In 2020, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival presented "The Copper Children," a play by Karen Zacarias. The plot is based on the historical events surrounding the adoption of 40 orphans from New York by Mexican American families in Clifton in 1904.
In 2020, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival presented "The Copper Children," a play by Karen Zacarias. The plot is based on the historical events surrounding the adoption of 40 orphans from New York by Mexican American families in Clifton in 1904.
PHOTO JENNY GRAHAM/OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL
There’s been plenty of instances in my life when I had less time to delve into the history of where I was, simply focused on the necessities of living. But in early July, the first time I visited Greenlee County, I was fascinated by the town of Clifton and its company-town neighbor, Morenci. That initial trip started a series of research, and in the process I rabbit-trailed into a fascinating story about the kidnapping of 40 children in that very area.
There seemed to be one liminal text, and I wanted to know more.
It took some doing, but after a numerous bouts of rescheduling and phone tag, Linda Gordon, a history professor at New York University, walked me through “The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction,” her award-winning account of a critical time in Clifton’s history: In 1904, when 40 New York orphans arrived by train in need of adoptive families, a group of white vigilantes protested the adoption of the children by Mexican Americans. All of the children were revoked from their new-found Hispanic households, a fraught action later defended by the U.S. Supreme Court.
There’s nary a place without a skeleton or two in the closet, and I was fascinated by the concept of parenting as a political and racial statement. I checked out a copy of Gordon’s 400-page tome from the Safford Library and found myself transported to the turn of the century in rural Arizona, where this obscure event in Clifton’s history came to life in a bright prose, the pages passing at a brisk clip.
I’ve found the transportive quality of books one of the best ways to grapple with uncomfortable topics. There’s no mandatory discussion or on-the-spot decision making. The transformation can be invisible.
A scene from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's 2020 production of Karen Zacarías' play "The Copper Children."
PHOTO JENNY GRAHAM/OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL
While Gordon expressed a relief at the strides toward equality made since her book was published in 1999, there is no denying the bias of a previous era in Arizona history: “The reason is just blunt,” she said. “There’s a tremendous amount of racism.”
As tales go, there’s a lot of versions of the orphan abduction story, but none Gordon found from a Hispanic viewpoint. In fact, Gordon said, many historical texts on racism don’t focus on Hispanics, period.
“I thought it was really important to learn about other aspects of American racism,” she told me.
From a single sentence in Carey McWilliams’ 1949 survey of Chicano culture, “North From Mexico,” Gordon began her investigation into an overlooked landmark in Arizona history that was perhaps easier to let fade. She said she spent a decade writing her book.
Explaining that memory and the oral tradition are both somewhat mercurial and often unreliable in nature, Gordon said most versions of the orphan thievery told via interview in Clifton and Morenci weren’t accurate in entirety.
Despite evidence of the contrary, “people really wanted to stick to what they remembered,” Gordon recalled.
The story of "The Copper Children" is also recounted in New York University Professor Linda Gray's book, "The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction."
PHOTO JENNY GRAHAM/OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL
She did not, she said, feel she was in a place to “revise their own memories.”
That stuck with me after our call ended a bit abruptly. Neither of us was sure whose phone did what, but we were cut off at that point just before saying goodbye. I checked my email to find an email from Gordon thanking me for my interest in her story 23 years after publication.
But how could I not be interested in such a story, I wondered. It’s an uncomfortable but didactic tale that speaks to a time our country never has to return to.
Of late, I feel there is a cultural anxiety to edit the past, ashamed perhaps at the blunders, injustices and indiscretions of earlier times.
It is unusual to find the truth comfortable, I’ve learned.
It means being honest with oneself, which I avoided for years, using all manner of distractions to anesthetize my discomfort.
What I appreciated about Gordon was her frank ability to call it like it is. Because of her commitment to scouring for authenticity, a historical account of the orphan abduction exists, should one have the courage to face it.
I think I know how that might feel.
I was once desperate to forge my own history, too. Only after facing the truth could I come to terms with how it shaped who I am today.
While history is unchangeable, the future holds all the possibility needed to rise above the prescriptions of the past.
