Quick quiz: What state, today, known as “the Reddest of the Red States,” was one of the most dynamic and robust strongholds of the Socialist Party in the US? The answer will astound you. So why did this center of collectivist electoral activity and strength dissipate and diminish? And what was the repressive knee-jerk backlash which furthered this dissolution? Find out more of this intriguing story here, here and here.
Yes, Oklahoma, the 46th state to enter the Union in 1907, today boasts that this Republican bastion, is “the Reddest of the Red States.” But as we have seen that phrase is perversely ironic because the Sooner State was once the home of more Socialists, and elected Socialists, than any other state. Oklahoma was where the anti-war Green Corn Rebellion of radicalized tenant farmers and sharecroppers who believed that World War I was a “rich man’s war and a poor man’ fight” erupted in 1917 and later the draconian Tulsa Outrage against IWW members. Finally the cycle of murderous violence escalated into the bloody Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921.
Red State, indeed.
11:53 pm on November 29, 2020
