The Green Corn Rebellion
Rural Oklahoma before 1920: the crop prices are depressed, tenants run most of the farms, and land speculation is rampant. With twenty percent interest rate on loans a common occurrence and the banks refusing to lend to farmers who have voted for socialists, what does the future hold? For Jim Tetley, a young farmer barely making ends meet, there is little hope. His brother is better off, but he works in the city, another world. Where Jim is, there is only work and poverty. Work and poverty have worn out his wife, Jeannie. Jim feels bad about lusting for Jeannie’s little sister, Happy. But such is life, or such is life as Jim sees it. Only Mack, his father-in-law, is able to discern better prospects. The only way out of misery, the only possible way of avoiding the eviction notice, or the draft notice, which will send Jim to fight the rich man’s war against poor German workers, is revolution. It is up to the poor to rise up.
This is the background for The Green Corn Rebellion, a gritty, impassioned novel first published in 1935, based on real events. The author, William Cunningham (1901-67), was a journalist and college teacher who interviewed the people who took part in the night-riding and barn-burning. He was fascinated by what he found. The rebellion gathered Native Americans, blacks, and white farmers. Although the introduction by Nigel Anthony Sellars points out that Cunningham “is unhampered by real events,” this interest in secondary characters breaks up the thrust of the novel, but it does not detract from making it a fascinating depiction of a downtrodden America.
