By Abe Villarreal
We all want to more about what people were thinking in black and white photos. The older the photo, the more mysterious. People standing in place for longer than we can imagine, waiting for flash of the bulb, often not smiling. Yet, they were saying something as they tried to preserve their moments in history.
Each Saturday, I volunteer at a local museum and I rummage through old photos, deciding what is valuable to keep in the museum’s collection and what should be discarded. Often times it is a hard decision. What makes something like a photo of people valuable?
A few days ago, copies of photos depicting the round up and transportation of nearly 1,300 protesting miners in Bisbee, Arizona during the summer of 1917 popped up in our museum’s donation pile. We were familiar with them and already had copies so it was decided easily to discard them.
But as I looked at them closely, I began to feel what people in old black and white photos were trying to say, especially during trying times. They don’t communicate in pictures like we do today. This group of photos told the stories of everyday people, living in a small mining community, going to work each day to help produce the riches that built a prosperous community.
It was 1917, and when disputes between management and labor existed, they often didn’t end up well for the laborers. In this case, what happened often during the 1930s in America, happened by surprise and seemingly overnight. It became known as the Bisbee Deportation of 1917.
Scenes are reminiscent of what we read about in history books for Jews who were captured during the Holocaust. American citizens, mostly striking members of the International Workers of the World (IWW) Union, as well as supporters and innocent bystanders, were rounded up at gun point in July of that year, in the early hours of the morning. The local sheriff deputized over 2,000 citizens to make this happen.
The men were gathered on that hot day, not knowing where they would end up. Forced into cattle cars, some with inches of manure on the floor, the detained men would end up on a day-long’s journey into the unknown. With no money, and very little water, they were shipped to middle-of-nowhere New Mexico, 20 miles outside the small town of Columbus.
Separated from their families, many businesses back in Bisbee were forced to close. Most of the pictures depict scenes of the round up and the waiting. Moments of anxiety and fear. In one photo, there is a group of miners sitting in front of their luggage and what looks like sacks of belongings. Everything they could fit in one bag. The miners look straight at the camera, but they look different from the people behind them, sheriff deputies with smiles on their faces.
Time and again, we only have pictures to help paint the complicated history of how we see each other as people. We look at them and try to fill in the questions in our minds. Why did we do it? How could this happen? What did they feel?
Even with pictures, and oral histories, the history we try to learn captures us by surprise when it repeats itself, again and again.
There are many details we do know about the Bisbee Deportation of 1917, the reason for the conflict, the big disagreements, the demands of the striking miners, and the aftermath. All of it is important, but not as important as how we are impacted as humans, when we fall victim to the consequences of power, politics, greed, and some would say evil.
As hard as they are too look at, I am happy I get to see these photos, to gain a little understanding of how people in a small American town, just over a century ago experienced the Bisbee Deportation of 1917.
Images of their faces are an important testimony and lesson needed as we continue to reach for that more perfect union we’ve been desiring for so long.
Abe Villarreal writes about the traditions, people, and culture of America. He can be reached at abevillarreal@hotmail.com.