#miners

What happens when a town deports nearly 1,200 people—and then never speaks of it again? In today's new Longreads essay, Masha Hamilton returns to Bisbee, Arizona, where in 1917 a posse of 2,000 vigilantes rounded up striking miners and drove them into the desert by cattle car. Her great-grandfather escaped over the mountains. The family never spoke of it.

Names. In a town that had sorted her family with slurs and lists, keeping her name was its own small strike. It was her way of saying: We are here, and we are not done yet.

Without text:

Resting with load at the head of the slope. Small boy is Jo Puma, a nipper. Jo's mother showed me the passport which shows Jo to be 14 years old, but he has no school certificate, although working in the mine. Pittston, Pa.

Record Group 102: Records of the Children's BureauSeries: National Child Labor Committee Photographs taken by Lewis Hine