Dancing with Manifest Destiny Volume 10: Elite Men of Color and the Making of American Los Angeles(Before Gold: California Under Spain and Mexico Series)

From the Mexican American War and through the Civil War Era, Mexican and US social hierarchies collided in Southern California, transforming the character of Los Angeles from Mexican-Californian to "American." Influencing this transition in unexpected ways were three men of color: a Californio general turned legislator; a formerly enslaved barber; and a Mexico City-born politician and historian. In Dancing with Manifest Destiny: Elite Men of Color and the Making of American Los Angeles, Daniel B. Lynch reveals how these men—Andrés Pico, Peter Biggs, and Antonio Francisco Coronel—helped shape early Los Angeles by strategically embracing and creatively amplifying the racial and masculine ideals of white settler colonialism.

Though not white Americans themselves, Pico, Biggs, and Coronel endorsed American-style white supremacy while leveraging elements of their own backgrounds that set them apart from and, in some ways, above white settlers. Lynch describes how this allowed them to establish commanding presences in three overlapping arenas: the equestrian culture of militias and vigilantism; the social world of the barbershop and demimonde; and the ideological realm of historical imagination in a layered colonial city on its way to becoming a major metropolis. While the interests of white men remained paramount in the ascendant settler city, there was room for a few elite men of color—men who did not fit the settler mold yet nonetheless represented a frontier masculinity uniquely suited to Southern California's distinctive diversity.

Dancing with Manifest Destiny deftly documents how Pico, Biggs, and Coronel, standing center stage in frontier Los Angeles, maintained a surprising degree of influence amidst extremely hostile circumstances—at least for a while. The book recovers a forgotten layer in the origin story of Los Angeles, even as it offers fresh insight into entanglements of race, masculinity, and politics that persist to this day.

About the Author :

Daniel B. Lynch teaches history and serves as the Leonetti/O'Connell Honors Research in Humanities and Social Sciences Program Head at Marlborough School in Los Angeles.

"Collaborators do not usually fare well in the hands of historians. But while Daniel B. Lynch does not sympathize with the choices made by Peter Biggs, Antonio Coronel, and Andrés Pico, he helps us understand why these prominent men of color worked with white supremacists and what their efforts wrought. A vital contribution to the history of Los Angeles's transition from Mexican pueblo to American metropolis—with implications that reach far beyond the case study of three men and one place."—Stephen Aron, author of Peace and Friendship: An Alternative History of the American West

"Deeply researched, lavishly illustrated, and expertly argued, this is a book long anticipated. Historian Daniel B. Lynch has taken us on a journey to an aspect of the Los Angeles past previously obscured and largely unknown."—William Deverell, author of Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past

"Through a brilliant analysis of how three protean figures navigated their rapidly evolving world, Daniel B. Lynch weaves together a narrative tapestry as complex, diverse, and surprising as nineteenth-century California itself. Dancing with Manifest Destiny cements Lynch's reputation as one of the finest historians of early Los Angeles."—Kevin Waite, author of The Boundless Biddy Mason: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom Across the American West