The Floyd Halleck Higgins photographs of 135 images of Mexican Sugar Beet Workers (1942) was recently digitized, cataloged, and mounted on the Online Archive of California (OAC) (http://www.cdlib.org/services/dsc/oac/) and Calisphere (http://www.cdlib.org/services/dsc/calisphere/) websites. The project was undertaken by UC Davis librarian Patricia Inouye working on Special Collections photographs and California historical collections with assistance from Jared Campbell, Metadata Services Unit Head, and University Archivist John Skarstad. The California Digital Library used this unique historical collection to celebrate the milestone of the over 200,000 digital image count on the Online Archive of California (http://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/).

The Higgins images document a special government program during World War II, now considered the beginning of the Bracero System. The images are part of a larger Higgins photograph collection on agricultural history and technology. F. Hal Higgins was a free-lance journalist and Safeway Farm Reporter who was given the job in 1942 to provide publicity for the Mexicans coming into California to harvest sugar beets. This was a special, informal program funded by the U.S. government under the Farm Security Administration. The 3000 Mexican men were carefully selected by the Mexican and United States governments and California Field Crops, Inc. to harvest the sugar beet crop. The sugar beet crop was especially large and there was a shortage of farm workers due to World War II. Higgins, in particular, tried "to catch a lot of the social side [of the program] in pictures." The images represent aspects of the workers' lives, including their arrival in the country, the building of labor camps, working in the fields, dining and entertainment.

Building a digital image collection has been an integral part of OAC development since it was established in 1998. Over the years, institutions such as UC Davis have submitted their records to the Online Archive of California, the Japanese Relocation Digital Archives, California Cultures, and several other projects sponsored by both CDL and OAC.

The Department of Special Collections at the General Library, University of California Davis is honored to provide the 200,000th celebratory photograph for this remarkable digital archive.

For further information about the collection and the project contact: Daryl Morrison, Head of Special Collections, dmorrison@ucdavis.edu.

Five Mexican workers harvesting sugar beets 1942

Five Mexican workers in front of camp building, one worker holding a baby doll. 1942