California Migration Museum

California Migration Museum Explore the living stories of migration in California, one neighborhood at a time. 🎧

In San Francisco, a statue of Christopher Columbus stood right here outside Coit Tower from 1957 until 2020, when it was...
04/21/2026

In San Francisco, a statue of Christopher Columbus stood right here outside Coit Tower from 1957 until 2020, when it was removed by the City. Now it’s an empty plinth.

For many, the statue was an unwanted reminder of the pain and trauma of colonial invasion. Yet for some Italian Americans, the statue symbolized acceptance after decades of discrimination. How do we honor both of these truths? Whose voices should be telling American history?

As part of ’s Shaping Legacy project critically examining the monuments in SF’s Civic Art collection, museum collaborated with artists and to reinterpret the complex immigration history connected to both the statue and North Beach.

Join us at Coit Tower this SATURDAY 4/25 as we debut a collection of pop-up art installations and immersive stories, informed by community storycircles and feedback.

More details at our link in bio, and follow along here all week.

[Visual description: 1. Empty plinth of Columbus Statue in front of Coit Tower, surrounded by yellow protea and other native succulent plants. 2. Unveiling of the Christopher Columbus statue at Coit Tower, October 12, 1957. Courtesy of ]

03/23/2026

🎧 In 1957, Mike Gerry opened his hair salon, Maurice’s House of Beauty, in the Castro. He was the first openly gay businessman in the area. Over the next decade, he tried to strike a balance between conservative Eureka Valley and a new q***r community quickly transforming the neighborhood.

Take a walk with museum and uncover the hidden histories in the Castro on our new immersive tour. Get started at any of these storied locations or listen for free at the link in bio.

📍 Maurice’s House of Beauty / 575 Castro Street
📍 The Missouri Mule /
📍 Castro Camera / ***rartsfeatured
📍 The Castro Theatre /
📍 Eureka Valley / Jane Warner Plaza
📍 Museum

Tonight, amidst the sequins and glitter of New Year’s Eve, we’re drawing inspiration from the drag queens featured in ou...
12/31/2025

Tonight, amidst the sequins and glitter of New Year’s Eve, we’re drawing inspiration from the drag queens featured in our new Castro experience, No Place Like Home. These queens from the 1960s used their wigs, sparkling jewelry and skyscraper heels as weapons of resistance at a time when being q***r was still taboo.

Our story about Mike Gerry and how quiet, Irish Catholic Eureka Valley transformed into a global gay homeland feels acutely relevant. Sixty years later, many q***r people in America are still suffering violence and persecution on a daily basis.

The stories we tell at Museum help create empathy and build resistance. Please consider supporting our work with a donation to our 2026 Storytelling Fund, to ensure we can keep telling stories like Mike’s when so many migrant and q***r histories are currently being silenced.

All donations are tax deductible, and can be made at the link in bio.

12/18/2025

Today is , shining a spotlight on the invaluable contributions of millions of immigrants and refugees around the world.

At Museum, our migrant storytelling – original, immersive and independent – helps preserve history, create empathy and build resistance to xenophobic narratives that should be consigned to the past. Please consider supporting our work with a donation to our 2026 Storytelling Fund, to ensure we can keep telling stories when so many migrant histories are currently being silenced.

All donations are tax deductible, and can be made at the link in bio.

Is leaving your country ever an act of patriotism? Between 1965 and 1975, almost 70,000 young Americans crossed into Can...
12/17/2025

Is leaving your country ever an act of patriotism? Between 1965 and 1975, almost 70,000 young Americans crossed into Canada to avoid being drafted to serve in the Vietnam War, and the prospect of fighting a bloody war for a cause many did not believe in.

Through the 1960s, Berkeley emerged as the nerve center of a sophisticated network that helped thousands of young men escape to the north. In 1965, after a teach-in attended by more than 35,000 people at UC Berkeley, the Vietnam Day Committee (VDC) was founded, and became the West Coast’s most well-known draft resistance organization. At the peak of the movement, safe houses dotted Telegraph Avenue and local businesses, knowing customers might be FBI informants, developed coded conversations and warning systems. These precautions were not unwarranted. The VDC headquarters were bombed in 1966, shortly after Ronald Reagan had labelled the group “treasonous.”

Our exhibit, AMERICAN REFUGEES, spotlights four stories of displaced Americans over the past 250 years.

In collaboration with ’s world premiere . On view in the Peet’s Theatre lobby through Dec 21, or explore the full exhibit at the link in bio.

[Visual Description: 1. Draft Resistance Rally at Yale University, April 3, 1968. This video contains archival images and visual effects enhanced with AI tools, helping us creatively bring the past to life.
2. Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada, 1970.
3. Young men at a military induction center in Oakland in 1968. Michelle Vignes photograph archive, courtesy of the Regents of the University of California, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.]

How can you return to a home you’ve never set foot in? Between 1929 and 1936, more than one-third of the Mexican populat...
12/09/2025

How can you return to a home you’ve never set foot in? Between 1929 and 1936, more than one-third of the Mexican population of Los Angeles were “repatriated” to Mexico, as part of a campaign to remove workers competing with white Americans for jobs.

The majority of those who were coerced into leaving were American-born US citizens. Most had never even visited the “home” to which they were now returning. In the decades that followed, this history was buried.

Our new exhibit, AMERICAN REFUGEES, spotlights four stories of displaced Americans over the past 250 years.

In collaboration with ’s world premiere . Now on view in the Peet’s Theatre lobby through Dec 21, or explore the full exhibit at the link in bio.

[Visual description: 1. People wave goodbye to a train departing Los Angeles with 1,500 Mexicans on August 20, 1931. Photograph courtesy of New York Daily News. This video contains archival images and visual effects enhanced with AI tools, helping us creatively bring the past to life.
2. Still from ’s DTLA immersive tour about Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s, 2025.]

What do we owe tomorrow’s climate refugees? Will we welcome our fellow citizens as they flee from storms, wildfires, or ...
12/03/2025

What do we owe tomorrow’s climate refugees? Will we welcome our fellow citizens as they flee from storms, wildfires, or drought? 

Between 1935 and 1940, more than 250,000 Americans fled the Dust Bowl states—Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas and Arkansas—for California. Following Route 66, they drove west hoping to escape an economic disaster caused by environmental catastrophe.

Labelled “Okies,” these Dust Bowl refugees were not welcome in California, despite being native-born American citizens. Instead, the state passed a string of laws designed to deter Okies from making California their new home, and stationed LAPD troops at the Arizona border.

Our new exhibit, AMERICAN REFUGEES, spotlights four stories of displaced Americans over the past 250 years. 

In collaboration with ’s world premiere , now on view in the Peet’s Theatre lobby through Dec 21, or explore the full exhibit at the link in bio.

[Visual Description: 1. Migrant boy in Tulare Migrant Camp, Visalia California. Photograph by Arthur Rothstein/FSA, 1940. This video contains archival images and visual effects enhanced with AI tools, helping us creatively bring the past to life. 2. Map of California by the Rural Rehabilitation Division showing proposed location of initial camps for migrants and routes of migration, 1935.]

America is often referred to as a land of liberty: a nation built by immigrants, arms open to welcome refugees arriving ...
11/19/2025

America is often referred to as a land of liberty: a nation built by immigrants, arms open to welcome refugees arriving at our borders. But throughout history, Americans have also been forced to leave their homes; fleeing discrimination, climate crises and the shadows of war.

A new Museum exhibit spotlights four stories of AMERICAN REFUGEES:

🔸 Black citizens who left SF in the 1850s,
🔸 Dust Bowl “Okies” turned away at the CA border,
🔸 US citizens coerced into self-deporting back to Mexico in the Great Depression,
🔸 and young men determined to escape the Vietnam Draft in the 1960s.

In collaboration with ’s world premiere . Now on view in the Peet’s Theatre lobby through Dec 21, or explore the full exhibit at the link in bio.

[visual description: 1. A migrant worker walks along the side of a dusty California highway. Photograph by Dorothea Lange, 1935. This video contains archival images and visual effects enhanced with AI tools, helping us creatively bring the past to life.
2. Sailing card for the clipper ship California, 1850; black and white portraits of Mifflin Gibbs c.1902 and Peter Lester c.1892.
3. Still from ’s DTLA immersive tour, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá, 2025.
4. Vietnam War Draft Resistance Rally at Yale University, April 3, 1968.]

In the 1930s, more than a million people were coerced into leaving California and sent across the border to Mexico, righ...
02/24/2025

In the 1930s, more than a million people were coerced into leaving California and sent across the border to Mexico, right here in downtown LA.

These became known as Mexican Repatriations, but the majority of those forced to leave were actually born in the United States. In most cases, these U.S. citizens had never visited the “home” to which they were now expected to return.

Join Museum, , and leading voices across the immigration history and activist communities in this Thursday 2/27 to examine how this past informs the present.

🕕 February 27, 6pm

📍 in Downtown LA

Please note: this event is currently at capacity but additional tix may be released day-of. More details and waitlist at the link in bio.

In the 1930s, more than a million people were coerced into leaving California and sent across the southern border to Mex...
12/20/2024

In the 1930s, more than a million people were coerced into leaving California and sent across the southern border to Mexico, right here in downtown LA.

Now, as the Trump administration plans a new wave of mass deportations, what lessons can we learn from the Mexican Repatriations that happened almost 100 years ago?

Join Museum, , and leading voices across the immigration history and activist communities for a special plática in on January 16 to consider how the past informs the present.

Featured speakers include:

🔸𝗞𝗮𝗿𝗹𝗮 𝗘𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗮 (Immigrant justice activist, narrator of ’s DTLA immersive experience)
🔸𝗗𝗿. 𝗙𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼 𝗕𝗮𝗹𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗮 (CSU LA Emeritus Professor)
🔸𝗔𝗻𝗴é𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗮𝘀 (Executive Director, )
🔸𝗞𝗮𝘁𝘆 𝗟𝗼𝗻𝗴 (Founder & Director, Museum)

More details and RSVP at the link in bio.
__

Image description: In the 1930s, following a series of immigration raids in downtown LA, over a million people of Mexican descent were coerced into returning to Mexico. In this photograph, families wait to board Mexico-bound trains in Los Angeles on March 8, 1932. Courtesy Los Angeles Public Library/Herald Examiner Collection

In the 1930s, more than a million people were coerced into leaving California and sent across the southern border to Mex...
12/11/2024

In the 1930s, more than a million people were coerced into leaving California and sent across the southern border to Mexico, right here in downtown LA.

Now, as the Trump administration plans a new wave of mass deportations, what lessons can we learn from the Mexican Repatriations that happened almost 100 years ago?

Join Museum, , and leading voices across the immigration history and activist communities for a special plática in on January 16 to consider how the past informs the present.

Featured speakers include:

- Karla Estrada (Immigrant justice activist, narrator of ’s DTLA immersive experience)
- Dr. Francisco Balderrama (CSU LA Emeritus Professor)
- Angélica Salas (Executive Director, )
- Katy Long (Founder & Director, Museum)

More details and RSVP at the link in bio.
__

Image description: In the 1930s, following a series of immigration raids in downtown LA, over a million people of Mexican descent were coerced into returning to Mexico. In this photograph, families wait to board Mexico-bound trains in Los Angeles on March 8, 1932. Courtesy Los Angeles Public Library/Herald Examiner Collection

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