Category Archives: 1946-2014

Legalized Midwifery: Montana Leads the Way

1946-2014, Activism, Family, Medicine, Work, , ,
The argument over home birth midwifery played out in the newspapers as well as in the court and the legislature. The Missoulian published this article, "Midwifery on trial in Montana," on January 4, 1989.010489
The argument over home birth midwifery played out in the newspapers as well as in the court and the legislature. The Missoulian published this article on January 4, 1989.

Although Montana midwives had a long history of working with doctors to serve the needs of women in their communities, their profession—and especially the idea of home birth—faded from mainstream acceptance as the hospital replaced the home as the “normal” birthing location. By the 1950s, a majority of women across the United States delivered their babies in hospitals. Even as hospital births became more common, midwives continued to assume that pregnancy and delivery were nonmedical events. Physicians, on the other hand, began to insist that medical assistance and access to technology were necessary for safe deliveries.

The conflict crystalized in 1988 when the Montana Board of Medical Examiners, at the request of a Missoula physician, pressed charges against a Montana midwife, Dolly Browder, and initiated a court case, accusing her of violating the Medical Practice Act by practicing medicine without a license.

After a three-day civil trial, the Missoula judge ruled against Browder. He concluded that she was practicing medicine and banned her from assisting pregnant women. The case concluded in January 1989, just as the Fifty-first session of the Montana legislature convened. With the looming threat of additional lawsuits, the Montana Midwifery Association hired a lobbyist, raised funds, and organized supporters. Their goal: To change the Montana Medical Practice Act to exempt home birth midwifery. Continue reading Legalized Midwifery: Montana Leads the Way →

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, the Church Universal and Triumphant, and the Creation of Utopia in Montana’s Paradise Valley

1946-2014, Biography, Religion, , ,
Elizabeth Claire Prophet poses on Elizabeth Clare Prophet poses in Paradise Valley, on Church Universal and Triumphant property, in this early 1990s photograph. Courtesy Bozeman Chronicle
Elizabeth Clare Prophet poses in Paradise Valley, on Church Universal and Triumphant property, in this early 1990s photograph. Courtesy Bozeman Chronicle

Elizabeth Clare Prophet was a magnetic—and polarizing—New Age religious leader based in Montana’s Paradise Valley. At the height of her career, her teachings attracted an estimated fifty thousand adherents, her predictions of a coming nuclear apocalypse garnered national media attention, and her survivalist approach alienated many of her Paradise Valley neighbors. The story of Prophet and the Church Universal and Triumphant illustrates the growing popularity of New Age mysticism in the late twentieth century. It also serves as an interesting (if somewhat sensational) case study for how the Montana landscape can be imbued with spiritual meaning.

Elizabeth Clare Wulf was born in New Jersey in 1940. Though raised by nonreligious parents, she became a Christian Scientist at the age of nine. While attending Boston University in 1959, she met Mark Prophet, who through his group, The Summit Lighthouse, held seminars on ideas about spiritual enlightenment that dated back to the late 1800s. After marrying Prophet, Elizabeth joined her husband as a leader of The Summit Lighthouse, then took control of the group after his death. In 1975 she founded the Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT), which was based on Lighthouse teachings, which combined elements of mysticism, Christianity, Eastern spirituality, self-sufficiency, patriotism, and anticommunism.  Continue reading Elizabeth Clare Prophet, the Church Universal and Triumphant, and the Creation of Utopia in Montana’s Paradise Valley →

Julia Ereaux Schultz, Health Advocate and Cultural Champion

1900-1945, 1946-2014, Arts & Culture, Biography, Cultural Preservation, Medicine, Native American, Politics, Women's Organizations, Work, ,
Shown here celebrating her 100th birthday, Julia Schultz lived to be 104. MHS Photo Archives 944-893
Shown here celebrating her 100th birthday, Julia Schultz lived to be 104. MHS Photo Archives 944-893

Born in 1872 on the South Fork of the Sun River, Julia Ereaux was the daughter of a French immigrant, Lazare “Curley” Ereaux, and his A’a Ni Nin (White Clay—also known as Gros Ventre) wife, Pipe Woman. Julia, whose White Clay name was Sweet Pine, grew up in a bicultural family and was fluent in French, English, and Gros Ventre. She became a rancher and a newspaper correspondent, even as she served as a Fort Belknap tribal council member, promoted traditional indigenous arts, and worked to prevent the spread of tuberculosis on the reservation. A founding member of one of the first Indian women’s clubs in Montana, Schultz devoted her life to the well-being of the A’a Ni Nin people.

By the time Julia was born, her parents had already lost two children to a smallpox epidemic that took the lives of hundreds of American Indians in what is now north-central Montana. Along with several other mixed-heritage families, the Ereaux family settled near Augusta and took up farming. They were so poor, Julia later recalled, that her mother had to cut and thresh the grain by hand.

Julia received her schooling at St. Peter’s Mission School, an Indian boarding school in the Sun River Valley, which was attended by many Blackfeet and Métis children. Run by Ursuline nuns, the school also employed two famous Montanans during Julia’s years there: Mary Fields, a former slave who worked as handyman and gardener for the school and who became Montana’s first female postal carrier, and Louis Riel, one of the Métis leaders of the Northwest Rebellion of 1885. Continue reading Julia Ereaux Schultz, Health Advocate and Cultural Champion →

Feminism Personified: Judy Smith and the Women’s Movement

1946-2014, Activism, Biography, Feminism, Women's Organizations, ,
Before moving to Missoula, Judy Smith was active in the feminist movement in Texas. She poses here with her mother at the first Texas statewide women’s reproductive rights conference at the University of Texas Student Union in Austin in 1974
Before moving to Missoula, Judy Smith was active in the feminist movement in Texas. She poses here with her mother at the first Texas statewide women’s reproductive rights conference at the University of Texas Student Union in Austin in 1971. Photo by Alan Pogue, courtesy The Rag, http://www.theragblog.com/alice-embree-and-phil-primm-remembering-judy-smith/

Judy Smith was a fixture in Montana’s feminist community from her arrival in the state in 1973 until her death in 2013. Her four decades of activism in Missoula encapsulated the “second wave” of American feminism.

Like many of her contemporaries, Smith followed the “classic” trajectory from the student protest, civil rights, and anti-Vietnam War movements of the 1960s into the women’s movement of the 1970s. While pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Texas, Smith joined a reproductive rights group. Because abortion was banned in the United States, she sometimes ferried desperate women over the border to Mexico to procure abortions. Knowing her actions were illegal, Smith consulted a local lawyer, Sarah Weddington. These informal conversations sparked the idea of challenging Texas’s anti-abortion statutes, culminating in the landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade. From this success, Smith learned that “any action that you take . . . can build into something.”

Smith brought her conviction that grassroots activism was the key to social change with her to Missoula. As she later characterized her approach, she simply looked around her adopted hometown and demanded: “What do women need here? Let’s get it going. Get it done.” Continue reading Feminism Personified: Judy Smith and the Women’s Movement →

More Than Just a Happy Housewife: Home Demonstration Clubs in Post-World War II Montana

1946-2014, Agriculture, Women's Organizations, Work, , , , , , ,
Members of the Fort Peck Friendly Homemakers Club prepare to serve food at a fund-raiser for a children’s Christmas party, circa 1948. Early clubs on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation were segregated by race, but the Extension Office worked to integrate clubs in the 1960s.
Members of the Fort Peck Friendly Homemakers Club prepare to serve food at a fund-raiser for a children’s Christmas party, circa 1948. Early clubs on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation were segregated by race, but the Extension Office worked to integrate clubs in the 1960s. Roosevelt County Extension Service, “Annual Report of Cooperative Extension Work, 1949.” 22.

Home Demonstration clubs—also known as Homemakers clubs—were created in 1914 as part of the Cooperative Extension Service in Agriculture and Home Economics. Their goal was to bring “expert” instruction on the subjects of home economics and agriculture to rural women. Originally intended to “uplift” rural women through professional instruction, Home Demonstration clubs became a way for Montana women to socialize and learn from one another and to serve their communities. While the clubs attempted to reinforce conservative domestic values, the experiences of Home Demonstration clubwomen in the post-World War II era suggest that farm women adapted them to their own ends.

At their inception, Homemakers clubs reflected a Progressive-era faith that expertise and government intervention could improve American society. Targeting women who were unable to attend college, Home Demonstration agents instructed women in “scientific” methods of child rearing, food preservation, cooking, consumerism, nutrition, women’s and family health, and home and farm management. Department of Agriculture employee Mary E. Creswell expressed optimism that proper instruction would improve the lives—and character—of rural women: “With increased opportunity for training, . . . and with the opportunity for permanent service in her county, the work of the county woman agent will continue to be the most potent influence for progressive and happy country homes.”

Continue reading More Than Just a Happy Housewife: Home Demonstration Clubs in Post-World War II Montana →

Rose Gordon: Daughter of a Slave and Small-Town Activist

1900-1945, 1946-2014, African-American, Biography, Discrimination, Medicine, Work, , ,
Businesswoman and writer Rose Gordon poses with her brother, Taylor, in front of her White Sulphur Springs home, on May 1960, MHS Photo Archives 951-717
Businesswoman and writer Rose Gordon poses with her brother, Taylor, in front of her White Sulphur Springs home, on May 1960, MHS Photo Archives 951-717

Rose Gordon was born 1883 in White Sulphur Springs to a former slave and a black Scottish-born immigrant. Her commitment to service makes her life notable, while the grace and advocacy she showed in navigating the racist currents common to small-town Montana sheds light on the African American experience.

Rose’s father, John, came to Montana Territory by steamboat in 1881 to cook on the mining frontier; her mother, Mary, followed a year later. The family purchased a home in White Sulphur Springs, Meagher County, where John worked as a chef for the town’s primary hotel. At the time the family settled there, Meagher County was home to some forty-six hundred people, including thirty African Americans.

In the 1890s John Gordon was killed in a train accident, leaving Mary Gordon to support five children by cooking, doing laundry, and providing nursing care for area families. Despite the long hours she gave to helping her mother, Rose graduated from high school as valedictorian. Her graduation oration, “The Progress of the Negro Race,” ended with praise for the African American educator Booker T. Washington, and Rose’s life thereafter gave testimony to Washington’s emphasis on self-improvement, self-reliance, education, and non-confrontational relationships with white people.

Continue reading Rose Gordon: Daughter of a Slave and Small-Town Activist →

Speaking for Those Who Could Not Speak for Themselves: The Journalism and Activism of Gretchen Garber Billings

1946-2014, Activism, Biography, Politics, , , , , ,
Gretchen Billings, shown here addressing an unidentified national convention, spoke "for people who had no voice," just as she did through the aptly named People's Voice, the Helena-based newspaper she ran with her husband Harry. Montana State University Library, Merrill G. Burlingame Special Collections, Collection 2095. Series 8, Box 18
Gretchen Billings, shown here addressing an unidentified national convention, spoke “for people who had no voice,” just as she did through the aptly named People’s Voice, the Helena-based newspaper she ran with her husband Harry. Montana State University Library, Merrill G. Burlingame Special Collections, Collection 2095. Series 8, Box 18

Gretchen Garber Billings was a journalist and activist who dedicated her career to advancing progressive causes in Montana. Born in Whitefish but raised in the Seattle area, Billings returned to her native state after World War II to work as a journalist and editor for the People’s Voice, an independent, cooperatively owned, left-leaning newspaper based in Helena. At the Voice, Billings spent almost two decades fighting for those she believed were underrepresented in politics and government: “We felt the mandate was to defend the general welfare,” she said, “to be the devil’s advocate, and to speak for people who had no voice: for prisoners, for civil rights, and for people who had no strong organizational structures to defend them.”

The People’s Voice was created at the end of the New Deal as an alternative to the Anaconda Company–controlled dailies that then dominated Montana’s news industry. Among the paper’s “founding fathers” were prominent Montana politicians like James Murray and Lee Metcalf, and its values reflected what historians Michael Malone and Dianne G. Doughtery termed the “farmer-labor brand of progressivism” that thrived in the state in the first half of the twentieth century.

Gretchen’s husband, Harry Billings, joined the staff of the Voice in 1946 and Gretchen came on board two years later. Together, they built the paper into a mouthpiece for progressive causes and a watchdog of the state government in Helena. Leon Billings remembered his mother as a “crusading journalist” who was a passionate activist when it came to issues she cared about, such as abolishing capital punishment. The Billingses frequently crusaded for causes that pitted them against the Anaconda Company and the Montana Power Company, often called the Montana Twins. These causes included support for union issues, worker’s compensation, and public ownership of utilities. They also advocated for public health reform and Native American rights. Continue reading Speaking for Those Who Could Not Speak for Themselves: The Journalism and Activism of Gretchen Garber Billings →

Work Fit for “Two Fisted” Rangers: Women in the U.S. Forest Service

1900-1945, 1946-2014, Discrimination, Trailblazers, Work, , , , , , , , , , ,

Because Montana contains vast tracks of public lands, the U.S. Forest Service played an important role in the state in the twentieth century. Known for its rough-and-tumble rangers and daring smokejumpers, the Forest Service is seemingly synonymous with the rugged style of masculinity associated with Montana and the American West. Even Smokey Bear, with his bulky muscles and stern face, seems like a man’s man.

A female lookout stands outside the Morrell Mountain Lookout in Missoula National Forest, in August 1922. Although the Forest Service hired women to staff lookouts, they were not supposed to fight fires. Photograph by K. D. Swan, courtesy of the Forest History Society, Durham, N.C.
A female lookout stands outside the Morrell Mountain Lookout in Missoula National Forest, in August 1922. Although the Forest Service hired women to staff lookouts, they were not supposed to fight fires. Photograph by K. D. Swan, courtesy of the Forest History Society, Durham, N.C.

Nevertheless, women have worked for the Forest Service since its creation in 1905. Throughout the twentieth century, women’s labor was indispensable to the Forest Service, even as women consistently struggled against the agency’s masculine reputation and the belief that they were unsuited for forestry work. It was not until the 1970s and 1980s—when they moved into traditionally masculine fields like firefighting and law enforcement—that women were able to gain positions of leadership in the agency.

In the early twentieth century, women were generally limited to clerical positions within the Forest Service, and in some cases even these “feminine” jobs were off limits to them. Albert Cousins, an early forestry professional, recalled that some foresters preferred to hire men, even for office work, “the idea being that a woman clerk would not handle the ‘rough’ work required in the administration of a forest, such as assembling and shipping fire tools, rustling fire fighters, etc. Such work properly was for a ‘two fisted’ ranger.” Continue reading Work Fit for “Two Fisted” Rangers: Women in the U.S. Forest Service →

“May the World Be a Peaceful and Happy Place to Live”: The Lifelong Activism of Elsie Gilland Fox

1900-1945, 1946-2014, Activism, Biography, , ,
After over twenty-five years of working for the International Longshoremen and Warehouse Union in San Francisco, Elsie Fox retired to Miles City. She remained a passionate advocate for progressive causes, from women’s rights to economic and racial justice. Photo courtesy Karen Stevenson
After over twenty-five years of working for the International Longshoremen and Warehouse Union in San Francisco, Elsie Fox retired to Miles City. She remained a passionate advocate for progressive causes, from women’s rights to economic and racial justice. Photo courtesy Karen Stevenson

A former member of the Communist Party who could brag of an FBI file over four hundred pages in length that monitored her political activity, Elsie Gilland Fox was a tireless and formidable activist and community builder from Miles City, Montana. Her modest upbringing in rural eastern Montana shaped her sense of economic justice, and Fox spent her life advocating democratic social change to alleviate the inequalities of the capitalist system.

Elsie Gilland was born on a Powder River ranch south of Broadus in 1907. Her parents divorced when she was four, leaving her mother, Marcie, to homestead and raise three young children by herself. Living on the edge of poverty meant that each member of the family had to contribute to the economic production of the homestead, and Elsie recalled planting potatoes and cleaning the chicken coop to help out. From her brother, she also learned how to hunt and fish, and fishing would become her lifelong love: “Whenever I’ve had a real crisis, fishing has brought me out of it,” she said in later years. “It’s being out of doors, the movement of the water, hearing the birds sing. Lots cheaper than a psychiatrist.” Continue reading “May the World Be a Peaceful and Happy Place to Live”: The Lifelong Activism of Elsie Gilland Fox →

Alma Smith Jacobs: Beloved Librarian, Tireless Activist

1900-1945, 1946-2014, Activism, African-American, Arts & Culture, Biography, Community building, Work, , ,

Alma Smith Jacobs served as the head librarian of the Great Falls Public Library for almost twenty years before becoming the Montana state librarian in 1973. Both of these achievements were historic firsts for an African American woman. Throughout her life, Jacobs demonstrated a passion for education and for community building and a commitment to working for racial justice in Montana.

As an adult, Alma Smith Jacobs--posed here (far right) with her mother and sisters at Spring Creek near Lewistown, ca.1920--made numerous contributions to Montana as a civil rights activist. She is most often remembered, however, for her work as a librarian. MHS Photo Archives PAc 96-25.1
As an adult, Alma Smith Jacobs–posed here (far right) with her mother and sisters at Spring Creek near Lewistown, ca.1920–made numerous contributions to Montana as a civil rights activist. She is most often remembered, however, for her work as a librarian. MHS Photo Archives PAc 96-25.1

Alma Smith was born in 1916 in Lewistown, Montana, to Martin and Emma Riley Smith, members of the wave of African American migrants who had been drawn to the Pacific Northwest between 1865 and 1910. Although Montana now has a reputation for being predominantly white, in the early twentieth century there were sizeable black communities in the state, especially in larger cities like Helena, Butte, Missoula, and Great Falls.

The Smith family moved to Great Falls when Alma was a child. After graduating from Great Falls High School, Alma took advantage of scholarships to achieve an impressive education, first at Talladega College in Alabama and then at Columbia University, where she completed a degree in library science. Credentials in hand, and newly married to World War II veteran Marcus Jacobs, she returned to Great Falls, where she found a position at the public library in 1946. Eight years later she became head librarian. From that position, she worked to build the presence of the library throughout the city and central Montana. Continue reading Alma Smith Jacobs: Beloved Librarian, Tireless Activist →