| This dissertation examines the impact and significance of white southern migration to southern California in the 1920s. Between World War I and the Great Depression, white southerners established a migratory pattern that funneled hundreds of thousands of dislocated working-class men and women into the lower half of the Golden State. Unwanted by some, despised by a few, but accepted by the majority, these migrants arrived on the outskirts of the West's largest metropolis and quietly transformed "Iowa by the Sea," into a interregionally diverse and slightly chaotic land of sprawling industrial suburbs pushing against receding fields and pastures.; Through this dissertation I chart the flow of southern migration to the West, reveal the presence of southerners prior to the Okies, and argue that during the 1920s Los Angelenos' generally positive attitudes towards white southerners reflected a greater positive assessment of white southern culture during a period of national reconciliation. Before Okie became pejorative, white southerners bypassed the San Joaquin Valley to seek work in southern California's oil fields, with hardly a disparaging word. Though Los Angeles's business elite feared the southern presence, and black Angelenos battled against the importation of white southern culture, many---in a period of national reunion---embraced the ideological song of the South. From the southern Reconstruction narrative of Birth of a Nation, to the religious and social conservatism of Los Angeles's Southern Methodist Church and vibrant Ku Klux Klan, southern ideas found a receptive audience in the City of Angles. This dissertation explores the lives of those who transmitted those ideas in a period before the sons and daughters of the South became Okies and Arkies. |
