While historians are more likely to refer to this radical part of American history as “Agrarian Socialism”, I like to call the Oklahoma version “Red Dirt Socialism”. Red is, after all, associated with Socialism and Communism (the Cold War term “red menace” comes to mind) – and there is lots of red dirt in the Sooner State!
I had never paid much attention to this piece of Oklahoma’s past, except discovering while researching for a friend that her great grandfather had been an Oklahoma Socialist and avowed atheist. However, not long afterwards I discovered my great grandfather had campaigned as a Socialist in Okfuskee County for the office of Constable, and then my interest was personal. A simple political ad started my research:
I have to tell you I was a bit startled to see this ad in the August 5, 1910 edition of The Weleetka Democrat. Noah Seborn Young was born in Alabama and migrated to Indian Territory with his family in the 1880s. Noah married Telitha Pugh in 1898 and had two children, one of them my grandfather, Roosevelt “Bud” Young, before Telitha died in 1904.
Noah died in 1936 in Littlefield, Texas, about a year and half after my mother’s birth. All I had ever heard about him was he had been a farmer and sometimes Holiness Church (lay) preacher. After seeing the ad I’ll admit to checking the Okfuskee County census records for 1910 more than once to make sure there was no one else in the county who could have possessed those same initials. I found no one else except him.
Another surprising aspect of discovering my great grandfather once ran for political office as a Socialist was the fact that today, politically speaking, Oklahoma is the most reliably “red state” (meaning conservative). How could a state with such a radical past turn out to be one of the most reliably conservative?
Oklahoma wasn’t yet a state when the nineteenth century rolled over into the twentieth. The Victorian Era, as defined by the reign of Queen Victoria of England, came to an end when the monarch died on January 22, 1901. Some might argue it had ended sooner since in later years the Queen was seen less frequently in public, her son and future king Edward more visible and capable of influencing society, much as his mother’s reign had done for over six decades.
In America the rise of Progressivism, the idea that social reform can bring about the betterment of society, began around 1890 and was advocated strongly until around 1920. Woodrow Wilson, America’s most progressive president, shepherded the country through a tumultuous period of economic, political and geopolitical change.
Socialistic thought, some historians would point out, began prominently appearing in America early in the nineteenth century with various Utopian societies like Oneida in New York or Amana in Iowa. It wasn’t until 1901, however, until the Socialist Party of America was established.
Before that, labor activism and anarchy had been on the rise since the mid-nineteenth century. The socialist and labor movements seemed destined to collide as working classes were impacted by a “mini-Era” near the end of the Victorian – the so-called Gilded Age. Industrialists like Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Jay Gould – derisively referred to as “robber barons” – employed unscrupulous methods to obtain and maintain their massive wealth.
Many in the working classes, feeling left behind, turned to socialism in an attempt to achieve some measure of economic equality. In today’s parlance you might say they were “woke” to the unscrupulous, monopolistic business practices which threatened to shut out the common, everyday working man or woman. Socialism made many promises, but could it really deliver the solution? Was it destined to change Oklahoma, or for that matter any other state of the Union?
Today, some historians cast aspersions on Oklahoma’s brand of socialism as a less-than-legitimate form of radical ideology which permeated larger urban areas in the eastern United States. Perhaps it seemed less legitimate since the Oklahoma Socialist Party was dominated by farmers, hence the term “agrarian socialism”.
Farmers who became Socialists weren’t necessarily “hicks from the sticks”, however. Some had been members of nineteenth century movements like the Farmers Alliance, which by the 1890s had morphed into the People’s Party (“Populists”), or the Farmers’ Union established in 1902. The Farmers’ Union began in Pilot, Texas and spread to Oklahoma, established and dedicated “to improving farm incomes through cooperative action.”1
Around the time of Oklahoma statehood in 1907 some farmers migrated to the Socialist Party, according to Jim Bissett’s Agrarian Socialism in America. Those who defected were some of the most skilled social activists and seen as a boon to the Oklahoma movement. Plus, these activists knew whereof they spoke – been there, done that, so to speak. They knew what reforms had been attempted and were well aware of what had succeeded and what still required reform (in their estimation).
As Bissett points out, another key element to Oklahoma Socialist Party successes was rooted in “genuine dialogue between the leadership and the rank and file. . . . In the process, participants in the Oklahoma socialist movement attempted to create a kind of working democracy, where organizational authority was exercised according to the demands of the membership.”2 Where other American political movements fell short of such ideals, the Oklahoma Socialist Party excelled.
Want to learn more about Oklahoma’s flirtation with socialism? This article is excerpted from the September 2018 issue of Digging History Magazine, available for purchase here at a discounted price.
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Footnotes:
- “Oklahoma Farmers’ Union”, Oklahoma Historical Society, accessed on July 13, 2026 at
http://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=OK044. - Jim Bissett, Agrarian Socialism in America: Marx, Jefferson, and Jesus in the Oklahoma Countryside 1904-1920 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 5-6.