The Socialist Party of Oklahoma was a semi-autonomous affiliate of the Socialist Party of America located in the Southwestern state of Oklahoma. One of the last states admitted to the Union, the area later incorporated into Oklahoma had been previously used for reservations to which indigenous Native American populations were deported, with the area formally divided after 1890 into two entities — an "Oklahoma Territory" in the West and an "Indian Territory" in the East.
In April 1889 some 2 million acres of unassigned lands in the future Oklahoma Territory were opened up to non-Native American settlement in the first of a series of Oklahoma land runs. Dominated by agriculture in an often harsh climate, the Oklahoma Territory was in this period one of the last undeveloped frontiers of the continental United States. With the regional economy dominated by the massive economic power of great railroads and large financial entities, an ethic of agrarian radicalism developed among many of Oklahoma's debt-ridden and impoverished small-holding farmers. Powered more by religious fervor than by Marxist ideology, substantial sections of the People's Party and its eventual successor, the Socialist Party, sprung forth from the Oklahoma soil.
As the first decade of the 20th century drew to a close, the Socialist Party of Oklahoma was one of the most dominant state organizations of the national party, gaining the support of nearly one in five Oklahoma voters and electing candidates to office in various locales around the state.
This boom was followed by a bust, however. The anti-militarist stance taken by the Socialist Party towards World War I was deeply unpopular with many of the organization's generally patriotic rural party members and provoked disruptive and sometimes violent reactions by others in the community. In August 1917 a failed armed march on Washington, DC remembered to history as the Green Corn Rebellion, organized by a local radical organization close to the Industrial Workers of the World, was blamed on the Socialists. The massive public outrage which followed prompted the dismantling of the state organization. By 1920 organized socialism in Oklahoma had been almost completely extinguished.
A fledgling Oklahoma state socialist organization was reestablished in 1928 and grew somewhat during the first half of the 1930s during the years of the Great Depression.
Organizational history
Background
The "Oklahoma lands" — the entire future state of Oklahoma with the exception of the narrow western panhandle — were first set aside as a site to which Native American populations were to be deported from their ancestral homelands in the 1830s.Danney Goble, Progressive Oklahoma: The Making of a New Kind of State. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980; pg. 3. It was there that the so-called "Five Civilized Tribes" — the Cherokee, Seminole, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Muscogee (Creek) peoples — were relocated at that time, clearing the way for European-American colonization of their previous lands. Following the conclusion of the American Civil War the Federal government used the fact of these five Native American peoples' support of the Confederate States of America as a pretext for retaking approximately half of these "Oklahoma lands." This freed new area for additional forced relocations of other Native American peoples.
In the years after the civil war the "Oklahoma lands" were administratively divided, with the Eastern territory remaining in the possession of the Cherokee, Seminole, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Muscogee designated the Indian Territory and the Western area given the official designation Oklahoma Territory. It was originally envisioned that part of this land ceded back to the Federal government after the conclusion of the Civil War would be used for the settlement of freed African-American slaves, but no such systematic relocation campaign was conducted.Goble, Progressive Oklahoma, pg. 4.
At the end of the 1880s, nearly two million acres (810,000 hectares) of unused land remained in the Federal inventory at the center of the present state. With little other free land available on the American frontier, public pressure grew for this land to be made available for settlement. Expectant settlers known as "Boomers" began to organize in neighboring Kansas, agitating the government to open the Unassigned Lands for settlement and promising the mutual support of their members for the establishment of their individual claims.Goble, Progressive Oklahoma, pp. 4-6. Attempts were made by some of these Boomers to squat claims, which were met by ineffectual government dispersals of illegal settlers and their subsequent re-invasion of illegally claimed lands.Goble, Progressive Oklahoma, pg. 7.
Public pressure and the ongoing pattern of illegal occupation began to move the wheels of government towards a fundamental transformation of its Indian policy. The Dawes Act of 1887 authorized the dismantling of collectively held tribal lands into individual allotments and signaled an intention to open the whole of the Unassigned Lands to parcelization and allocation to private landholders. Whereas commonly held tribal lands were unlikely to be leased out to white settlers, the Dawes Act with its individually owned parcels ranging from 60 to 320 acres created a situation in which individuals could be persuaded to make transactions that tribal governments would not.Bissett, Agrarian Socialism in America, pg. 18.
The fragmentation of the collectively owned tribal lands was followed in April 1889 by the first and largest of a series of officially sanctioned Oklahoma land runs, in which prospective settlers rushed to stake claims to parcels previously part of the Unassigned Lands.Goble, Progressive Oklahoma, pg. 8. Oklahoma became the new Kansas — a bustling, hardscrabble, agrarian frontier economy emerged, with Oklahoma City the nexus of the Oklahoma Colony.
White settlers flocked to the state in search of nominally priced virgin agricultural land. By August 1889 nearly 6,000 claims were filed on over 900,000 acres of land.Worth Robert Miller, Oklahoma Populism: A History of the People's Party in the Oklahoma Territory. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987; pg. 29. The next year would see another 7,000 claims putting a million more acres behind fences. By 1901 virtually all the Oklahoma Territory — the western half of today's Oklahoma, land previously set-aside for displaced Native American populations — was in the hands of European-American homesteaders.Miller, Oklahoma Populism, pg. 3.
Oklahoma populism
Obtaining land proved to be the simple part of the economic equation for the white newcomers to the Oklahoma Territory. Life proved difficult. The timing of the April 1889 land dash made the growing of a crop in the first year nigh impossible. Settlers, many of whom were of limited financial means to begin with, were forced to draw down the stocks of provisions which they carried with them to their new homesteads. Homes were built and wells dug, but 1890 was a year of severe drought, which made a second consecutive year of no farm income for many settlers.
Thugs squatting on prime land sometimes kept their rightful owners off their own property until matters could be litigated in court, further impeding the development of viable farms.Miller, Oklahoma Populism, pg. 30. Speculators claimed prime land and access to transportation and water. Some lost their claims and were rendered landless owing to a lack of funds to pay legal fees. Exacerbating these problems, for a full year no territorial government existed to adjudicate the myriad of legal issues which emerged.Miller, Oklahoma Populism, pp. 30-31.
On top of the difficulties faced in the launching of a new agricultural economy came the insertion from neighboring states of a resource-draining financial and business apparatus. Few Oklahomans had the financial resources to go into business for themselves on more than a personal subsistence level and a seller's market prevailed.Miller, Oklahoma Populism, pg. 31.
A costly credit system emerged in which merchants would frequently charge substantially higher prices for wares purchased on credit and then levy heavy interest rates on the unpaid balance — combined costs which could add as much as 50% to the total purchase price.Robert Ransom and Richard Sutch, One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1977; pp. 128-131. Quoted in Bissett, Agrarian Socialism in America, pg. 15. Many were forced to mortgage their furniture and basic possessions at exorbitant interest rates in order to make ends meet.Miller, Oklahoma Populism, pg. 32. Defaulting families lost their possessions and were reduced into still more dire living conditions. Poverty was endemic. Nearly a decade after the great land grab of 1889, one study estimated the value of the furniture owned by the average Oklahoman family at just $7.50.
The widespread economic misery had the effect of radicalizing a significant segment of the Oklahoma population. This found expression in the 1890 establishment of the People's Party (commonly known as the "Populists") in Oklahoma in the summer of 1890.Miller, Oklahoma Populism, pg. 39. On June 21, 1890, representatives of the Farmers' Alliance, the Knights of Labor, and the Union Labor Party gathered in Oklahoma City for pre-convention planning. The group set August 13, 1890 as the date for the first territorial convention of the new political organization, which sought to challenge the dominant Democratic and less potent Republican parties in the Oklahoma Territory. The selection of this date proved unfortunate, however, as Governor George Washington Steele subsequently announced August 5 — a week ahead of the scheduled organizing convention — as the date for the election of a territorial legislature.
Despite being surprised by the snap election, the Populists still managed to win election to several seats in the first territorial legislature, including a sweep of Payne County's senator and three representatives and winning another seat in Payne County.Miller, Oklahoma Populism, pg. 41. People's Party supporters tended to be Northern-born, while the Democrats were skewed towards the Southern born.Miller, Oklahoma Populism, pg. 42. The Republicans tended to split the Northern-born vote with the Populists, dominated by those hailing from New England, while People's Party supporters tended to be of Midwestern origins. Six Republicans, 5 Democrats, 1 Populist, and 1 Republican-leaning Independent were elected to the 1890 Oklahoma Territorial Council (Senate), while the first House of Representatives included 14 Republicans, 8 Democrats, and 4 Populists.Miller, Oklahoma Populism, pg. 44. Oklahoma was, in short, a three party state from the outset.
The People's Party remained an extremely effective political entity for two more election cycles. In 1892 the Oklahoma People's Party advanced a full slate of its candidates, committed to the third party approach but relegated to third place. In the elections of November 1894, however, the People's Party seemed to break through, outpolling the candidate of the Democratic Party for Congress by drawing 33% of the vote in a losing effort.Bissett, Agrarian Socialism in America, pg. 24.