Veterans of Battery F

Rock Island Argus., June 07, 1919, Page 2, Image 3

Charges Cruelty in Divorce Plea

The Rock Island Argus and daily union., April 12, 1921, Page 10, Image 10

Simpson M Stevens - 1940 census

1940 census
location: Bexar County, Texas
date:

Simpson Stevens  head  male  white  52  married  Texas  mechanic dry cleaning
Leona Stevens  wife  female  white  45  married  Texas
Aubrey Anderson  lodger  male  white  24  single  Texas  pattern maker

Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.

Simp M Stevens - 1930 census

1930 census
location: San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas
date: April 3, 1930

Simp M Stevens  officer  male  white  39  widowed  Texas

Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002.

Simpson Stevens World War II draft card

Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.

Simp M Stevens World War I draft card

Ancestry.com. U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005.

Simpson McCune Stevens death

Ancestry.com. Texas, Death Certificates, 1903-1982 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013.

AWJ Smith World War II draft card

AWJ Smith - 1930 census

date: April 23, 1930
location: Hunter, Choctaw County, Oklahoma

Albert W J Smith  head  male  white  52  married  age @ 1st marriage 2-  Arkansas  farmer
Suda V Smith  wife  female  white  37  married  age @ 1st marriage - 15  Arkansas
Clara O Smith  daughter  female  white  15  single  Texas
William C Smith  son  white  male  10  single  Texas
Jefferson C Smith   son  male  white  8  single  Oklahoma
Virginia F Smith  daughter  female  white  3 6/12  single  Oklahoma
Albert L L Smith  son  male  white  1/12  single  Oklahoma

Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002.

AWJ Smith - World War I draft card

Ancestry.com. U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005.

William Smith and Sudie Virden marriage

date: August 15, 1907
location: Nola, Scott County, Arkansas

"Arkansas County Marriages, 1838–1957." Index. FamilySearch, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2009, 2011. "Arkansas County Marriages, 1838–1957," database, FamilySearch; from Arkansas Courts of Common Pleas and County Clerks. Digital images of originals housed at various county courthouses in the State of Arkansas. Marriage records.

AWJ Smith - 1940 census

1940 census
date: April 25, 1940
location: Bowie County, Texas

William Albert Smith  head  male  white  62  married  Arkansas
Sudie Smith  wife  female  white  48  married  Arkansas
Jefferson Clyde Smith  son   male  white  18  single  Oklahoma
Virginia Faye Smith  daughter  female  white  13  single  Oklahoma
Ledford Lee Smith  son  male  white  10  single  Oklahoma

Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.

Ledford N Virden

birth: July 1844
location:
death: December 12, 1902
location:

father:
mother:

spouse: Louisa C Allen
spouse: Sarah E

marriage to Louisa C Allen - 1872

1880 census

marriage to Sarah Thomason - 1891

1900 census

Children with Louisa Allen:

John A Virden - 1875
Sallie A Virden 1879
Annie L Virden - 1880
Maudie L Virden - 1885

children with Sarah E:

Sudie Viola Virden - 1892
Jeff Tillman Virden - 1895

William Smith - 1910 census

date: May 5, 1910
location: Sugar Creek, Logan County, Arkansas

William Smith  head  male  white  37  married - 2nd  married 2 years  Arkansas
Sudie V Smith  wife  female  white  17  married - 1st  married 2 years  1, 1 Arkansas
Fanny M Smith  daughter  female  white  11  single  Arkansas
Henry Smith  son  male  white  1 6/12  single  Arkansas
Sarah M Virden  mother-in-law  female  white  50  single  Arkansas
Jeff T Virden  brother-in-law  male  white  12  single  Arkansas

Ancestry.com. 1910 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2006.

L N Virden and Sarah Thomason marriage

date: February 8, 1891
location: Park, Scott County, Arkansas

"Arkansas County Marriages, 1838–1957." Index. FamilySearch, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2009, 2011. "Arkansas County Marriages, 1838–1957," database, FamilySearch; from Arkansas Courts of Common Pleas and County Clerks. Digital images of originals housed at various county courthouses in the State of Arkansas. Marriage records.

Ledford N Virden - 1880 census

date: June 11, 1880
location: Hickman, Scott County, Arkansas

Ledford Virden  white  male  34  farmer  South Carolina
Louisa Virden  white  female  30  wife  keeps house  Georgia
John A Virden  white  male  4  son  single  Arkansas
Sallie A Virden  white  female  1  daughter  single  Arkansas

Year: 1880; Census Place: Hickman, Scott, Arkansas; Roll: 56; Family History Film: 1254056; Page: 388B; Enumeration District: 171; Image: 0461

Ledford Virden and Louisa Allen marriage

date: July 31, 1872
location: Jefferson County, Arkansas

"Arkansas County Marriages, 1838–1957." Index. FamilySearch, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2009, 2011. "Arkansas County Marriages, 1838–1957," database, FamilySearch; from Arkansas Courts of Common Pleas and County Clerks. Digital images of originals housed at various county courthouses in the State of Arkansas. Marriage records.

Simpson McCune Stevens

birth: December 12, 1888
location: Texas
death: September 4, 1946
location: San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas

father: Thomas Walter Stevens
mother: Martha Jane West

spouse: Ella Mekalip
spouse: Leona E

World War I draft card

1920 census

1930 census

1940 census

World War II draft card

death

burial

children with Ella MeKalip:

Frank Stevens
Martha Beatrice Stevens
Esther Ruth Stevens

Esther Ruth Stevens

birth: 1922
location: Texas
death:
location: Massachusettes

father: Simpson McCune Stevens
mother: Ella Mekalip

spouse: Fabian Hall
spouse: Salvatore G Tabbie

1930 census - Waco - children's home

marriage to Fabian Hall -1939

marriage to Salvatore G Tabbie - 1943

children with Fabian Hall:

Donald Ray Hall Stevens - 1940

Esther Ruth Stevens and Salvatore Tabbi marriage

date: July 13, 1943
location: Smith County, Texas

"Texas, County Marriage Records, 1837-1965," database with images, FamilySearch(https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QV1Z-MZSR : accessed 29 August 2016), Salvatore G Tabbi and Esther Ruth Stevens, 13 Jul 1943, Marriage; citing Smith, Texas, United States, various county clerk offices, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Texas Dept. of State Health Services and Golightly-Payne-Coon Co.; FHL microfilm 1,853,824.

Esther Ruth Stevens and Fabian Hall marriage

date: April 13, 1939
location: Smith County, Texas

"Texas, County Marriage Records, 1837-1965," database with images, FamilySearch(https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QV1Z-MMM6 : accessed 29 August 2016), Fabian E Hall and Esther Ruth Stephens, 13 Apr 1939, Marriage; citing Smith, Texas, United States, various county clerk offices, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Texas Dept. of State Health Services and Golightly-Payne-Coon Co.; FHL microfilm 1,853,823.

William Clinton Smith and Floy Middlton marriage

date: June 8, 1940
location: Smith County, Texas

"Texas, County Marriage Records, 1837-1965," database with images, FamilySearch(https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QV1C-1LXW : accessed 29 August 2016), Clinton Smith and Floy Middlton, 08 Jun 1940, Marriage; citing Smith, Texas, United States, various county clerk offices, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Texas Dept. of State Health Services and Golightly-Payne-Coon Co.; FHL microfilm 1,853,823.

Fannie Mae Smith Hackett

birth: February 20, 1899
location: Arkansas
death: March 21, 1968
location: Liberty, Liberty County, Texas

father: Albert William Jefferson Smith
mother: Ruthie Strickland

spouse: Paul Hackett

1910 census

1920 census

1930 census

death

burial

children with Paul Hackett:

Josephine A Hackett - 1917
Ruthie Hackett - 1922
Paul Hackett - 1929

Albert William Jefferson Smith

birth: July 19, 1877
location: Mena, Arkansas
death: December 16, 1944
location: Tyler, Smith County, Texas

father: Clinton Smith
mother: Kathleen Anderson

spouse: Ruthie Strickland
spouse: Sudie Viola Virden

marriage to Ruthie A Strickland - September 5, 1898

marriage to Sudie Virden - 1907

1910 census

World War I draft card

1930 census

1940 census

World War II draft card

burial

children with Ruthie Strickland:

Fannie Mae Smith - 1899

children with Sudie Viola Virden:

Henry Smith - 1908
Clara Othel Smith - 1915
William Clinton Smith - 1919
Jefferson Clyde Smith 1921
Virginia Fay Smith - 1926
Albert Ledford Lee Smith - 1936

Hopsons in Newspaper

ATHENS WEEKLY REVIEW
February 22, 1934
LEAGUEVILLE
(Special Correspondence)
Leagueville, Feb 19 - Another blizzard has arrived and just at the time we had decided spring was near. Seems like we’ll have to agree with the ground hog.

Rev. Spivey filled his regular appointment at the church during the week-end.

Mr. and Mrs. Arch Crawford and children have recently moved into the community. We are very glad to have them.

Mrs. Lee Hopson and children spent part of last week in the Sam Gideon home.

Still quite a bit of sickness here. Miss Ethel Cooie, who has been very ill, is reported to be improving.

A very large crowd enjoyed a musical at the Gene Tindel home Tuesday night. Special music was furnished by the Bearcat string band of Brownsboro.

Mr. and Mrs. C. H. Hopson and T. B. Taylor were business visitors to Corsicana Thursday and Friday.

Singing continues to be good. Mr. and Mrs. Splawn and Mr. and Mrs. John Pickering and other visitors attended last Wednesday night and the writer was absent for the first time. We have probably the largest class in the county and are always glad to welcome visitors. So if you are a lover of singing, come out and be with us.

Mr. and Mrs. Wesley Fields and children spent Sunday in the C. H. Hopson home.

Mr. and Mrs. Guy Brownlow and Mr. and Mrs. Seaborn Tindel of Oklahoma were visitors here last week. Mr. Tindal and Mrs. Brownlow are former residents of the county.

Mrs. Ebb Adair who was called to the bedside of her sister at Garden Valley, has returned home.

Not much news this week; too cold to learn any.

Harris, Ollie, and Vivian Brantley

The Los Angeles Plaza

Estrada, William David The Los Angeles Plaza: Sacred and Contested Space. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008.

            William David Estrada’s nativity to Los Angeles gives him a particularly keen insight into the history of the Plaza and Los Angeles. He has served in various curator positions throughout the city and is currently the Curator of History at El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument. His work, The Los Angeles Plaza: Sacred and Contested Space, provides an in-depth account of the history of the Plaza and Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Plaza explores changes in spatial and social dimensions over several centuries and shows how these changes reflect the more encompassing story of the city of Los Angeles.

            Thematically and chronologically arranged, Estrada begins The Los Angeles Plaza with a detailed history of the Plaza area prior to colonial rule and up through 1821. He describes early poblador attempts to settle the pueblo and their struggles to seamlessly intermingle the native Indian population with the incoming settlers. Also, Estrada explores the spatial and structural plans of the grid-plan plaza. A major event that Estrada credits as symbolizing the Plaza’s early social and cultural history is the mounting conflict between early missions and the establishment of a civic church. As the civic church grew in authority in the pueblo, the Plaza became the undisputed center of Mexican California.[1]

            Next, Estrada examines the changes that took place in the Plaza area and Los Angeles following Mexican independence from Spain. Southern California experienced a significant expansion of agriculture, notably cattle ranching and farming, along with the growth of private ranchos and an export economy in hides, soaps, and tallow. Los Angeles grew to become the unmatched center of Mexican society in Southern California, with the Plaza at its heart. With the election of Pío Pico of Los Angeles the Plaza came to represent the growing importance of Los Angeles as the focus of social and political life in Alta California. Los Angeleno residents began to exhibit a social prestige because of their residence in the Plaza area. This time period also saw the settlement and acculturation of foreigners from the United States and Europe. Chinese immigration began as early as 1850 and the expansion of Los Angeles would grow to depend on Chinese labor. Estrada proclaims that the changes taking place in Los Angeles indicate that the city was on its way to becoming an American City.

            Indeed, the third chapter, entitled “From Cuidad to City,” defines the urban growth that would permanently alter the landscape of Los Angeles and the Plaza area. Estrada contends that “the 1870s signaled the beginning of several cultural, technological, demographic, and economic transformations that further defined Los Angeles as an emerging American city, and they were most reflected by the changes at the Plaza.”[2] Railroads were the harbinger of the urban-industrial growth experience by Los Angeles and the surrounding Southern California area. Due to exponential population growth, what emerged was a new social landscape segmented along racial and class lines.

            This time period brought more changes to the landscape of the Plaza. Urban and residential development began to move away from the centralized location of the Plaza in Los Angeles. The deteriorating condition of the Plaza area led to the first preservation effort with aims to create a garden park space. In addition, Mexican residents living in the Plaza area began to change the architecture of housing from the established adobe-style to Italianate or Victorian-style housing, in what Estrada points to as a way for Mexicans to adapt to the changing cultural landscape.

            The Los Angeles Plaza depicts the new imagination of the Plaza in the early twentieth century that led to the reclamation of the space by immigrants from differing cultural backgrounds. Estrada argues that the melting-pot of cultures brought new meaning and greater cultural vibrancy to the Plaza. People of all cultural backgrounds used the Plaza and surrounding area for commercial and leisure activities. The new cultural offerings connected recent immigrants to their distant homelands as a sort of psychological survival. The Plaza offered immigrants a place of interaction beyond their homes and workplaces, and increasingly, was the space for radical free speech and an as a rallying place for politics. Additionally, in part because of its central location, throughout World War I the Plaza was known as an important space for revolutionary activities.

            No other example characterizes the commercial-tourist use of the Plaza better than the opening of chapter six. Estrada uncovered a scene from a 1952 film where a recently unemployed Mexican man refuses the only job he can find: portraying a caricature of himself as a sleeping Mexican man underneath a tree near the Plaza. This example paves the way for the efforts to contest then-accepted historical narratives over public pageantry, mural art, and community preservation.

            For Estrada, the distortion of the local history of the Plaza is personal, and the latter half of The Los Angeles Plaza explores the efforts to fight that distortion. The transformation of Olvera Street into a colorful tourist site attempted to hide its historical realities. When exiled Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueros was commissioned to paint a mural, expectations were of an exotic jungle scene. However, when the mural was unveiled “all anticipations of an artwork depicting Southern California as an idyllic land of perpetual sunshine, the missions, and the open shop were instantly shattered.”[3] Ameríca Tropical instead depicted the scene of a crucified Indian amid fallen pyramids, armed revolutionaries, and a bald eagle symbolizing Yankee imperialism. Estrada points out that Ameríca Tropical serves to explain how underlying forms of protest can clarify our understanding of the Plaza as an arena for the continued fight over historical narratives. The concealment of the mural a short time later proves how white contemporary Plaza residents attempted to distort the history of the area.

            No story of the Plaza would be complete without mentioning Christine Sterling and her efforts to expand the Plaza and control the interpretive landscape. Largely due to Sterling’s efforts, the Plaza became the property of the state of California and a designated State historic Park and State Historic Landmark. Despite other shortcomings, Sterling was a defender of the Mexican community. The Latinization of the Plaza and Los Angeles in general brought redemptive meaning to Southern California. Estrada notes the Chicano and Chicana Movement as evidence of greater involvement among Mexican Americans in politics and activism.

The several biographical sketches and personal memories of Plaza occupants such as Karl Yoneda, Meyer Baylin, Christine Sterling, and the homeless Luis, does much to enhance the intimate feel of The Los Angeles Plaza. Without these aspects, Estrada would have fallen short of a true investigation of the Plaza. Estrada is particularly adept at storytelling, and his prose animates history of the Plaza and Los Angeles within the pages of The Los Angeles Plaza.

            Today, the Plaza is a varied mixture of historical, physical, and cultural resources that have fostered as much by myth and current politics as by actual history. The symbolic heart of Los Angeles still remains the Plaza, especially as the population of Mexican Americans continues to grow. As Los Angeles deals with the privatization of its downtown space supplanting traditional streets and spaces, the city will continue to wrestling with the ongoing issues of modernization and interpretation of history.  

---

[1]William David Estrada, The Los Angeles Plaza: Sacred and Contested Space (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008), 40.

[2]Estrada, The Los Angeles Plaza, 81.

[3]Estrada, The Los Angeles Plaza, 210. 

Contagious Divides

Shah, Nayan Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Berkley: University of California Press, 2001.

            Nayan Shah is a leading expert in Asian American studies and serves as professor at the University of California. His work, Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown explores how race, citizenship, and public health combined to illustrate the differences between the culture of Chinese immigrants and white norms in public-health knowledge and policy in San Francisco. Shah discusses how this knowledge impacted social lives, politics, and cultural expression. Contagious Divides investigates what it meant to be a citizen of Chinese race in nineteenth and twentieth-century San Francisco.

            Shah begins with the mapping of Chinatown as an immigrant enclave by investigations of health authorities. These investigations provided descriptions of filthy and unsanitary living conditions. The results of the health investigations led to descriptions that would found the body of “knowledge” that Chinese immigrants and their unhygienic habits were the source of epidemic diseases. Chinese social behavior was pointed to as the cultural cause of medical menaces. Chinese immigrants were compared to farm animals and depicted as inhuman and inferior. At the beginning of Chinese settlement in San Francisco Chinese immigrants were considered more animalistic than citizens. The health mapping of Chinatown cemented the relationship between Chinese race and place.

            Contagious Divides next addresses the domestic sphere of Chinese culture. In a chapter entitled “The Dangers of Queer Domesticity,” Shah brings to life the perception white Americans had of Chinese homes. Most American domestic relations consisted of a heterosexual couple and children. However, in Chinatown Chinese men were mostly bachelors and the few Chinese female immigrants there were all considered syphilitic prostitutes. Gender roles, household numbers, spatial arrangements, and a lack of perceived family structure was seen as not only different from American domestic norms, but also as a threat to the racial order and national power. Another space credited with being a place of Chinese degradation were opium dens. Considered by Americans to be semipublic resorts that would seduce white tourists, opium dens generated an inappropriate sociability with Chinese immigrants that created an atmosphere responsible for destroying the morals, manhood, and health of white Americans. Because of their queer domesticity and morally loose social practices, Chinese immigrants were not considered citizens.

            According to Shah, the struggle for respectable domesticity and American cultural citizenship rested on the shoulders of Chinese women. Chinese immigrants were thought to intentionally infect whites with diseases using their best weapon: Chinese female prostitutes. White Americans viewed this racial war as being raged by mercenary prostitutes who would infect young white boys with syphilis. Dr. Mary Sawtelle blamed Chinese women alone for the syphilis pandemic on the Pacific Coast.[1] To many white Americans like Dr. Sawtelle, Chinese prostitutes embodied syphilis.

            Hygiene was considered to be women’s nature and responsibility. This gendered asymmetry led white women in San Francisco to train Chinese women in the tenets of middle-class domesticity and conversion to Christianity. Americans associated hygiene with civilization and whiteness in the materiality of furnishings, decorations, and odors. To be considered a citizen, one would need to be clean, white, and Christian.

            Shah argues that the bubonic plague crisis in Chinatown was a pivotal moment in the establishment of public health power. Amidst bouts of bubonic plague and other epidemic diseases, San Francisco employed quarantines on Chinatown. City health authorities believed contamination could be separated along racial lines. In Chinatown, whites could come and go, but those of Chinese race were expected to remain quarantined. The filth and overcrowding associated with Chinatown was believed to incubate bubonic plague. City health officials responded with the quarantine, disinfection, treatment, and inoculation of all residents of Chinatown. Epidemic logic justified the extraordinary invention of mass quarantine, the mobilization of resources, and the disruption of daily life in Chinatown.

            The Chinese response to the quarantine and the eventual inoculation campaign is interesting. Shah points out three general Chinese reactions: refusal to believe there was an epidemic disease, belief in a disease other than bubonic plague, and the assumption that the cause of the epidemic was from injections of bubonic plague into Chinese residents of Chinatown. The multiple quarantines imposed on Chinatown produced Chinese economic repercussions, protests, and boycotts. Chinese immigrants also exhibited intra-race discrimination when they would treat violently any fellow Chinatown resident who sought out the care of white doctors for illnesses. Combined with the multiple epidemics, quarantines, and the destruction after the 1906 earthquake, the health response in San Francisco ultimately led to the sanitary surveillance and management of Chinatown that would later expand throughout the United States. White property owners and elite Chinese merchants developed plans to rebuild Chinatown in a sanitary manner as an enclave and tourist destination. Sanitary management proved that Chinese immigrants could be viewed as citizen subjects if they abided by prescribed hygiene and sanitary requirements.

            Contagious Divides also surveys the politics of American/Chinese labor and their respective standards of living. White Americans felt economically threatened by Chinese laborers for jobs, health, and the American way of life. Additionally, the Chinese medical menace was believed to be a threat to white households and livelihoods. Consumer campaigns began to link the white American security of workplaces with that of white domestic spaces. For instance, the buy-the-union-label campaigns in the first decade of the twentieth century discouraged the purchase and use of Chinese cigars in order to keep Chinese diseases out of American homes and to enact an economic boycott on Chinese cigar manufacturing. In doing so, the American standard of living would be upheld, white worker’s families, livelihoods, homes, and health would be protected.

            As San Francisco began to expect epidemic diseases to enter its city, Chinese immigrant-medical inspections were thought to be more important than ever. Initial quarantine and rigorous health inspections would serve as the defense against epidemic diseases. San Francisco turned medical inspections into a screening process for the fitness of future citizens. For example, the diagnosis of a bacterial disease in a prospective Chinese immigrant linked disability with the immigrant’s potential fitness for employment. Health officials considered the medical inspections to be not just about stopping the spread of epidemic diseases, but as a way to develop a certain criteria to determine the long-term consequences of citizenship. The health inspections answered the question, “What kind of citizen would the immigrant be?”

One outstanding aspect of Contagious Divides is the chronicling of poetry left by detained Chinese immigrants on Angel Island. The poetry reveals the realities of Chinese detainment and gave the detainees a platform from which to record their experiences. At the time, health officials discounted Chinese poetry and satire reports because it was presumed that the immigrants could know nothing and were in essence not fit for citizenship.

In order for Chinese immigrants to fully be integrated into American society, Chinese conduct and living spaces would need to be standardized according to American practices. “The imperatives of health cemented the relationship between conduct and citizenship.”[2] Middle-class domesticity would be the standard immigrants were held against, including adult male responsibility, female domestic caretaking, and reproduction that was legitimized by marriage.

As the twentieth century wore on, Chinatown residents experienced a dramatic shift in the way they were perceived by Americans. Shah writes, “They went from being reviled and demonized at the turn of the century to being considered deserving and worthy of assistance in the mid-twentieth century.”[3] Finally, the result of decades of public health reform would signify that Chinese immigrants were to be considered citizens.

Contagious Divides conclusively investigates how race, health, and citizenship in nineteenth and twentieth century America provided a foundation for Chinese Americans to reform social conditions of the community and become American citizens. Through the efforts of public health reform and the lens of American domestic norms, Chinese immigrants dispelled the long-held belief of their supposed inhumanity and animalistic characteristics.

---

[1]Nayan Shah, Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown (Berkley: University of California Press, 2001), 107.

[2]Shah, Contagious Divides, 204.

[3]Shah, Contagious Divides, 225.

History 5377 - The American West

Book Review: The White Scourge by Neil Foley

Book Review: Migra! by Kelly Lytle Hernandez

Book Review: Contagious Divides by Nayan Shah

Book Review: The Los Angeles Plaza by William David Estrada

Migra! by Kelly Lytle Hernandez

Hernández, Kelly Lytle. Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2010).
A leading American historian of race, policing, immigration, and incarceration in the United States, Kelly Lytle Hernández’s Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol tells the story of how Mexican immigrant workers emerged as the primary target of the United States Border Patrol and how, in the process, the United States Border Patrol shaped the history of race in the United States. Migra! also explores social history, including the dynamics of Anglo-American nativism, the power of national security, and labor-control interests of capitalistic development in the American southwest. In short, Migra! explains the intricate relationships United States Border Patrol officers faced within a developing system of immigration law enforcement.

Migra! is divided into three parts, with part one focusing on the highly regional and local period of Border Patrol operations from 1924-1941. Prior to the establishment of the United States Border Patrol, the United States-Mexico border marked a political boundary that migrant Mexican workers needed to cross for seasonal labor. With the founding of the Border Patrol in 1924, its first generation of officers were tasked with the prevention of unlawful entry by aliens into the United States. There were many methods of unlawful entry and many classes of people explicitly prohibited from entering into the United States. To compound the growing problems faced by the Border Patrol, they would have to operate on limited funds. According to one Border Patrol officer from the early years, officers merely “walked around looking wise.”1

Hernández provides an interesting sketch of the officers of the Border Patrol. Most were local men who had come of age in the United States-Mexico borderlands. Many were integrated into the borderlands communities and familiar with its people, customs, and traditions. Unlike the agri-businessmen who profited from Mexican migrant labor, early Border Patrol officers were neither elite members of borderland communities nor active participants in the core economies. These working-class white men vigorously opposed unrestricted Mexican immigration and interpreted immigrants as labor competition. United States Border Patrol officers fostered collaborative relationships with farmers and ranchers as a social and political law enforcement tactic. Hernández contends that United States Border Patrol officers had no training and little supervision. Officers would patrol the political boundary, known as line watches, between the two nations. These line watches were ineffective because of the size of their jurisdictions and the sheer size of the borderlands between Mexico and the United States. Soon it became clear to Border Patrol officers that most illegal migrant activity developed in the greater borderlands regions than along the boundary between Mexico and the United States. “Instead of enforcing the boundary between the US and Mexico, BP officers patrolled backcountry trails and conducted traffic stops on borderland roadways to capture unsanctioned Mexican immigrants as they travelled from the border to their final destination.” American citizens of Mexican descent. In addition, Border Patrol officers would use selective immigration law enforcement in exchange for respect.

Migra! is not simply focused on United States Border Patrol history, but the shared history of a bilateral attempt at controlling migration between Mexico and the United States. With the establishment of the United States Border Patrol and the tightening of American immigration control, Mexican officers were forced to patrol emigration. Hernández explains the three main benefits behind Mexican emigration. Emigration to the United States provided an economic opportunity for Mexicans. In postwar Mexico, Mexican laborers suffered low wages and poverty. Emigration was seen as the only option for many Mexican citizens. Next, with many poor laborers emigrating to the United States, the rural countryside was drained of citizens, thus avoiding potential political rebellions. Finally, Mexican labor officials saw emigration as a way to remake Mexican society. Those who crossed the border into the United States for seasonal labor work would learn cultural and economic lessons that could be shared upon their return to Mexico.

Part two of Migra! focuses on the nationalization of the United States Border Patrol during and after World War II. Due to the perceived threat of emigrants from any nation, Border Patrol resources were amplified and law enforcement personnel was diverted toward the Mexican and United States borderlands. With increased patrol of the borderlands, many Mexican migrants were unable to cross the border for seasonal work. This created a shortage of Mexican labor that United States agri-businessmen could not afford. The Bracero Program would serve as a binational program to manage the cross-border migration of Mexican laborers. 4 United States labor officials approached the Mexican Department of Migration about a controlled and managed system of legal migration. The Bracero Program offered Mexicans the opportunity to legally work in the United States. Braceros were healthy, landless, and surplus male agricultural workers from areas in Mexico not experiencing a labor shortage. Braceros met the labor need to American agribusinessmen, but Hernández counters that the Bracero Program was a system of labor exploitation, a project of masculinity and modernization, and a site of gendered resistance. The United States Border Patrol built upon the opportunities provided by the Bracero Program to gain greater control over unsanctioned border crossings. United States Border Patrol officers and Mexican Border Patrol officers instituted a close working relationship to transform the permeable US-Mexican border into a clear boundary. According to Hernández, the Mexico-United States boundary was now seen as a bridge that linked rather than divided.

In part three of Migra!, Hernández explains that the bilateral migration control between Mexican and United States Border Patrolmen created economic problems for American agri-businessmen. Farmers and ranchers rebelled against their loss of influence over migration control. With new Border Patrol officers who were not the “good ol’ boys” of the past United States Border Patrol, the relationship between officers and farmers was marked by tension. Farmers expected cooperation instead of interference from United States Border Patrol officers. The officers were too effective, too inflexible, and too unconcerned with the farmers’ position to turn a blind eye to immigration law 5 enforcement. Farmers in south Texas likened their plight to Southern slave owners’ struggles against Northern aggressors during the Civil War-era. Finally, Hernández details how the United States Border Patrol was about to fight back against farmers’ rebellions to restore control, goodwill, friendship, and legitimacy in the borderlands community.

Turning toward crime control in a momentous shift in the development of the United States Border Patrol, the Border Patrol won the support of Texas and stabilized its position in the Mexico-United States borderlands. With the held of law enforcement strategies such as Operation Wetback and Operation Cloud Burst, the United States Border Patrol triumphed through negotiation, compromise, and retreat. Migra! provides an in-depth study of United States immigration law enforcement. It explains the cross-border dimensions of migration control, and details the Border Patrols growth in the borderlands. Border Patrol policies are shown as intrinsically embedded in the expansion of federal law enforcement in the twentieth century. Hernández concludes that the United States Border Patrol’s rise evolved according to economic demands and nativist anxieties, but also operated according to individual interests and community investments of Border Patrol officers.

Migra! is essential reading for understanding the foundation that the United States Border Patrol was built upon. However, Migra! is short-sighted in that it will not provide readers with an explanation of the current situation in the Mexico-United States borderlands. This is the only downfall in this magnificently written and impeccably researched book.