LaRue Spiker and Louise Gilbert
Check out this online video about LaRue and Louise.
This was a talk given in March and September 2019 by Carolyn Gage
at the Southwest Harbor Public Library.
"The Quietside's Unsung Civil Rights Heroines:
LaRue Spiker & Louise Gilbert & the Wade House Bombing"
This was a talk given in March and September 2019 by Carolyn Gage
at the Southwest Harbor Public Library.
"The Quietside's Unsung Civil Rights Heroines:
LaRue Spiker & Louise Gilbert & the Wade House Bombing"
Little information has survived about the long romantic partnership between Louise Gilbert and LaRue Spiker, except that their connection was grounded in shared political and moral beliefs in racial equality and other progressive values. As part of an attempt to challenge racial segregation in housing in Louisville, Kentucky, Louise and LaRue risked prison and did spend time in jail. Following their ordeal, they left the Midwest and both eventually moved to Mt. Desert Island, where they lived as partners in side-by side cabins for the rest of their lives.
LaRue Spiker was born in the farming town of Bushnell in southwestern Illinois. Not much is known about her childhood, but the fact that she left home to attend the University of Minnesota, then earned a master’s degree at the school of social work at the University of Chicago suggests that she was both tough and determined. Her choice of social work demonstrates an early concern with social justice, as social workers were generally perceived to be progressive by their supporters and subversive by their enemies.
LaRue and Louise met and became close at the University of Chicago. Louise shared LaRue’s strong sense of social justice, and she is probably the Louise Gilbert who co-wrote (along with Agnes Van Driel and Dorothy Crounse) The Chicago Urban League, a 1936 unpublished study that finds its way into most serious examinations of the Great Migration and the growth of black civic organizations. Louise was also involved in a number of organizations that were considered radical in mainstream America, such as the Civil Rights Congress and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and LaRue developed connections to those groups too.
After she completed her degree, LaRue worked for a short time as a social worker in Illinois, then she and Louise moved to Indianapolis, where Larue worked as a child welfare consultant with the Indiana Welfare Department, and Louise was supervisor of the children’s division. In the rabidly anti-communist atmosphere of the mid-20th century, LaRue’s activism, including gathering signatures for a petition for peace, soon got her fired. Louise resigned in protest, and, in the summer of 1950, the two moved again, this time to Louisville, Kentucky. Louise got a social work job, and LaRue worked in a flour mill, where she became involved in labor activism as a member of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). In addition to the hard physical work and union activities, she also worked on her first novel, a fictionalized account of the life of white abolitionist Elijah P. Lovejoy (1802-1837), a labor of love that would never be published.
The Louisville of the early 1950s was rigidly segregated. Hoping to challenge this injustice, in May 1954, two of Louise and LaRue’s comrades in the Civil Rights Congress, Anne (1924-2006) and Carl (1914-1975) Braden, bought a house in a white section of town and turned it over to a black couple, Andrew (1922-2005) and Charlotte (1928-2020) Wade. Racist retaliation was swift, in the form of rocks and gunfire directed at the house and other acts of intimidation. Louise and LaRue became part of a group of supporters who helped guard the house and offer some protection to the Wades and their two-year-old daughter. In July 1954, when a firebomb demolished the house, Louise and LaRue were among the seven white activists who were arrested and charged with “criminal syndicalism and sedition” for conspiring to flout segregation laws. They received special attention as targets of investigation as much because they were unmarried women living together as for their leftist politics.
When called to testify before a grand jury, both Louise and LaRue refused to be sworn in, and both were jailed for contempt. Eventually, first Louise, then LaRue agreed to be sworn in, and when they were questioned under oath, both refused to answer, citing their right not to incriminate themselves. In November 1956, when the case was taken before the U.S. Supreme Court, charges against all seven defendants were dismissed.
Afterwards, Louise and LaRue went their separate ways for a while. Louise moved to Philadelphia to continue her work for WILPF. Always the rugged individualist, LaRue hit the road in a camper van and spent several years travelling. In 1957, she discovered Mount Desert Island, remaining there throughout the summer, and in 1960 she returned to build herself a cabin in Southwest Harbor. There, she lived with her family of animals, close to nature and comfortable in the independent atmosphere of rural Maine. She maintained contact with Louise through letters and visits—her article, “Philadelphia—Peace, Patriots, and Pretzels,” which drew attention to her writing skills, demonstrates LaRue’s connection to Louise’s new home city.
In 1962, she was appointed editor of The Bar Harbor Times, but she resigned after only two years over conflicts with the publisher, possibly over her progressive ideas and her critiques of local politics. LaRue was also an accomplished photographer, and she often used her own photos to illustrate her articles. She was deeply involved in environmental activism on the island, and belonged to such organizations the Southwest Harbor Conservation Commission, the Natural Resources Council of Maine, the Audubon Society, and Downeast Animal Welfare. She was also a member of the League of Women Voters, and in 1979 used her own photos to create an extensive slide show about land use and the importance of wetlands to the ecology of Mt. Desert Island.
After her retirement, Louise joined LaRue on Mt. Desert Island, and, in the independent-but-connected spirit that characterized much of their relationship, they did not move in together, but instead became neighbors, living next door to each other and known throughout the MDI community as loving partners until Louise’s death in 1994. The following year, LaRue suffered a fatal stroke. As always, they were never far apart on the same path of social justice.
Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South.
Lexington, KY: UP of Kentucky, 2002.
K'Meyer, Tracy E. Civil Rights in the Gateway to the South: Louisville, Kentucky 1945-1980. Lexington, KY: UP of Kentucky, 2009.
Redhead, Elizabeth. “LaRue Spiker and ‘America’s Most Beautiful Island’” in Chebacco: The Mount Desert Island Historical Society Journal.
LaRue Spiker was born in the farming town of Bushnell in southwestern Illinois. Not much is known about her childhood, but the fact that she left home to attend the University of Minnesota, then earned a master’s degree at the school of social work at the University of Chicago suggests that she was both tough and determined. Her choice of social work demonstrates an early concern with social justice, as social workers were generally perceived to be progressive by their supporters and subversive by their enemies.
LaRue and Louise met and became close at the University of Chicago. Louise shared LaRue’s strong sense of social justice, and she is probably the Louise Gilbert who co-wrote (along with Agnes Van Driel and Dorothy Crounse) The Chicago Urban League, a 1936 unpublished study that finds its way into most serious examinations of the Great Migration and the growth of black civic organizations. Louise was also involved in a number of organizations that were considered radical in mainstream America, such as the Civil Rights Congress and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and LaRue developed connections to those groups too.
After she completed her degree, LaRue worked for a short time as a social worker in Illinois, then she and Louise moved to Indianapolis, where Larue worked as a child welfare consultant with the Indiana Welfare Department, and Louise was supervisor of the children’s division. In the rabidly anti-communist atmosphere of the mid-20th century, LaRue’s activism, including gathering signatures for a petition for peace, soon got her fired. Louise resigned in protest, and, in the summer of 1950, the two moved again, this time to Louisville, Kentucky. Louise got a social work job, and LaRue worked in a flour mill, where she became involved in labor activism as a member of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). In addition to the hard physical work and union activities, she also worked on her first novel, a fictionalized account of the life of white abolitionist Elijah P. Lovejoy (1802-1837), a labor of love that would never be published.
The Louisville of the early 1950s was rigidly segregated. Hoping to challenge this injustice, in May 1954, two of Louise and LaRue’s comrades in the Civil Rights Congress, Anne (1924-2006) and Carl (1914-1975) Braden, bought a house in a white section of town and turned it over to a black couple, Andrew (1922-2005) and Charlotte (1928-2020) Wade. Racist retaliation was swift, in the form of rocks and gunfire directed at the house and other acts of intimidation. Louise and LaRue became part of a group of supporters who helped guard the house and offer some protection to the Wades and their two-year-old daughter. In July 1954, when a firebomb demolished the house, Louise and LaRue were among the seven white activists who were arrested and charged with “criminal syndicalism and sedition” for conspiring to flout segregation laws. They received special attention as targets of investigation as much because they were unmarried women living together as for their leftist politics.
When called to testify before a grand jury, both Louise and LaRue refused to be sworn in, and both were jailed for contempt. Eventually, first Louise, then LaRue agreed to be sworn in, and when they were questioned under oath, both refused to answer, citing their right not to incriminate themselves. In November 1956, when the case was taken before the U.S. Supreme Court, charges against all seven defendants were dismissed.
Afterwards, Louise and LaRue went their separate ways for a while. Louise moved to Philadelphia to continue her work for WILPF. Always the rugged individualist, LaRue hit the road in a camper van and spent several years travelling. In 1957, she discovered Mount Desert Island, remaining there throughout the summer, and in 1960 she returned to build herself a cabin in Southwest Harbor. There, she lived with her family of animals, close to nature and comfortable in the independent atmosphere of rural Maine. She maintained contact with Louise through letters and visits—her article, “Philadelphia—Peace, Patriots, and Pretzels,” which drew attention to her writing skills, demonstrates LaRue’s connection to Louise’s new home city.
In 1962, she was appointed editor of The Bar Harbor Times, but she resigned after only two years over conflicts with the publisher, possibly over her progressive ideas and her critiques of local politics. LaRue was also an accomplished photographer, and she often used her own photos to illustrate her articles. She was deeply involved in environmental activism on the island, and belonged to such organizations the Southwest Harbor Conservation Commission, the Natural Resources Council of Maine, the Audubon Society, and Downeast Animal Welfare. She was also a member of the League of Women Voters, and in 1979 used her own photos to create an extensive slide show about land use and the importance of wetlands to the ecology of Mt. Desert Island.
After her retirement, Louise joined LaRue on Mt. Desert Island, and, in the independent-but-connected spirit that characterized much of their relationship, they did not move in together, but instead became neighbors, living next door to each other and known throughout the MDI community as loving partners until Louise’s death in 1994. The following year, LaRue suffered a fatal stroke. As always, they were never far apart on the same path of social justice.
Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South.
Lexington, KY: UP of Kentucky, 2002.
K'Meyer, Tracy E. Civil Rights in the Gateway to the South: Louisville, Kentucky 1945-1980. Lexington, KY: UP of Kentucky, 2009.
Redhead, Elizabeth. “LaRue Spiker and ‘America’s Most Beautiful Island’” in Chebacco: The Mount Desert Island Historical Society Journal.