{{Short description|1953 mass arrest in Arizona, US}} {{Use mdy dates|date=April 2024}} {{Use American English|date=April 2024}} {{Infobox event | image = Nome Nugget, August 12, 1954, "Bigamy Raid" image.png | image_alt = A black-and-white newspaper photograph published in the August 12, 1954 edition of the Nome Nugget. A crowd of men, dressed in pants and shirts and belts, stand in a courtyard outside a single-story schoolhouse. A pole (possibly a flagpole?) appears to be in the middle. At the edges on the left appear to be men in hats (possibly law enforcement?) and on the edge at the right is what appears to be a woman in a dress. | caption = Men from Short Creek gathered at local school | date = {{start date|1953|07|26}} | location = Short Creek Community | coordinates = {{Coord|36|59|22|N|112|58|41|W|type:city_region:US-AZ|display=inline,title}} | participants = | arrests = 40+ | notes = }} {{LDSpolygamy}}

The '''Short Creek raid''' was an Arizona Department of Public Safety and Arizona National Guard action against Mormon fundamentalists that took place on the morning of July 26, 1953, at Short Creek, Arizona. The Short Creek raid was the "largest mass arrest of polygamists in American history".<ref name=":1">{{Cite magazine |last=Cosgrove |first=Ben |date=April 20, 2014 |title=Photos From a Notorious 1953 Raid on a Polygamist Arizona Town |url=https://time.com/3879612/short-creek-raid-photos-arizona-polygamy-mormon/ |magazine=Time |access-date=May 3, 2024 |archive-date=May 3, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240503070053/https://time.com/3879612/short-creek-raid-photos-arizona-polygamy-mormon/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> Law enforcement arrested polygamist men and removed children from their families. Arizona governor John Howard Pyle had invited journalists to view the raid, and the resulting media coverage from multiple outlets was negative, criticizing the raid's tactics and the intrusion upon children.

==Events== thumb|left|The schoolhouse where the Mormon fundamentalists were during the raid.

Just before dawn on July 26, 1953, 102 Arizona officers of public safety and soldiers from the Arizona National Guard entered Short Creek. The community, which was composed of approximately 400 Mormon fundamentalists, had been tipped off about the planned raid and were found singing hymns in the schoolhouse while the children played outside. The entire community was taken into custody, with the exception of six individuals who were found not to be fundamentalist Mormons.<ref name=":0">{{Harvtxt|Driggs|1990|p=367}}.</ref> ''Time'' called it "the largest mass arrest of polygamists in American history".<ref name=":1" /> Arizona law enforcement took 164 dependent children into custody; a superior court ordered in March 1955 that they be released back to their families.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Driggs|1992|loc=paragraph 10}}.</ref> Numerous Short Creek children ended up in foster care and some were never returned to their families.<ref name=":1" /> Historian D. Michael Quinn argued that the raid's "only American parallel is the federal actions against Native Americans in the nineteenth century."<ref>{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1998|p=12}}.</ref>

==Media attention== Arizona Governor John Howard Pyle initially called the raid "a momentous police action against insurrection"<ref>{{Harvtxt|Bradley|1993|p=207}}.</ref><ref>{{cite news |title= Parallels to Short Creek raid in 1953 are pointed out |url= https://www.deseret.com/2008/4/10/20081346/parallels-to-short-creek-raid-in-1953-are-pointed-out |quote=Pyle called it "a momentous police action against insurrection," and described the fundamentalists as "the foulest conspiracy you could possibly imagine," saying it amounted to white slavery. |work= Deseret News |date= 2008-04-10 |accessdate= 2021-03-27 }}</ref> and described the Mormon fundamentalists as participating in "the foulest conspiracy you could possibly imagine" that was designed to produce "white slaves".<ref name=":0" /> More than 100 reporters had been invited by Pyle to accompany the police to observe the raid. However, the raid and its tactics attracted mostly negative media attention; one newspaper editorialized:

<blockquote> By what stretch of the imagination could the actions of the Short Creek children be classified as insurrection? Were those teenagers playing volleyball in a school yard inspiring a rebellion? Insurrection? Well, if so, an insurrection with diapers and volleyballs!<ref>''Arizona Republic'', 1953-07-28.</ref> </blockquote>

Arizona newspapers variously called the raid "odious" and "un-American".<ref>{{Harvtxt|Van Wagoner|1992|p=294}}.</ref> ''Time'' and ''Newsweek'' also covered the raid.<ref>{{cite news |date=1953-08-03 |title=The Great Love-Nest Raid |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,822887,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081222122030/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,822887,00.html |archive-date=December 22, 2008 |accessdate=2009-01-05 |work=Time magazine}}</ref><ref>"People: The Big Raid", ''Newsweek'', 1953-08-03, p. 26.</ref> One commentator has averred that coverage of the raid was "probably the first time in history that American polygamists had received media coverage that was largely sympathetic."<ref>Stephen Eliot Smith, The "Mormon Question Revisited : Anti-polygamy Laws and the Free Exercise Clause (LL.M. thesis, Harvard Law School, 2005).</ref> When Pyle lost his bid for re-election in 1954 to Democratic candidate Ernest McFarland, Pyle blamed the fallout from the raid as having destroyed his political career.<ref>Abbie Gripman, [http://www.childpro.org/2001-2002%20media/2001-02%20media%2001.htm "Short Creek Raid Remembered"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070817130203/http://www.childpro.org/2001-2002%20media/2001-02%20media%2001.htm |date=August 17, 2007 }}, ''The Miner'', 2002-08-02.</ref>

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) owned the ''Deseret News'',<ref>{{Cite news |last=Barringer |first=Felicity |date=January 7, 2001 |title=Of Church, State, and Journalism |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/07/business/of-church-state-and-journalism.html |work=The New York Times}}</ref> a periodical that supported the raid on Short Creek.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Van Wagoner|1992|pp=294–295}}.</ref> The ''News'' applauded the action as necessary to prevent the fundamentalists from becoming "a cancer of a sort that is beyond hope of human repair."<ref>{{Harvtxt|Van Wagoner|1992|p=295}}.</ref> When the paper later editorialized its support for separating children from their polygamist parents, there was a backlash against the paper and the church by a number of Latter-day Saints, including Juanita Brooks, who complained that the church organization was approving of "such a basically cruel and wicked thing as the taking of little children from their mother."<ref>{{Harvtxt|Van Wagoner|1992|pp=296–297}}.</ref> The Short Creek raid was the last action against polygamous Mormon fundamentalists that has been actively supported by the LDS Church.<ref>Gordon B. Hinckley, president of the LDS Church, has stated that the decision whether or not to prosecute a Mormon polygamist is "entirely in the hands of the civil officers. It's a civil offence. It's in violation of the law. We have nothing to do with it. We're totally distanced from it. And if the state chooses to move on it, that's a responsibility of civil officers." : Gordon B. Hinckley on ''Larry King Live'', CNN tevevision broadcast, 1998-09-08.</ref>{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

==Aftermath== After the Short Creek raid, the fundamentalist Mormon polygamist colony at Short Creek eventually rejuvenated.<ref name="slate-2008">Neil J. Young, [https://slate.com/human-interest/2008/04/the-legacy-of-an-infamous-1953-raid-on-a-polygamous-enclave.html "Short Creek's Long Legacy"], ''Slate'', April 16, 2008.</ref> Short Creek was renamed Colorado City in 1960. In 1991, the Mormon fundamentalists at Colorado City formally established the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS Church). The members of the sect did not face any prosecutions for its polygamous behavior until the late 1990s, when isolated individuals began to be prosecuted.<ref>[http://attorneygeneral.utah.gov/polygamy/The_Primer.pdf "The Primer"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050111224555/http://attorneygeneral.utah.gov/polygamy/The_Primer.pdf |date=2005-01-11 }} – Helping Victims of Domestic Violence and Child Abuse in Polygamous Communities. A joint report from the offices of the Attorneys General of Arizona and Utah.</ref> In 2006, FLDS Church leader Warren Jeffs was placed on the FBI Ten Most Wanted List; he was arrested in 2007 and in 2011 was convicted in Texas of two counts of child sexual abuse<ref>Wagner, Dennis (24 February 2011). "Jailed sect leader retakes legal control of church". USA Today. McLean, Virginia. Retrieved 6 May 2019</ref> and sentenced to life in prison.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/08/09/texas.polygamist.jeffs/index.html|title=Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs sentenced to life in prison|website=CNN}}</ref>

On 3 April 2008, following allegations of physical and sexual abuse by an unidentified caller who described herself as a 16-year-old girl, law enforcement officers raided a FLDS compound Jeffs had founded in Texas called the YFZ Ranch.<ref>{{cite news | url= http://www.thespectrum.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080405/NEWS01/804050310 | archive-url= https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20131021182913/http://www.thespectrum.com/needlogin?type=login&redirecturl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thespectrum.com%2Fapps%2Fpbcs.dll%2Farticle%3FAID%3D%2F20080405%2FNEWS01%2F804050310 | url-status= dead | archive-date= October 21, 2013 | title= 52 children taken during raid | publisher= The Eldorado Success | date= April 4, 2008 | accessdate= 2008-04-06 }}</ref> As of 8 April, a total of 416 children had been removed from the compound by authorities.<ref name=CNN2008-04-07>{{cite news|url=http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/04/07/texas.ranch/ |title=Texas takes legal custody of 401 sect children |publisher=CNN |date=April 7, 2008 |accessdate=2008-04-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080411050954/http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/04/07/texas.ranch/ |archive-date=2008-04-11 |url-status=dead }}</ref> A former member of the FLDS Church, Carolyn Jessop, arrived on-site 6 April and stated her opinion that the action in Texas was unlike the Short Creek raid.<ref>{{cite news | url= http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_8835442 | title= People who have left sect go to Texas to help | publisher= The Salt Lake Tribune | date= April 7, 2008 | first= Brooke | last= Adams | accessdate= 2008-04-07 | url-status= dead | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080408041857/http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_8835442 | archive-date= April 8, 2008 }}</ref> Others, however, have drawn direct connections between the two events.<ref>{{cite news | last= Adams | first= Brooke | url= http://www.sltrib.com/polygamy/ci_8887264 | title= Polygamous crackdown echoes 1953 Short Creek arrests | publisher= The Salt Lake Tribune | date= 11 April 2008 | accessdate= 2008-04-18 | url-status= dead | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080412122404/http://www.sltrib.com/polygamy/ci_8887264 | archive-date= 12 April 2008 }}</ref><ref>{{cite news | url= http://www.sltrib.com/polygamy/ci_8908639 | title= Polygamy: Where religious liberty ends | publisher= The Salt Lake Tribune | date= 13 April 2008 | accessdate= 2008-04-18 | url-status= dead | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080414230940/http://www.sltrib.com/polygamy/ci_8908639 | archive-date= 14 April 2008 }}</ref>

==See also== {{Portal|Arizona|Latter Day Saints}} * Hildale, Utah * Joseph White Musser: Mormon fundamentalist leader during the raid * Short Creek Community

==References== {{reflist}}

== Sources == * {{Cite book |last=Bradley |first=Martha Sonntag |year=1993 |title=Kidnapped from That Land: The Government Raids on the Short Creek Polygamists |series=Publications in Mormon Studies |publisher=University of Utah Press |isbn=0-87480-528-7}} * {{Cite journal |last=Driggs |first=Ken |date=Spring 1990 |title=After the Manifesto: Modern Polygamy and Fundamentalist Mormons |journal=Journal of Church and State |volume=32 |issue=2 |pages=367–389 |doi=10.1093/jcs/32.2.367}} * {{cite journal |last=Driggs |date=Winter 1992 |first=Ken |title=Who Shall Raise the Children? Vera Black and the Rights of Polygamous Utah Parents |url=http://utahhistory.sdlhost.com/#/item/000000031000941/view/29 |archive-url=https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20131021165803/http://utahhistory.sdlhost.com/#/item/000000031000941/view/29 |url-status=dead |url-access=subscription |journal=Utah Historical Quarterly |volume=60 |issue=1 |pages=27–46 |doi=10.2307/45063508 |jstor=45063508 |s2cid=254436238 |access-date=January 10, 2014 |archive-date=October 21, 2013}} * {{Cite journal |last=Quinn |first=D.&nbsp;Michael |date=Summer 1998 |title=Plural Marriage and Mormon Fundamentalism |journal=Dialogue |volume=31 |issue=2 |pages=1–68 |doi=10.2307/45226443 |jstor=45226443 }} * {{Cite book |last=Van Wagoner |first=Richard S. |year=1992 |title=Mormon Polygamy: A History |edition=3rd |publisher=Signature Books |isbn=1-56085-057-4 |language=en}}

==External links== * {{Cite magazine |first=John |last=Florea |year=2011 |orig-date=January 1, 1944 |title=Rare: LIFE with Polygamists, 1944: Meet the [Rulon Clark#93; Allreds |url=http://www.life.com/gallery/49551/rare-life-with-polygamists-1944#index/1 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111118073048/http://www.life.com/gallery/49551/rare-life-with-polygamists-1944#index/1 |archive-date=November 18, 2011 |url-status=dead |type=photo gallery: Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images |magazine=Life |access-date=August 18, 2011}} * [https://web.archive.org/web/20140421223547/http://life.time.com/history/short-creek-raid-photos-arizona-polygamy-mormon/#1 Photos From a Notorious 1953 Raid on a Polygamist Arizona Town] – Life archive * [https://web.archive.org/web/20080426011725/http://extras.sltrib.com/specials/polygamy/raidaccount.asp Police raid Arizona polygamist enclave], a special report by ''The Salt Lake Tribune'' – "[a] historical account of a radio address given by Arizona Governor Howard Pyle shortly after the Short Creek raid in 1953."

{{FLDS Church}} {{Apostolic United Brethren}}

Category:1953 crimes in the United States Category:1953 in Arizona Category:1953 in Christianity Category:20th-century Mormonism Category:Apostolic United Brethren Category:Christianity and children Category:Christianity and law in the 20th century Category:Crimes in Arizona Category:Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Category:History of Mohave County, Arizona Category:Imprisonment and detention in the United States Category:July 1953 in the United States Category:Latter Day Saint movement in Arizona Category:Law enforcement in Arizona Category:Law enforcement operations in the United States Category:Mormon fundamentalism Category:United States law and polygamy in Mormonism