The Sacramento Ethnic Communities Survey Collection was created in the 1980s as the basis for a major museum installation at the (then-named) Sacramento History Center. Over 35 advisors, researchers, scholars, and planners spent one year gathering data. Analysis of the federal census records revealed over 150 ethnic groups in the Sacramento region. Based on the information in the census records, researchers determined that 22 groups maintained an identity over time and shaped the social and cultural history of Sacramento. These are the groups represented in the survey. For each group the survey team wrote a community history, copied photographs that documented the community, and captured oral histories with prominent members. The exhibition lasted nearly a decade at the museum and upon its removal an educational CD-ROM was created and distributed to the public to ensure the effort lived on. Plans originally called for the publication of the written manuscripts histories and the transcriptions of the oral histories but the funding was never secured.
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