The failed 1953 raid that shaped the relationship between the government and polygamists

[In early April] when Texas authorities entered the compound of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints near Eldorado, the men, women, and children of the ranch surely thought of a similar raid conducted on their predecessors more than half a century earlier. In 1953, Arizona law-enforcement officials descended on the Short Creek community on the Arizona-Utah border and took nearly 400 Mormon fundamentalists, including 236 children, into custody. The raid on Short Creek backfired, however, by arousing public sympathy for the polygamists, and it shaped the ensuing relationship between state powers and polygamous communities for the next 50 years. But this legacy also ultimately helped lead to the recent events in Eldorado.