Missoula has a Legacy of Racist Pamphlets on Campus Too

The white supremacist group Identity Evropa made headlines in Montana this week after signs with their symbol were placed at two colleges in Billings. University of Montana Director of African American Studies Tobin Miller-Shearer says he can’t recall that specific group leafleting a campus in Missoula, but says other groups have done so on a fairly regular basis.

"In the 11 years that I've been here, there's probably been about a half-dozen times where the campus community has been leafleted in one form or another," Miller-Shearer said. "There has been a particular pattern of hate groups inserting racist literature into African-American books in the library, and in our library here, and then leaving them for my students to find."

Shearer says the last leaflet his students found was discovered about two years ago and, unlike the incidents in Billings, most of the incidents in Missoula don’t trace back to a particular group.

"I won't repeat the kind of language that is used, but it's highly problematic, racist language that's used by these hate groups to try to bait and harangue and intimidate students of color on our campus," Miller-Shearer said. "Usually, it is not attributed to a specific group, but a couple times we have been able to trace it to particular groups... often groups over in Idaho."

When asked which groups in Idaho had been thought to be associated with the leafleting at UM, Miller-Shearer listed a diverse field that included everything from a KKK group from the Spokane-area to another organization called True Cascadia.