Kate Richards O'Hare

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Kate Richards O'Hare in 1915

Kate Richards O'Hare, circa 1913

Carrie Katherine "Kate" Richards O'Hare (1876–1948) was an American Socialist Party activist, editor, and orator best known for her controversial imprisonment during World War I.

Biography

Early years

Carrie Katherine Richards was born March 26, 1876 in Ottawa County, Kansas, O'Hare briefly worked as a teacher in Nebraska before becoming an apprentice machinist in her native Kansas. There she was drawn into socialist politics and married fellow socialist Frank P. O'Hare.

Political career

She unsuccessfully ran as a candidate for the United States Congress in Kansas on the Socialist ticket in 1910.

In the pages of the National Rip-Saw, a St. Louis-based socialist journal in the 1910s, O'Hare championed reforms in favor of the working class and toured the country as an orator. After America's entry into World War I in 1917, O'Hare led the Socialist Party's Committee on War and Militarism. For giving an anti-war speech in Bowman, North Dakota, O'Hare was arrested and taken to prison by federal authorities for violating the Espionage Act of 1917, an act criminalizing interference with recruitment and enlistment of military personnel. With no federal penitentiaries for women existing at the time, she was delivered to Missouri State Penitentiary on a five-year sentence in 1919, but in 1920 was pardoned in the last days of the Wilson administration [N.B. Harding was not President until March 1921], after a nationwide campaign to secure her release. In prison, O'Hare met the anarchists Emma Goldman and Gabriella Segata Antolini, and worked with them to improve prison conditions.

O'Hare, unlike Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs and other prominent socialists at the time, was a supporter of racial segregation, and penned a 1912 pamphlet titled "Nigger" Equality, which attempted to appeal to Southern voters.^[1]

Later years

Kate O'Hare divorced Frank O'Hare in June 1928 and married the engineer and businessman Charles C. Cunningham in California in November of the same year. Despite her continued involvement in politics, much of O'Hare's prominence gradually faded. O'Hare worked on behalf of Upton Sinclair's radical populist campaign in the 1934 California gubernatorial election, and briefly served on the staff of Wisconsin Progressive Party politician Thomas R. Amlie in 1937–1938. Esteemed as a penal reform advocate, she served as an assistant director of the California Department of Penology in 1939–1940.

Death and legacy

O'Hare died in Benicia, California, on 10 January 1948.

Footnotes

↑ Kate Richards O'Hare, "Nigger" Equality. St. Louis, MO: National Rip-Saw, 1912.

Works

"How I Became a Socialist Agitator," Socialist Woman [Girard, KS], October 1908, pp. 4-5.
The Sorrows of Cupid. St. Louis, MO: National Rip-Saw, 1912.
"Nigger" Equality. St. Louis, MO: National Rip-Saw, 1912.
Americanism and Bolshevism. St. Louis, MO: F. P. O’Hare, 1919.
Socialism and the World War. St. Louis, MO: F. P. O’Hare, 1919.
In Prison. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1923.

External links

Lubna A. Alam and Elizabeth I. Perry, "How Did Kate Richards O'Hare's Conviction and Incarceration for Sedition during World War I Change Her Activism?" Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000, womhist.alexanderstreet.com/ —Document collection.
Kate Richards O'Hare Letters. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.

Authority control	VIAF: 32889771 ISNI: 0000 0000 6322 2947

Persondata
Name	Ohare, Kate Richards
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	March 26, 1876, or March 26, 1877
Place of birth
Date of death	January 10, 1948
Place of death

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