More than any event in the twentieth century World War II marked the coming of age of America's West Coast cities. Almost overnight, new war industries prompted mass urban migration and development, producing social, cultural, and political changes that would persist well beyond 1945. For the San Francisco Bay Area, Marilynn S. Johnson argues, World War II was to the twentieth century what the gold rush was to the nineteenth.

Focusing on Oakland, Richmond, and other shipyard boomtowns in the East Bay, The Second Gold Rush chronicles the defense buildup, labor migration from the South and Midwest, the development of federal migrant communities, and the social and racial conflicts that pitted newcomers against longtime Bay Area residents.

Johnson follows this story into the postwar era, showing how struggles between conservative and liberal forces over employment, housing, and civil rights shaped the urban political landscape into the 1950s and beyond. Tracing the cultural legacy of war migration, she also explains how Southern religion and music became an integral part of Bay Area life.

1. Urban historians have paid surprisingly little attention to World War II and the social and cultural transformation of wartime cities. In The Second Gold Rush, Johnson places the human drama of the war at center stage, recreating the texture of daily life in the workplace, the home, and the community.