From Prairie to Prison: The Life of Social Activist Kate Richards O'Hare

Miller, who edited Kate Richards O'Hare: Selected Writings and Speeches , here presents a scholarly study of her subject's unusual life. Born in 1876 into a poor farming family in Kansas, O'Hare became a socialist after hearing a speech by Mother Jones. After her marriage to socialist Frank O'Hare, they traveled together lecturing to factory workers and farmers on economic and social injustice. Later, as parents of four children, Frank stayed home to care for them while his wife continued to travel and organize for the American Socialist Party, becoming one of the best-known female crusaders and a close colleague of Eugene Debs. Like Debs, she was imprisoned for her opposition to WW I and she spent 14 months in jail during 1919-1920. Her imprisonment led to the breakup of her marriage and also caused her to re-direct her energies from the Socialist Party to penal reform, the cause she championed until her death in 1948. (July)