Lioness of Idaho: Of right and wrong
Louise Shadduck is pictured outside the remodeled family home where she was born, at the east end of Shadduck Lane.
A lifelong conservative, Louise Shadduck was not always the first to advocate minority causes. Yet she had a fierce sense of fairness, learned as the only girl at the dinner table with six brothers on a Depression-era farm north of Coeur d’Alene.
Throughout her life, when someone was treated unfairly, she had no qualms about calling it wrong. Her sense of personal decency made her a powerful behind-the-scenes force for human rights.
When she was a young reporter for the Cd'A Press in the 1930s, an African-American band was scheduled to play in the city, but an obscure law was keeping the members from getting a hotel room. Louise insisted the band stay at her home.
A lifelong student of history, she loved Native Americans' stories. In articles and speeches, she decried the injustice they endured. At least three Idaho tribes named her an honorary member.
On a trip to New York in the 1970s, she ignored warnings and took a subway by herself into Harlem to buy a black doll. It was important to her that a grandniece in Idaho would not grow up thinking all children were Caucasian.
Shadduck broke many barriers not only as a woman, but as a single woman. She worked decades in a political world dominated by men and traditional couples. She often commented that women could do anything political that a man could, and it was a shame they had to work twice as hard to do it. When the United Nations declared 1975 “International Women’s Year” and held an international conference in Mexico City, she attended and was one of 31 women from Idaho named to prepare legislative recommendations for that convention “to eliminate the barriers that prevent women from participating fully and equally in all aspects of national life.”
In the early 1970s, a pattern of crimes including counterfeiting, bank robbery, hired murder and holding a school full of children for ransom all seemed connected to a 20-acre North Idaho compound. The same small group held public parades, which drew white supremacists from all over the country. National media gave the appearance that Coeur d’Alene was an unsafe place, and, for many, it was. Shadduck’s comments about them were scathing.
Dina Tanners; a Roman Catholic priest, Rev. Bill Wassmuth; NIC professor Tony Stewart; real estate professional Marshall Mend; and veterinarian’s wife Ginny DeLong formed the Human Rights Task Force, meeting at the time at St. Pius X Roman Catholic Church, to protect human rights in our community. They all suffered threats, intimidation and vandalism, but on Sept. 15, 1986, a pipe bomb exploded at the backdoor of the church rectory when Father Wassmuth was inside, fortunately not near the door.
Coeur d’Alene attorneys Glen Walker and Scott Reed helped the Task Force lobby for Idaho’s 1983 law making racial harassment a crime. Shadduck helped take that a step further.
In February of 1987, Idaho State Sen. Mary Lou Reed invited Shadduck, Father Wassmuth and Dana Wetzell to speak to Idaho’s Judiciary and Rules Committee. Shadduck showed evidence of convicted felons from all over the country being invited, when they were released, to build a “white homeland” in Idaho. Her testimony read “I am an individual whose love of Idaho runs through every fiber, and this bill is MORALLY right (Caps hers).”
When the committee approved the bill, Shadduck took Father Wassmuth and personally introduced him to almost every legislator in Boise. Rare for any major bill, it passed unanimously in the state Senate and was overwhelmingly approved by the House.
The next year, Victoria Keenan and her son, Jason, were fired upon, stopped and traumatized outside the supremacist compound. Two years later, Norm Gissel, an attorney from Coeur d’Alene, and Morris Dees, a lawyer from the Southern Poverty Law Center, helped the Keenan family sue for damages and win. That suit was based on the amendment Shadduck had helped Father Wassmuth achieve.
The compound was bankrupted and closed. The sale would lead a philanthropist to fund the Human Rights Education Institute in Coeur d’Alene.
Sometimes we hope for a leader or hero to singlehandedly champion needed change in the world, and are often disappointed. Positive change is more often accomplished by dedicated groups. Shadduck was effective because she acted across political, religious and cultural lines as a strong, quiet partner to both local and statewide action. Together, they managed to uproot and disperse perpetrators of hatred.
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Mike Bullard is the local author of "Lioness of Idaho: Louise Shadduck and the Power of Polite." Bullard will give free copies of the book to anyone who donates to League of Women Voters at a book reading from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 9 at the Coeur d'Alene Public Library.