Video
Tucsons Pueblo Center Redevelopment Project
The Pueblo Center Redevelopment Project (PCRP) in Tucson, approved by voters on March 1, 1966, marked Arizona’s first major urban renewal initiative. It targeted an 80-acre area south of Congress Street to Fourteenth Street, between Granada/El Paso Avenues and Church/Stone Avenues, which was the state’s most densely populated zone and home to large African American, Chinese American, and Mexican American communities. City officials displaced residents and demolished homes and businesses to clear land for new civic structures, including the Tucson Convention Center, with demolition starting in May 1967 and groundbreaking occurring in 1969 after funding delays. This project reshaped Tucson’s Southside, prioritizing modernization over existing neighborhoods.
The Bisbee Deportation of 1917
The Bisbee Deportation of 1917 stands as one of the most notorious labor conflicts in U.S. history, occurring in the copper mining town of Bisbee, Arizona. On July 12, armed vigilantes—deputized by Cochise County Sheriff Harry C. Wheeler and backed by Phelps Dodge executives—rounded up approximately 1,300 striking miners, supporters, and bystanders amid a walkout organized by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) demanding better wages, safety, and an end to discrimination against Mexican American and immigrant workers. The men, many not even strikers, were herded to a local ballpark, then loaded into cattle cars of the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad for a grueling 16-hour journey without food or water to Hermanas, New Mexico, where they were abandoned penniless. A presidential commission later condemned the action as wholly illegal, yet no perpetrators faced prosecution, highlighting corporate power over labor rights during World War I-era copper production demands.
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