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A review by rob503
The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction by Linda Gordon
4.0
Linda Gordon uses the story of the abduction of forty white orphans originally promised to Mexican Catholic families in the border communities of Southeastern Arizona to explore issues of race, gender, and vigilantism. This story of children that became the rope in a tug of war between races and religions culminates in a Supreme Court decision that ruled the adoption to be “child abuse.” Her book also demonstrates how racially motivated many institutions in the United States were, and still, are.
Her primary argument is that women have played a significant role in constructing and defending race lines, but mostly remain in the background of these stories. Gordon details how white orphans being given to non-white families infuriated the Protestant white “Anglo” women of the town who invigorated their husbands to abduct the children at gunpoint. Gordon laments that the role of the family is often underrepresented when exploring issues of race. Whereas the Mexican Catholic women in the story were motivated to expand their families and perhaps blur the national and racial lines evident in their communities, so too were the Anglo protestant women. The Anglo women, unfortunately, were motivated by familial expansion and their belief that they were the best option for raising the orphaned, white, children. Maternalism drove the racial divide in this community rather than healing it through a shared sense of humanity that could have been found in the children’s arrival.
Throughout the book, the author demonstrates the path the region took to become such a racially mixed area, and how those political and racial attitudes made it a powder keg. Her chapter on the history of vigilantism in the United States was particularly enlightening and demonstrated the role it played in shaping race and gender throughout American history. In the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision, it is easy to follow how white Anglo-Saxon protestants have maintained supremacy in the United States, and how myth and memory contribute to a continued racial divide in that part of the country.
Inserting a novel-like retelling of the narrative around her historical scholarship makes the book very readable. Her ability to recreate the world around the events through her prose is worthy of emulation. She does not embellish beyond the evidence she finds, despite a lack of documentation about motive during the abduction crisis, as motive and motivations are never explicitly clear in official documents. She connects institutional and church records to memories of town residents and other works on racial relations in the greater Southwest border region to paint a picture of life in 1904, and the ramifications of this orphan crisis.
Her epilogue is particularly important, insofar as she describes how memories are crafted. Significant events like the labor strike of 1983 and powerful entities like the mining company in Morenci sometimes conspire to craft a narrative that suits the needs of those in power. Gordon engages with a growing subfield on women's involvement in shaping child welfare policy in the Progressive Era.
Her primary argument is that women have played a significant role in constructing and defending race lines, but mostly remain in the background of these stories. Gordon details how white orphans being given to non-white families infuriated the Protestant white “Anglo” women of the town who invigorated their husbands to abduct the children at gunpoint. Gordon laments that the role of the family is often underrepresented when exploring issues of race. Whereas the Mexican Catholic women in the story were motivated to expand their families and perhaps blur the national and racial lines evident in their communities, so too were the Anglo protestant women. The Anglo women, unfortunately, were motivated by familial expansion and their belief that they were the best option for raising the orphaned, white, children. Maternalism drove the racial divide in this community rather than healing it through a shared sense of humanity that could have been found in the children’s arrival.
Throughout the book, the author demonstrates the path the region took to become such a racially mixed area, and how those political and racial attitudes made it a powder keg. Her chapter on the history of vigilantism in the United States was particularly enlightening and demonstrated the role it played in shaping race and gender throughout American history. In the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision, it is easy to follow how white Anglo-Saxon protestants have maintained supremacy in the United States, and how myth and memory contribute to a continued racial divide in that part of the country.
Inserting a novel-like retelling of the narrative around her historical scholarship makes the book very readable. Her ability to recreate the world around the events through her prose is worthy of emulation. She does not embellish beyond the evidence she finds, despite a lack of documentation about motive during the abduction crisis, as motive and motivations are never explicitly clear in official documents. She connects institutional and church records to memories of town residents and other works on racial relations in the greater Southwest border region to paint a picture of life in 1904, and the ramifications of this orphan crisis.
Her epilogue is particularly important, insofar as she describes how memories are crafted. Significant events like the labor strike of 1983 and powerful entities like the mining company in Morenci sometimes conspire to craft a narrative that suits the needs of those in power. Gordon engages with a growing subfield on women's involvement in shaping child welfare policy in the Progressive Era.