Microhistory at its best. Gordon (History/Univ. of
Wisconsin-Madison) has long been a student of working-class and
poor women, with a special interest in motherhood (Pitied But Not
Entitled, 1994, traces the history of single mothers and welfare).
Here she takes on some new challenges - narrative, the history of
Spanish-speaking Americans, New Western history. Gordon began with
great raw material: a gripping tale that sounds more like the plot
of a TV mini-series than the subject of a university press book. In
1904, Catholic nuns in New York sent 40 Irish children on an
"orphan train" to a small Arizona mining town, where they would be
cared for by Catholic families - Mexican Catholic families. When
the children arrived, the Anglo townsfolk were outraged by the idea
that 40 white boys and girls were going to be placed with non-white
families. Anglo women organized their men into a posse which
kidnapped the children from the Mexican families. A trial followed,
and the Arizona Territorial Supreme Court found in favor of the
Anglos. Gordon, drawing on interviews, newspapers, and the court
transcript, recreates the kidnapping and the ensuing courtroom
drama in intoxicating detail. Along the way, Gordon cracks open a
number of hot issues, from labor relations to women's roles. At the
center is her exam/nation of the social construction of race; you
won't find a more illuminating or nuanced discussion of the
invention of whiteness than Gordon's. "The train ride," Gordon
reminds us, "had transformed [the foundlings] from Irish to white."
In early twentieth-century New York, Irish kids were no more
"white" than Jewish or Italian children. But in Arizona, where the
"other" was dark-skinned and spoke a language even more foreign to
"white" ears than an Irish brogue, the children were suddenly as
white as George Washington. Gordon has written the rare history
book that readers won't be able to put down. (Kirkus Reviews)
In 1904, New York nuns brought forty Irish orphans to a remote
Arizona mining camp, to be placed with Catholic families. The
Catholic families were Mexican, as was the majority of the
population. Soon the town's Anglos, furious at this "interracial"
transgression, formed a vigilante squad that kidnapped the children
and nearly lynched the nuns and the local priest. The Catholic
Church sued to get its wards back, but all the courts, including
the U.S. Supreme Court, ruled in favor of the vigilantes. The Great
Arizona Orphan Abduction tells this disturbing and dramatic tale to
illuminate the creation of racial boundaries along the Mexican
border. Clifton/Morenci, Arizona, was a "wild West" boomtown, where
the mines and smelters pulled in thousands of Mexican immigrant
workers. Racial walls hardened as the mines became big business and
whiteness became a marker of superiority. These already volatile
race and class relations produced passions that erupted in the
"orphan incident." To the Anglos of Clifton/Morenci, placing a
white child with a Mexican family was tantamount to child abuse,
and they saw their kidnapping as a rescue. Women initiated both
sides of this confrontation. Mexican women agreed to take in these
orphans, both serving their church and asserting a maternal
prerogative; Anglo women believed they had to "save" the orphans,
and they organized a vigilante squad to do it. In retelling this
nearly forgotten piece of American history, Linda Gordon
brilliantly recreates and dissects the tangled intersection of
family and racial values, in a gripping story that resonates with
today's conflicts over the "best interests of the child."
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