United States government victory Pontotoc Rebels The Green Corn Rebellion was an armed uprising that took place in rural Oklahoma on August 2 and 3, 1917.

In the aftermath of the incident, scores of arrests were made and the Socialist Party of America, which had been strong in the region, was discredited in the public eye for allegedly having attempted to foment revolution.

[5] The US government's decision to enter World War I was backed up with additional legislation imposing military conscription in America to staff the nation's wartime Army and Navy.

[7] Isolated hotspots of anti-conscription activity occurred in some urban centers,[6] but the registration process was generally an orderly affair, with the vast majority of young American men accepting their fate with what has been characterized as "a calm resignation.

"[7] On July 20, 1917, a blindfolded Newton D. Baker, the Wilson administration's Secretary of War, drew numbers choosing certain registered young men for mandatory military service.

"[9] Although it was a young state and had been admitted into the union only in November 1907, there was already a strong radical tradition in Oklahoma, whose impoverished tenant farmers of its southeast seized upon the millenarian fervor of the early Socialist Party in an attempt to improve their lives.

[15] Many of the young "dirt farmers" found their economic prospects hopeless since they were squeezed between a usurious credit system practiced by stores and substantial crop liens inflicted by landlords.

[20] In early August 1917, before the rebellion, large numbers of African-American, European-American, and Native American men gathered at the farm of Joe and John Spears in Sasakwa, at Roasting Ear Ridge, to plan a march upon Washington, D.C., to end the war.

[23] On Friday, August 3, exactly two weeks after the draft lottery in Washington, DC, an armed gathering assembled near the adjoining borders of Pontotoc, Seminole, and Hughes Counties, in southeastern Oklahoma.

[24] The uprising seems to have been spurred by the agitation of the Working Class Union, which was reported in one newspaper as having called its supporters to arms with a manifesto: Now is the time to rebel against this war with Germany, boys.

[26] The historian Garin Burbank argues that the coming of conscription threatened to decimate family economies by removing able-bodied young men, who were needed to harvest cotton.

[27] Burbank argues also that socialist ideas had found its mark in Oklahoma, with many poor farmers earnestly believing from their experiences in daily life in the reality of "exploitation" and accepting the notion that the European war was little more than capitalist business enterprise writ large.

[28] Arming themselves, an estimated 800 to 1000 rebels, "the vast majority of old American stock," met on the banks of the South Canadian River and made plans to head east and to live off the land as they marched.

[29] They would eat roasted "green corn" and barbecued beef on the way, it was later said, and eventually join up with countless thousands of likeminded comrades, who would together march on Washington, DC, where they would overthrow "Big Slick" Wilson, repeal the Draft Act, and end the war.

The so-called rebellion proved anticlimactic, as the historian Garin Burbank notes: Catching sight of the advancing townsmen, the country people fired a few desultory shots and fled in disorder.

[37] Sam Marcy, the founder of the Workers' World Party, upheld the Green Corn Rebellion as the ideal working-class antiwar struggle in his book "The Bolsheviks and War," which was published in 1985.