Authors: Donis Casey
All Men Fear Me (27 page)
The War, the Wobblies, and the Green Corn Rebellion
Though inspired by true events, this is a work of fiction. It's hard to overstate the public hysteria in the United States, and in Oklahoma in particular, during the First World War. I can only try to show how America's entry into the war would have affected someone like Alafair. She lived in the exact middle of an enormous country and, to her, Europe could have been another planet for the effect it had on her daily life. It would have been difficult for her to comprehend the reasons the country was at war. I played with time a bit in this story by adding a week between the Bisbee deportation on July 12, and the first draft lottery, which actually occurred on July 20. The anti-draft uprising, later known as the Green Corn Rebellion, took place on August 4, 1917.
World War I
Most Americans had no desire to get involved in the European war when it began in 1914. There were as many Americans with German ties as there were with English and French ties, and the reasons the Europeans were trying to kill one another was poorly understood by most. When Germany broke its pledge to limit submarine warfare and began sinking American ships in an effort to break the British naval blockade, the U.S. severed diplomatic relations. Then, in January 1917, the British deciphered a telegram from German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann to the German Minister to Mexico, offering United States territory to Mexico if it would join the German cause and attack the U.S. border. The interception of the Zimmermann Note effectively changed American public opinion overnight. Congress declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917.
But not everyone in the country was behind the war, to say the least.
The Unions
The Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.) is a socialist labor union formed in Chicago in 1905. The union advocated strikes and work slowdowns in order to achieve their goals of improved working conditions, a living wage, pensions, and child-labor regulation. The I.W.W., along with the U.S. Socialist Party, opposed both the U.S. entry into World War I and involuntary conscription, for which members were violently persecuted. I.W.W. members are known as Wobblies, though nobody knows exactly why.
The Working Class Union (W.C.U.) was a radical union which was formed when the national leadership of the I.W.W. rejected membership for farmers and other self-employed people because they were not true wageworkers. Unlike the I.W.W. and the Socialist Party, the W.C.U. did not object to the idea of violence to gain its ends.
The Green Corn Rebellion
In August of 1917, shortly after Congress passed the Selective Service Act, an armed rebellion led by tenant farmers took place in east-central Oklahoma. On August 2, the Seminole County sheriff and three deputies set out to investigate a reported gathering of radical activists in an area known for its W.C.U. sympathies, but were ambushed and fled for their lives. That evening, the W.C.U. called a secret meeting on a hill outside of Sasakwa, where they made plans to march on Washington D.C., arrest President Wilson, reform the economy, and put an end to the war. They expected to link up with thousands of other farmers and workers on the way, creating a massive army. However, their plans were betrayed to the law by an informer in their ranks, and a large posse of men mobilized in Wewoka and headed for the rebel camp. When the armed citizens burst into the camp, the rebels dispersed, guerrilla-style. For the next week, hundreds of suspected insurgents were rounded up and arrested. Posses engaged in several bloody battles with hold-outs, and the organized rebellion was completely put down within a week. Nearly five hundred men were arrested, but fewer than two hundred were indicted, and one hundred fifty convicted of sedition.
The anti-draft rebellion caused a brutal backlash. On November 9, vigilantes calling themselves the Knights of Liberty “liberated” seventeen Wobblies from jail in Tulsa, whipped them, covered them with hot tar and feathers, and drove them out of the city. Many socialist leaders all over the United States were sent to prison, and some were not released until they were pardoned by President Harding in 1921. The American Socialist Party denied any involvement in the Green Corn Rebellion, but was blamed for the uprising anyway. The rebellion damaged the American socialist movement and contributed to the decline of the Working Class Union and the I.W.W., as well as contributing to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Oklahoma and the first national Red Scare in the 1920s.
There are several stories about why the uprising came to be called the Green Corn Rebellion. One of the more likely is that it took place shortly after the Creek Nation's annual Green Corn Ceremony of late July or early August.
The Bisbee Deportation
In the spring of 1917, the I.W.W. sent organizers to unionize miners in Bisbee, Arizona. The mining companies rejected all union demands for better wages and working conditions, so in early July a strike was called and over three thousand men walked out. The county sheriff, in conjunction with the mining companies, formed a posse of over twenty-two hundred men, and at dawn on the morning of July 12, rousted two thousand purported strikers from their beds at gunpoint. Twelve hundred miners who would not renounce unionization were loaded onto twenty-three cattle cars and deported, without water and in ninety-degree heat, two hundred miles to Hermanas, New Mexico, and dumped. An I.W.W. lawyer met the train in Hermanas and secured the release of several men. The local officials in Hermanas didn't quite know what to do with the rest. Many destitute strikers were taken back to Columbus, New Mexico, and housed by the Army in a tent camp for months.
When the U.S. entered World War I in April 1917, Europe had already been tearing itself apart for three years, its people starving and their farms destroyed. The U.S. Food Administration, headed by Herbert Hoover, was formed to provide food for American troops as well as to help feed the Allied population. In the U.S., the reduction of consumption was voluntary, but Americans were urged to stop wasting food, and to cut down on the use of wheat, sugar, meat, and fats.
Housewives were urged to sign a food conservation pledge card and many cookbooks were issued by the Food Administration and patriotic publishers. Families like the Tuckers who raised much of their own food were not as affected as those who lived in the cities. Still, every time a housewife purchased wheat flour, she also had to buy an equal amount of other cereals like rye flour or cornmeal and mix them with wheat flour when she baked, or use them exclusively on wheatless days. Citizens embraced the restrictions enthusiastically. It is interesting to note that the prescribed diet improved the nation's health.
Calendar of Patriotic Service
United States Food Administration
Sunday
â One wheatless meal, one meatless meal.
Monday
âWheatless day, one meatless meal.
Tuesday
âMeatless day, porkless day, one wheatless meal.
Wednesday
âWheatless day, one meatless meal.
Thursday
âOne meatless meal, one wheatless meal.
Friday
âOne meatless meal, one wheatless meal.
Saturday
â
Porkless day, one wheatless meal, one meatless meal.
Every Day
â Save wheat, meat, fats, sugar to create provision for our armies and the allies.
Alafair's Hot Water Cornbread
2 cups cornmeal
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup boiling water
Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Stir in boiling water. The batter should be smooth and very thick. Heat about a quarter inch of fat in a large skillet over medium high heat. Drop rounded spoonfuls of batter into the hot fat and flatten each fritter with the back of the spoon. Fry until brown on one side, then flip and brown the other. Drain on a towel-lined plate and serve hot. These are delicious as a savory side with butter, or as a dessert with jam or syrup.
An old family recipe.
War Cake
1 cup molasses
1 cup corn syrup
1 ½ cups water
1 package raisins
2 tablespoons fat
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon cloves
½ teaspoon nutmeg
3 cups rye flour
½ teaspoon soda
2 teaspoon baking powder
Boil together for five minutes the first nine ingredients. Cool, add the sifted dry ingredients and bake in two loaves for 45 minutes in moderate oven. Makes a dense, surprisingly moist cake; great as a holiday treat.
Recipe from
War Economy in Food
, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1918.
Potato Bread
1 pound potatoes (boiled or mashed)
1 quart liquid
1 ounce sugar
1 ounce salt
1 ounce fat
½ ounce yeast
3 pounds flour
Boil liquid. Add yeast to ¼ cup of liquid cooked to lukewarm temperature. Dissolve sugar, salt, and fat in remainder of liquid. When lukewarm add yeast and mashed potatoes. Beat well. Add flour and knead thoroughly. Let rise until it has doubled in bulk. Mold into loaves. Let rise again and bake.
Recipe from
Win the War in the Kitchen: Official Recipe Book Containing All Demonstrations Given During Patriotic Food Show
, Chicago, January 5-13, 1918, Illinois State Council of Defense, 1918.
Meatless Sausage
1 cup soaked and cooked dried peas, beans, lentils or lima beans
½ cup dried breadcrumbs
¼ cup fat
1 egg
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sage
Mix and shape as sausage. Roll in flour and fry in drippings.
Recipe from
Foods That Will Win the War and How to Cook Them
, C. Houston Goudiss and Alberta M. Goudiss, Forecast Publishing Co., New York, 1918
Soy Bean Loaf
2 cups cooked soy beans
1 tablespoon chopped pickle
2 tablespoons oleo
1 cup cooked rice
1 beaten egg
1 chopped onion
Salt
Pepper
Put soy beans through a meat chopper, combine with other ingredients and form in a loaf. Brown in the oven. Serve with tomato or brown sauce.
Recipe from
Win the War Cookbook
, St. Louis County Unit, Woman's Committee' Council of National Defense, Missouri Division, 1917.
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