The Short Creek raid is the name given to Arizona

Arizona

Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...

 state police

Police

The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...

 and Arizona National Guard

Arizona National Guard

The Arizona National Guard is the National Guard of the American state of Arizona. It consists of the Arizona Army National Guard and the Arizona Air National Guard.Both components are part of the Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs...

 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

Mass arrest

A mass arrest occurs when the police apprehend large numbers of suspects at once. This sometimes occurs at illegal protests. Some mass arrests are also used in an effort combat gang activity. This is sometimes controversial, and lawsuits sometimes result...

 of polygamists

Polygamy

Polygamy is a marriage which includes more than two partners...

 in American history. At the time, it was described as "the largest mass arrest of men and women in modern American history."

Events

Just before dawn on July 26, 1953, 102 Arizona state police officers 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 hymn

Hymn

A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification...

s 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. Among those taken into custody were 263 children. One hundred fifty of the children who were taken into custody were not permitted to return to their parents for more than two years, and some parents never regained custody of their children.

Public and media reaction

Arizona Governor John Howard Pyle

John Howard Pyle

John Howard Pyle was the ninth Governor of the U.S. state of Arizona, serving from 1951 to 1955. He was a Republican...

 initially called the raid "a momentous police action against insurrection" and described the Mormon fundamentalists as participating in "the foulest conspiracy you could possibly imagine" that was designed to produce "white slaves." 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:

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!

In the same week that the Korean War

Korean War

The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...

 Armistice Agreement was signed, the raid achieved notoriety in media across the United States, including articles in Time

Time (magazine)

Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

and Newsweek

Newsweek

Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...

, with many media outlets describing the raid as "odious" or "un-American." One commentator has suggested that commentary of the raid was "probably the first time in history that American polygamists had received media coverage that was largely sympathetic." Another has suggested that the raid's "only American parallel is the federal actions against Native Americans in the nineteenth century."

When Pyle lost his bid for re-election in 1954 to Democratic

Democratic Party (United States)

The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

 candidate Ernest McFarland

Ernest McFarland

Ernest William McFarland was an American politician and, with Warren Atherton, is considered one of the "Fathers of the G.I. Bill". He is the only Arizonan to serve in the highest office in all three branches of Arizonan government—two at the state level, one at the federal level...

, Pyle blamed the fallout from the raid as having destroyed his political career.

Support from LDS Church

One of the few media outlets to applaud the raid was the Salt Lake City-based Deseret News, which was owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). The News applauded the action as a needed response to prevent the fundamentalists from becoming "a cancer of a sort that is beyond hope of human repair." 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

Juanita Brooks

Juanita Pulsipher Brooks was an American historian and author, specializing in the American West and Mormon history, including books related to the Mountain Meadows massacre, to which her ancestor Dudley Leavitt was sometimes linked.-Biography:Born Juanita Leone Leavitt, Brooks was born and raised...

, who complained that the church organ was approving of "such a basically cruel and wicked thing as the taking of little children from their mother." The Short Creek raid was the last action against polygamous Mormon fundamentalists that has been actively supported by the LDS Church.

Aftermath

After the Short Creek raid, the fundamentalist Mormon polygamist colony at Short Creek eventually rejuvenated. Short Creek was renamed Colorado City

Colorado City, Arizona

Colorado City is a town in Mohave County, Arizona, United States, and is located in a region known as the Arizona Strip. According to 2006 Census Bureau estimates, the population of the town was 4,607...

 in 1960. In 1991, the Mormon fundamentalists at Colorado City formally established the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is one of the largest Mormon fundamentalist denominations and one of the largest organizations in the United States whose members practice polygamy. The FLDS Church emerged in the early twentieth century when its founding members left...

 (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. In 2006, FLDS Church leader Warren Jeffs

Warren Jeffs

Warren Steed Jeffs was the president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints . In 2011, Jeffs was convicted of two felony counts of child sexual assault....

 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.

On 3 April 2008, following allegations of physical

Physical abuse

Physical abuse is abuse involving contact intended to cause feelings of intimidation, injury, or other physical suffering or bodily harm.-Forms of physical abuse:*Striking*Punching*Belting*Pushing, pulling*Slapping*Whipping*Striking with an object...

 and sexual abuse

Sexual abuse

Sexual abuse, also referred to as molestation, is the forcing of undesired sexual behavior by one person upon another. When that force is immediate, of short duration, or infrequent, it is called sexual assault. The offender is referred to as a sexual abuser or molester...

 by an unidentified caller who claimed to be a 16-year-old girl, law enforcement officers raided a FLDS compound Jeffs had founded in Texas called the YFZ Ranch

YFZ Ranch

The YFZ Ranch, also known as the Yearning for Zion Ranch, is a community which housed as many as 700 people just outside of Eldorado in Schleicher County, Texas, United States. It is owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints . It is about southwest of San Angelo and ...

. As of 8 April, a total of 416 children had been removed from the compound by authorities. A former member of the FLDS Church, Carolyn Jessop

Carolyn Jessop

Carolyn Jessop is a former Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints member who wrote Escape, an autobiographical account of her upbringing in the polygamist sect and later flight from that community. She is the cousin, by marriage, of Flora Jessop, another former FLDS member and...

, arrived on-site 6 April and stated her opinion that the action in Texas was unlike the Short Creek raid. Others, however, have drawn direct connections between the two events.

See also

• Joseph White Musser: leader of the Mormon fundamentalist Short Creek community during the raid

External links

• Police raid Arizona polygamist enclave, a special report by The Salt Lake Tribune
  The Salt Lake Tribune
  The Salt Lake Tribune is the largest-circulated daily newspaper in the U.S. city of Salt Lake City. It is distributed by Newspaper Agency Corporation, which also distributes the Deseret News. The Tribune — or "Trib," as it is locally known — is currently owned by the Denver-based MediaNews Group....
  
  -- "[a]n historical account of a radio address given by Arizona Governor Howard Pyle shortly after the Short Creek raid in 1953."
• Short Creek Mormon Raid - LIFE Magazine archive