Jonas Sliupas (1861–1944) was a figure of the Lithuanian national movement, a physician, an active promoter of the idea of independent Lithuania in the political circles of the United States of America, a social and political journalist, and a spreader of freethinking ideas. He was born on 6 March 1861 in the village of Rakandziai, Gruzdziai rural district, Siauliai district, to the family of farmers Rokas and Ona Sliupas. In 1880 he finished the Mintauja gymnasium and entered Moscow University, and in 1882 switched to St. Petersburg University. He was arrested for participating in student riots and deported to his homeland. Trying to avoid being drafted in the army, he secretly left for Switzerland, wherefrom was invited by Martynas Jankus to Bitenai to become the editor of the Ausra newspaper in the summer of 1883. The socialist and freethinking trend of the newspaper, as well as Jonas Sliupas’s social activity caused dissatisfaction of the authorities in Lithuania Minor. Persecuted by the Russian and Prussian authorities, he departed to the United States in May 1884. There he began active work in the community of American Lithuanians: contributed to the founding of Lithuanian parishes, and established the Society of Lovers of Lithuania (1885), the Lithuanian Scientific Society (1889), took part in the socialist movement until 1905, and was one of the organizers of the Union of Lithuanians in America (1886), one of the founders of the Lithuanian Freethinking Society (1900), and a figure of the Seyms of American Lithuanians (1914–18), which advanced the requirements of Lithuania’s autonomy, and later – independence. In the years of World War I, Sliupas’s Lithuanian activity turned into a diplomatic struggle for Lithuania’s freedom.

In 1921 Sliupas returned to Lithuania. Having found himself on the fringe of political life of the state, in 1922–23 he worked as a teacher at the Birzai and Siauliai gymnasiums, and in 1924–30 gave lectures on the history of medicine at Kaunas University. Concerned about the strengthening of the country’s economy, he invested the capital that he had accumulated in the USA in Lithuanian companies, but lost everything when the Trade and Industry Bank went bankrupt in 1927. His first wife Liudvika Malinauskaite-Sliupiene died in 1928, and in 1929 Sliupas married Grasilda Grauslyte, a native of Palanga. In 1930 he moved to Palanga, and as soon as Palanga was granted the city rights, he became its first burgomaster in 1933. Sliupas took great interest in the processes taking place in the Lithuanian state, and repeatedly expounded his remarks, suggestions and protests in memoranda addressed to the authorities. As the second Soviet occupation was approaching, he fled to Austria with his family in 1944. He died on 6 November 1944 in Berlin and was buried in the Lithuanian national cemetery in Chicago.