Kate Richards O'Hare

Kate Richards O’Hare

Born in Ottawa County, Kansas, on March 26, 1876, Kate O’Hare was an important woman for American socialism. She grew up on a farm where she learned how important it was to work hard. “Days that laid the foundation of my whole life, gave me health and strength and love of freedom…” O’Hare had written in How I Became a Socialist Agitator, on October 1908.

In 1887, due to a severe drought O’Hare and her family moved to Kansas City where her father was able to find an hourly wage job. This was the first time she saw severe poverty. O’Hare wrote in How I Became a Socialist Agitator, “The poverty, the misery, the want… men trampling the streets by day… the pinching poverty of the workless and the frightful, stinging piercing cold of that winter in Kansas City will always stay with me…”

Eventually O’Hare’s father opened a shop as a mechanic. O’Hare started working there with her father, introducing her to the labor movement. Working there taught her to believe that trade unions were vital to the welfare of the working man.

In 1901 O’Hare joined the Socialist Party where she met J. A Wayland and became his student. Wayland created socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason where O’Hare wrote about Roselie Randazzo a seventeen year old Italian girl who made flower hats for a living and WWI.

In May 1917 the US Congress passed the Espionage Act, limiting what people can say in public speeches. No one could say things that may lead to military disobedience or stop conscription. Despite this O’Hare continued speaking across the nation against the war. In June 1917, in Bowman, North Dakota, O’Hare was arrested for disobeying the Espionage Act and was sentenced to five years in prison.

Across the nation Socialist newspapers demanded her release. She wrote, “I am deeply grateful to be where I am today and to have found such a place of service. Know that my children are secure. The poor little ‘dope fiend’ in the cell next to me needs me more than my own do. You have love and health and the beautiful world; she has only the hellish cry of her nerves for ‘dope,’ the black despair born of neglect of those who should help her, and the growing hunger of a long undernourished body.”

By 1920 the Socialist party had decreased by three-fourths of its membership. Having three of its leaders, including O’Hare, imprisoned and the communist party rise contributed to this decline. O’Hare turned to prison reform and labor education . In 1938 O’Hare was appointed assistant director of California prisons.

Kate Richards O’Hare was an influential woman in socialist history. She was important to our history and to our future. For more information on Kate O’Hare, visit plainshumanities.unl.edu, and KSHS.org.