Green Corn Rebellion

The Green Corn Rebellion was an armed uprising that took place in rural Oklahoma on August 2 and 3, 1917. The uprising was a reaction by European Americans, tenant farmers, Seminoles, Muscogee Creeks, and African Americans to an attempt to enforce the Selective Draft Act of 1917. The name "Green Corn Rebellion" was a reference to the purported plans of the rebels to march across the country and to eat "green corn" on the way for sustenance. They hoped to be joined by thousands of sympathizers, march to Washington, D. C., overthrow the federal government, abolish the draft, and end U. S. involvement in the war. Many of the rebels were aligned with the Socialist Party of America.

On April 6, 1917, US President Woodrow Wilson, who had recently sworn into a second term of office for which he had run behind the slogan "He Kept Us Out of War," appeared between a joint session of the US Congress to ask for a declaration of war against Imperial Germany. Congress readily obliged Wilson's request by voting to declare war on Germany by a margin of 373–50 in the House of Representatives and 82–6 in the Senate. The US government's decision to enter World War I was backed up with additional legislation imposing military conscription in America to staff the nation's wartime Army and Navy. On May 18, 1917, a draft bill became law. The bill called for all eligible young men nationwide to register for the draft on a single day, June 5, 1917. Isolated hotspots of anti conscription activity occurred in some urban centers, Among the leading organized forces in opposition to conscription and the war was the Socialist Party of America, whose April 1917 National Convention had declared its "unalterable opposition" to the war and urged the workers of the world to "refuse support to the governments in their wars."

The so called Green Corn Rebellion may be said to have started on Thursday, August 2, 1917, when a Seminole County sheriff, Frank Grall, and a visiting deputy sheriff, Bill Cross, were ambushed near the Little River, a tributary of the Canadian River. Raiding parties followed this action, cutting telephone lines and burning railroad bridges. The uprising seems to have been spurred by the agitation of the Working Class Union, which was reported in one newspaper as having called its supporters to arms with a manifesto:

Now is the time to rebel against this war with Germany, boys. Boys, get together and don't go. Rich man's war. Poor man's fight. The war is over with Germany if you don't go and J. P. Morgan & Co. is lost. Their great speculation is the only cause of the war. Unfortunately, no documents written by WCU members have survived, and the mentality of those taking up arms must be considered speculative by historians. The historian Garin Burbank argues that the coming of conscription threatened to decimate family economies by removing able bodied young men, who were needed to harvest cotton. Burbank argues also that socialist ideas had found its mark in Oklahoma, with many poor farmers earnestly believing from their experiences in daily life in the reality of "exploitation" and accepting the notion that the European war was little more than capitalist business enterprise writ large. Arming themselves, an estimated 800 to 1000 rebels, "the vast majority of old American stock," met on the banks of the South Canadian River and made plans to head east and to live off the land as they marched. They would eat roasted "green corn" and barbecued beef on the way, it was later said, and eventually join up with countless thousands of likeminded comrades, who would together march on Washington, DC, where they would overthrow "Big Slick" Wilson, repeal the Draft Act, and end the war. The plans were instantly betrayed to local authorities by an informer.

A total of three people were killed in the Green Corn Rebellion in August 1917, Nearly 450 people were detained in connection with the incident, 266 of whom were released without charges being filed. Those identified as leaders of the uprising received the heaviest sentences. Most were soon paroled or pardoned, but five men remained in the federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, in February 1922. The so called "rebellion" was used as a cudgel against the Socialist Party of Oklahoma, which was blamed for the incident, whose origins were, however, largely spontaneous and external. The Industrial Workers of the World shared the brunt of popular indignation although the organization had taken no part in the Green Corn Rebellion and had been related to the WCU only by the latter group being formed in response to the IWW's refusal to organize tenant farmers. An elderly Seminole Muscogee Creek woman relayed to Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz that her uncle had been imprisoned after the rebellion: "The full moon of late July, early August it was, the Moon of the Green Corn. It was not easy to persuade our poor white and black brothers and sisters to rise up. We told them that rising up, standing up, whatever the consequences, would inspire future generations. Our courage, our bravery would be remembered and copied. That has been the Indian way for centuries, since the invasions. Fight and tell the story so that those who come after or their descendants will rise up once again. It may take a thousand years, but that is how we continue and eventually prevail." Sam Marcy, the founder of the Workers' World Party, upheld the Green Corn Rebellion as the ideal working class antiwar struggle in his book "The Bolsheviks and War," which was published in 1985. In 2017, the centennial of the Green Corn Rebellion was marked by media coverage and the launch of a website to archive both historical and current interpretations of the event.