Socialist Party of Oklahoma

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 United States of America, 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 fairly 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.