Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
MISSOULA: MONTANA'S MOST LIBERAL TOWN?
In 1992, when I decided to move to Montana and was vacillating between Missoula
and Bozeman, my older brother broke it down according to an age-old and surpris-
ingly right-on generalization when he asked: “Are you more interested in cowboys
or hippies?”
Missoula has long been associated with a hippy lifestyle (the herbs store is one
of the busiest shops in town), but its origins as a center for labor movements and
civil disobedience go back more than a century. In 1909 a pregnant 19-year-old by
the name of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn came to Missoula on behalf of the Industrial
Workers of the World to organize the region's lumber and migrant farm workers. She
and her husband organized heated rallies around town. Eventually city leaders passed
a law making public speaking on Missoula streets a crime. Flynn's plan to start a
freedom-of-speech battle across the Northwest worked, and before long people will-
ing to be arrested for the cause arrived by the trainload. City jails quickly filled and
overflowed, forcing the city to back down and reinstate the right to speak publicly.
Among the Missoula locals who have contributed to its reputation was Jeannette
Rankin, in 1916 the first woman to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives,
two years after Montana granted women the right to vote but four years
before
the
19th Amendment gave women across the country the right to vote. Among the early
graduates from the University of Montana in 1902, Rankin was a tried-and-true pa-
cifist, casting one of 50 votes against the resolution to enter World War I in 1917 and
the lone vote against entering World War II, a move that sealed her political demise.
Rankin famously stated, “You can no more win a war than you can win an earth-
quake.” She was a founding vice president of the American Civil Liberties Union
and an outspoken antiwar activist during the Vietnam War era.
The university has also contributed significantly to Missoula's reputation for its
liberal leanings. When the school was dedicated in 1895, speaker William Fisk
Sanders implored, “Hold not up to these pupils hopes of money or office . . . their
high service is to save the world from shame and thrall.” In 1915, the removal of
the University of Montana's popular president, Edwin Craighead, triggered the first
of many organized protests on campus, including major incidents around freedom of
speech, freedom of the press, civil rights, and the Vietnam War.
