President Trump's recent visit to Arizona and the controversy surrounding his potential pardon of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio reminded me of an important, but largely forgotten, moment in Arizona history: the Bisbee Deportation of 1917.
In the summer of 1917, the IWW organized the copper miners of Bisbee, Arizona and called a strike. The town responded by forming a vigilance committee that arrested the strikers, as well as many bystanders. The vigilance committee marched everyone arrested to the nearest train station, and deported them to New Mexico. President Wilson formed a commission, and sent Felix Frankfurter to investigate the Bisbee deportation.
Frankfurter was disgusted by what he found, as reflected in a letter he sent to Judge Learned Hand:
The manifestations of shoddy patriotism this trip reveals are wide and deep. You would be surprised, even you, [by] the tyrannies that are exercised in the holy name of “loyalty.” . . . The thing is so shallow and so pathetic, as well as brutal. These old bags, who have fought labor and unions as poison for a decade, now wrap themselves in the flag and are confirmed in their old bias . . . by a passionate patriotism. Gee - but it’s awful and then they wonder at the fecundity of the IWWs, the wobblies as they are picturesquely called. They breed the IWWs - they and the neglect of the old fashioned trade unions of the needs of the immigrant, non-English speaking seasonal workers of the West.
Despite Frankfurter's report, no one was ever punished for the Bisbee deportation. The United States Attorney for the District of Arizona indicted the ringleaders of the vigilance committee, but the Supreme Court held that the federal courts lacked jurisdiction. And when Cochise County Attorney Robert N. French tried Harry E. Wootton, one of the leaders of the vigilance committee, for kidnapping, the Arizona state court allowed him to plead the defense of necessity, and the jury found him not guilty. The state didn't bother charging anyone else.
Of course, the IWW also broke the law, sometimes with justification and sometimes without. The Bisbee strike itself may or may not have been justified, and the IWW's actions in relation to that strike may or may not have been legal. But there is no question that the vigilance committee's actions were illegal. It had no authority to arrest or deport anyone, and its actions were arbitrary and unreasonable. The mob simply arrested and deported anyone who looked or spoke differently, whether or not they joined the strikers, who did not initiate any violence, and did not pose a threat.
Earlier this year, my friend Laurie McKenna, who lives in Bisbee, staged a performance art event to commemorate the Bisbee deportation. She created 1,196 rubbings of a 1917 penny to recognize all of the people who were deported, commissioned a "penny pincher" to create commemorative pennies, and requested scholarly reflections on the subject, which she published in a "zine" format. One zine was written by Luc Sante, the author of Low Life and many other excellent books. And the other was written by me, and titled "A Potted History of the Bisbee Deportation of 1917." While I wasn't able to attend the event, I understand that it was very successful.
In any case, the Bisbee deportation is one more reminder of the historic fragility of civil liberties, especially in times of conflict. If you are interested in learning more, the University of Arizona has created an excellent website dedicated to the event, which includes many primary source documents.
Arizona's Pullman. I am grateful to this Blog. I don't want to end up like a well known bankrupt real estate peddler bereft of any historical knowledge. Just imagine. Learned Hand...would be called Learned Finger. Fankfurter... New York Hot Dog... It seems like leadership, principle, and civility just vanished on 1-20-17, 12:01 pm EDT
Posted by: Deep State Special Legal Counsel | August 25, 2017 at 10:00 PM
Great post - thanks for sharing.
Posted by: Craig Martin | August 26, 2017 at 10:16 AM