Forging the Copper Collar by James W. Byrkit

Author:James W. Byrkit
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Published: 2015-01-12T16:00:00+00:00

More Deportations

There was little of that kind of stamping. More undesirables found themselves on the wrong end of a vigilante’s gun. President Wilson’s fear that Bisbee might set a precedent was realized. Although the earlier, smaller deportations in the West had denied Bisbee a unique or original experience, the success, support, publicity and absence of enforced restraint involved in the Bisbee Deportation inspired and licensed more of the same.

With the Bisbee model in the van, a mob of native Americans, on July 14—two days following the Bisbee episode—forced seven hundred aliens to leave the lead mining districts of Flat River, Missouri. The vigilantes said the employers had been discharging Americans and putting aliens in their places at lower wages.33 The “aliens” included Italians, Russians and Poles, national backgrounds identified as allies with the United States.34 On July 25, thirteen men and one woman, “all said to be members of the I.W.W.,” were corralled by one hundred fifty citizens armed with clubs and sent out of town on a westbound train from Bemidji, Minnesota. This number of deportees later rose to thirty.35

Over in New Mexico, the sanctuary of the Arizona deportees, they had a deportation of their own on July 31. A truck with a machine gun mounted on it escorted thirty-two alleged IWW coal miners in Gallup to the railroad station. They were sent to Belen, New Mexico, where additional Gallup deportees later raised the total to eighty. When he discovered that most of these men belonged to the United Mine Workers of America, Samuel Gompers became indignant and brought the fact to President Wilson’s attention.36 More fearless with New Mexico coal mine owners than with Phelps Dodge, Wilson interceded. After only four days in Belen and following receipt of a telegram from New Mexico Governor Lindsey, they received permission to return to Gallup.37

The precedent Wilson feared was set. In scope, size and planning, nothing paralleled it in the history of America, legal or extralegal. In August, another deportation took place in Fairbury, Nebraska.38 In 1919, authorities cited Bisbee as a precedent for a deportation in California of orange grove workers from the Pomona Valley.39

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