Hometown Picnics: How Newcomers Kept Memory of Home Alive in Los Angeles

Fifty-thousand former Iowans descended upon Long Beach's Bixby Park on Aug. 11, 1934, for their state societys annual summer picnic. California Gov. Frank Merriam, a fixture of the Iowa picnics and a former Hawkeye, spoke, as did two Los Angeles County judges. Ninety couples competed for best Virginia Reel dancer as part of the Iowa Associations Golden Wedding Club for couples celebrating 50 years of marriage. Musicians accompanied the picnickers as they sang the Iowa Corn Song. Sandwiches, potato salad, deviled eggs, cucumber rings, fried chicken, homemade cookies, cakes, and pies were on the menu as erstwhile Hawkeyes discussed the news from back home.

Iowa picnic attendees wore differently colored ribbons to differentiate their relationship to Iowa. Red ribbons were for Iowa natives while Iowa pioneers (Iowa residents for over 50 years) wore white. Guests of Iowans wore yellow ribbons to represent the jaundice of envy of those who were not Hawkeyes. Despite these ribbon colors, all were now residents of Southern California. And like all previous and future Iowa picnics, speakers at the 1934 event touted the symbiotic relationship between California and Iowa, often joking that Long Beach was Pacific Coast capital of Iowa. As Carey McWilliams once wrote, for years all roads in Southern California on Iowa Day, led to picnic grounds.

McWilliams described the state society as a unique Southern California institution. Pennsylvanians started Los Angeles' first state society in 1886, and by the 1920s every state in the union was represented with a total of 500,000 members. The concept became so popular that the Federation of State Societies was established to manage all the different groups. C. H. Parsons, leader of California's Federation of State Societies, told the Los Angeles Times in 1937 that the prime purpose of the organization, the only one of its kind in the United States, is to promote sociability to keep alive the friendships formed in the old home town.'

Nebraskans gathered in Sycamore Grove for their 1925 state picnic. Photo courtesy of the Photo Collection - Los Angeles Public Library.

Long Beachs Bixby Park hosted the 1951 Iowa State Picnic. Photo courtesy of the USC Libraries - Los Angeles Examiner Collection.

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While Parsons may not have known that Washington, DC, also had a tradition of state societies dating to the 1850s, he also failed to acknowledge that many immigrant communities in Los Angeles were also reunited with kin from their own hometowns, states, prefectures, and provinces. Immigrant mutual aid societies have long been a part of Los Angeles since the Hebrew Benevolent Society opened the city's first charity in 1854. Shortly after the turn of the 20th century, Mexican families in Los Angeles could turn to mutualistas (mutual aid societies) such as La Confederacion De Sociedades Mexicanas and La Liga Protectora Mexicana for legal support. Mutualistas have a long history in Southern California and currently include the formalized Mexican and Central American Hometown Associations (HTA) such as the Federation of Zacatecan Clubs of Southern California and the Organization Regional de Oaxaca.

One of the earliest examples of a mutual aid society based on regional origin was the Chinese huiguan (hometown/native place associations), which started in China as a way to aid travel across the empire. The overseas Chinese huiguan has centuries-old antecedents in China. Similar organizations already existed in the imperial capital of Peking as early as the 15th century, according to historian Him Mark Lai. The Chinese who crossed the Pacific brought this tradition to California. By the 1860s, Los Angeles' first Chinese immigrants had joined the See Yup (Sze Yup) Company, a huiguan for immigrants from the Guangdong Province. As one of the oldest in Los Angeles, Chinatown's Kong Chow Benevolent Association grew out of the See Yup Company. The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (established in 1889) is the umbrella organization for these hometown groups. And as Eugene Moy of the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California confirmed, reunions and picnics were part of the social functions of these groups.

Photo courtesy of the Photo Collection - Los Angeles Public Library.

Boholanos of Southern California, Inc. annual picnic, Veterans Park, Redondo Beach, June 1973. Photo courtesy of Elson Trinidad.

Yamaguchi Kenjinkai Picnic photos excerpted from the centennial book published by the Nanka Yamaguchi Kenjinkai, 1905-2005.

Filipino-Angelenos adopted a similar tradition as they immigrated to Los Angeles. Filipinos recreate a bit of home' [in Los Angeles] by setting up town or provincial associations, wrote Bangele Deguzman Alsaybar in a dissertation about the youth culture in Los Angeles. These provincial associations started as early as 1930 and, like the state societies, often organized an annual picnic. In a phone interview, KCET contributor Elson Trinidad shared memories of attending events from different provincial associations as his parents were from different parts of the Philippines. He remembered fondly the picnics of the Boholanos of Southern California (established in 1955) and Christmas parties for the Pagsanjan Association (a hometown group). The picnics were often held at Veterans Park in Redondo Beach and the Santa Fe Dam Recreational Area. At every picnic, there was roast pig (lechon), different varieties of pancit, various forms of adobo, lumpia, always a fruit salad, and different types of American food like fried chicken, Trinidad recounted.

Jewish-Angelenos new to the city created their own mutual aid societies based on the tradition called landsmanshaftn, or Jewish mutual aid societies made up of migrants from the same towns. These organizations existed before World War II,

LINK:	https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/hometown-picnics-how-newcomers-kept...
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