buying a home.

Speaker 14 They're not going to be moving into these middle-class districts. They're desperate.

Speaker 6 At first, there's a lot of sympathy for these migrants.

Speaker 14 Los Angeles had this network of support for destitute people.

Speaker 14 And so you had a lot of the missions and settlement homes and different types of institutions that would cater those folks sort of in downtown LA.

Speaker 6 This was the case in cities across the country.

Speaker 14 The understanding basically was we were taking care of our own people. The care for these folks was really the duty of the communities in which they resided.

Speaker 6 But the Depression changed everything.

Speaker 14 Things got so tough so quickly, so many people lost their jobs, lost their homes, lost their way of livelihood that it swamped this private network of support that it existed.

Speaker 14 Completely overwhelmed the community chest organizations, the soup kitchens. There was just no way they could handle it.

Speaker 14 And so as the decade progressed and the Great Depression continued, Folks began to try to find ways to try to manage this burden.

Speaker 14 And one of the ways for communities where people were coming in was to try to exclude folks who they would claim didn't belong.

Speaker 6 And an easy target was all the newcomers driving into LA on Route 66.

Speaker 14 Some folks began to say, all right, folks who aren't working now, they have different options. Maybe they should be getting back to work.
And if they aren't, then why not?

Speaker 6 Newspapers and politicians at the time often referred to these migrants as indigents, vagrants, transients, or bums.

Speaker 14 People are exhausted, and I think some of their sympathy is starting to run out.

Speaker 6 In 1933, LA elects a new mayor. His name is Frank Shaw, and he has a reputation for being anti-migrant.

Speaker 16 Shaw advocated for a countywide anti-indigent ban in the 1930s and sort of the early days of the Depression.

Speaker 6 But there's a catch.

Speaker 16 The problem is that Shaw was born in Ontario, Canada.

Speaker 6 Shaw is Canadian. He is ironically a migrant himself.
And also...

Speaker 16 There's not good evidence that his parents ever had him or his brother naturalized.

Speaker 6 And if that's the case, it means he's not actually eligible to be LA's mayor. It's a scandal in the making.

Speaker 6 And when Harry Chandler, the publisher of the LA Times, catches wind of the story, he sees an opportunity. He goes to Shaw and says, let's make a deal.

Speaker 16 As the story goes, at least, E agrees to hold back these reports that are alleged to prove that Shaw is in fact a Canadian. In exchange, he gets Shaw to agree to reinstall Davis as chief of police.

Speaker 6 James Davis, as in the recently fired police chief, who tends to play it loose when it comes to people's civil rights, all in the name of preventing crime.

Speaker 16 Chandler and others, people in the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, want someone like Davis who isn't as concerned about the criticisms that happen with anti-labor activity to be there at the head of the LAPD.

Speaker 6 And it works. Davis is reinstated as the LAPD's chief of police with the express purpose of picking up where he left off.

Speaker 16 The gloves are off, I guess, and he runs with it. Davis hits the ground running.

Speaker 6 It's not long before the Red Squad, the anti-communist policing unit, is again starting to infiltrate.

Speaker 16 Political movements and things like that and starts to try to smear people perceived to be labor agitators.

Speaker 16 War.

Speaker 21 War to the finish.

Speaker 18 War in which every radical head will be stomped back into the earth as quickly as it arises.

Speaker 6 And of course, Davis keeps the interests of Chandler and the other business leaders of L.A. in mind.
And they in turn scratch his back.

Speaker 31 We appreciate that Chief Davis and his co-workers in Los Angeles are fighting the battle of all of Southern California when they hold firmly in check the subversive activities of radical agitators.

Speaker 14 The Los Angeles Times, which as much as anyone really supported them, would report

Speaker 14 how they were sort of controlling the Reds and getting rid of the criminals and all of that.

Speaker 23 Suppression of violence commended.

Speaker 21 Colonial War Society praises Chief Davis and local police force.

Speaker 6 This time around, Davis gravitated to the attention. He wanted everyone to know that he meant business.

Speaker 14 He was a very media-friendly person. He loved to take pictures of himself looking tough, pointing guns at the camera.
He really embraced the image.

Speaker 6 The state's incoming migrants quickly became the focus of his policing work.

Speaker 6 And by the mid-1930s, these efforts were particularly pointed at single men, which Davis and critics would call hobos or vagrants.

Speaker 14 Those were the folks who were considered a threat. They're unattached.
They're potentially prone to criminality. They're prone to labor disruption.

Speaker 14 And if you have a single male who doesn't have a family to provide for, no children to provide for, all those types of responsibilities tend to engender not only sympathy, but responsibility.

Speaker 6 Speaking to a group of Hollywood women in 1934, Davis made it clear that his fight to rid the city of vagrants was an extension of his work to rid the city of communists.

Speaker 18 Americans are asleep.

Speaker 21 In two to six years, communism will be a reality in the United States if drastic steps are not taken to check it.

Speaker 6 Davis and LA's business elites feared that poor migrants coming into the state were more likely to join a labor movement or vote for socialist ideas, which they saw as a growing threat in California.

Speaker 33 We mean mass production under modern conditions. The land workers are to have the best land and the factory workers the best machinery.

Speaker 6 In 1934, Upton Sinclair.

Speaker 14 Most famous as a muck-raking journalist. He wrote a book called The Jungle about the Chicago meatpacking industry.

Speaker 16 And until very recently, a socialist.

Speaker 14 He runs in the Democratic Party. And to everybody's shock, he wins the Democratic primary.
And he runs for the governor of California. And he devises a plan called EPIC.

Speaker 11 End poverty in California.

Speaker 6 This is Upton Sinclair speaking later in his life about his upstart campaign.

Speaker 11 And of course, EPIC suggests something important and something wonderful.

Speaker 14 And this stuns the civic leadership in Los Angeles and across the state. They're scared to death because these policies seem to reflect a direct assault on business as usual.

Speaker 16 They fear that their hold on power is going to falter.

Speaker 6 So they get to work on a smear campaign to discredit Sinclair.

Speaker 14 They develop a message to counter Sinclair's campaign. They paint him as a radical.
They paint him as a leftist.

Speaker 6 They even suggest he's a Russian agent.

Speaker 34 I'm going to vote for Upton St. Clair.
Will you tell us why? Upton St. Clair is the author of the Russian government, and it worked out very well there, and I think it should do here.

Speaker 14 And then they enlist the Hollywood studios, who obviously want a part of this as well.

Speaker 6 A lot of Hollywood bigwigs do not want radical politics. They want a nice business-friendly LA.

Speaker 6 So they chip in and help produce so-called newsreels that would run before feature films at movie theaters.

Speaker 14 They create these fake newsreels.

Speaker 14 They have these actors hired to portray unemployed workers coming into California, riding the rails and saying, I'm coming to California because I heard Uptonkin Sinclair is going to be governor.

Speaker 14 And once he's in there, I'm going to be able to take advantage of these great resources that are going to be able to provide for me.

Speaker 11 California is going to be plain of poverty and everybody gets things for nothing.

Speaker 6 Upton Sinclair tries to fight it, calling it the lie machine. But it's a loud and inescapable campaign.

Speaker 14 And it works. He's defeated fairly easily.

Speaker 6 James Tougun Davis is watching this election unfold. He sees the growing fear of migrants, and he gets an idea.

Speaker 16 On February 3rd, 1936, 135 officers in squads of seven and seven

Speaker 16 leave Los Angeles. They drive to 16 stations around the state of California.
So anywhere where there's a domestic state line.

Speaker 14 Arizona and Nevada all the way up to the Oregon border. So he spread them out along this huge border, hundreds of miles long.

Speaker 16 Alongside highways and near rail crossings.

Speaker 14 And he arranged for all of them to be deputized by the local police or sheriff's office up there.

Speaker 16 To legally work as law enforcement officers in those counties.

Speaker 6 The papers call it the bum blockade.

Speaker 6 And all along the California border, LAPD officers set set up and wait.

Speaker 35 Hello, my name is Jeff Cooper from Bozeman, Montana. I love Through Line.
Usually listen to it on the way home from skiing with our two young daughters.

Speaker 36 Or you'll catch me listening to it on the way to my job as a flight paramedic. Keep up the good work.
I love Through Line, and it's a great trail. Thank you.

Speaker 1 This message comes from Jerry. Many people are overpaying on car insurance.
Why? Switching providers can be a pain. Jerry helps make the process painless.

Speaker 1 Jerry is the only app that compares rates from over 50 insurers in minutes and helps you switch fast with no spam calls or hidden fees. Drivers who save with Jerry could save over $1,300 a year.

Speaker 1 Before you renew your car insurance policy, download the Jerry app or head to jerry.ai/slash npr.

Speaker 1 This message is from Synchrony Bank, who wants to remind you to stay flexible. Not the 10,000 steps before breakfast, yoga bending, circus performing, wish I hadn't done that kind of flexible.

Speaker 1 It's about staying financially flexible, like with their high-yield savings account. You'll earn a great rate without monthly fees or minimums that can slow your progress.

Speaker 1 Go to synchrony.com/slash NPR. Remember, FDIC.

Speaker 6 Part 3.

Speaker 8 That Do-Ray Me.

Speaker 37 While the worker on the survey observed the officers, about half the automobiles were allowed to pass without any inspection.

Speaker 6 In 1936, the California state government released a nearly 400-page report on migrants to the state.

Speaker 6 And an entire section of it was devoted to surveyors' eyewitness accounts of the LAPD's border blockade.

Speaker 37 A beautiful new Packard sedan with four passengers was signaled to pass. The officer turning to the worker, remarking, we would make enemies if we stopped people like that.

Speaker 38 A 1929 Ford roadster, dripping water and oil with a homemade trailer attached, came to a stop under the canopy.

Speaker 25 The police beckoned them to halt.

Speaker 14 They would try to discourage people who looked like they were very poor from coming into California.

Speaker 16 It's being enforced very subjectively.

Speaker 25 The old car was lacking paint in spots, spattered with oil-soaked dust, and probably not washed for a year or so.

Speaker 16 If it's a run-down car, it might be stopped. A man traveling alone is more likely to be stopped.
What I want you to do, you're a family to a moment.

Speaker 25 The family totaled nine. The oldest boy, 18, sat alone in the middle of the trailer.

Speaker 28 Heaped around him were what appeared to be all the worldly possessions the family owned.

Speaker 16 Questioning them, asking why they're coming into state, where they're coming from, who they are, what their name is. proof of work, proof of means, or proof you have somewhere to go.

Speaker 25 A check with the police revealed that the family were coming to California for the the first time to see the wife's sister.

Speaker 38 They had $30 in cash.

Speaker 37 The captain of the highway patrol informed the travelers that it would cost $20 to clear the licenses on the car and trailer.

Speaker 25 For 10 minutes or so, the scene was tense.

Speaker 38 The mother clutched her baby girl to her as she broke out in sobs.

Speaker 25 The boys sat quietly staring into space, waiting for their parents to decide.

Speaker 25 The father, unshaven and unwashed, silently took his place behind the wheel.

Speaker 37 The battery was low and the motor did not respond, but when it did, it sounded as if it too was undesirable and in need of assistance.

Speaker 38 The father turned the Ford around, and the family of nine went back over the road they had traveled, having denied police the privilege of fingerprinting them as not wanted in California.

Speaker 6 Surveyors' reports of the blockade told a story of inconsistency. The police stopped hitchhikers, cars, trains, and buses coming into the state.

Speaker 6 In some places, migrants were fingerprinted, and those prints were sent off to LA and to Washington, D.C. to check for a criminal background.

Speaker 6 Some were detained in local jails. Others were just turned around and sent back across the state border.

Speaker 6 To pull off the blockade, from a legal standpoint, the LAPD was relying on an anti-indigent state law that had been passed in 1933.

Speaker 14 That prevented the importation of people into the state, quote-unquote, likely to become a public charge.

Speaker 6 A public charge, meaning they would be a drain on the city's coffers.

Speaker 14 So the law itself is sort of representing that ideology, and that then becomes the legal justification for the bum blockade.

Speaker 14 They weren't trying to stop all migration into California, they were trying to stop certain people from coming in.

Speaker 6 As soon as the LAPD's border blockade was rolled out, it made headlines.

Speaker 32 Most public officials chatter at length in print about the desirable things they are going to do.

Speaker 25 A few do things first and talk about them afterward.

Speaker 32 While the interminable talkers at Sacramento are fuming and spluttering, 136 of the city's finest are on the job, turning back undesirables.

Speaker 14 I could find people who both supported and opposed it.

Speaker 32 Hobos of America will fight in the courts, if necessary, to preserve their constitutional rights in this city's current border patrol campaign against indigent transients.

Speaker 14 The debate turned on a question of character of the blockade's targets. Were they victims of economic circumstance who deserve sympathy?

Speaker 14 Or were they arriving due to some cultural or moral flaw? Were they unwilling to work?

Speaker 10 Why should California become the stamping ground for undesirables, professional bums, men and women who come here merely to live off others?

Speaker 14 The phrase that Davis often used was, won't workers.

Speaker 14 That they refused opportunities that were available to them either in their own communities or in other parts of the country, and that therefore we did not owe them entry.

Speaker 6 In this sense, the blockade was building on sentiments that already ran deep. Cities and towns had always struggled with the question of what to do when desperate people showed up on their doorsteps.

Speaker 6 And anti-vagrancy laws had existed since before the U.S. was even founded.
In the 1930s, LA wasn't even the only place that tried out a blockade.

Speaker 29 There were similar

Speaker 29 actual border blockades.

Speaker 6 The governor of Florida had sent the state police out to the state's border two years before the LAPD's blockade.

Speaker 29 But still, the LA border blockade attracts a huge amount of attention because of the theatricality of it.

Speaker 6 In some places, Police Chief Davis's blockade became a laughing stock. On the border with Nevada, some men from Reno put up a sign mocking the blockade that said, stop! Los Angeles city limits.

Speaker 6 Backlash against the blockade spread, and it was reported out in newspapers newspapers across the region.

Speaker 23 Bum blockade is merely LA publicity, says Oregon Governor Martin.

Speaker 6 A California state senator called the program damnable, absurd, and asinine.

Speaker 6 Some of the sheriffs in border towns refused to deputize Davis's officers.

Speaker 23 I do not intend to place county officers and taxpayers in a position which almost certainly would lead to lawsuits.

Speaker 24 And a newspaper publisher near the border of Nevada said, People here are anything but friendly to the plan. In fact, they don't like it a bit.
So far, they think it's just a lot of hoe.

Speaker 6 In the pages of the LA Times, Davis was given space to defend his blockade and to keep people updated on how he thought it was going.

Speaker 30 February 5th, 1936.

Speaker 21 I vouch if the people so ready with criticism of this plan know the facts. The hordes of indigents are coming with the idea of getting on relief rolls, begging, or stealing.

Speaker 14 February 10th, 1936.

Speaker 21 Within 36 hours after placing a blockade, the tide of foraging floaters was turned.

Speaker 6 And on February 12th, he took to the airwaves.

Speaker 39 eddie griffets described as american 823

Speaker 16 calling all cars was this sort of predecessor to shows like dragned and other cop shows the show was based on real cases from the lapd

Speaker 16 it's sort of a propaganda machine for the lapd

Speaker 39 and now we present chief jamesy david of the los angeles police department good evening friends

Speaker 6 That week, Davis had a special story prepared for critics of his blockade.

Speaker 39 The killer, whose career of crime will be unfolded for you here this evening, was a typical migratory criminal who entered the state in the province of Ejobo.

Speaker 6 The killer, a man named Eddie Griffith, had embarked on a crime spree, traveling from Seattle to California by hitchhiking and riding the rails.

Speaker 39 He came into California without money, without any visible means of support. He sought to forage in green pastures, even if he had to rob and heal to do so.

Speaker 6 And before he launched into the story, Davis made his case.

Speaker 39 Tonight's story is the true story of one migratory indigen whose criminal career under a proper single tent and border patrol program might have been licked in the bud.

Speaker 6 If something like his border blockade had existed, Davis said Eddie Griffith never would have made it to California. The only hitch was

Speaker 6 there was no Eddie Griffith. The story wasn't true.

Speaker 6 It was a dramatized version of a couple of police cases, stitched together and embellished. And the same was starting to seem true of the entire premise of Davis's border blockade.

Speaker 6 His claims about hordes of dangerous migrants storming the border were seeming flimsier each day.

Speaker 23 While Los Angeles City cops huddled in the high Sierras engaged in a war to save California from the hobos, a checkup showed the war was dying out due to an almost complete lack of hobos.

Speaker 29 Police Chief Davis claimed that they turned away thousands of migrants at the border. I think that's hard to verify.

Speaker 14 They only actually stopped a small number of people.

Speaker 29 On March 17th, the Attorney General of California finally issues an opinion and says that no, the police chief cannot do this.

Speaker 6 Calling the blockade unconstitutional.

Speaker 32 He says, organized government, state, county, or municipal should not attempt the achievement of a laudable purpose by unlawful means.

Speaker 29 California is one state in a sisterhood of states.

Speaker 32 As other states must do onto California, so must California do onto them.

Speaker 6 By the end of March, things were looking grim for the blockade's future.

Speaker 6 The ACLU had organized a lawsuit against the blockade, which newspapers reported was only dropped after police intimidated the lead plaintiff. Bad press about the blockade continued to pile up.

Speaker 6 Most of all, it was expensive.

Speaker 6 And so in early April, after a little over two months, the blockade ended. Its demise came quietly, without any fanfare or headlines in the paper.

Speaker 14 I think it was fairly obvious to most people at the time that this was for show,

Speaker 14 that this was not making an appreciable difference in migration into the state. Lots of people were still coming in.
It was fairly easy to get around the blockade if you needed to.

Speaker 29 Looking back from the perspective of history,

Speaker 29 no, it was not effective.

Speaker 6 In 1938, James Davis' career as police chief ended.

Speaker 13 For good this time.

Speaker 6 He was forced to resign after it was revealed that he'd helped cover up the bombing of a private investigator who'd been looking into corruption in the LAPD.

Speaker 6 Davis spent the final years of his life sailing aboard a tuna trawler and collecting his pension.

Speaker 6 Meanwhile, California's attitude towards migrants changed.

Speaker 14 With the arrival of World War II, suddenly everything slams into reverse.

Speaker 6 The U.S. starts ramping up the war effort in 1940, sending supplies to Allied forces in Europe.

Speaker 14 Suddenly, California and many other places state want as many migrants as as possible because of the building war effort.

Speaker 14 And so communities that might have wanted to exclude people before are now desperate for them.

Speaker 6 And in 1941, a Supreme Court case would cement that change. Edwards v.
California.

Speaker 6 The case revolved around a 1933 law. the same anti-indigent law that Davis used as legal justification for his blockade.

Speaker 6 The plaintiff had been caught bringing his brother-in-law, who had no job and no money, into California. And the justices ruled unanimously in his favor.

Speaker 8 It is a privilege of citizenship of the United States to enter any state of the Union.

Speaker 14 We can no longer have any of these laws prohibiting interstate migration of citizens.

Speaker 8 If national citizenship means less than this, it means nothing.

Speaker 14 And so that eliminates that law precisely because of national defense. That this may be a barrier to sending labor to places where we're going to need it in case of a national emergency.

Speaker 8 The Constitution was framed upon the theory that the peoples of several states must sink or swim together, and that in the long run, prosperity and salvation are in union and not division.

Speaker 6 In some ways, Davis's legacy, the border blockade, lived on.

Speaker 6 Just maybe not with the effect he intended.

Speaker 29 It really did lead people to try and interrogate the rights that they sort of instinctively felt were being violated by the blockade.

Speaker 29 People said if citizenship means anything, it means that I should be able to move about the United States and to be treated like I belonged, where I ended up.

Speaker 14 I think the blockade shows the malleable definition of who deserves to belong or not belong in a community.

Speaker 14 Different people can come under attack.

Speaker 14 even those that you wouldn't expect, like native-born white American citizens.

Speaker 14 The sort of instrumental morality of attitudes towards migrants and homeless people depending on social demand, it really does turn on a dime.

Speaker 15 You want to buy you a home or farm that can't deal nobody harm or take your vacation by the mountains or sea?

Speaker 15 Don't swap your old cow for a car. You better stay right where you are.
You better take this little tip from me.

Speaker 15 Cause I look through the want ads every day.

Speaker 15 But the headlines on the papers always say,

Speaker 15 If you ain't got the door gray me,

Speaker 15 boys, you ain't got the do-ray me.

Speaker 15 Why, you better go back to beautiful Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee.

Speaker 15 California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see.

Speaker 15 But believe it or not, you won't find it so hot if you ain't got the do-re me.

Speaker 2 That's it for this week's show. I'm Randabed Fattah.

Speaker 3 And I'm Ramteen Arab Louis. And you've been listening to Through Line from NPR.

Speaker 2 This episode was produced by me.

Speaker 6 And me, and Lawrence Wu, Julie Kane, Anya Steinberg, Casey Minor, Christina Kim, Devin Katayama, Irene Naguchi.

Speaker 2 Voiceover work in this episode was done by Mark Roth, Kevin Jones, Tessa Hall, Ari Steinberg, Bergen Hoff, and Alice Oryola.

Speaker 3 Thank you to Johannes Durgee, Edith Chapin, and Colin Campbell.

Speaker 2 Special thanks to Shelly Lemons, Steve Kite, and the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at Oklahoma State University for access to the Dust, Drought, and Dreams Gone Dry collection.

Speaker 2 To Ludlow Music for permission to use Woody Guthrie's Do-Ray-Me.

Speaker 2 And to the Bouch Art Research Library at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for their recording of Upton Sinclair.

Speaker 3 Fact-checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vogel. The episode was mixed by Robert Rodriguez.

Speaker 2 Music for this episode was composed by Ramteen and his band Drop Electric, which includes Naveed Marvy, Sho Fujiwara, Anya Mizani.

Speaker 3 And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, please write us at throughline at npr.org and make sure to follow us on Apple, Spotify, or the NPR app so you never miss an episode.

Speaker 2 Thanks for listening.

Speaker 18 This message comes from Jackson. Seek clarity in retirement planning at jackson.com.

Speaker 18 Jackson is short for Jackson Financial Inc., Jackson National Life Insurance Company, Lansing, Michigan, and Jackson National Life Insurance Company of New York. Purchase, New York.

Speaker 1 Support for NPR and the following message come from HomeServe. It never happens at a good time.
The pipe bursts at midnight. The heater quits on the coldest night.

Speaker 1 Good thing Home Serve's hotline is available 24-7. Call to schedule a repair, and a local pro will be on their way.
Trusted by millions. For plans starting at $4.99 a month, go to homeeserve.com.

Speaker 1 Not available everywhere. Most plans range between $4.99 to $11.99 a month your first year.
Terms apply on covered repairs.

Speaker 20 This message comes from Mint Mobile. Starting at $15 a month, make the switch at mintmobile.com/slash switch.
$45 upfront payment for three months. 5GB plan equivalent to $15 a month.

Speaker 20 Taxes and fees extra. First three months only.

Speaker 1 See terms.