Author, Tim Z. Hernandez visited the AIC campus last month to discuss his newly-published book that took him seven whole years to write and share journey and inspiration to write the book.

The presentation in the CCA was a full house of students of the AIC community and Springfield residents.

All They Will Call You was published on January 28, 2017. The book is about what is known as “the greatest airplane crash in California’s history” that occurred on January 28,1948 in the Los Gatos Canyon, in Fresno County, Calif., due to a fire that took the lives of 32 passenger. Of those 32 passengers, 28 were Mexican workers being deported by the U.S. Government.

Now, this story is very heart-wrenching. This great plane crash ended up in the newspapers the next day but what has inspired the whole creation of Hernandez’ book was that the newspapers had stated the names of all four of the American passengers who were working the plane but had only stated the Mexican passengers as “deportees.”

As you could imagine, this ended up being a huge stir with many, especially one famous singer/songwriter, Woody Guthrie. Guthrie ended up writing a poem about the devastating story about how none of the Mexican passengers were named.

Soon after, Guthrie’s poem was noticed by a young college student named Martin Hoffman. Hoffman then turned the poem into a song called ‘Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)’.

This song ended up being known as “one of the greatest known protest songs of the twentieth Century”, said Hernandez.

So then of course, this is the song that inspired Hernandez to find out what really happened that January day in 1948 and to finally fight for justice for those who were never recognized and ended up dying in the plane crash.

Hernandez brought one of his friends, Johnny Irion, who is one half of the band Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion, to the presentation to sing the famous song that started it all.

Now, about Hernandez’ story about how All They Will Call You came together: Hernandez started his research by going to the cemetery that the passengers were buried and asked if they had a list of names of those from the plane but all they had was a list that said, “Mexican National.”

Hernandez tried to do some research in the U.S. and tried to find the families of those who passed but barely had any luck, so he ended up traveling to Mexico in 2015 with friends and a filmmaker. They ended up interviewing many families of those who passed to find out more information about them.

Hernandez started sharing stories of families and friends that he met with while on his journey in Mexico. He also shared the process for evaluations for Mexicans to become a field worker or railroad worker in the United States, and it is very disheartening.

At the end of the presentation, Hernandez showed a list of all the names of those Mexican workers. “Some men were mistaken as women”, said Hernandez.

AIC History Professor Gary Jones, who also helped put this event together stated, “our immigration policy is inhumane.”

“The immigration policy doesn’t match our ideas,” he continued.

Many people will probably vouch for Professor Jones on those statements, especially after listening to Tim Z. Hernandez’ presentation.

All They Will Call You is available for purchase in stores and also as an eBook.