Racial History of Arizona, Part One: The 19th and Early 20th Century

The Arizona Rangers

The "Driving While Mexican" law enacted last week in Arizona is not some isolated incident, a case of good people gone bad over a frustrating circumstance.

Indeed, it is part of Arizona's long, complex racial history, dating back to shortly after the Civil war when copper and silver mines were opening in the Gila Mountains, among other places. At the time, the thinly populated region could have been aptly named Mex-Arizona, the border being legalized on paper, but for all intents and purposes fluid and porous.

The first white reaction came in the 1870s when, fresh off the completeion of the Transcontinental Railroad project, and after building a primary railroad network across the then-territory, Chinese laborers drifted into metals mining work. The Chinese men fell into competition with Mexican workers for whom the Arizona-Mexico border was imaginary at best.

As long as the Chinese remained in competition with Mexican workers only, their presence provoked little concern among news editors and representatives of vocal white groups. But it was not long before the Chinese began to drift from the railroads into mining work. Henry Lesinsky (pioneer of Arizona, a Prussian of Jewish descent) touched upon this matter publicly, announcing that if his Longfellow Copper Mines employed any Chinese at all, “it would be at work which neither white men nor Mexicans would accept.”

Lesinsky did not want to be responsible for starting a “Mongolian invasion of that territory.” Instead, the Chinese would be put to work in the hills burning and transporting charcoal for the furnaces over such rough country that “even Mexicans cannot be got to carry anything over it.” Not more than seventy would be hired, and these would work separately from the “225 to 275 white men and Mexicans, who got on very well together.” A week later the Silver City Herald reported that “some fifty Chinamen have arrived at Clifton, Arizona, and will be put to work in the mines and furnaces.”

"Vagabondage and crime" were said to be the direct result of this immigration, local politicians were challenged to define their positions on the issue publicly, and the Immigration Act of July 1, 1879, then being formulated, was cited as evidence of federal recognition of the seriousness of the Chinese question. “The Chinese must go!” became the symbolic cry that greeted Southern Pacific foremen when they arrived with their crews at Maricopa Station in January, 1880, after a six-months interruption of the work. The Chinese soon went, some 3/4ths of them into the copper camps.

By the early 1900s,  Mexican laborers predominated in the mines, most of them brought by enganchadores, or "hookers," recruiters who preferred men from the interior of Mexico rather than border-men.

According to the editor of the Bisbee Daily Review, thousands of Mexicans were brought into Arizona during 1901 to work on the railroads and in the mines. The inflow was so great at this time that he questioned the accuracy of the 1900 census in setting Arizona’s total population at 122,212. “There is little doubt, despite these official figures,” he said, “that the territory has a bona fide [permanent] population of about 140,000.” No immigration statistics were kept at this time, but contemporary estimates claimed that between 60,000 and 100,000 Mexicans crossed the border annually.

This was the beginning of the trans-national labor issue we see now exploding in Arizona's profiling law today. (Of course, ranch and farming workers crossed easily in early days, but numbers were insignificant.)

Eventually, Mexican laborers ran smack up against unionized whites in the mines, the whites believing that low-wage Mexican workers dragged down the wages of their members, high-skill workers. In actuality, the price of copper had tumbled in the first decade of the 20th century.

On March 21, 1901, during Governor Nathan O. Murphy’s last year in office, the legislature passed a bill enabling the creation of a special body called the Arizona Rangers. Their personnel, whose identification was to be kept as secret as possible “for strategic purposes,” were authorized to command the services of cattlemen and law officers when necessary. Formed originally to patrol the border and prevent cattle rustling, they were often used by mine owners to suppress strikes. Having formed the body as one of his last official acts, Murphy, himself a mine owner, resigned to attend to business affairs, forcing his successor, Governor Alexander O. Brodie, to take office prematurely in July 1, 1902. The next year the union won a round. When the twenty-second legislature met on January 19, 1903, says historian James McClintock, they passed an act “directed against the companies employing Mexican and contract labor… prohibiting more than eight hours of labor on underground work in the mines.” While the eight-hour law constituted a major victory for [white] union men in their efforts toward better working conditions, their principal satisfaction came in seeing an effective blow delivered to mine operators who sought to employ alien Mexicans whenever possible because Mexicans would submit to working ten to twelve hours a day at a wage that undercut the union scale by almost fifty percent.

A strike, called the Clifton Strike, ensued and toward its latter stages, only Mexican laborers were left, and they insisted on organizing for better wages and shorter hours. The strike, which may have ended in bloodshed, (both sides were heavily armed), was instead ended by a catastrophic rainstorm that literally washed away the Mexican workers shantytowns.

The Clifton strike was the opening shot of a long series of skirmishes between labor and management with Mexican workers as a major issue. Because of increased cooperative efforts, the wages of Mexican workers began to rise as the years went on. By the end of the Territorial period, the momentum of economic necessity showed Anglo and Mexican workmen that cooperation was the better course. There was also a significant decline in anti-Mexicanism. The alien labor issue, however, continued to be a problem. In fact, really serious troubles were just beginning. Contract systems for alien Mexican labor were established during both World Wars and the government ultimately resigned itself to legalizing what it could not prohibit.

This sat well with white Arizonans as long as Mexican workers were the only ones willing or available to work mine, road and railroad-building, and other menial jobs. Mexican women were employed as household help, or as menials in laundries, food establishments and so forth.

As the white population of Arizona grew, however, from 1900 through the 1950s and the economy diversified, whites saw their right to seek employment as substantially more crucialt than the old, cross-border model.

Immigration: Dear Arizona, Here's The New York Model

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand 

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame 

Is the imprisoned lightning, 

And her name Mother of Exiles.

- Emma Lazarus

Inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty

Imagine for a moment not the fevered Arizona, ramparts up and bristling, on the border with Mexico preventing itself from being "overrun" by brown-skinned immigrants to the south, but an Arizona with Scandinavia, Germany, Holland and Belgium as its neighbors. Tens of thousands of fair-haired, ruddy-cheeked young men and women enter Arizona's sacred space. 

Would the Arizona legislature pass a law permitting all fair-haired, ruddy-cheeked people to be stopped anytime, anyplace, anywhere in the state to have their "papers" checked? 

Have a Nordic/Germanic accent? Turn around and put your hands behind you! Bad boy, bad boy, what you gonna do when they come for you?

Don't make me laugh, Arizona. Anyone with a brain the size of a chipmunk knows what racism looks like. And it's ugly.

There is another way, the New York Model, that has been forged through blood and tears over almost four centuries. New York, the Mother of Exiles.

Wave upon wave of ethnic groups dating to the 1630s have disembarked on the shores of the New York metropolitan region of roughly 20 million, beginning with the Dutch, English, Scots-Irish and Africans who displaced the native population. The Indians were pushed aside by the first northern Europeans. (There are about 120,000 people who claim Native American ancestry in New York City's 5 boroughs.)

Next, Germans nuzzled their way into the in-crowd, followed by the Irish who were met with such hue and cry - due to their Catholicism primarily, but also their poverty-stricken state created by the potato famine and British oppression - one would have thought the Know Nothings/Nativists were beset by a clone army of typhoid carriers. 

But New York was just warming up. Next came the garlic-breathed Italians and Greeks, and the ultimate outsiders, the Jews. The exotic Chinese initially came in small numbers, though by World War I were jostling Jews and Italians for their own piece of real estate on the Lower East Side.

The next "problem" groups were Great Migration blacks from the South and Puerto Ricans, although the establishment could not do much about them except to discriminate once they barged into New York, since they were as American as the next folks by dint of citizenship law.

Voila the long, well-known story abbreviated: the Puerto Ricans begat the Dominicans, the Dominicans begat the Haitians, the Haitians begat the Jamaicans, the Jamaicans begat the Bahamians, the Mexicans, the Central Americans, South Americans, Koreans, more Chinese, Vietnamese, Indians, Pakistanis, North Africans, on and on.

Fully 60% of New York City's population is composed of either foreign born individuals or the children of foreign born people. (Make note to inform Arizonans: we all work, study, shop, ride, etc., together without having the sky fall upon our heads on a daily basis.)

To say that the waves of immigration did not and do not place heavy burdens on the region's social services would be disingenuous. But, immigrants to New York are almost ridiculously quick to adapt, get to work, and assimilate.

According to a report by the Manhattan Institute in 2009, 52% of foreign-born residents of the New York metro area are naturalized citizens. In the rest of the country, the figure is just 40%. Ninety-four per cent are legal residents or visitors in New York. In the rest of the country, the number is less than 75%.

Immigrants learn English more quickly in New York. Among adult immigrants who have arrived in the past five years, 40% speak English very well versus 32% in the rest of the country. Among recently arrived foreign-born kids, the difference is even stronger: 47% versus 36%. (Click here for a touching story about immigrants learning to read, check this out by Clyde Haberman in the NY Times the other day.)

What makes New York City so facile at absorbing immigrants? Our national caricature paints us as rough n' ready, brusque, cold and self-absorbed. Yet... 

The big city has many things going for it.

New York is not racially or ethnically binary like so many other places. The city’s immigrants come from every corner of the globe, and no single group makes up more than 12% of the foreign-born population. That makes it almost impossible for any single immigrant group to form a large isolated ghetto. 

Sure, the city has ethnic neighborhoods and always has, but it is easy for anyone to head elsewhere to work or shop. New York doesn't have "No-Fly Zones." The day the immigrant lands in the city of dreams mom and dad can parade the kiddies and grandparents down 5th Avenue, Park Ave., anyplace in the city they like.

Even in well-etched ethnic enclaves, the immigrant encounters native-born Americans and representatives of cultures other than his or her own. The city is a public place where residents have no choice but to share quotidian experiences. As immigrants and natives share experiences, they become more alike. Immigrants don't come here to displace us, they come here to be just like us as they add a little more seasoning to the broth.

In my day-to-day life in this past week alone, I interacted with West African cab drivers, Indian newsstand owners, the Greek diner staff, a Bosnian building super, a Yemeni deli guy, many Dominicans, a small number of Mexicans, a British-born baseball coach (yes!), a few native Irish floor re-finishers, and a sprinkling of native Italians. None of them were born here. (This is to say nothing of the countless Americans from other regions I encounter on a daily basis. When my young neighbor smiles and says "I'm from Des Moines," she might as well say "Hallo. I am from La Cote d'Ivoire.")

The immigrants, aside from generally appearing exhausted from work or worry, seem earnest, eager, fascinated with America and New York, and extremely interested in my own family's immigrant journey. What happened to my family in the 1870s and 80s is possibly more important to them than it is to my own social and ethnic peers. The biggest assimilation machine is The Golden Dream itself, past, present, and future.

Importantly, we in New York have a history of dealing with immigrants - not always pretty, but very concrete and incredibly well-documented. We've made our mistakes and have moved into a new era. New York has a helpful network of legal advocates and local assimilation institutions born of our contentious past ready to help immigrants navigate contemporary rapids.

Most New Yorkers don't live in gated communities, or play golf on private courses, travel in private cars isolated from each other, or swim at residents-only beaches. Our kids thrive in a huge, roiling mash-up in schools, sports, theater classes, dance, music, and on public transportation, cabs, shops, libraries, medical facilities, and the thronged streets. We also mix with 55 million visitors per year from all corners of the Earth.

There is barely time to ponder one's role in this large millennial swirl of humanity. But one conclusion you reach pretty quickly is that human beings are pretty much alike no matter where they hail from.

I am sure New York officials would be happy to take a few minutes to speak with those old, scared and cranky folks down in AZ. Give us a call, ya hear? We'll tell you how it all went down.

You know us in the crazy city. We LOVE to talk. You could learn a lot, Arizona. But the first things you have learn is some humility and you do that by finding your humanity. People crossing the border only want what your grandparents or great grandparents wanted, that which the United States delivered so well.

When the census form arrived a few weeks ago, I deliberated whether I should check my race as white or not. It seemed absurd to check "other" and write in "Italian-Irish." These days, in this place, it would have felt affected.

Eventually, I did actually check "other," then scrawled in "New Yorker" in a prominent place.