The corner of Higgins Avenue and West Front Street, known today as “Free Speech Corner,” marks the location of an important victory in the fight for national free speech rights. The Free Speech Fight in Missoula began in the fall of 1909 when a group of International Workers of the World activists arrived in the city. Leading this group of union activists, known commonly as Wobblies, were nineteen year old Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and her husband Jack Jones. The group’s primary goal in Missoula was to organize local migrant workers and to stop what they believed were unethical hiring practices by local employment agencies. Flynn and the Wobblies established their headquarters in the basement of Harnois Theatre and quickly began organizing street meetings and spreading Wobbly literature.

The Wobbly street meetings began attracting large numbers of local laborers, causing city officials, at the urging of the business community, to begin enforcing a city ordinance banning street speaking.  On September 28, 1909, police arrested the first two Wobblies for civil disobedience. Within days, the Missoula jail was filled with activists as Wobbly leaders encouraged supporters from surrounding states to descend on Missoula and challenge the city’s ordinance by speaking publicly. Their new strategy was to overwhelm the county jail and courts, forcing local officials to recognize their right to free speech.

This tactic created the desired effect as tax payers began feeling the financial burden of housing and feeding dozens of prisoners. The events in Missoula also drew national attention to the issue of free speech and labor rights, inspiring progressive leaders like Senator Robert La Follete, to travel to the city in support of the jailed Wobblies.

Finally bowing to public pressure, city officials released all those imprisoned for street speaking on October 8th,, 1909, with the assurance from Wobbly leaders that all future street meetings would not impede traffic or disrupt daily life in the city.Wobblies touted the decision as a major victory in the fight for free speech. However, the return to normalcy in Missoula, caused most activists to leave the area without reaching their initial goal of permanently organizing local migrant workers and addressing the hiring practices of the local employment agencies.

The victory in Missoula did encourage the Wobblies to make similar stands for free speech in other areas of the country and the “Missoula Model” became a common civil disobedience tactic among many other groups seeking to exercise their civil liberties in the face of government obstruction.

Credits and Sources:

Bradley C. Bobertz, The Brandeis Gambit: The Making of America's "First Freedom," 1909-1931, 40 Wm. & Mary Law Reveiw 557 (1999), http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr/vol40/iss2/7

Koelbel, Lenora. Missoula the Way It Was; "a Portrait of an Early Western Town." Missoula, Mont.: Gateway Print & Litho, 1972.