Filipino American culture has been in the news in recent years, most notably with the rise of Filipino food’s popularity. But with every piece written about the nuances of Filipino cuisine, and in turn, Filipino culture, there are many more that claim to discover a people who have been here for decades. Filipino food, in all its sour and salty glory, may finally be having its long overdue moment, while less savory elements of our culture and history are left behind. Issues that don’t fit into the pretty picture of what’s currently on trend in Filipino America are swept under the rug — like an act of racism that took place in a small Stockton community. Filipinos have been in the US for over a hundred years and have had a colonial history with the US for even longer. But for some reason, all people can think about when it comes to Filipinos are lumpia and chicken adobo.

The earliest recorded arrival of Filipinos to the United States was in 1587, in Morro Bay, California. But the first significant wave of Filipino immigration took place at the turn of the 20th century. When the Philippines was colonized by the United States in 1898, Filipinos became US nationals and had the legal right to work in the US. In the book Little Manila Is in the Heart, San Francisco State University professor and Little Manila Foundation cofounder Dawn Bohulano Mabalon wrote that young Filipino men left Philippine provinces to work as contract laborers — sakadas — on the sugar plantations of Hawaii. From there, many moved on to fill a growing need for cheap farm labor on the US mainland.



Located in the San Joaquin Valley, Stockton became a popular destination for newly landed Filipinos in the 1920s and 1930s. Little Manila included the downtown streets of Lafayette and El Dorado, which were lined with Filipino businesses like barber shops, shoe shiners, pool halls, and restaurants. The US was the dream for these mostly young, single, and male Filipino immigrants, often called the generation of manongs, or older brothers and uncles. Stockton was a central place for them to reconnect with friends from their respective provinces back home or to spend their hard-earned money in bars, gambling dens, and brothels.