Montana Historical Society
During a visit with Sen. Lee Metcalf in Washington, D.C., on May 24, 1961, Fred Fite (left), of the U.S. Forest Service’s Missoula Regional office, traces on a relief map some of the proposed boundary changes for the Selway-Bitterroot Primitive Area.
The summer of 1964 changed the face of the United States in ways that are still being played out today, and Montana’s Sen. Lee Metcalf was at the center of it all.
The Civil Rights Act was signed into law in July. That was followed in August by passage of the Economic Opportunity Act and soon after by the Wilderness Act. On the 50th anniversary of these ground-breaking laws, the Montana Historical Society will look back at the major role Metcalf played in getting the legislation through Congress and signed by President Lyndon Johnson.
On Wednesday, Sept. 3, at 7 p.m. at the Myrna Loy Center in Helena, MHS will present a free public program, “Lee Metcalf and the Summer of 1964,” that will feature MHS Metcalf Special Project Archivist Matthew Peek and former Montana Rep. Pat Williams.
“Metcalf is a man who little is known of prior to his time in the U.S. Senate,” Peek said. “This program will present little-known information on Metcalf’s role as one of the originators of the Wilderness Act in the 1950s, and how he contributed to the development of modern conservation.”
Williams, who represented Montana in Congress from 1979 to 1997, will share his views on Metcalf’s continuing legacy to Montana and the nation.
In addition to sponsoring legislation creating the Lee Metcalf Wilderness Area in Montana, Williams worked on many other bills dealing with wilderness, civil and human rights, and poverty issues. He later was senior fellow and regional policy associate at the Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana.
Peek said the program will examine how, between 1956 and 1964, Metcalf’s views and legislative approaches in the struggle over the creation and passage of the Civil Rights Act and Economic Opportunity Act influenced the final outcome of those important pieces of legislation.
For the past year and a half, Peek has been working on a project to arrange, preserve and describe a major collection of photographs and film from Metcalf’s congressional office that are now part of the MHS collection. During that time, he has interviewed many colleagues and friends of Metcalf to gather information to help organize the collection for use in the MHS Research Center.
When completed, the Metcalf Photograph and Film Collections will be available at the MHS Research Center and finding aids will be accessible through the Northwest Digital Archives and the Montana Shared Catalog.
