The racism and discriminatory laws that persisted until the mid-1960s kept these mostly young men from pursuing the American dream of a US education, a family, and higher economic status, even barring them from crossing Main Street into what was then the exclusively white northern section of the city.
They set up businesses and organizations of all kinds to meet their own needs - restaurants, hotels, grocery stores, barber shops, the Rizal Social Club, the Daguhoy Lodge, a rescue mission, and many others, creating what became Stockton's Little Manila.
The Manongs (Ilocano: first-born male, "respected elder brothers", several other connotations), as they are affectionately called, fought for better working conditions in the fields, fair wages, and equal rights, paving the way and making life easier for the generations of Filipino Americans that followed.
Filipino labor leaders like Larry Itliong, Andy Imutan, Chris Mensalvas, Ernesto Mangaoang, Carlos Bulosan, and Philip Vera Cruz all worked out of Stockton at one time or another.
Dawn B. Mabalon, history professor at San Francisco State University and Little Manila Executive Director, and filmmaker Dillon Delvo (both the offspring of Manongs), the Mariposa Hotel, the Rizal Social Club, the Filipino Recreation Center and the entire Little Manila District was named one of the nation's most endangered historic places of 2003 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.