| New museum commemorates Short Creek raid 1953 raid remembered in Colorado City | |
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By Jane Zhang The Spectrum | |
COLORADO CITY, Ariz. -- Following a blast of dynamite on the hill the townsfolk gathered in the wee hours at the Short Creek School, singing the songs of Zion and waiting for hundreds of Arizona police officers to arrive. "Have you had the heart to take this screaming child from his mother?" their leader, Leroy S. Johnson, had challenged the policemen. "We are bothering no one. Why don't you leave us alone?" But Arizona Gov. Howard Pyle was determined to quell "the foulest conspiracy you could imagine," where teenage girls were involved in a community-wide "shameful mockery of marriage." Thirty-one men would be jailed and tried while their wives and children were taken away for 2 1/2 years in foster care. The Short Creek Raid would cost Pyle his re-election. And 50 years later, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints -- an offshoot of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- has become one of the largest and fastest-growing polygamist groups in America, with its population exploding by 40 percent in the 1990s. On Saturday, about 350 residents from the Short Creek valley -- now renamed Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah -- attended the opening ceremony of a museum dedicated to the 1953 raid. A monument was also erected in front of the museum, which is housed inside the renovated Short Creek School. The museum displays magazine articles, photos, illustrations and handmade crafts such as "Uncle Edson Jessop's butter churn" and "Flour sifter made by Uncle Fred Jessop in 1955." Since the raid attracted national attention in 1953, Edson Jessop told his story in Colliers magazine, answering "Why I have wives." Life magazine, on the other hand, depicted "the lonely men of Short Creek," who learned to live when their wives were away. The Short Creek museum was funded by community donations -- $50,000 from Colorado City and an Arizona state grant worth at least $20,000, said Colorado City Mayor Dan Barlow. Instead of "a museum of the relics," he added, the Short Creek will become a growing, "living museum" to remind younger residents of Colorado City's history. "It means an opportunity for my children and the community to not forget the sacrifices parents made for them, and opportunities and liberties we now enjoy because our parents stood firm," said Barlow, who, at age 21, was also taken in the raid and jailed in Kingman for about a week. He narrated an account of the 1953 raid for the ceremony, amid applause from clean-shaven men and women in long dresses who sat or stood separately on the lawn. Some young girls rocked their bundled baby sisters or brothers in the sun. Benjamin Bistline, who is not a polygamist but has lived in Colorado City most of his life, said the ceremony was not to glorify polygamy but to tell the experience. At 18 in 1953, he was not arrested during the raid. "It's part of our history -- it's like Bunkerville," said Bistline, who has self-published a book called "The Polygamists, a History of Colorado City." "They have a story to tell. There's two sides to a story." As "a full-fledged American," said Louis Barlow, Dan Barlow's eldest brother, said he felt "thankful to be different." "We are not, as Uncle Roy (Leroy Johnson) said, law breakers," Louis Barlow, who was arrested at the raid, told the crowd. "We are law defenders and supporters. We believe in the respect of law and order." Since the 1879 ruling of Reynolds vs. the United States, however, the U.S. Supreme Court hasn't changed its stand on polygamy, holding common laws higher than religious beliefs. The U.S. Congress outlawed polygamy with the 1882 Edmunds Act. The Utah Legislature in March enacted a child bigamy law. Arizona doesn't have a statute against polygamy, even though the state Constitution has a clause prohibiting the practice. Both Utah and Arizona prosecutors are investigating what they say is tax and welfare fraud in Colorado City and Hildale. But for 50 years, no massive raid has followed in the twin towns, although occasional cases have been filed charging bigamy and abuses of women and children. Cases are hard to persecute, prosecutors say, because of lack of witnesses or a paper trail in the often closed and secret society. Asked about polygamy at a town hall meeting in St. George in April, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said he needed evidence of abuse for any polygamy charges. Hatch said he would not "sit here and judge anybody just because they live differently than me." Hatch had played the organ in a church building in Colorado City, said Jeannine Holt, who attended Saturday's ceremony representing Hatch. "I shed a lot of tears putting myself in (the shoes of) the mother of children," said Holt, who has three kids. In 1953, however, Gov. Pyle called the fundamentalist group in Short Creek a rebellion engendering "the lives and future of 263 children -- the product and the victims of the foulest conspiracy you could imagine," in The Arizona Republic. Dan Barlow, who would not let The Spectrum talk to ceremony participants, said "we support the law and God." "A very traumatic experience" for Short Creek, he added, the raid was "the biggest conspiracy that happened in the state of Arizona." The governor and some judges pondered the charges before the men were put on trial, Dan Barlow said. Among the 31 men arrested were one bachelor and 10 men who had only one wife, he said. Traced to Joseph Smith, founder of the LDS church, he said, polygamy has been practiced for more than 150 years. After receiving a revelation, LDS church President Wilford Woodruff issued a Manifesto in 1890 to abolish plural marriages, a decision that helped the territory achieve statehood. Since then, the LDS church has officially excommunicated members who practice polygamy. | |
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TheSpectrum.com Originally published July 26, 2003 | |
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