Category Archives: Activism

Freda Augusta Beazley and the Rise of American Indian Political Power

1946-2014, Activism, Biography, Discrimination, Native American, Politics, Reform, Work, , , , ,
Freda Beazley strides into a meeting holding a folder titled "Welcome Delegates. 15th Annual Convention, National Congress of American Indians.
Freda Beazley, a member of the Assiniboine Indian Tribe of Fort Peck Reservation and a vice-president of the National Congress of American Indians, at the 15th annual meeting of the National Congress of American Indians held in Missoula, Montana, during September 14-19, 1958. MHS Photo Archives Lot 31 B5/13.02

In the mid-twentieth century, American Indian tribes faced crippling poverty, enormous land loss, and attacks on their status as semi-sovereign nations. One Montanan integrally involved in the efforts to fight these injustices was Freda Beazley, an Assiniboine woman from Klein and the widow of a former state legislator. Beazley served on the advisory council to Montana’s Office of Indian Affairs, the first such agency in the nation. She was an officer on the Montana Intertribal Policy Board (MIPB), the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), and the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians. She was also the first coordinator of Rural and Indian Programs for Montana’s Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO). Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Beazley worked steadfastly at state and federal levels to protect tribal sovereignty, end poverty, and improve Indians’ education and employment opportunities.

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The Women’s Protective Union

1800-1899, 1900-1945, 1946-2014, Activism, Butte, Women's Organizations, Work, , , , ,
Young woman (and WPU member) behind the candy counter of Butte's Rialto Theatre
The WPU represented women who worked in service industries, including waitresses, cooks, maids, elevator girls, and janitors. By the 1940s, the union had won eight-hour shifts, the right to overtime pay, sick leave, and paid vacations for its members. Above, a WPU member is shown working the candy counter at the Rialto Theater. PH088 W.P.U./H.E.R.E. Photograph Collection, Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives.

In what must have been an unusual sight on a June evening in 1890, thirty-three women walked into the Butte Miners’ Union hall. They were waitresses, dressmakers, milliners, and saleswomen, and they had gathered to organize a protective association for Butte’s women workers. As the Butte Daily Miner reported the following day, “The ladies of Butte—God bless them!—are not going to be behind their brothers in demanding their rights.” From its inception, the Butte Women’s Protective Union (WPU) labored to improve the conditions of women’s work and to extend a network of support and friendship to Butte’s working women.

Most working women in Butte engaged in “commercialized domesticity.” Miners, carpenters, blacksmiths, pipefitters, and men who worked in scores of other occupations dominated the mining city. Until well into the twentieth century the majority of them were single. They needed to be fed, clothed, nursed, entertained, and generally looked after by women who performed domestic tasks for wages. Working men ate in cafes and boardinghouses, slept in rooming houses, sent their laundry out, and spent their evenings in saloons, dance halls, and theaters—except for the saloons, these were all places where women worked. Women’s work made men’s work possible. Continue reading The Women’s Protective Union →

Lucille Otter: Doing Good for Tribe and Country

1900-1945, 1946-2014, Activism, Biography, Native American, Politics, , , , ,
219WHMLucilleOtter upload
In addition to advocating for voting rights, Lucille Otter encouraged the creation of the Mission Mountains Tribal Wilderness, the first tribally designated wilderness in the country. She stands here in front of the Mission Mountains. Photo Courtesy Renee Roullier-Madrigal

“Politics, one way or another, controls your destiny. Choose yours today,” read a 1974 announcement written by Lucille Otter on the front page of the confederated Salish, Kootenai and Pend d’Oreille tribes’ newspaper. Empowering tribal members to exercise their right to vote was one of the many ways Lucille Trosper Roullier Otter helped Indian people better their condition in life.

Lucille Trosper was born in 1916 on the Flathead Indian Reservation to Angeline McCloud, a member of the Salish tribe, and Belford Trosper. She grew up hunting and fishing with her brothers—activities that inspired her dedication to conservation efforts in the Flathead region. She graduated from Ronan High School in 1933. Although Lucille did exceptionally well in school, she did not attend college because her father objected.

Jobs were scarce in Montana during the Great Depression and nearly nonexistent on the reservation. “Life was terrible!” Lucille recalled. She worked briefly for the Works Progress Administration before being hired in 1934 to work at the Dixon headquarters of the Indian Division of the Civilian Conservation Corps, becoming the first woman to work in an administrative capacity in the Indian CCC. She was in charge of budgeting ICCC projects, keeping accounts, and overseeing payroll and purchase orders for the ICCC camps. The ICCC enrollees called her “buddy.” Continue reading Lucille Otter: Doing Good for Tribe and Country →

“The Men Would Never Have Survived”: Women, Union Activism, and Community Survival in Butte

1900-1945, 1946-2014, Activism, Butte, Community building, Family, Women's Organizations, , , , ,
95WHM women children picket
Betty Jo Houchin and Ruby Larson used their informal network to organize a picket of St. James Hospital in July 1971. Their husbands were both on strike when the women decided to protest the hospital’s decision to treat strikers and their families “only on an emergency basis” because striking workers were not covered by the Anaconda Company’s health insurance. Photo courtesy of the Montana Standard (July 4, 1971).

Although excluded from most jobs in the mines and smelters of Butte and Anaconda (with the short-lived exception of female smelter workers in World War II), women played integral roles in the survival of these company towns. The success of each community depended on the wages of laborers who toiled for the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. When those wages were threatened—during strikes or company shutdowns—the entire community mobilized. During periods of conflict, women’s contributions to the household economy became especially significant, as women pinched pennies and took on paid employment to help their families survive. These and other activities in support of labor were crucial to community survival, but men’s resistance to women’s full participation in union efforts also reveals the prevalence of conservative gender ideals in mid-century Butte and Anaconda.

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“We Are No Longer Criminals”: The Fight to Repeal Deviate Sexual Misconduct Laws

1946-2014, Activism, Crime, Discrimination, Feminism, Politics, Reform, , ,
157WHM Button
Supporters of repealing Statute 45-5-505 produced and distributed this pin which featured the gay rights symbol of a pink triangle. Courtesy of Linda Gryczan.

In 1993, Linda Gryczan told her neighbors she was suing the state of Montana to overturn a law that criminalized gay sex. Though she “was afraid that someone might burn down her house,” her neighbors—and activists across the state—rallied to her cause. But those who believed homosexuality should remain a crime also mobilized. Women took leading roles on both sides of the decades-long fight over Montana’s deviate sexual misconduct law.

Passed in 1973, Statute 45-5-505 of the Montana Code Annotated defined “deviate sexual relations” as “sexual contact or sexual intercourse between two persons of the same sex or any form of sexual intercourse with an animal.” Though rarely enforced, the law carried a fine of up to fifty thousand dollars, as well as ten years in prison, and made same-sex consensual intimacy a felony.

At the urging of gay and lesbian rights advocates, Montana state representative Vivian Brooke (D-Missoula) introduced bills in both 1991 and 1993 to strike the law from the books. The bill failed in both sessions. Many legislators agreed with Rep. Tom Lee, who argued that “[God] has declared homosexual activity to be wrong, and I don’t think we serve the other people of this state by contradicting him.” Others, noting that the law was not enforced, wished to avoid political fallout over what they saw as a symbolic vote.

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“Lifting as We Climb”: The Activism of the Montana Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs

1900-1945, 1946-2014, Activism, African-American, Community building, Discrimination, Reform, Women's Organizations, , ,
Catalog #PAc 96-25.2
This photo captured the women (and children) of the first MFCWC Annual Convention, which took place in Butte on August 3, 1921. Photograph by Zubick Art Studio, Butte, Montana. MHS PAc 96-25.2.

In 1921, the Montana Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs (MFCWC) organized “to encourage true womanhood . . . [and] to promote interest in social uplift.” While its members engaged in many traditional women’s club activities—raising money for scholarships, creating opportunities for children, and providing aid to the sick—advancing the cause of civil rights in Montana was one of the organization’s most important legacies.

MFCWC (originally the Montana Federation of Negro Women’s Clubs) held its inaugural meeting in Butte, where members agreed on five organizing principles: “Courtesy—Justice—The Rights of Minority—one thing at a time, and a rule of majority.” At the local level, member clubs engaged in a variety of volunteer work, from bringing flowers to hospital patients to adding works by African American authors to local libraries. But at both the local and the state levels, MFCWC members also concentrated on racial politics, raising funds for the NAACP and taking positions on abolishing the poll tax and upholding anti-lynching laws.

The MFCWC’s legislative committee became especially active after World War II, and from 1949 to 1955 it led the campaign to pass civil rights legislation in Montana. The committee’s efforts reflected Montana’s complicated racial climate. As its members advocated for legislative change, the MFCWC often encountered resistance from white Montanans, who simultaneously asserted that Montana did not have a “racial problem” and that, where prejudice did exist, it could not “be changed by passing a law.”

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Cultivating Female Reform: The Montana Woman’s Christian Temperance Union

1800-1899, 1900-1945, Activism, Women's Organizations, ,
Etta Weatherson, Candace Shaw, Elizabeth Blakeman ride on the WCTU float in 1916 Fourth of July Parade, Columbus, Montana
Etta Weatherson, Candace Shaw, Elizabeth Blakeman ride on the WCTU float in 1916 Fourth of July Parade, Columbus, Montana. MHS Photo Archives 951-822

Founded in 1883, the Montana chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was a popular, well-organized women’s club focused on reducing the consumption of alcohol in the state. Part of a broad series of reform movements that swept the country at the turn of the century, the WCTU was witness to women’s growing political power in the area of social reform.

The national WCTU was founded in Ohio in 1873 and quickly gained a broad base of support around the country. Like their national counterparts, Montana women joined the WCTU because they believed that limiting access to alcohol would in turn reduce the incidence of other social ills, such as gambling, prostitution, and public and domestic violence. In addition to advocating temperance (and later complete prohibition), Montana WCTU members also worked for a broad range of social reforms. At their state convention in Billings 1910, for example, the members voted for resolutions that “urged enforcement of juvenile court law [and] government aid to destitute mothers, . . . condemned the use of coca-cola, and recommended sanitary fountains.”

In her study of the WCTU and similar women’s clubs in this period, historian Stephenie Ambrose Tubbs argues that Montana women enjoyed a “growing sense of social and political power through their clubs’ active participation in social and civil affairs.” By­­ assertin­­g their role as reformers, the middle-class women involved in the Montana WCTU were restructuring ideas about femininity and women’s role in the public sphere. They challenged the traditional idea that a woman’s place was in the home, suggesting instead that society had become so morally corrupt that it required women’s political participation. They drew on the Victorian idea of women’s natural moral superiority to make the case that women had to take the lead in reform. Continue reading Cultivating Female Reform: The Montana Woman’s Christian Temperance Union →

Family Planning and Companionate Marriage in Early Twentieth-Century Montana

1900-1945, Activism, Family, Medicine, , , , , ,
Faber's Golden Female Pills claimed to be ?worth twenty times their weight in gold for female irregularities. Never known to fail.? This coded ad for an abortifacient ran in the Philipsburg Mail, August 17, 1893. Pregnancy was the main cause of ?supressed menstuation? or ?irregularity? and cures were commonly advertised.
Faber’s Golden Female Pills claimed to be ?worth twenty times their weight in gold for female irregularities. Never known to fail.? This coded ad for an abortifacient ran in the Philipsburg Mail, August 17, 1893. Pregnancy was the main cause of ?supressed menstuation? or ?irregularity? and cures were commonly advertised.

Like their national counterparts, Montana women in the early twentieth century generally considered marriage, childbirth, and motherhood to be natural (and expected) elements of womanhood. At the same time, they did attempt to control their fertility. Conservative attitudes about sex, religious prescriptions against artificial contraception, and isolation and scarcity of medical care all conspired to limit Montana women’s access to birth control. Nevertheless, through female social networks and activism, the women of the state were able exercise a degree of control over reproduction.

Montana women had a variety of reasons for seeking contraception. Many could sympathize with the anonymous ranch wife who, when interviewed, said that she limited her family to two children “because when you had so much work to do, you can’t do all of it. So the children were the minor thing.” Other women, struggling with the hard times that hit Montana farmers and ranchers in the 1920s, sought to delay pregnancy until they were on better financial footing.

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Doris Brander and the Fight to Honor Women’s Military Service

1900-1945, 1946-2014, Activism, Military, , ,
Doris Brander, shown here in her enlistment photo, joined the navy’s Women’s Auxiliary Voluntary Expeditionary Service (WAVES) in 1942, shortly after Pearl Harbor.
Doris Brander, shown here in her enlistment photo, joined the navy’s Women’s Auxiliary Voluntary Expeditionary Service (WAVES) in 1942, shortly after Pearl Harbor. Courtesy Linda Brander

Born in Malta, Montana, on August 29, 1921, Doris I. Palm Brander graduated from Malta High School, joined the navy’s Women’s Auxiliary Voluntary Expeditionary Service (WAVES) in 1942, shortly after Pearl Harbor, and attended the U.S. Naval Training School in New York.

Like most of her compatriots, Brander enlisted in the navy out of the dual desires: for adventure and to contribute to the war effort. As she recalled, “I think most of us women that volunteered in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and coast guard did it out of a sense of adventure, but also because we knew that until the war was over, both in Europe and in Asia, things would not go back to normal. So by pitching in and helping, we felt we would get things back to normal faster. We wanted to do what we could to stop the war.”

As reasonable as she found these goals, she discovered that her male comrades often questioned her motives and abilities. “Because we were cutting a new path in history with our volunteering for the service, we were really looked at with question marks as to what our purpose was, what our motive was, what our morals were,” she recalled.

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Work Done by Muscle Power or Grit: Anna Dahl, Rural Electrification, and the Transformation of Rural Women’s Work

1900-1945, 1946-2014, Activism, Agriculture, Nontraditional roles, Trailblazers, Work, , ,
The Sheridan Electric Coop's first board of trustees, 1946
Posed here in October 1946 with the Sheridan Electric Coop’s first board of trustees, Anna Dahl became used to being the only woman at the table. She went on to become the second woman in the United States elected president of the board of a rural electric coop, the first woman member of the board of directors of the Montana State REA, and the first woman trustee of Northwest Public Power Association, Anna Dahl Scrapbook, SC909, MHS Archives

In the twentieth century, rural women faced a different—and arguably more rigorous—set of gender expectations than did their urban sisters. They did, of course, preserve and cook food, mend and wash clothes, care for children, and clean their homes, but they were also intimately involved in farm labor. Rural women raised produce, chickens, and pigs; kept the farms’ books; and worked in the fields. Their work was so essential that historian Richard Roeder called Montana women the “economic linchpins” of the state’s farms and ranches.         

Even more amazing than the number of tasks rural women performed is the fact that, before World War II, they largely completed their work without electricity. Anna Dahl, a farm wife from Sheridan County, helped change this. A key community activist promoting rural electrification in eastern Montana, Dahl helped bring power to six hundred families in Sheridan, Roosevelt, and Daniels counties. Her efforts significantly altered life on the farm, especially for Montana women.

Anna Boe Dahl (1892-1986) arrived in Plentywood, Montana, with her brother in 1917. She taught school in Dagmar for two years before marrying Andrew Dahl in 1919 and moving to a 640-acre farm near Coalridge. There she and Andrew raised five children. During the Depression, Anna also taught English and farm economics for the Works Project Administration to supplement the family income.

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