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.” 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. But 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.
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
