Danver Steven L. (Edited). Revolts, Protests, Demonstrations, and Rebellions in American History: An Encyclopedia (ENG)

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Green Corn Rebellion (1917)

During World War I, in August 1917, a small revolt of poor tenant farmers broke

out in rural Oklahoma. Organized to prote st the Conscriptio n Act of June 1917,

the Green Corn Rebellion resulted in a few m inor skirmishes and the arrest of

almost 500 participants. Though the “revolt” was a relatively minor protest in

the larger prosecution of the war, it has become a symbol of the antiwar resistance

in rural areas of the United States during World War I.

Conditions in Oklahoma had been bad for farmers for a number of years pre-

ceding the rebellion. Oklahoma was settled late, in the 1890s, and much of the

land was owned by speculators who became landlords to tenant farmers. Due to

the presence of a substantial amount of Indian land, much of the property in

Oklahoma was not subject to taxation, ensuring poor-quality education and

government serv ices for rural Oklahomans. Indeed, only about 1 in 15 men

arrested in the Green Corn Rebellion could read and write.

Though farm prices had risen at the outbreak of World War I, tenant farmers in

the area felt that bankers, speculators, and local business es victimized them with

foreclosures, high interest rates , high rents, and low crop prices. Farmers began

to look at the socialist ideology as a viable alternative to the capitalist system.

By 1915, thousands of Oklahoma farmers had joined the Working Class Union

(WCU), a socialist organization based in Van Buren, Arkansa s, that had over

10,000 members among the rural poor in Oklahoma.

The WCU program for rural socialism included making more federal land

availabl e for poor farmers to purchase; it also called for a progressive, or gradu -

ated tax on l andlords, a nd marketing cooperatives to bypass middlemen in the

agricultural system. Farmers in the area were angry with th e federal government

for fostering a program to dip cattle in chemical dips to combat the “Texas Fever”

plague in the area. (Many rural dwellers thought the chemical dips actually hurt

the cattle.)

Socialism was very popular in the heart of the rural United States in the years

leading up to World War I. Many small towns had socialist n ewspapers, and o ne

of the most popular socialist periodicals in the period was published in nearby

Girard, Kansas. Thousands of rural dwellers in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, and

other states would attend weeklong socialist “camp meetings” that featured speak-

ers and songs much like an evangelical revival. In 1914, socialists held over 100

739

political ofﬁces in the state. Farmers, especially poor farmers, felt that the emerg-

ing global capitalist system had left them behind, and now they were being asked

to submit their sons to a ﬁght in a war that was, in their eyes, the fault of that same

system.

When the government announced that the military draft would begin in

June 1917, protests broke out across the country, particularly in rural areas where

socialists and paciﬁsts had sewn their ideology in the years before the war. Ironi-

cally, rising farm prices in 1916 led to less activity with the WCU in Oklahoma,

but the group reformed to protest the implementation of the Conscription Act.

(Rural resistance to the draft in World War I was poignantly portrayed i n the

1941 ﬁlm Sergeant York, about World War I draft resister–turned–war hero Alvin

York of rural Tennessee.)

The WCU looked favorably on the “direct action” tactics of the radical Indus-

trial Workers of the World (IWW), a union formed in 1905 that was popular in

working-class America for confronting the capitalist system in a series of often-

violent strikes and protests in the years leading up to the war. Ironically, the

IWW had reje cted WCU overtures because tenant fa rmers and sma ll business

men in the WCU were “capitalists” in the eyes of IWW leaders.

When President Woodrow Wilson campaigned for reelection in 1916, he had

witnessed a great outpouring of paciﬁsm in rural areas. Farmers felt betrayed when

the leader who had “kept the boys out the war” led the country into the maelstrom

in April 1917. The implementation o f the military draft further convinced these

impoverished farmers that they were being conscripted to ﬁght a “rich man’s war.”

In the ﬁrst days of August 1917, the movement began to coalesce under a red

banner ﬂying on the farm of local socialist John Spears near Sasakwa on the Cana-

dian River. Hundreds of white, black, and Native American tenant farmers planned

a program of protest and resistance. Hearkening back to the day of Coxey’s Army

in 1890s, the farmers planned to march on Washington. Along the way, the protest-

ers would eat “green” corn from the ﬁelds, hoping that their numbers would grow

on the way to the Capitol. In the weeks preceding the Green Corn Rebellion in

August, WCU leaders “Rube” Munson and Homer Spence had already been

arrested for obstructing the draft.

On August 2, 1917, around 300 protesters (some of them armed) began to cut

telephone and telegraph lines and light b ridges and oil pipelin es aﬁre. (Appr oxi-

mately 1,000 rebels and their supporters were involved over the course of the

rebellion.) The local sheriff Bob Duncan quickly organized a “posse” that con-

fronted the rebels, eventually killing four in skirmishes over the next few days.

The revolt was easily put down within a week with the assistance of deputy U.S.

marshal Frank Whally, and of the 450 men arrested, 150 of the Green Corn rebels

were convicted, many of whom received 10-year terms in federal prison at

740 Green Corn Rebellion (1917)

Leavenworth. Other groups, including the Socialist Party of the United States and

the IWW, were also suppressed and effectively shut down in the state in the wake

of the Green Corn Rebellion.

In the decades after the war, few historians discussed the Green Corn Rebellion.

There was a novel about the episode published several years later, The Green Corn

Rebellion, by Oklahoma author William Cunningham. In the 1950s, a ground-

breaking study, Opponents of War, 1917–1918, was written by historians Gilber t

Peterson and H. C. Fite. The book places the Green Corn Rebellion in the context

of the crackdown of antiwar resistance and radicalism in the United States during

World War I. The Green Corn Rebellion, as Peterson and Fite noted, was a small

thread in a larger tapestry of resistance to the war. In rural areas throughout the

United States, numerous socialists and their supporters were arrested for violating

the Espionage Act, the Sedition Act, and other laws des igned to suppress dissent

during the conﬂict.

The quick and thorough suppression of the Green Corn Rebellion in Oklahoma

was part of a comprehensive campaign to reduce or eliminate socialism and

radical unionism in the U nited States that started during the war and continued

in the postwar Red Scare that began in 1919 under the leadership of Attorney Gen-

eral A. Mitchell Palmer. Socialism also became tainted with its association with

the newly created Soviet Union, which had withdrawn from the war effort just as

Americans were landing in Europe in force. In the 1920s, groups like the Ku Klux

Klan became popular in places like rural Oklahoma, where aversion to radical

politics was also associated with immigrat ion and the values of the city. Once a

vib rant ideological force in the rural heartland of the United States, the socia list

movement effectively died in an increasingly conservative rural population in the

1920s. Episodes such as the Green Corn Rebellion hastened that decline.

—Randal Beeman

See also all entries under New York Draft Riots (1863); Molly Maguire s (1870s); G reat

Railroad Strikes (1877); Haymarket Riot (1886); Seattle Riot (1886); Homestead Strike

(1892–1893); Pullman Strike (1894); Lattimer Massacre (1897); Black Patch War (1909);

Ludlow Massacre (1914); Boston Police Strike (1919); Battle of Blair Mountain (1921); Bonus

Army (1932); Toledo Auto-Lite Strike (1934); World T rade Organization Protests (1999).

Further Reading

Kennedy, David . Over Here: The First World War and American Society.NewYork:

Oxford, 2004.

Murphy, Paul L. World War I and the Origin of Civil Liberties in the United States.NewYork:

Norton, 1979.

Green Corn Rebellion (1917) 741

Peterson, H. C., and Fite, Gilbert C. Opponents of War, 1917–1918. New York: Greenwood

Press, 1986.

Pope, Daniel. American Radicalism. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2001.

Preston, William, Jr. Aliens and Dissenters: Federal Suppression of Radicals, 1903–1933.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963.

Sellars, N igel Anthony. Oil, Wheat & Wobblies: The Industrial Workers of the World in

Oklahoma, 1905–1930. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998.

742 Green Corn Rebellion (1917)

Conscription Act (World War I, 1917)

The Conscription Act, formally known as the Selective Service Act, was passed by

the U.S. Congress on May 18, 1917. The law authorized the government to begin

drafting American males into the armed forces starting on June 5, 1917. The Con-

scription Act was seen as a military necessity by the government, but the law was

very controversial among those who opposed American involvement in the Euro-

pean conﬂict.

World War I (known as the “Great War” at the time) began in the summer of

1914. Though the United States was i nvolved in the war economical ly f rom the

beginning, the American people were very r eluctant to send combat troops into

the ﬁght. After a series of problems with Germany, including submarine attacks on

U.S. vessels and a potential German alliance with Mexico, the United States

declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917.

American military planners wanted to amass an army of over four million men

in France, and then train, equip, and drill them before sending them into the front

lines to hopefully overwhelm the Germans. Though nearly two million men volun-

teered for duty, the Conscription Act was created to ﬁll out the ranks with draftees.

At least 24 million men registered f or the draft, and 2.8 million of them were

inducted into the armed forces of the United States. Initially, the Conscription

Act called for a draft of all males aged 21 to 30, but that age limit was sub-

sequently expanded to include all males aged 18 to 45. The majority of those

drafted were farmers and common laborers.

Resistance to the Conscription Act was strong, but those who opposed the law

were eventually overwhelmed by the patriotic sentiments that emerged in the

war. Draft resisters were targeted as slackers and traitors, and the government

employed repressive mechanisms to stiﬂe resistance to the draft. Some who

resisted as conscientious objectors viewed the draft as a violation of their religious

and paciﬁst principles . Fewer than 350,0 00 individuals avoided the draft; thu s,

the Conscription Act was viewed by the U.S. government as a very successful

enterprise.

Among the draft resisters was a man from Tenne ssee named Alvin York , who

sought to be released from duty due to his religious convictions. York later

changed his mind and became one of the nation’s top w ar heroes during the con-

ﬂict in Europe. His story was retold in the classic Hollyw ood ﬁlm Sergeant York

(1941). A narchists, socialists, communists, and other radicals were often leaders

in opposition to the Conscription Act. Mother Jones, a radical New York–based

magazine, declared June 5, 1917, as the day democracy died in America. In

743

Oklahoma, impoverished rural dwellers started a well-known yet short-lived draft

resistance campaign known to history as the Green Corn Rebellion in June 1917.

The Selective Service system differed fr om the previous draft in the Civil War

in that it did not allow draftees to hire substitutes to take their place in the military.

Refusal to sign up for the draft was a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in

jail. Many opponents of the Conscription Act were also thrown in prison during

the war for impeding the draft and violating the Espionage or Seditions acts.

—Randal Beeman

Further Reading

Kennedy, David. Over Here: The First World War and American Society.NewYork:

Oxford, 2004.

Peterson, H. C., and Fite, Gilbert C. Opponents of War, 1917–1918. New York: Greenwood

Press, 1986.

Industrial Workers of the World

(IWW)

Founded in Chicago in 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World (I WW) was a

radical socialist-anarchist movement that advocated the overthrow of the capitalist

system via the organization of all wag e workers into “one big union.” From the

beginning, the IWW was controversial due to the fact that many IWW members

(who were labeled “Wobblies”) advocated direct action, or violence, as a means to

achieving their goals. The IWW was involved in a number of violent strikes and

protests on behalf of free speech. The IWW was also hampered by critics within

the socialist movement, and from attacks by industrialists and the government.

During and after World War I (1914–1918) and the subsequent First Red Scare

(1919–1921), IWW members often faced arrest and physical violence due to their

opposition to the war.

After the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865), workers across the United States began

to organize trade unions to ﬁght for better pay and working conditions. While

some of these unionists supported socialism and welcomed all workers into their

folds, the major unions such as the American Federation of Labor (AFL) restricted

membership to skilled white workers. Radicals such as William “Big Bill”

Haywood, Eugene V. Debs, and Mary Harris “Mother” Jones founded the IWW

for all wage workers irrespective of job skills, race, ethnicity, or gender.

744 Green Corn Rebellion (1917)

Though the IWW was never very speciﬁc about how their union would lead to

the overthrow of the capitalist system, the union won support fo r its attempt to

organize itinerant farm workers, miners, and lumbermen for the ﬁrst time. IWW

activities met with stiff resist ance from both corpor ations and the government.

IWW members braved arrest and jail in their successful campaigns for free speech

in Spokane, Washington, and San Diego and Fresno, California, in 1910–1911.

Some IWW members believed that w orkers should organize politically to create

better conditions in the workplace. Other leaders, such as Haywood, insisted that

strikes, boycotts, and protests were more effective. By 1908, several key leaders

such as Debs and Daniel Deleon resigned from the IWW due to its advocacy of

violence to achieve its goals.

By World War I, the IWW had at least 50,000 members a nd many more sup-

porters in the labor movement. IWW members participated in and led numerous

strike action s including famous confro ntations in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in

1912, and Paterson, New Jersey, and Wheatland, California, in 1913. Numerou s

IWW members were jailed and killed in these and other strikes. IWW member

Joe Hill was hanged in Utah in 1914 for murder, even though the evidence was cir-

cumstantial at best. Other IWW members were killed in skirmishes with the law in

places such as Everett, Washington, in 1916.

During World War I, the IWW opposition to the war and military conscription

led to militant persecution of the union by the authorities. The Sedition Act,

Espionage Act, and various criminal syndicalism laws in the states effectively

made it illegal to protest the war and the military draft, and to call for an overthrow

of the capitalist system. IWW ofﬁces were raided and shut down across the coun-

try, and hundreds of “Wobblies” were thrown in jail. Haywood was among the

IWW members sentenced to prison, though he eventually escaped to the Soviet

Union, where he lived the remainder of his life. After World War I, the IWW did

have a brief resurgence, but the union’s a dvocacy of socialism was increasingly

unpopular, and the IWW eventually faded from the spotlight in the 1930s and

1940s.

—Randal Beeman

Further Reading

Carlson, Peter. Roughneck: The Life an d Times of Big Bill Haywood. New York: W. W.

Norton, 1984.

Chace, James. 1 912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs—The Election Tha t Changed the

Country. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004.

Dubofsky, Melvin. We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World.

Chicago: University of Illi nois Press, 2000.

Green Corn Rebellion (1917) 745

Socialism

Prior to World War I, the socialist movement in the United States was a small yet

vibrant third party that presented an alternative political path for many Americans.

The socialis t message of public ownership of the nation’s infrastructure and the

more equitable r edistribution o f wealth a ppe aled to working people, rural folks,

intellectuals, reformers, and idealists. Though World War I created an atmosphere

that was highly antagonistic toward socialism, the socialist movement did have an

inﬂuence in the United States in a variety of ways, including public ownership of

many municipal utility systems, strict governmental controls over the nation’s

industrial system during World War I, and a progressive income tax enacted

in 1913.

The r oots of American soc ialism lay in the organization of worker’s unions

after the Civil War. Socialism spread from Europe to the United States, inﬂuenced

by thinkers such as Karl Marx and Ferdinand Lassalle. The Socialist Labor Party

was founded in 1876, and the Socialist Party of the United States was formed in

1901. As industrialism swept Europe and the United States, many workers felt

trapped in the capitalist system, in which they often faced horriﬁc working condi-

tions, arbitrary wage cuts, and a sense that their lives were controlled by wealthy

business owners. The American Federation of Labor, led by Samuel Gompers,

eventually rejected socialism in favor of a p rogra m for higher wa ges and better

working conditions. Other unions, such as the American Railway Un ion (led by

Eugene V. Debs) advocated p ublic ownership of the railways and oth er “natural

monopolies” such as the telephone system and other basic industries.

Many socialists, including so-called Fabian and utopian socialists, were urban

reformers and assorted idealists who felt that the harsh system of capitalist compe-

tition was wasteful and inefﬁcient. Some religiously oriented people viewed

socialism as a more humane a pproach to organizing society. In rural areas o f the

United States, socialism was particularly strong in the years prior to World War I,

especially among small farmers who often faced excess debt, unfair crop prices,

and high transportation rates. Soc ialist organizations and newspapers were

endemic in American rural areas, and the top socialist magazine, Appeal to Rea-

son, was published in the small town of Girard, Kansas. Socialist strength also

came through in the polling booths, with Debs receiving 12 percent of the

national vote in the 1912 presidential election and with another socialist, Victor

Berger, elected to Congress in 1910.

When World War I began in 1914, most American socialists denounced the war

as a capitalist-imperialist conﬂict, and they were mostly united in their opposition

to American involvement in the war. After the United States entered the war in

746 Green Corn Rebellion (1917)

April 1917 , the socialist movement divided over support fo r the conﬂict. Social-

ists, anarchists, communists, an d other radicals led the opposition to the war and

to military conscription. Eugene V. Debs, Kate Richards O’Hare, and other promi-

nent socialists were arrested and jailed during the war for violating the Espionage

Act, the Sedition Act, and other laws designed to limit protest against the war and

military conscription.

After the Russian Revolution in October 1917 and the newly founded Soviet

Union pulled out of the war, socialism fell into further disregard. Ironical ly, the

wartime economy in the United States required a near absolute governmental take-

over and consolidation of major industries, such as the railroad system, which had

long been a dream of the socialist movement. The socialist movement lost even

more strength after the war during the ﬁrst Red Scare (1919–1921), but the social-

ist cause did enjoy a revival during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

—Randal Beeman

Further Reading

Chace, James. 1 912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs—The Election Tha t Changed the

Country. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004.

Pope, Daniel. American Radicalism. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2001.

Green Corn Rebellion (1917) 747