Stopping The Presses: The Murder Of Walter W. Liggett - Softcover

Marda Liggett Woodbury

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816629293 ISBN 13: 9780816629299

Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 1998

Synopsis

"Stopping the Presses is a fascinating look at the dangerous word of newspapers in the 1930s. I wish I'd had this book while researching Saint Mudd. I know how difficult it is to research history on the under-world...and even more difficult to research the overworld that protected the underworld. Hats off to Marda Ligget Woodbury, this is...the kind of work Walter Ligget would be proud of. Stopping the Presses is an important book". Steve Thayer, author of Saint Mudd and The Weatherman

In the 1920s and 30s, Minneapolis was crime city. Gangsters and politicians were partners running the Twin Cities' illegal gambling, prostitution, and liquor concerns. Stopping the Presses is a searing look at this corrupt time, told through the life of martyred journalist Walter W. Ligget by his daughter, who finally sets the record straight.

Walter Ligget published The Midwest American, a newspaper that sought to expose machine politics and corruption in Minnesota. At times Ligget seemed alone in this endeavor -- very few journalists joined his crusade to detail the links between the political establishment of populist Governor Floyd B. Olson and the crime syndicate in Minneapolis.

For his efforts Ligget was threatened, offered bribes, beaten up, framed, and finally shot to death in the alley behind his home. His wife witnessed the assassination and was able to identify Liggett's killer as mob leader Kid Cann. Though he was indicted by a grand jury, Cann was not convicted after what appears to a sloppy investigation and cursory trial.

Liggett's ten-year-old daughter Marda also witnessed the shooting that night. Decades later, while researching the events surrounding her father's death, shediscovered a historical record that was either woefully inadequate or outright incorrect. She worked for more than eight years ton research her father's life and death, exposing a side of Minnesota's history that has been ignored or overlooked.

An intriguing report on the complex intersection between populist politics and corruption, Stopping the Presses is a personal and detailed account of the surprising stories of crime, politics, and journalism of the time.

About this title

About the Author

MARDA WOODBURY is Library Director at the Life Chiropractic College-West and a part time writer-researcher.

From Publishers Weekly

Woodbury depicts her crusading muckraker of a father (1886-1935) as an idealist who rallied against corruption and too-chummy links between crooks and politicos in a one-man crusade that eventually cost him his life. (Gangsters shot him dead in front of his family in a Minneapolis alley.) Unfortunately, tangible drama and outrage don't arrive until the book's second half, though an exhaustive portrait of the Liggett family saga, along with a generous helping of descriptions of the Depression-era American press and unionist-socialist politics do help set the stage. The mainstream press appears to have respected Liggett, who published mainly in the Midwest American, a small weekly he began in 1933 with the blessing of Minnesota's then governor Floyd Olson, but, as Woodbury shows, kept its distance. Woodbury's research is top-notch and is well complemented by childhood remembrances, but some of the detail is extraneous and might have been pared away to make this feel less like a regionalist's account. Still, readers will find fascinating the trial of Kid Cann, Liggett's accused killer. Edith Liggett, the author's mother, proves a staunch, heroic figure, and readers can only shake their heads as the press fights too late for the life and reputation of one of its own. 20 b&w photos.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0816629293
• ISBN 13: 9780816629299
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 296