Picture This: California Perspectives on American History

Toby (the Squaw Who Warned General Canby of His Impending Fate), and Four Old Modoc Squaws

Members of the San Francisco Ad Hoc Committee To End Racial Discrimination protest outside the Oakland Tribune building in downtown Oakland, California, demanding an increase in minority employees at the paper

Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, addresses a crowd of supporters in front of the Alameda County Courthouse in Oakland

Button bearing black and white photolithographic image of Angela Davis and words ‘Free Angela’

San Francisco in 1850 (Niantic Hotel)

A young African American woman sitting on the arm of a chair on an airplane holding a baby in her arms and feeding him a bottle

Courtroom drawing in the case against Huey P. Newton, a Black Panther

University of California, Berkeley, students who support the Third World Strike get into a scuffle with police

Picture This: California’s Perspectives on American History is an educational resource that features primary source images from the Oakland Museum of California’s collections that reflect the rich cultural diversity of California.

On this website you can:

Browse pictures by three categories: Timeline, Theme, and Most Useful for Educators
Use a Picture Map to locate where images were created
Explore ways to play with the images through our Interactive Activities such as creating your own exhibits, matching images with artifacts, and sorting images by time period

Create Your Own Exhibit

The exhibit below is one of the many created by visitors to Picture This.

The Mexican Migration to the United States – a story of tensions. (group 7)

The Mexican Migration to the United States – a story of tensions. (group 6)

See more exhibits created by visitors to Picture This »