When Oklahoma Was the Heartland of American Socialism
In 1917, impoverished Oklahoma tenant farmers were the backbone of the US’s flourishing socialist movement. That year, hundreds mobilized — armed — to march on Washington and force an end to the World War I draft.
The Green Corn Rebellion in 1917 is a testament to the success of a regional socialist movement, the strongest the United States had ever seen at that time. (Smithsonian)
In the winter of 1915, the socialist journalist and publisher John Kenneth Turner traveled through southern Oklahoma to report on the conditions of poor tenant farmers. “On this little journey,” he wrote in a dispatch to the socialist weekly Appeal to Reason, “I did not find anybody enjoying the benefits of modern civilization in any degree.”
A man of wealth would not stable his horse in such houses as these people live in; the food that they eat would be spurned by a well-fed dog.
Many of them at this moment are in the actual throes of acute starvation. Many have already been stripped of their poor possessions and turned out in the cold, with no shelter, nowhere to turn, and not a penny in their pockets. And many more will have met the same fate by the time this article reaches the reader.
Conditions for Oklahoma tenant farmers further deteriorated over the coming years, as World War I precipitated a collapse in cotton prices. When impoverished tenants learned they would be conscripted to fight in that same war, they reached a breaking point.
This article is for subscribers only. Please login or subscribe to access our full archives and beautiful print and digital magazine starting at just $3 a month.