Archive for May, 2013

Available at Amazon and San Diego bookstores.

San Diego today is a vibrant and bustling coastal city, but it wasn’t always so. The city’s transformation from a rough-hewn border town and frontier port to a vital military center was marked by growing pains and political clashes. Civic highs and criminal lows have defined San Diego’s rise through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries into a preeminent Sun Belt city. Historian Richard W. Crawford recalls the significant events and one-of-a-kind characters like benefactor Frank “Booze” Beyer, baseball hero Albert Spalding and novelist Scott O’Dell. Join Crawford for a collection that recounts how San Diego yesterday laid the foundation for the city’s bright future.

The book is  available at Amazon and in bookstores starting today.

“You can’t parade. Our orders are to prevent it.” In a moment there was a seething, screaming mass around the policemen. Staves and sticks began to fly.
–San Diego Sun, May 31, 1933

The story of a student demonstration that turned into a riot: The Young Communists.

The riot in Pantoja Park.