UC Merced

This paper examines the relationship between race, space, labor, and resistance in Bakersfield, California during the 1960s to the mid-1970s. It explores the ways in which Black residents in Bakersfield endured structural racism which affected their social, political, and economic lives, but also it explores the infrapolitical and formal methods of resistance that Black residents deployed against their oppression. In addition, this paper investigates Black youth and dance hall culture prominent as an outlet through which racial and class boundaries were created and recreated.