A shared world in Tres Alamos -- Race and conflict in tombstone -- The white man's camp in Bisbee -- "A better man for us" in Warren -- Mormons and Mexicans in the San Pedro River Valley -- Women and men in the Sulphur Springs and San Simon Valleys -- The Bisbee deportation -- One country, two races
Summary
Benton-Cohen explores the daily lives and shifting racial boundaries between groups as disparate as Apache resistance fighters, Chinese merchants, Mexican-American homesteaders, Midwestern dry farmers, Mormon polygamists, Serbian miners, New York mine managers, and Anglo women reformers. Racial categories once grew sharper as industrial mining dominated the region. Ideas about home, family, work and wages, manhood and womanhood all shaped how people thought about race. Mexicans were legally white, but were they suitable marriage partners for "Americans"? Why were Italian miners described as living "as no white man can"? By showing the multiple possibilities for racial meanings in America, Benton-Cohen's insightful and informative work challenges our assumptions about race and national identity
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-348) and index