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Denver is building a new justice center, and the mayor
wants to name it after Ralph L. Carr, governor of Colorado
from 1939 to 1943, and a champion of justice for
all.
Others support naming it for Dale Tooley, Denver
District Attorney from 1973 to 1983.
On one hand, this is a Denver facility, not a state facility, so it makes more sense to name it after a Denver figure like Tooley. On the other hand, something important in Colorado should be named after Ralph Carr.
There is a Carr in Colorado. It's along the Union
Pacific Railroad a few miles south of the Wyoming line. I
remember visiting it in 1970 when Martha and I lived in
Pierce while attending college in Greeley. Pierce is just
south of Nunn, which has the most notable landmark in that
part of Colorado: the water tower with Watch Nunn
Grow.
Once some kids climbed up there and painted
Weeds
under the other words, but I digress.
The Carr north of Nunn was not named after Gov. Ralph L. Carr, though. It was named after Robert E. Carr, a railroad official when that line was still the Denver Pacific before it was acquired by the Union Pacific in 1880.
Ralph L. Carr was born in 1887 in Rosita, a mining camp in the Wet Mountains of Custer County. He grew up in another mining town, Cripple Creek, and got a law degree from the University of Colorado. He went back to the boondocks -- Victor, Trinidad, Antonito -- where he edited newspapers and practiced law before getting into politics.
So the man was a journalist, lawyer and politician -- three of the most despised professions in modern America. What did he do that we should name something significant after him?
Carr, a Republican who opposed the growing federal bureaucracy of the New Deal, was elected governor in 1938 and re-elected in 1940. On Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
The resulting conflict is now often called the good
war,
but it had an ugly side on the West Coast, home to
thousands of Japanese immigrants and their descendants who
were American citizens.
There was a fear of subversion, along with ample racism
and a desire to pick up property on the cheap at forced
sales. On Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt
signed an executive order allowing the Army to designate
military zones
from which any or all persons
could be excluded for any reason. The West Coast was
declared such a zone, and people of Japanese ancestry were
to be excluded and forced to move to relocation
camps
in the interior of the country.
Most Western governors did not want them. Wyoming Gov.
Nels Smith said If you bring Japanese into my state, I
promise they will be hanging from every tree.
Carr opposed the relocation. If a majority may seize
a minority and place them in
jails today, Carr said,
then every minority group
may expect the majority to treat them the same way. He
also said that
Our Constitution guarantees to every
man, before he is deprived of his freedom, that there be
charges and proof of misconduct in a fair hearing.
His objections were ignored, so he welcomed the
internees to Colorado. They were held at Camp Amache near
Lamar, and Carr told Coloradans to treat them fairly. If
you harm them, you must harm me. I was brought up in a
small town where I knew the shame and dishonor of race
hatred.
He did what was right. He paid for it at the polls, losing the 1942 election to Big Ed Johnson, who reflected the bigotry of the day.
Carr went back to practicing law, and got the Republican nomination for governor in 1950. He died shortly before the election, and the Republicans picked Gunnison rancher Dan Thornton to replace him on the ballot; Thornton has a fair-sized city named for him.
But Carr, Colo., isn't named for Ralph Carr, and
something in Colorado should be. He stood for the American
way amid panic and frenzy. To date, there hasn't even been
a biography, but that will soon change. Adam Schrager, a
reporter for KUSA-TV in Denver, has written one, The
Principled Politician: The Story of Ralph Carr,
which
will be published early next year.
I look forward to reading it, because I'd love to learn more about Carr. And I look forward to seeing something named after him, whether it's the new Denver Justice Center, or something else -- after all, we have two 14ers named for A.D. Wilson, an 1874 surveyor, and one ought to be enough.
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