Lunchbox Lecture: Greg Gaut - "The War at Home: Minnesota During the Great War, 1914-1920"

The Murray County Historical Society invites the public to attend its first Lunchbox Lecture of the season on Thursday, October 9th, 2025, in the 4-H building on the Murray County Fairgrounds in Slayton starting at noon. This month’s lecture will feature author and historian Greg Gaut.

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 cost of the talk is $3.00 per person or Historical Society members get in free. Attendees are welcome to bring their own lunch. Refreshments and light snacks are provided. For more information about this and other museum events, call 507-836-6533 or email bXVzZXVtIHwgbXVycmF5Y291bnR5bW4gISBnb3Y=.

You may also like the following events from Murray County Historical Museum:

• This Sunday, 12th October, 02:00 pm, Murray County Historical Society's 2025 Annual Meeting, With Special Guest Speaker Janet Timmerman in Slayton
• Next month, 13th November, 12:00 pm, Lunchbox Lecture: Naomi Helen Yaeger - Bringing a Murray County Family Story Home in Slayton
• Happening on, 8th January, 12:00 pm, Lunchbox Lecture - Nick Demuth: History of the Murray County Poor Farm in Slayton

Also check out other Arts events in Slayton, Literary Art events in Slayton, Contests in Slayton.