Oct 8, 2025
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Not in Our Town: Billings, Montana
by Doniphan Blair
From Native Americans to Blacks and average Montanans, the people of Billings stood with their Jewish neighbors when they were attacked by neo-Nazis. courtesy: Not In Our Town organizationPLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover research expenses for our articles and rebuilding the cineSOURCE site.
IN A BOWL IN THE PLAINS OF EASTERN
Montana, Billings may seem far from Jewish life, but its Jews arrived in the 1880s, consecrated a cemetery in 1919, and built their first synagogue in 1944. In 2005, they opened a larger synagogue, big enough for a congregation of 60 or so families but too small for a full-time rabbi. A student rabbi from Los Angeles flies out once a month or on the high holidays. Montana’s largest city, Billings has 121,000 people, making the 1000 or so Jews less than 1%.
I first spoke with Carol Roberts in 2024, a striking and engaging woman who was in Billings during the Menorah Incident, later known by the catch phrase "Not in Our Town." Jewish and from Cincinnati, she met her Montanan husband, Don, in college. Although he didn’t convert to Judaism, Carol’s three daughters all got Bat Mitzvahed, and Carol served on the board of Billings’ one synagogue, Beth Aaron. Carol comes from a family of activist Jews, notably her grandfather Alex Frieder and his brothers. They had a cigar company in the Philippines during World War Two and helped over 1200 Jews find refuge there, as detailed in the documentary “Escape to Manilla”.
Carol Roberts shows me around Congregation Beth Aaron and some of its striking art. photo: D. BlairOn my recent August 2025 visit, Carol gave me a tour of the small temple’s lovely sanctuary, with seats for 100, and colorful art. She also gave me a copy of Julie Coleman’s history of Montana’s Jews, “Golden Opportunities”, which started when merchants came in covered wagons to supply the gold miners and settlers. I told Carol about my friend Joe Folberg, from St Louis, who did much the same in modern times, driving around the West with a trunk filled with goods priced better than the monopolistic trading posts. The Beth Aaron Synagogue got its name when the merchants who founded it, in the spirit of the West, gambled for the naming rights, and Louis Harron won.
Carol didn’t experience much antisemitism in Billings, which won the All-America City Award in 1992, except in 1980, shortly after she moved there. She awoke one morning to rock salt in her plants and “Death to the Jews” in shaving cream on her front window. She and Don quickly cleaned it up, so to not frighten their daughters, one now a doctor in DC, another a political consultant in California, and the third an orthodontist still in Billings.
That was an isolated incident until the early ‘90s, when the skinheads and Ku Klux Klan became active. They distributed Klan newspapers and flyers, which attacked mostly homosexuals and Jews, according to the Facing History and Our Selves website. It has an excellent article, “Not in Our Town” (8/2/2016), from which I borrowed much of the following.
As usual things started small: a bumpersticker saying “Nuke Israel” on a stop sign near the synagogue, a beer bottle coming through the window of Uri Barnea, conductor of the Billings Symphony and an Israeli immigrant. “It started in October with headstones being turned over in cemetery,” Carol told me. But it took off in December 1993, when a large cinderblock smashed through the window of Tammie and Brian Schnitzer's home.
Police Chief Wayne Inmans, who grew up among prejudiced people but enlightened himself, readily joined BIllings' 'Not in Our Town' movement. photo: D. BlairThe attackers hit the bedroom window of five-year-old Isaac because it had a menorah, in celebration of Hanukkah, the Jewish winter “Holiday of Lights.” Fortunately, Isaac was watching TV with his 2-year-old sister and a babysitter in the living room. The sitter didn’t see the broken window or call the police, but Brian did.
As it happened, Billings’ police chief, Wayne Inman, was well versed in the issues, having just moved from Portland, Oregon, where an Ethiopian student, Mulugeta Seraw, was killed by members of an Aryan group in 1988. Billings’ neo-Nazis were largely imports from Portland, in fact, since some had obtained witness protection there. Chief Inman even knew one personally from arresting him.
Already in 1993, Margaret MacDonald, a mother of two and the part-time director of the Montana Association of Churches, was organizing a statement against hatred and bigotry. Despite initial resistance, she persisted and more than 100 organizations and 3,500 people signed the resolution. Indeed, Margaret, Tammie Schnitzer and others had already formed the Billings Coalition for Human Rights. “This wasn’t a Jewish issue,” Tammie said. “It was a human rights issue. We wanted to make the community aware of what was going on.”
In October, the Jewish cemetery was vandalized, and on the Jewish New Year, later in the month, a bomb threat was made to the synagogue during the children’s service. The synagogue elders, “seemed to feel that to acknowledge a problem or identify ourselves as being different would make us stand apart,” Tammie said. Rejecting that strategy, she urged her fellow Jews to speak out. “I wanted to let people know what was happening. But some members felt that we would put ourselves in more danger. We didn’t know what to do.”
Graffiti on the house of Native American-White couple: Natives were also effected by the racist attacks and were active in protesting against them. image: unknownIn the following weeks, many Billings residents took action. When skinheads started showing up at the African Methodist Episcopal Church—Montana has a small but well-established Black community, descendants of the Buffalo Soldiers—some White Christians started attending every service. In October, a Native-White interracial couple awoke to find a swastika spray-painted on their house. Graciously, the local painters’ union volunteered to repaint it.
About ten percent of Billings, Native Americans figured prominently in this story—as we can see by the many men in full headdresses in the famous panorama photo of over 100 Billings residents holding menorahs (see first photo)—although they're not mentioned much in the reporting.
The haters were especially incensed during the Christmas and Hanukkah season, hence the cinderblock through the Schnitzers’ window. The police officer who answered Brian’s call advised them to take down their Hanukkah decorations and take their kids with them, when leaving the house.
Lying in bed that night, Tammie contemplated the irony: the attack had occurred during Hanukkah, a holiday commemorating Jews who fought two thousand years earlier to worship God in their own way, also a strong sentiment in the American West, notably among Mormons. “I wondered what kind of struggle we were going to be in for,” Tammy thought (according to the Facing History and Our Selves article), “And how we could stop it before it became worse.” Tammie told a reporter from The Billings Gazette that the officer’s advice troubled her. “Maybe it’s not wise to keep these symbols up,” she said. “But how do you explain that to a child?”
When Margaret MacDonald read Tammie’s statement, she thought about how hard it would be to explain to her own children they had to take down their Christmas decorations, due to safety concerns, and she immediately called her pastor, Keith Torney.
The menorah printed by The Billings Gazette and eventually hung in over 6,000 homes and businesses. image: The Billings Gazette“What would you think if we had the children draw menorahs in Sunday school. And if we told people to put them up in their windows?” Margaret asked. Agreeing wholeheartedly, Reverend Torney began enlisting other churches. Soon there were hundreds of menorahs in windows across Billings. “It wasn’t an easy decision,” Margaret said. “With two young children, I had to think hard about it myself. We put our menorah in a living room window, [but] made sure nobody sat in front of it.”
One of the first to put up a child-painted menorah was Becky Thomas, also a mother of two and a Catholic, who lives near the Schnitzers. “It’s easy to go around saying you support some good cause, but this was different. It was putting ourselves in danger,” Becky said. “I told my husband, ‘Now we know how the Schnitzers feel.’”
“Yes, there’s a risk,” Chief Inman told the many people calling about the safety of such a gesture. “But there’s a greater risk in not doing it.”
The editor of The Billings Gazette, Wayne Sheeley, also joined the struggle. On December 7th, he published in his centerfold a large menorah, perfect for taping in windows. Local businesses also distributed photocopies, and a billboard appeared with the iconic phrase, “Not in Our Town! No Hate, No Violence. Peace on Earth.”
The haters continued to lash out, however, breaking glass at the Evangelical United Methodist Church, taking pot shots at a Catholic school, kicking in the windows of cars displaying menorahs, and more hate speech and graffiti.
But for every menorah torn down, ten appeared. Eventually, as many as 6,000 homes or businesses in Billings, representing almost a quarter of the population, were displaying Jewish menorahs. “All along, our coalition had been saying an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us,” said Margaret MacDonald. “And God bless them, the people of this town understood.”
The citizens of Billings kept their menorahs up until the New Year, long past the end of the actual religious Hanukkah.
“The haters could attack a couple of Jewish homes,” noted Chief Inman, who grew up in community with no Jews or Blacks, where making slurs against them was common, but realized, as he went into the wider world, that was not right. “They could make a second wave of attacks on Christian homes and churches. But they could not target thousands of menorahs.”
The Not In Our Town movement was picked up across America: shown here activists Camille Taylor and Suresh Krishna from Bloomington, Indiana, on a visit to Billings, Montana. image: unknownThe vandalism and hate literature and calls ended, but without good witnesses or evidence, the police were not able to make arrests. Don Roberts, Chief Inman, Brian Schnitzer, Uri Barnea and Russel Brown, a member of the African-American community joined together in a civil suit against the offenders and the Aryan Nation. “It got to the point where the names of the supporters of the Aryan Nation and KKK were going to be disclosed,” Chief Inman said. “They didn’t want to do that, and we haven’t heard from them since [due to our] threat that if they came back proceedings would start. Many moved out.”
The following year, 250 Christians joined Billings’ Jews for their traditional Passover meal and hundreds attended a concert of Jewish music organized by the Schnitzers, to show their appreciation of their neighbors and the town.
Meanwhile, the Billings Menorah Incident blew up into a world-wide story, often using the slogan “Not in Our Town,” a phrase coined by the owner of a sporting goods store, Universal Athletics,. That became the name of the movie produced by The Working Group, a nonprofit founded in 1988 in Oakland, California (see the film's short or their site). It also became a nationwide model and was adopted by many media projects, like a kids’ book, and businesses, used the “Not in Our Town” slogan.
Billings continues to be a multicultural place. Over a 100 people gathered in 2022 to commemorate the Not In Our Town movement, which started there 29 years earlier, and rededicate themselves to keeping hate out of their community. Indeed, Billings’ Jewish community is expanding and continues to thrive and a small Chabad Lubavitch center opened a few years ago.
After the 10/7/23 attack, in October, 2024, the synagogue put two billboard on Interstate 90, facing each way, of the hostages still be held, and the synagogue had a remembrance ceremony. Imagine how the Israel-Hamas War might have turned out if the progressives of the world had followed the “Not in Our Town” tradition of Billings, Montana, and stood with Israel, instead of their attackers?
Article author Doniphan Blair in front of the Beth Aaron Synagogue. image: D. Blair“Now things are quiet, things are pretty much normal,” Carol continue. “We are not that involved with what is happening in Israel, but a member of the congregation was in the IDF and we have Israeli members. So it is never too far from our thoughts."
"There is a very small Muslim community in Billings. I have met a couple, and they are not radical folks. They left Iran or Iraq a long time ago, and they recognize the freedoms the United States provides. We have folks on both sides of the [political] isle in congregation, so we make the synagogue a political free zone, except for personal conversations.”
After Carol left, driven by husband Don, who had waited in the car, I stayed for 45 minutes. The Beth Aaron Synagogue of Billings, Montana, was the perfect place to contemplate what can happen when people of good will don’t stay silent.
Posted on Aug 21, 2025 - 12:39 PM
by Doniphan Blair
From Native Americans to Blacks and average Montanans, the people of Billings stood with their Jewish neighbors when they were attacked by neo-Nazis. courtesy: Not In Our Town organizationIN A BOWL IN THE PLAINS OF EASTERN
Montana, Billings may seem far from Jewish life, but its Jews arrived in the 1880s, consecrated a cemetery in 1919, and built their first synagogue in 1944. In 2005, they opened a larger synagogue, big enough for a congregation of 60 or so families but too small for a full-time rabbi. A student rabbi from Los Angeles flies out once a month or on the high holidays. Montana’s largest city, Billings has 121,000 people, making the 1000 or so Jews less than 1%.
I first spoke with Carol Roberts in 2024, a striking and engaging woman who was in Billings during the Menorah Incident, later known by the catch phrase "Not in Our Town." Jewish and from Cincinnati, she met her Montanan husband, Don, in college. Although he didn’t convert to Judaism, Carol’s three daughters all got Bat Mitzvahed, and Carol served on the board of Billings’ one synagogue, Beth Aaron. Carol comes from a family of activist Jews, notably her grandfather Alex Frieder and his brothers. They had a cigar company in the Philippines during World War Two and helped over 1200 Jews find refuge there, as detailed in the documentary “Escape to Manilla”.
Carol Roberts shows me around Congregation Beth Aaron and some of its striking art. photo: D. BlairCarol didn’t experience much antisemitism in Billings, which won the All-America City Award in 1992, except in 1980, shortly after she moved there. She awoke one morning to rock salt in her plants and “Death to the Jews” in shaving cream on her front window. She and Don quickly cleaned it up, so to not frighten their daughters, one now a doctor in DC, another a political consultant in California, and the third an orthodontist still in Billings.
That was an isolated incident until the early ‘90s, when the skinheads and Ku Klux Klan became active. They distributed Klan newspapers and flyers, which attacked mostly homosexuals and Jews, according to the Facing History and Our Selves website. It has an excellent article, “Not in Our Town” (8/2/2016), from which I borrowed much of the following.
As usual things started small: a bumpersticker saying “Nuke Israel” on a stop sign near the synagogue, a beer bottle coming through the window of Uri Barnea, conductor of the Billings Symphony and an Israeli immigrant. “It started in October with headstones being turned over in cemetery,” Carol told me. But it took off in December 1993, when a large cinderblock smashed through the window of Tammie and Brian Schnitzer's home.
Police Chief Wayne Inmans, who grew up among prejudiced people but enlightened himself, readily joined BIllings' 'Not in Our Town' movement. photo: D. BlairAs it happened, Billings’ police chief, Wayne Inman, was well versed in the issues, having just moved from Portland, Oregon, where an Ethiopian student, Mulugeta Seraw, was killed by members of an Aryan group in 1988. Billings’ neo-Nazis were largely imports from Portland, in fact, since some had obtained witness protection there. Chief Inman even knew one personally from arresting him.
Already in 1993, Margaret MacDonald, a mother of two and the part-time director of the Montana Association of Churches, was organizing a statement against hatred and bigotry. Despite initial resistance, she persisted and more than 100 organizations and 3,500 people signed the resolution. Indeed, Margaret, Tammie Schnitzer and others had already formed the Billings Coalition for Human Rights. “This wasn’t a Jewish issue,” Tammie said. “It was a human rights issue. We wanted to make the community aware of what was going on.”
In October, the Jewish cemetery was vandalized, and on the Jewish New Year, later in the month, a bomb threat was made to the synagogue during the children’s service. The synagogue elders, “seemed to feel that to acknowledge a problem or identify ourselves as being different would make us stand apart,” Tammie said. Rejecting that strategy, she urged her fellow Jews to speak out. “I wanted to let people know what was happening. But some members felt that we would put ourselves in more danger. We didn’t know what to do.”
Graffiti on the house of Native American-White couple: Natives were also effected by the racist attacks and were active in protesting against them. image: unknownAbout ten percent of Billings, Native Americans figured prominently in this story—as we can see by the many men in full headdresses in the famous panorama photo of over 100 Billings residents holding menorahs (see first photo)—although they're not mentioned much in the reporting.
The haters were especially incensed during the Christmas and Hanukkah season, hence the cinderblock through the Schnitzers’ window. The police officer who answered Brian’s call advised them to take down their Hanukkah decorations and take their kids with them, when leaving the house.
Lying in bed that night, Tammie contemplated the irony: the attack had occurred during Hanukkah, a holiday commemorating Jews who fought two thousand years earlier to worship God in their own way, also a strong sentiment in the American West, notably among Mormons. “I wondered what kind of struggle we were going to be in for,” Tammy thought (according to the Facing History and Our Selves article), “And how we could stop it before it became worse.” Tammie told a reporter from The Billings Gazette that the officer’s advice troubled her. “Maybe it’s not wise to keep these symbols up,” she said. “But how do you explain that to a child?”
When Margaret MacDonald read Tammie’s statement, she thought about how hard it would be to explain to her own children they had to take down their Christmas decorations, due to safety concerns, and she immediately called her pastor, Keith Torney.
The menorah printed by The Billings Gazette and eventually hung in over 6,000 homes and businesses. image: The Billings GazetteOne of the first to put up a child-painted menorah was Becky Thomas, also a mother of two and a Catholic, who lives near the Schnitzers. “It’s easy to go around saying you support some good cause, but this was different. It was putting ourselves in danger,” Becky said. “I told my husband, ‘Now we know how the Schnitzers feel.’”
“Yes, there’s a risk,” Chief Inman told the many people calling about the safety of such a gesture. “But there’s a greater risk in not doing it.”
The editor of The Billings Gazette, Wayne Sheeley, also joined the struggle. On December 7th, he published in his centerfold a large menorah, perfect for taping in windows. Local businesses also distributed photocopies, and a billboard appeared with the iconic phrase, “Not in Our Town! No Hate, No Violence. Peace on Earth.”
The haters continued to lash out, however, breaking glass at the Evangelical United Methodist Church, taking pot shots at a Catholic school, kicking in the windows of cars displaying menorahs, and more hate speech and graffiti.
But for every menorah torn down, ten appeared. Eventually, as many as 6,000 homes or businesses in Billings, representing almost a quarter of the population, were displaying Jewish menorahs. “All along, our coalition had been saying an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us,” said Margaret MacDonald. “And God bless them, the people of this town understood.”
The citizens of Billings kept their menorahs up until the New Year, long past the end of the actual religious Hanukkah.
“The haters could attack a couple of Jewish homes,” noted Chief Inman, who grew up in community with no Jews or Blacks, where making slurs against them was common, but realized, as he went into the wider world, that was not right. “They could make a second wave of attacks on Christian homes and churches. But they could not target thousands of menorahs.”
The Not In Our Town movement was picked up across America: shown here activists Camille Taylor and Suresh Krishna from Bloomington, Indiana, on a visit to Billings, Montana. image: unknownThe following year, 250 Christians joined Billings’ Jews for their traditional Passover meal and hundreds attended a concert of Jewish music organized by the Schnitzers, to show their appreciation of their neighbors and the town.
Meanwhile, the Billings Menorah Incident blew up into a world-wide story, often using the slogan “Not in Our Town,” a phrase coined by the owner of a sporting goods store, Universal Athletics,. That became the name of the movie produced by The Working Group, a nonprofit founded in 1988 in Oakland, California (see the film's short or their site). It also became a nationwide model and was adopted by many media projects, like a kids’ book, and businesses, used the “Not in Our Town” slogan.
Billings continues to be a multicultural place. Over a 100 people gathered in 2022 to commemorate the Not In Our Town movement, which started there 29 years earlier, and rededicate themselves to keeping hate out of their community. Indeed, Billings’ Jewish community is expanding and continues to thrive and a small Chabad Lubavitch center opened a few years ago.
After the 10/7/23 attack, in October, 2024, the synagogue put two billboard on Interstate 90, facing each way, of the hostages still be held, and the synagogue had a remembrance ceremony. Imagine how the Israel-Hamas War might have turned out if the progressives of the world had followed the “Not in Our Town” tradition of Billings, Montana, and stood with Israel, instead of their attackers?
Article author Doniphan Blair in front of the Beth Aaron Synagogue. image: D. Blair"There is a very small Muslim community in Billings. I have met a couple, and they are not radical folks. They left Iran or Iraq a long time ago, and they recognize the freedoms the United States provides. We have folks on both sides of the [political] isle in congregation, so we make the synagogue a political free zone, except for personal conversations.”
After Carol left, driven by husband Don, who had waited in the car, I stayed for 45 minutes. The Beth Aaron Synagogue of Billings, Montana, was the perfect place to contemplate what can happen when people of good will don’t stay silent.
Posted on Aug 21, 2025 - 12:39 PM
