Green Corn Rebellion
| Green Corn Rebellion | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the American Theater of World War I | |||||
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The Green Corn Rebellion was centered in rural Pontotoc County in southeastern Oklahoma. |
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| Belligerents | |||||
| Pontotoc Rebels |
 United States
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||
| Working Class Union (?) | Woodrow Wilson | ||||
| Strength | |||||
| 800 to 1000? | Thousands | ||||
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-Americans, 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 discredited 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.
On April 6, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson, recently sworn into a second term of office for which he had run behind the slogan "He Kept Us Out of War," appeared between a joint session of Congress to ask for a declaration of war against Imperial Germany. Congress readily obliged the President's request, voting to declare war on Germany by a margin of 373-50 in the House and 82-6 in the Senate.
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