History Highlights

Included here are short write-ups on the "far from ordinary" people making history in the MonDak. Researched and written by VISTA volunteer Curt Heimbuck, the two currently featured articles look back at the early 1900s and the "characters" of J.P. Brennan, an enterprising recruiter for the new Holly Sugar Factory in Sidney, MT who made repeated trips to Colorado in the 1920s to find experienced beet growers willing to move to the area, and R.L. Wyman, also of Sidney, a former school teacher, sheepshearer, Dawson County clerk and one of 72 Montanans convicted under the state's unsparingly harsh Sedition Act and one of 41 forced to serve time in the Deer Lodge state penitentiary.  The Montana sedition act, passed in February 1918, would become the model for federal legislation passed six months later on the same topic.

Today, Professor Clem Work of the University of Montana Journalism School and students from the University of Montana Law School are leading an effort to seek pardons for all those convicted of sedition in Montana. The Montana sedition law, which arose out of the fear and hysteria surrounding World War I,  “criminalized just about anything negative said or written about the government or its conduct of the war,” Work says on his web site. “These sedition prisoners were victims. They were sent to prison for opening their mouths against the government.”

The effort, known as the ‘‘Montana Sedition Project,’’ was sparked by Work's book, Darkest Before Dawn: Sedition and Free Speech in the American West, in which he discusses the Montana experience. Law students, also at the University of Montana, are taking another look at the cases, and hope to prepare pardon petitions for Gov. Brian Schweitzer this spring. They were inspired to take on the task after hearing of Work’s book through Jeff Renz, the director of UM’s criminal defense clinic.

Professor Work also discussed his research in an April 4th lecture at the MonDak entitled: “Liberty Can Wait: How Montanans Lost Their Free Speech During WWI."

For more on the Montana Sedition Project, see www.seditionproject.net.
 

Update on Sedition Project

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer announced April 30th that he will pardon the nearly seven dozen Montanans convicted of sedition during World War I in a ceremony May 3, 2006 at the state Capitol in Helena.