The Bisbee Deportation was the illegal kidnapping and deportation of 1,300 mostly immigrant copper miners from Bisbee, Arizona in July, 1917. The miners were members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or Wobblies), on strike against the Phelps Dodge mining company. The authorities sent them on a 16-hour train ride, without food or water, in the hot desert summer, to the New Mexican desert 200 miles away. Many were taken to Columbus, NM in hopes that the U.S. soldiers there would attack the Wobblies. The U.S. soldiers were there to secure the town, after having battled Pancho Villa and 500 Mexican rebels the previous year.
Roots of the Strike
Arizona has been one of the largest copper producers in the U.S. for many years. Indigenous people used the ore for pigments and jewelry. When the Spanish came, they began mining in the 1700s. U.S. companies took over the mining there after the Gadsden Purchase, in 1853. Copper mining in the Warren District, which includes Bisbee, began in 1877, with Phelps Dodge soon coming in and buying the Copper Queen (operational until 1975) and Atlantic claims. Calumet and Arizona also operated mines in the region.
By 1917, a large percentage of the copper miners in the Warren District were Mexican and Balken immigrants. Discrimination against them was harsh. Working and living conditions for all the miners were deplorable. After receiving little support from the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, the miners organized with the IWW. In early May, they presented a list of demands to management that included: an end to the bonus system, replacement of the sliding scale with a $6.00 per day shift rate, and an end to discrimination against union members. The company refused every demand.
The IWW called for a strike to begin on June 26. More than 3,000 miners participated, including workers from all the local mines (not just Phelps Dodge), or about 85% of all mine workers in Bisbee. Cochise County Sheriff Harry Wheeler asked the Governor to request federal troops: “The whole thing appears to be pro-German and anti-American.”
The Vigilantes
On July 10, Phelps Dodge President Walter Stuart Douglas formed “Citizens Committee” made up of local business leaders. They rounded up over 100 Wobblies in Jerome, Arizona and deported 67 of them from to Needles, California. They told them to never return. When the IWW protested to the Governor, he claimed that they had “threatened” him.
On July 11, authorities in Bisbee sealed off the county and seized the local Western Union telegraph office. They cut off outside communication, while over 2,000 well-armed vigilantes began rounding up IWW members. It was one of the largest posses ever assembled in the U.S. And they didn’t limit their harassment to miners, either. They arrested sympathetic towns people, as well as several shop owners too. They also looted their cash registers and shelves. The authorities arrested over 2,000 men in total. Jim Brew was an IWW member and a veteran of the violent West Virginia Cripple Creek strike of 1903-04. He fought back and killed Deputy Sheriff Orson McRae. Three other deputies promptly shot him dead.
The Deportation
They imprisoned the men at the Warren Ballpark. There, the cops gave non-IWW members the choice of denouncing the IWW. Roughly 700 men took the deal and were freed. The others jeered and swore profanities at the deputies, and sang labor songs. The next day, on July 12, they deported the men to New Mexico. Some of the cars were covered in manure three inches deep. The temperature for the 16-hour ride was in the mid-90s. The authorities threatened to lynch any of them that returned.
Aftermath
In May 1918, the U.S. Department of Justice ordered 21 Phelps Dodge executives to be arrested. This included Walter S. Douglas, president of the company. However, a federal district court released every one of them, arguing that they had violated no federal laws. The Justice Department appealed and the Supreme Court ruled 8-to-1 that the Constitution didn’t empower the federal government to enforce the rights of the deportees. That was a state issue.