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 radicalized European-American, tenant farmers, Seminoles, Muscogee Creeks and African-Americans to an attempt to enforce the Selective Draft Act of 1917 and was so-called due to the purported plans of the rebels to march across the country, eating "green corn" on the way for sustenance. Betrayed by an informer in their midst, the country rebels met with a well-armed posse of townsmen, with whom shots were exchanged and three people killed. In the aftermath of the incident, scores of arrests were made and the Socialist Party of America, formerly strong in the region was decimated in the public eye for allegedly having attempted to foment revolution. The incident was also used as a pretext for national reprisals against the Industrial Workers of the World.
Famous quotes containing the words green, corn and/or rebellion:
“Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green & pleasant Land.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“This generation is very sure to plant corn and beans each new year precisely as the Indians did centuries ago and taught the first settlers to do, as if there were a fate in it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The rebellion is against time pollution, the feeling that the essence of what makes life worth living—the small moments, the special family getaways, the cookies in the oven, the weekend drives, the long dreamlike summers Mso much of this has been taken from us, or we have given it up. For what? Hitachi stereos? Club Med? Company cars? Racquetball? For fifteen-hour days and lousy day care?”
—Richard Louv (20th century)