This day in history: Why a World War I veteran was denied membership in the American Legion. Plus, an angry crowd swarmed Spokane City Council

From 1976: An angry crowd thronged the Spokane City Council meeting to defend what one man called “the last frontier of liberty” – a person’s home.

They were upset about a provision in a proposed building code that granted a “right-of-entry” to building inspectors.

‘“There is nobody going to enter my house without somebody getting shot,” said one man.

A city official tried to reassure the crowd that the “right-of-entry” clause applied strictly to new construction.

The crowd was not mollified. One man, who claimed to be representing the “National Association for Firearms and Freedom,” quoted the Bill of Rights and from what he called the “Sixteenth American Jurisprudence,” guaranteeing the right of people to be secure in their homes.

Mayor Pro Tem Margaret Leonard was sympathetic to the protesters. The council voted unanimously to add a sentence which specifically confined the ordinance to new construction and major remodeling.

From 1926: A Seattle man wrote a letter to the commander of Spokane’s American Legion post in which he threatened to “get” the commander if he didn’t resign.

The commander took this threat seriously, because he learned from the Seattle American Legion post that the letter writer, “Karl Edleman,” had caused problems there and “carried a long knife concealed in a can.”

Edleman was angry at the commander – and the American Legion in general – because he had been denied membership even though he had served during the World War.

Yet he had been denied for an excellent reason: Edleman had served in the German Army, not the U.S. Army.

He was believed to be “demented.”