Reflections Series: “The War at Home: Minnesota during the Great War, 1914-1920” Program

Greg Gaut will present on his book, “The War at Home: Minnesota during the Great War, 1914-1920” at the Lyon County Museum, 301 West Lyon Street, Marshall on Tuesday, October 7 at 6:30 PM.

Americans went to war in 1917 not only against Germany but also against each other.  The controversial decision to send an army to France came during a contentious time when farmers and workers challenged the wealthy, African Americans struggled against Jim Crow and lynchings, women campaigned for suffrage, and millions crusaded against alcohol.  Greg Gaut will introduce his new book, The War at Home, which focuses on the lives of individual Minnesotans to tell the dramatic story of this period, when the North Star State experienced bitter polarization, nativism, flagrant disregard for democratic norms, and intense, occasionally violent, confrontations. The Minnesota Commission of Public Safety ruled the state with an iron hand during the war. Led by John F. McGee, the commission pursued a “loyalty” campaign against trade unions, the Nonpartisan League, the Socialist Party, and the Industrial Workers of the World. McGee’s most prominent adversary was Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., whom the Nonpartisan League nominated to challenge the governor in the fiercely contested 1918 primary.  Although Minnesota’s home front experience was the product of a particular confluence of events and personalities, it raises issues about how democracy can give way to authoritarianism when economic inequality, anti-immigrant nationalism, and racism rule the day.

Greg Gaut is an historian whose career has included two decades of teaching at a liberal arts college and a decade of work as an historic preservation consultant primarily preparing National Register of Historic Places nominations around the state of Minnesota. With his wife and co-author Marsha Neff, he is a frequent contributor to Minnesota History, and two of their articles won the David Gebhard Award for the best article on Minnesota’s built environment. A lover of libraries, he published Laird’s Legacy: A History of the Winona Public Library and Reinventing the People’s Library, a  history of St. Paul’s Arlington Hills Public Library which is now the East Side Freedom Library. His article on a World War I espionage case, “Hardware Store Sedition: The Case of Charles W. Anding,” won the Solon J. Buck Award for the best article in Minnesota History for 2020. He holds a doctorate in Modern European and Russian history from the University of Minnesota.

The program is free and open to the public.  Light refreshments will be served.  Programs at the Lyon County Museum are sponsored by members.  For more information, contact the Lyon County Museum at 507-537-6580 or director@lyoncomuseum.org