Green Corn Rebellion
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The Green Corn Rebellion took place in 1917 in rural Oklahoma. It was a popular uprising of poor farmers who identified with the Socialist Party. Up until that time, the Socialist Party regularly won 10 percent of the vote in Oklahoma elections. The short-lived uprising was set off by when the government attempted to enforce the national draft law passed by Congress. The rebels saw World War I as a rich man's war and resisted violently. In August 1917, central Oklahoma farmers, spurred on by local socialists and the Arkansas-based Working Class Union organized to oppose the draft. The rebels may also have believed they had the support of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), but the IWW had rejected affiliation with the WCU in May 1917 because the latter organization included farmers, shopkeepers, doctors and lawyers and not just wage workers. Arming themselves, a few hundred men met on the banks of the South Canadian River and prepared to march on Washington. Local townsfolk took the Green Corn Rebellion seriously, marshalled their own forces, and fought several small skirmishes with the rebels before the farmers scattered. The battles caused the deaths of four townsmen, three rebels and a local schoolteacher mistakenly killed by a posse after he ran a roadblock.[citation needed] In all 266 men were arrested; 150 were convicted and 75 sent to jail. The rebels served terms ranging from a few months to 10 years, and while most were paroled or pardoned after a short period, five men remained in the Federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, in February 1922.
The rebellion also weakened the Socialist Party in Oklahoma, although the party helped elect former Oklahoma City mayor John C. Walton governor in 1922. Nationally, the Socialist Party was blamed for the rebellion, although the incident was set off spontaneously without its knowledge. This was one in a series of events undermining the American socialist movement and fueling the Red Scare.
A fictionalized account of the abortive revolt can be found in William Cunningham’s 1935 novel, The Green Corn Rebellion.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Burbank, Garin (1976). When Farmers Voted Red: The Gospel of Socialism in the Oklahoma Countryside, 1910-1924.
- Kohn, Stephen M. (1994). American Political Prisoners: Prosecutions under the Espionage and Sedition Acts. Greenwood Press.
- Peterson, H. C. (1957). Opponents of War, 1917-1918, pp 39-41.
- Sellars, Nigel Anthony (1998). Oil, Wheat & Wobblies, the Industrial Workers of the World in Oklahoma. 1905-1930. University of Oklahoma Press, pp 77-92.
- Sellars, Nigel Anthony. Treasonous Tenasnt Farmers and Seditious Sharecroppers: The 1917 Gren COrn Rebellion Trials. Oklahoma City University Law Review, pp. 1097-1141.
