California Story Fund
The Bridge Builders: The Latino Experience
Fund for Labor Culture and History
San Francisco Bay Area
Project Director: John Robinson
Latinos who helped build California’s bridges
This oral history and photography project will document the lives of Latino bridge builders – laborers, pile drivers and ironworkers – who have contributed to some of the biggest public works projects in California’s history.
Project Director John Robinson is an award-winning photographer, oral historian and working member of the Iron Workers. Said Robinson, “I had always worked with Latino comrades on my job sites, but they were in the minority. “Today most of my union colleagues are Latino as are the majority of the apprentices.”
Robinson wants to be certain that Latinos’ contributions to these historic works is well documented and remembered. Said Robinson, “The media’s coverage has focused on traffic congestion, cost overruns and new technology, but little has been done to document the people building these magnificent structures.”
Robinson will photograph and interview individuals who helped build the new Bay Bridge and the Benicia-Martinez Bridge and helped demolish the Carquinez Bridge in Crockett.
An exhibit of the collected oral histories and photographs will take place in March 2008. Several community events, many involving the bridge workers, are planned in connection with the exhibit.