'Bisbee'17': A tragic story of Arizona's ghost town resonant in America's mass deportations today
"How do you get two thousand people to keep a secret?" Dick Graeme, a miner for 58 years with the Copper Queen Company, says in Robert Greene's 'Bisbee'17,' referring to the grave crime against humanity committed by thousands of people in the small town of Bisbee, in Arizona.
The event, Graeme is alluding to, is the infamous Bisbee Deportation, which occurred on July 12, 1917, where nearly 1,300 striking immigrant miners were illegally kidnapped and deported by 2,000 townspeople who were deputized overnight by the sheriff. Bisbee, now a ghost town, was rich with copper during World War I as mining companies flocked to the town and made record profits. The miners — mostly Mexican and Eastern European immigrants — however, grew tired of the unsafe working conditions and discrimination and called for a strike.