Half a century ago the Upper Valley was ground zero for a battle between state power to compel citizens to display a message they disagreed with and determined dissenters willing to resist, even to the point of going to jail for their beliefs.

Over a period of several years the struggle included a determined conservative governor from Orford, aggressive Lebanon police and a waffling state court system against a diverse assortment of people from Claremont, Lebanon, Cornish, Plainfield and Hanover bent on fighting for what they believed were their free-speech rights.

It would take a precedent-setting ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court to finally settle the matter, and it would be a total victory for those who took on the state in defense of their protections under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The outcome asserted that free speech rights also include the right not to say anything.

The essence of the conflict was this: Can the state compel a citizen to display on their private property a message with which they disagree on religious or moral grounds? The message was the New Hampshire state motto “Live Free or Die” that began being embossed on automobile license plates in 1970. A year earlier the Legislature had mandated the move, which many critics believed was intended as an endorsement of the then-still raging Vietnam War.

As soon as the new plates were issued, some people started complaining to the state motor vehicle agency and a few took more dramatic action.

One was Sid Leavitt, a Dartmouth College graduate and U.S. Army veteran who worked a spell as a reporter for the Valley News and later for daily newspapers in Maine and New York State. Leavitt took an X-Acto knife and some green plastic film from a trash bag and spent a night carefully fashioning and applying the words “Live and Let Live” over the state motto stamped on his newly obtained license plates.

Lebanon police soon cited him for doctoring up his plates, and Leavitt would plead not guilty in Lebanon District Court, be convicted and fined $50. He immediately appealed and his case would become part of a mix of similar cases, mostly originating in the Upper Valley and eventually consolidated into a group that came before the state Supreme Court.

In a statement to the Valley News, Leavitt said the motto was placed on the plates through the efforts of “jingoistic, sloganeering politicians trying to apply our state motto to the Vietnam War.” He further said his action was “not a joke nor was it malicious nor was it intended to offend anyone’s sensibilities.”

Soon others were being hauled into court by the Lebanon police. Two residents had covered up all but “Live Free” with black tape, and they were hit with $50 fines. Lebanon Police Chief Charles Reynolds wanted the penalty raised to $100 and pledged to ask for a 90-day jail sentence for the next dissenters his officers picked up.

Word of the aggressive policing in Lebanon filtered down to Concord and a bipartisan group of senators filed legislation that would have converted plates bearing the motto into vanity plates available for an extra $10, but the measure went nowhere. Police in Lebanon remained on the lookout for more anti-motto motorists, bringing in two Hanover people on charges of misuse of plates. One had hammered out the “Live Free or Die” lettering, the other had simply painted it over.

The sitting governor, Walter Peterson, was beseeched to call off the prosecutions, or persecution, as some called it, but he claimed he was powerless to stop them.

Their appeals went to the Grafton County Superior Court, where the presiding justice declined to rule and instead shipped the cases to the state Supreme Court. When the matter came up for hearing, the state was represented by none other than Warren Rudman, the attorney general and later U.S. senator. The two defendants were similarly represented by skilled attorneys, but the court picked a narrow path to uphold the state’s power to require motorists to display the motto on their number plates.

At the time New Hampshire automobile plates had combinations of letters and numbers. A Grafton County plate might say “GK592” or Sullivan, “SB 235.” Those were the means by which police could identify a vehicle and distinguish it from all the others on the road. The defendants didn’t contest the necessity for the combinations of letters and digits then in use, but the court threw the letters of the motto into the same category. The court shoved arguments about moral and religious concerns aside, but cited “a desire to perpetuate history and tradition” as a consideration in requiring all motorists to display the motto in addition to the identifying letters and numbers.

Soon after the state Supreme Court ruling came down, Meldrim Thomson the arch-conservative Republican from Orford, became governor and immediately threatened to veto any legislation that would tinker with the status quo on number plates and mottos. Legislators angrily attacked a bill that would have made motto-free plates a $5 option. One representative said motto dissenters “should get out of New Hampshire and go live in Massachusetts” and motto-free plates should be painted yellow.

Although the Upper Valley had been the epicenter of number plate motto battles for nearly four years, the scene had calmed in 1974. But in November things would heat up again when a Claremont couple, George and Maxine Maynard, began taping over the motto on their four cars. They were asserting their religious beliefs, they said. Neighborhood kids came and ripped off the tape, so Maynard punched out the “or Die” with a nail.

On Nov. 27 Maynard was stopped by Lebanon police and summoned to court for misuse of plates, which officers confiscated on the spot. Forty-eight hours later he was again stopped by the LPD. That week the Maynards were pictured in the Valley News with their children, and George was quoted in the accompanying story stating: “Live free or die is not my conviction, it’s someone else’s and they’re putting words in my mouth. My freedom of speech is being denied.”

The newspaper chimed in with an editorial saying “the plate motto was an archaic insistence” and “the state’s requirement that its subjects be forced to keep that motto front and center would appear to violate the very words of the phrase.”

On Dec. 6, Maynard was convicted in Lebanon District Court but a $25 fine was suspended though he had said he would refuse to pay. Police hung onto his confiscated plates. He would have yet another run-in with the Lebanon police on Dec. 28; a citation was issued, his plates confiscated. He fashioned cardboard plates, but a state trooper stopped him in Plainfield and another summons was issued and the cardboard plates were taken.

Then, yet another go-round: On Jan. 3, he was in Lebanon District Court, but the cases were continued until Jan. 31. While he was in the courtroom, police seized another set of his plates and had another summons served on him at his home in Claremont. The Maynards’ four registered automobiles offered police multiple targets for enforcement.

On Jan. 31, Maynard was fined $75, which he refused to pay, so Judge William Lovejoy sentenced him to 15 days in the Grafton County jail with another six months suspended. Along the way, television stations had picked up the story; Maynard got fired from his job and his church, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, had booted him out.

After Maynard served his jail time, the American Civil Liberties Union joined the fray and teamed up with two veteran downstate attorneys volunteering their services pro bono. The legal team went to the U.S. District Court in Concord and sought a restraining order against the Lebanon police chief, the head of the state police and the director of motor vehicles to stop prosecution and confiscation. Judge Hugh Bownes wasted no time in issuing an injunction. The state appealed the finding to a special panel of three judges, who sustained the district court judge’s decision.

Gov. Thomson demanded the state appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, blasting “un-American decisions of misguided federal judges” who, if not checked, will “destroy America.” No matter, the full Supreme Court accepted the case and at oral argument several of the justices gave the counsel for New Hampshire a rough time. On April 20, 1977, the court by a vote of 7-2 found for Maynard.

David Souter, then the state attorney general and later himself a U.S. Supreme Court justice, said he “wasn’t really surprised at the court’s decision. We realized this was a difficult case since the law didn’t really favor us.” Thomson responded to the verdict by ordering all state agencies to use rubber stamps bearing the “Live Free or Die” motto on all official documents and correspondence.

The U.S. Supreme Court case, Wooley v. Maynard, has since become a go-to for precedents in litigation involving government efforts to enforce beliefs contrary to those of individuals. One recent example is a Colorado bakery’s refusal to make a wedding cake for a same-sex marriage.

Maynard was completely vindicated, but that wasn’t the end of the story. The district court had ordered the state to pay the $20,000 in legal fees Maynard incurred during the long legal slog.

But the state wasn’t paying up.

So the judge called in the U.S. marshal and instructed him to go to the New Hampshire Liquor Commission store in Hooksett and collect from the registers the cash needed to settle things up. The store manager was on the phone immediately to his boss in Concord and frantic calls to the governor’s office finally got the money on the way from the state treasury.

Steve Taylor of Meriden is an occasional Valley News contributor. He credits Lebanon-based historian and writer Dan Billin for extensive research on this topic. Billin lectures on the subject for the New Hampshire Humanities-to-Go program.