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