Criteria

The Banta Award 2000

 

The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction
by Linda Gordon
Harvard University Press, 1999

 

 

 

The 2000 Banta Award BOOK
The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction is a continuation of Linda Gordon's interest and devotion to the issues of race, gender, and class and how they combine to influence events in history. This book explains in microscopic detail how these factors came together in Clifton-Morenci, Arizona. This is a story of New York nuns who brought forty Irish orphans to a remote Arizona mining camp to be placed with Catholic families, most of whom were Mexican. Although the majority population of the town was Mexican, the town's white citizens were furious over the interracial placements and soon formed vigilante groups that kidnapped the children and nearly lynched the nuns. The Catholic Church sued to get the children back, but all the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, ruled in favor of the white vigilantes.

As the mines became big business, they pulled in thousands of Mexican immigrant workers. With whiteness perceived as a mark of superiority, racial tensions grew and the already volatile race and class relations erupted with the "orphan incident."

Although this can be seen as a small incident in American history, Linda Gordon's book has revealed an amazing story that portrays class conflict and racial and ethnic prejudice within the larger context of the turn-of-the-century America. Gordon used court transcripts, oral history, and newspapers to create this intriguing story of racial boundaries in the mining towns along the Mexican-American border.

Linda Gordon won the Bancroft History prize for The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction.

The AUTHOR
Linda Gordon

Linda Gordon has centered her study on those aspects of American history that deal with issues that surround gender, children, family, and class. Her writing and research has focused on a wide variety of themes that call attention to how the issues that speak to and about women, children, and the family interact with general society. From birth control, to welfare and family violence, Linda Gordon's research and scholarship has given us new perspectives on the role of women in American society.

Linda Gordon was born in Chicago, Illinois. After receiving her B.A. degree from Swarthmore College, she studied at Yale University where she received her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees. From 1968 to 1984, she was on the history faculty at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. In 1984, she moved to Madison to become professor of history, and soon achieved the positions of Florence Kelly Professor of History and Vilas Distinguished Research Professor. In addition, Linda Gordon has been invited to be a visiting professor and guest lecturer, and has participated in many conferences and meetings throughout the world.

Her books include the now classic history of birth control in America, Women's Body, Women's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America (Viking, 1976); Heroes of Their Own Lives: the Politics and History of Family Violence, Boston, 1880-1960 (Viking, 1988); and, Pitied but Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare (Free Press, 1994). The Wisconsin Library Association awarded Heroes of Their Own Lives and Pitied but Not Entitled as Outstanding Books of the Year.

2000 WLA Literary Awards Committee Members