Walter Liggett

I'm always a bit surprised when I find out about a piece of Minnesota history I've never heard mentioned at all before. I've been here almost 40 years, after all.

That happened when I learned about U.S. Senator Ernest Lundeen from Rachel Maddow's podcast Ultra, and it just happened again yesterday.

It started because of a post on streets.mn about quasi-public street signs.

Photo by Wolfie Browender.

See that sign that says Liggett St? 

I posted to BlueSky with an abbreviated know-it-all bit of info on who Liggett was: 

U of Mn regent, dean of the ag college, state RR commissioner, and member of the State Fair's parent organization. He managed the 1890 Fair...which was almost rained out (attended by just 9,000 people). He died in 1909 at age 63 of "tightening of the arteries, caused ... from nervous trouble."

To which one of my BlueSky mutuals replied,

Any relation to Walter Liggett, journalist allegedly killed by Kid Cann?

Dear reader, I had never heard of Walter Liggett, journalist allegedly killed by Kid Cann... or of Kid Cann, for that matter.

Well, it turns out Walter Liggett is more famous than William Liggett of State Fair street sign fame (who was also Walter's father).

Walter Liggett worked for many of the most prominent local daily newspapers in the Twin Cities during World War I, and at some point for the dailies in New York City, including the New York Times. He was also a socialist journalist/activist involved in creating the Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota (which is the F-L that's still part of our DFL party... what we call the Democrats in these parts) and its publications. Before and during the Great War, he was active in the Nonpartisan League, which I've mentioned a few times before. 

After 1920, he went to Washington, D.C., to work for a Nonpartisan League candidate who had gotten elected to the Senate. According to his Wikipedia page, he was involved in the efforts to free Sacco and Vanzetti, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for a series he wrote on the corruption caused by Prohibition, and published a critical biography of Herbert Hoover in 1932.

Walter returned to Minnesota in 1933 and set up a press. After that, the story of what happened to him (as told on his Wikipedia page) is, it appears, drawn from the book his daughter wrote about his killing. He and some others who had helped found the Farmer-Labor party believed there was corruption in the party, involving Jewish gangsters from Minneapolis, and including the populist governor and party-member Floyd B. Olson. Prohibition had just ended and there was money to be made with the legalization of alcohol.

Knowing that Minneapolis has a long history of antisemitism, I found that part a bit eyebrow-raising. Sure, there were some prominent Jewish gangsters in the U.S. in the 1930s, but at first hearing, this sounds more like prejudice than fact. But Kid Cann does sound like the real deal, even though there's some information that Russian interests may also have wanted Walter Liggett dead for messing with insurgent socialism in the U.S.

Walter's papers, organized by his widow and daughter, are held at NYU. His Wikipedia pages says this of his written legacy:

...the literary output of Walter Liggett was simply enormous. He wrote scores upon scores of articles in newspapers and magazines as well as four books.... Unfortunately for posterity, most of his literary output was printed on pulp paper, and very little of it has been digitized.