Arizona Attorney - February 2015

By Sunday afternoon, the American citizens of Clifton–Morenci held another meeting at which more than 300 attended. Judge Little chaired the meeting and advised the group that they had no legal claim to the children without the approval of the Foundling Hospital. Regardless, the committee selected a group of 25 to go to the Mexican homes and take the children.

This they did.

Neville Leggatt, the delivery person for Arizona Copper, knew the location of all the homes and thus was an important member of the group. Leggatt said it was a wet and wild night, raining and storming, as the posse, including George Frazer, the smelter superintendent, rode from house to house snatching children out of their beds, as late as 11:00 p.m. on Sunday night, and then delivering the sleepy, half-dressed children to the waiting women.

On Monday, October 3, Swayne and the priest met with a crowd of 200 to 300

already assigned to others.

The assigned families left with some of the children that Saturday afternoon, but most went with the priest and accompanying Sisters of Charity to the church to spend the night. The Mexican families gathered up those children on Sunday afternoon. The American women reported to their husbands that these white children were being given to Mexican families who were inappropriate to care for them, and they, the American women, wanted them. After a quick Saturday afternoon meeting, a delegation of three, including Deputy Sheriff Jeff Donagan, Thomas Simpson (from the Duncan hotel), and Charles Mills, Superintendent for Phelps Dodge, went to see the agent for the Foundling Hospital, Mr. Swayne. Unsympathetic to their concerns, Swayne said that the Sisters would be visiting every house and, if unsuitable, they would take the children back. That promise was not good enough.

40 ARIZONA ATTORNEY FEBRUARY 2015

law’s attic

Law’s Attic sheds light on remarkable historical events whose anniversary is upon us.

The feature is comprised of occasional short essays on noteworthy cases, laws or legal events whose anniversary is ripe—whether they occurred 10 years ago, or 500. If you have suggestions for legal historical events that we should cover in 2015, contact the editor at arizona.attorney@azbar.org.

www.azbar.org/AZAttorney

The Abduction

According to a book by Linda Gordon, on Saturday, October 1, 1904, on the request of a newly arrived French priest, a group of Irish-American children arrived in Clifton, Arizona, from the Catholic Foundling Hospital in New York to be adopted by Mexican families in Clifton and Morenci who attended the parish. When the priest and Mexican women met the children at the train station, some white woman— “Americans,” they called them—gathered to watch the spectacle. The children—white, pretty, neatly dressed, some with long blonde curls—shocked these women, who were not expecting white children. One of the women, Mrs. Gatti, asked the priest if she could have a child because her husband was Catholic, though she wasn’t. No, the priest explained; all the children were

DIANNE POST graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, law school in 1979 and began practicing in Arizona in 1980. For 18 years, she represented primarily battered women and abused children in the family and dependency law systems. In 1998, she began doing international human-rights work, mainly on gender-based violence. She has worked in 14 other countries and lived for extended periods in five.

A hundred and ten years ago, race, religion and children’s rights collided in a mining town in Arizona. 2 The rift between communities, between the rich and poor, between the whites and non-whites, played out in a case that focused on states’ rights and parens patriae and went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court—echoing arguments that resound to this day.