This Year in History

1908

Newspaper clip
Newspaper clip

This Year in History - 1908

Newspaper clip
  • The California Club, a San Francisco Women’s Organization, is enlisted to lead a campaign to help the city fight the deadly bubonic plague, which was carried by fleas attached to millions of rats that scurried through San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. 

    The women led a campaign to clean up the city’s butcher shops, bakeries and other establishments that allowed rats to flourish.
  • Col. Allen Allensworth, a former slave who became the highest-ranking black officer in the U.S. Army, establishes the town of Allensworth in the Central Valley for African Americans seeking to escape restrictions of the Jim Crow South.
  • The cities of Brawley, originally a tent city, and El Centro are incorporated in Imperial County. Kingsburg and Turlock are incorporated in the Central Valley.
  • California delivers its ten electoral votes to Republican William Howard Taft who defeats William Jennings Bryan in the 1908 presidential contest.