Revolutionary Solidarity on the Plains: Charles R.D.S. Oakford’s the Prolocutor and Mexican Migrants in Garden City, Kansas

Introduction

The Kansan socialist Charles R. D. S. Oakford was in trouble again. The Evening Telegram attacked him for advocating for Dario Arellano, a previous Mexican migrant worker and now restaurant owner, accused of theft in 1911.^[1] An unnamed journalist wrote that “[f]ortunately, Mr. Oakford hasn’t a very large following among the [law-abiding] element, and the authorities don’t pay any attention to his demands for the release of criminals.”[2] Oakford responded vehemently through his own press, defending Arellano and condemning local officials for their racism towards Mexican migrant workers in Garden City, Kansas.^[3]

Oakford was a veterinarian and the editor of the Prolocutor that critiqued local politics from 1909 to 1911 as well as “sold socialism.” [4] He was invested in radicalizing his audience as well as increasing his newspaper’s circulation. Oakford, like other socialist journalists of the time, did not hesitate to comment on international affairs like the Mexican Revolution and point out the complicity of the U.S. backing the Porfiriato or the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz.^[5] Kansas was a site for “blooming” socialist activity in the early 20^th century after the decline of the Populist Movement. This included the rise of local Socialist Party chapters, increasing labor organizing, and publications such as the national publication the Appeal to Reason in the town of Pittsburgh but also smaller ones like the Prolocutor led by Oakford.[6] Oakford took steps to call for his neighbors in Garden City to be in solidarity with leftists revolting in Mexico. However, Oakford’s solidarity also took a more material form by engaging with Mexican migrant communities in Garden City. The town was the site of increasing development made possible by Mexican migrants who worked the newly irrigated beet fields, built part of the sugar factory, and gave maintenance to railroads.^[7]

This essay presents a microhistory of the “global Midwest” as Kansan socialists translated the ideals of the Mexican Revolution to stand in solidarity with local Mexican migrant workers who sought to shape “sustainable” spaces for themselves as they encountered racism and exploitative labor systems in Western Kansas.[8] The editor of the Prolocutor, Charles R. D. S. Oakford, sought to use his position as a local Kansan journalist-activist to bring the Mexican Revolution to Kansas.^[9] Thus, the piece also describes how local leftists in the Midwest responded to calls to action by persecuted political exiles including Ricardo Flores Magón and other members of the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM).[10] This liminal moment of collaboration between Oakford and Mexican migrant workers in the early 20^th century helps expand our imagination about where revolutionary solidarity takes place when migrants are under attack.

Charles R. D. S. Oakford: Journalist-Activist in Kansas

Oakford became a strong proponent of radical politics while away from Kansas. When he was 21, he quit the Kansas Normal School to train as a veterinarian at the Washington State Agricultural School as well as serve in the military in Alaska.^[11] It was there where Oakford began to realize the potential for radical press and expressed his politics through the Skagway Typographical Union No. 380.^[12] Oakford became an unapologetic socialist writer on the plains dedicated to furthering socialist politics in Kansas and establishing his young family’s financial stability. After coming back to work in Kansas for his father, he began his socialist newspaper, the Prolocutor, in Syracuse, Kansas, in 1909 until the new owner of its printing plant refused to continue to produce it because of its radicalism.^[13]Yet, Oakford persisted as he saw his writing as a method to struggle against capitalism by countering its ideologies. After the Kansas State Historical Society (KSHS) requested copies of his newspaper, Oakford wrote to Georgie W. Martin, then Secretary of the KSHS, that the printing press was a means of production whose private ownership disrupted socialist writers like himself. It maintained the “[t]ruth . . . strangled” and continued to “[oppress] the masses and exploit them.”^[14] Like other socialist newspapers of the time, Oakford argued that his newspaper countered capitalist ideologies in workers by radicalizing them.^[15] To the horror of several, Oakford’s weekly newspaper covered local politics in Garden City with the support of a “large band of socialists in this town.”^[16] Oakford sought to cause a ruckus in the town but also to do business. For example, Oakford sold so many newspaper advertisements in the Prolocutor to the point that he admitted to readers that he would have to move some original content to the following week’s issue.^[17]

As a journalist-activist who sought to advocate for marginalized people in Garden City, Oakford’s involvement with local politics was intertwined through his work at the Prolocutor. Oakford ran for Lieutenant Governor, and his wife, Vernie, ran for Secretary of State on the Socialist Party ticket for Kansas in 1910.^[18] Not only did Oakford challenge conservative politics, but his own comrades by advocating for marginalized people such as Black migrants. Oakford was almost expelled from the chapter because he supported the inclusion of Black workers in the Garden City Socialist Party Chapter membership and their representation on the state Socialist Party ticket.^[19] Oakford’s writing and political involvement in Garden City were deeply interconnected as he jointly used these methods as a journalist-activist to confront the unequal conditions of people of color.

When Oakford arrived in Garden City, he also addressed the conditions of Mexican laborers who built the town “where the rainbow touches the ground” as it aspired to be a modern and prosperous city.^[20] Mexican migration to the U.S. increased in the early 20^th century due to the deteriorating conditions for the lower classes under Porfirio Diaz’s regime.^[21] Some Mexican migrants were drawn to the Midwest, to places like Garden City, Kansas, where settlement and development increased, necessitating exploitable labor for industries such as agriculture and railroads.^[22] The Garden City Industrial Club, a group of city and business leaders committed to the advancement of the seat of Finney County, highlighted development projects in advertising pamphlets that attracted investors and inhabitants.^[23] They noted modern amenities of the city but also a booming agricultural sector that produced 2.5 million dollars’ worth of products in 1909.^[24] The town saw itself as a pioneer since it was the first county to use irrigation ditches to water the first alfalfa and sugar beet fields in the state.^[25] However, Mexican migrants took on most of the arduous labor as they “planted, hoed, thinned, and topped the sugar beets.”^[26] The U.S. Land and Sugar Company’s agricultural plans were interconnected with industrialization efforts as its sugar factory, built partially by Mexicans, processed sugar beets.^[27] Garden City was able to move its products and people via rail as it was on the Atchinson, Topeka, & Santa Fe Railway, which Mexicans regularly maintained via small crews of workers.^[28]Mexicans were foundational to creating the town that the inhabitants of Garden City were proud of and inviting others to invest in.

Mexicans came to Garden City looking for financial stability yet found discrimination and exploitative labor conditions. In an oral history interview, Gregoria Mújica, a beet worker and butcher, described “I suffered a lot when we got to Garden City . . . the most horrible part was in Garden City . . . the system was like slavery here.”^[29] He further discussed how work in Garden City was unstable since they were never guaranteed nor paid on time. “Work was where you could find it, where they gave it to us,” said Señor Mújica.^[30] Additionally, management expected migrants to put their whole families to work together in the beet fields.^[31] Moreover, Mexicans also faced intertwined labor and racial hierarchies, as seen in their work in railroads, where management stratified them to common track jobs below white foremen.^[32] Outside of the workplace, according to Sue Rodríguez’s oral history interview, the white people of Garden City sensationalized crimes allegedly committed by Mexicans, leading to their association of Mexicans with criminality.^[33] The result of this discourse can be seen in a Garden City Telegraph article, which reported that “[n]o other race of people that the [police] officers have to deal with are so hard to handle as the Mexicans.”^[34] Oakford sought to address these concerns by rationalizing the relevance of the Mexican Revolution to Kansas.

Bringing the Mexican Revolution to Kansas

Oakford “brought the Mexican Revolution to Kansas” by building solidarity with subversive Mexicans who sought an end to the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. He directly called upon his neighbors to protest the complicity of the U.S. in upholding the Porfiriato. He “appealed to the people of the United States to . . . protest against President Taft’s shaking hands with ‘the bloody butcher’ Diaz of Mexico.”^[35] The Mexican Revolution had not officially broken out yet; however, Oakford highlighted Taft’s complicity with how the Porfiriato had engaged its “formidable repressive mechanism . . . that had previously forestalled widespread protest and revolt” of more radical actors of the revolution such as the Flores Magón brothers who led the PLM.^[36] Locals interpreted Oakford’s critiques of the president as treasonous and they hung and burnt Oakford in effigy in front of the bank for a spontaneous speech in Garden City.^[37]Oakford would continue these critiques in the Prolocutor as he questioned the federal government’s mobilization of troops in 1911.^[38] Regardless of the severe backlash, Oakford’s persistence demonstrates that he recognized the power of mobilizing his community in solidarity with revolting Mexicans, particularly those of the PLM, through his local press.[39] He was hoping to uplift PLM aspirations for the Mexican Revolution to take place as a socialist revolt.[40]

Furthermore, Oakford also sought to make the Mexican Revolution relevant to Garden City by highlighting local acts of solidarity but also drawing connections to Mexican migrants’ experiences in their town. Oakford made the Mexican Revolution personal to his readers as he promoted actions taken by local community members to support the Mexican Revolution. He reprinted a petition signed by inhabitants of Garden City to socialist Congressman Victor L. Berger and sent to their representative, Edmond H. Madison, that called upon the U.S. to remain neutral and not to intervene in the Mexican Revolution in 1911.^[41] Oakford also promoted Mexican activists who came to Garden City to speak in support of the revolution. In one of these advertisements, Oakford highlighted Lazaro Gutiérrez de Lara’s talk at the Garden City Courthouse about “Mexico’s Despotism” in March of 1910.^[42] Gutiérrez de Lara was a PLM member and notably accompanied John Kenneth Turner to Mexico to write his “Barbarous Mexico” series.^[43] His talks in the state were surveilled by the Mexican Consulate in Kansas City.[44] In his description of the event, Oakford encouraged people to go, writing to his readers “[l]earn of the peonage system that is being extended into the United States, in fact, into the beet fields that surround our own beautiful city.”^[45] Although a sly reference, Oakford’s use of the term “peonage system” reveals that he believed that the Mexican Revolution was relevant to the people of Garden City because their city reproduced the same exploitative labor systems that pushed people to revolt in Mexico. He thought that his readers could learn about the context of the migration of their Mexican neighbors and their current labor conditions.

Revolutionary Solidarity

Not only did Oakford denounce the conditions of Mexicans, but he also mobilized his solidarity in support of their concerns in Garden City. Oakford rooted his intentions behind his acts of solidarity by considering Mexican migrants as potential historical actors. He saw them so as he attempted to radicalize them by spreading Flores Magón’s anarchist publication Regeneración among them in 1911.^[46] Local newspapers in Garden City critiqued this act as another way that Oakford was inciting revolt by sharing subversive literature in English and Spanish “which violently attacks the United States army.”^[47] Oakford wrote to the author of the piece, “you have at last awakened to hear the roar of the Social Revolution on every side and the mighty, resonant vibrations have reached down into your little “stood-still” realm and behold[,]it oscillates.”^[48] His jeering highlighted Oakford’s underlying hope that his actions to radicalize Mexicans would mobilize them to challenge their conditions. The socialist editor recognized Mexicans as a mutual political force in Garden City that could continue and expand the work of the revolution in Kansas.

Although Mexican voices were not prominent in the Prolocutor, Oakford established relationships with Mexicans in Garden City as he reported specific problems Mexicans faced. He wrote that “protests of unfair treatment have been reported at the Prolocutor office by foreign laborers . . . It seems queer to us that the Mexican Consul never does anything for his countrymen until the Socialists dig up the evidence . . . We have evidence that about $5,000 has been held back from the Mexican [laborers’] pay in this locality.”^[49] Oakford listened to their concerns as his critiques coincided with other Mexican migrants’ experiences of wage theft and the inadequacy of the consulate office in Kansas City. The Mexican consulate could not protect Mexican workers in the region as it experienced drastic changes in staffing because of the revolution and strained relationships with the U.S.^[50] Additionally, the writer committed to doing something beyond just reporting these issues as he wrote that “[w]e will send for a Spanish interpreter to investigate these cases.”^[51] Oakford mobilized his solidarity with oppressed Mexicans to help his Mexican neighbors who faced unjust labor conditions.

Oakford also defended Mexicans from blatant discrimination and imagined the existence of a more equitable justice system. In 1911, Oakford unapologetically wrote in defense of Dario Arellano, a Mexican restaurant owner on trial for alleged theft of goods. He stressed Arellano’s humanity by naming him, highlighting his labor as a former worker at the sugar refinery, and supporting him unconditionally as he wrote that the newspaper “will defend this Mexican, innocent or guilty. He should have a fair trial, and he is going to get one.”^[52] Oakford also exposed the discriminatory attitude of Deputy Sheriff Kite who admitted to searching and seizing Arellano’s property without a warrant just because “it was too much [sic] clothes for a Mexican to have in their possession at one time.”^[53] Kite illegally attained evidence, infringing further on Arellano’s ability to get a fair trial. Oakford also called upon the readers to “[p]ut a laboring man in for judge next election. These old capitalistic minded chair warmers have no use for laborers and especially Mexican or Negro laborers.”^[54] He humorously attacked the presiding Judge Folsom, yet simultaneously implied that there were possibilities for a justice system that centered on the concerns of marginalized workers of color. However, Oakford’s article did not display his full involvement in Arellano’s trial. The Evening Telegraph reported that “Mr. Oakford was on hand, busy with the interpreter, the lawyers, the sheriff, and all others.”^[55] Further, they wrote that Oakford “blames every small thievery upon the “system,” whatever that is . . . [He says,] ‘[S]ociety is the real criminal.’”^[56] The newspaper’s critique suggests that Oakford assisted or advised the defense by applying an anti-capitalist critique to protect Arellano. Neither Oakford nor other local newspapers disclose Arellano’s fate. Yet, Oakford’s actions in this case demonstrate that he not only reported on but supported marginalized Mexican migrants, who he imagined as political actors who would further the promises of the Mexican Revolution in Kansas.

Conclusion

Oakford’s journalist-activist methods did not go unpunished by his adversaries. Local newspapers ridiculed him as the “the champion of the great common “greasers” of the Republic of Mexico,”^[57] mocking him for his solidarity and association with Mexicans. The Garden City Industrial Club began one of several lawsuits against Oakford for critiquing local officials.^[58] A mob in Garden City also destroyed his office to intimidate him.^[59]In 1911, Oakford left town and stopped writing, dedicating himself to his profession as a veterinarian as he did not want people to continue harassing his family.^[60] A new dimension of Kansans’ hate for Oakford revealed itself when rumors spread about his supposed death by a fatal cow’s blow while he attempted to treat the animal in 1913.^[61]However, his liminal experience as a socialist journalist-activist in Kansas is notable as he brought the Mexican Revolution to Kansas, hoping to mobilize his neighbors to be in solidarity with it to ensure an equitable future for Mexico’s oppressed. He went beyond this discursive act by mobilizing his own solidarity in more material ways to help Mexican migrants in Garden City. This story demonstrates how white socialists imagined the Mexican Revolution and sought to shape their acts of solidarity to support it from the “global Midwest.” Oakford’s activism displays the importance of studying liminal moments of left radicalism in Kansas through the lens of agency, particularly moments where leftists, inspired by revolt, stood in revolutionary solidarity with migrants to dare to create worlds beyond capitalism.^[62]

Featured Photo Credit: Figure 1: The Prolocutor Masthead. Courtesy of the Kansas State Historical Society. Copy and reuse restrictions apply.

Endnotes

^[1] “Dr. C. R. D. S. Oakford, editor of . . . ,” Evening Telegraph, Jul 28, 1911, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com.

[2] “Dr. C. R. D. S. Oakford, editor of . . .”

^[3] “Sheriff violates the law,” Prolocutor, Aug 3, 1911, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com.

[4] Elliot Shore argues that socialist newspapers of the time, like the Appeal to Reason, had two objectives: to spread socialism by radicalizing its audiences and profit off increased circulation. Often these were in conflict. See Elliott Shore, Talkin’ Socialism : J.A. Wayland and the Role of the Press in American Radicalism, 1890-1912 (University Press of Kansas, 1988), 3 ; —-. “Selling Socialism: The Appeal to Reason and the Radical Press in the Turn-of-the-Century America.” Culture and Society 7 (1985): 147–68.

^[5] Justin Akers Chacón, Radicals in the Barrio : Magonistas, Socialists, Wobblies, and Communists in the Mexican American Working Class. (Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2018): 117.

[6] R. Alton Lee, and Steven Cox, When Sunflowers Bloomed Red : Kansas and the Rise of Socialism in America (University of Nebraska Press, 2020).

^[7] Henry J. Ávila, “Immigration and Integration: The Mexican American in Garden City, Kansas, 1900-1950,” Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 20, no. 1 (1997): 24, 27; James R. Shortridge, Cities on the Plains: The Evolution of Urban Kansas (University Press of Kansas, 2004): 203-4.

[8] American Studies scholars point out the region’s connections to national and global systems with the term “global Midwest.” This theorization has intellectual origins in “queering the middle” or unsettling tropes of the Midwest region. Key to this study is also how allies to Latinx Midwest placemaking disrupts a normative understanding of the Midwest as communities have struggled amidst the multitude of challenges they faced including racism, exploitation, and violence. See Thomas Xavier Sarmiento, M. Bianet Castellanos, and Christopher Perreira. “Unsettling Global Midwests: A Special Issue of the American Studies Journal.” American Studies 62, no. 3 (2023): 7–19; Martin F. Manalansan, IV, Chantal Nadeau, Richard T. Rodríguez, and Siobhan B. Somerville. “Queering the Middle: Race, Region, and a Queer Midwest.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 20, no. 1 (2014): 1; Theresa Delgadillo, Ramon H. Rivera-Servera, Geraldo L. Cadava, and Claire F. Fox, “Introduction” in Building Sustainable Worlds: Latinx Placemaking in the Midwest (University of Illinois Press, 2022); Omar Valerio-Jimenez, Vaquera-Vásquez, Santiago, and Claire Fox, eds. “Introduction: History, Placemaking, and Cultural Contributions” in The Latino/a Midwest Reader. University of Illinois Press, 2017.

^[9] Term “journalist-activist” is from Linda Lumsden, “Socialist Muckracker John Kenneth Turner: The Twenty-First Century Relevance of a Journalist/Activist’s Career,” American Journalism 32, no. 3 (2015): 295-6.

[10] This article documents the reverberations of moments of collaboration between American leftists and members of the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) vividly documented by Kelly Lytle Hernandez. Thus, it also expands on the scholarship of Devra Anne Weber to demonstrate the reach of revolutionary thought as she tracked PLM members’ involvement in the Midwest (like Fernando Palomares and Primo Tapia de la Cruz) who organized I.W.W. locals. See Kelly Lytle Hernández, Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire and Revolution in the Borderlands, W. W. Norton & Company, 2022; —-, “Scorpio’s Tale” in City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965, 92–130, University of North Carolina Press, 2017; Devra Anne Weber, “Wobblies of the Partido Liberal Mexicano: Reenvisioning Internationalist and Transnational Movements through Mexican Lenses,” Pacific Historical Review 85, no. 2 (2016): 205, 218.

^[11]  “Items of interest,” Students Salute, Apr 3, 1897, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com.

^[12] Signs of his socialist politics and involvement in publications arose in a 1901 Daily Morning Alaskan newspaper. Oakford concluded the Skagway Typographical Union No. 380’s rally to support the “Citizen’s Ticket” for local elections by calling for the “overhauling in its entirety [of] the whole system.”See “Rousing Rally at Anderson’s Hall,” Daily Morning Alaskan, Jun 18, 1901, Library of Congress via Chronicling America.

^[13]  “FROM THE FREDONIA CITIZEN,” Neodesha Daily Sun, Apr 23, 1909, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com.

^[14] Note: These are Oakford’s own emphases. Charles R. D. S. Oakford to George W. Martin, Secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society, July 9, 1909,Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com.

^[15] Oakford hoped that “[t]he day is dawning when the utterances . . . in the PROLOCUTOR will be stamped upon the mind of mankind[,] and they shall know the truth.” See Charles R. D. S. Oakford to George W. Martin, Secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society.

^[16] E. R. Wilson, “Snap Shots,” Prolocutor, Oct. 6, 1910, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com; “THERE IS NO NEED FOR HIM HERE,” Garden City Telegram, Nov 5, 1909, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com.

^[17] The revenue from the newspaper most likely supplemented his continued work as a veterinary physician and surgeon in Garden City, which he advertised.“To our readers,” Prolocutor, Mar 23, 1911, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com.

^[18] “Official Vote Announced,” Wichita Eagle, Nov 15, 1910, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com.

^[19] Stella Garrisson, “An Appeal for Justice in the Socialist Party,” Prolocutor, Sep 22, 1910, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com.

^[20] Garden City Industrial Club. “KANSAS: Where the Rainbow Touches the Ground,” c. 1910, Kansas Collection, RH C8473, Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 2.

^[21] Kelly Lytle Hernández, “Mexican Immigration to the United States,” OAH Magazine of History 23, no. 4 (2009): 25–29; Gilbert Michael Joseph and Jürgen Buchenau, Mexico’s Once and Future Revolution : Social Upheaval and the Challenge of Rule since the Late Nineteenth Century. (Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2013): 25-6.

^[22] Robert Oppenheimer, “Acculturation or Assimilation: Mexican Immigrants in Kansas, 1900 to World War II.” The Western Historical Quarterly 16, no. 4 (1985): 429.

^[23] Finney County Kansas Historical Society, “The Industrial Club,” History of Finney County, Kansas, Vol. 2. Garden City, Kan., 1954: 191.

^[24] Garden City Industrial Club. “KANSAS: Where the Rainbow Touches the Ground,” c. 1910, Kansas Collection, RH C8473, Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 3.

^[25] Garden City Industrial Club, 3.

^[26] Ávila, 27; Oppenheimer, 437.

^[27] Oppenheimer, 433.

^[28] Ávila, 27.

^[29] Note: these are my own translations from Spanish to English..“Entrevistado: Gregorio Mújica, Mayo 22 de 1981. – En Garden City, Ks,” 1981, RH MS 750, box 1, folder 15, Oral History Project regarding the Hispanic community of Garden City, Spencer Research Library, Lawrence, KS: 7, 9.

^[30] “Entrevistado: Gregorio Mújica, Mayo 22 de 1981. – En Garden City, Ks,” 10,11.

^[31] Oppenheimer, 437.

^[32] Ávila, 26-7.

^[33] “Robert Oppenheimer interviewing Cipriana (Sue) Rodriguez on May 22, 1981 in her home in Garden City,” 1981, RH MS 750, box 1, folder 7, Oral History Project regarding the Hispanic community of Garden City, Spencer Research Library, Lawrence, KS: 7.

^[34] “Although a thorough search . . ..” Garden City Telegram, Jul 1, 1910, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com.

^[35] “Hange Deditor [Sic] in Effigy,” Coffeyville Daily Journal, Aug 17, 1909, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com.

^[36] Joseph and Buchenau, 30.

^[37] “Oakford On Trial,” Appeal to Reason, Oct. 7, 1911, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com; “Oakford again the subject of censure,” Garden City Telegram, Sep 10, 1909, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com.

^[38] “Why should the United States . . .,” Prolocutor, Mar 23, 1911, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com;  “PROCLAMATION WITHDRAW THE TROOPS,” Prolocutor, Apr 6, 1911, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com.

[39] The Prolocutor called upon its readers to support exiled Mexican revolutionary anarchists in the U.S. by asking them to subscribe to their newspaper, Regeneración. Oakford demonstrated his ideological hopes when he wrote in defense of the PLM’s activism as he described that “[a]ll revolutionists are naturally opposed to . . . subtle foes of freedom,” which were the “rulers of all nations, the military of the world, and the laws of every wheel of oppression which crushes the masses.” See “The kidnapping of Manuel Sarabia . . .,” Prolocutor, Mar 17, 1910, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com; Prolocutor, Sep 15, 1910, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com.

[40] Kelly Lytle Hernández, Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire and Revolution in the Borderlands (W. W. Norton & Company, 2022); ———. “Scorpio’s Tale” in City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965, (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 92–130.

^[41] “WITHDRAW THE TROOPS,” Prolocutor, Apr 20, 1911, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com.

^[42] “NOTICE! L. Guttiez De LARA will . . .,” Prolocutor, Mar 17, 1910, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com.

^[43]  “Statement of Protest Over the Jailing of Lazaro Gutiérrez de Lara,” Buffalo Courrier, Oct 24, 1909.

[44] Reference description of file LE-952, Tomo 35 where staff reported and sent newspaper clippings that advertised Gutiérrez de Lara’s talk to the Secretary of Foreign Relations. See Josefina Moguel Flores, Dirección General del Acervo Histórico Diplomático. Guía e Índices del Archivo de los Hermanos Flores Magón, 1901-1912 (Mexico City; Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 2010).

^[45] “NOTICE! L. Guttiez De LARA will . . .”

^[46] “There has been some complaint . . .,” Prolocutor, Mar 30, 1911, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com.

^[47] “There has been some complaint . . .”

^[48] “There has been some complaint . . .”

^[49] “PROTESTS FROM LABORERS, Prolocutor, Mar 31, 1910, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com.

^[50]  These relationships were further strained with local Mexicans in Kansas City advocating for later changes for the consul position. See Michael M. Smith, “The Mexican Revolution in Kansas City.” Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 14, no. 3 (1991): 206–18;  —-, “Mexicans in Kansas City: The First Generation, 1900-1920.” Perspectives in Mexican American Studies 2, no. 32 (1989): 41.

^[51] “PROTESTS FROM LABORERS.”

^[52] “Sheriff violates the law.”

^[53] “Sheriff violates the law.”

^[54] “Sheriff violates the law.”

^[55] “Dr. C. R. D. S. Oakford, editor of . . ,” Evening Telegraph, Jul 28, 1911, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com.

^[56] “Dr. C. R. D. S. Oakford, editor of . . .”

^[57] “Greaser” was a racist slur used against Mexicans in the Southwest that referred to a “greasy appearance” that implied inferiority. See Arnoldo De León, They Called Them Greasers: Anglo Attitudes toward Mexicans in Texas, 1821-1900 (University of Texas Press, 1983), 16.

“Hon. Oakford, the Deerfield editor . . .,” Emporia Weekly Gazette, Oct 7, 1909, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com.

^[58]  “Oakford On Trial.”

^[59] “Dumped Office in the Street,” Garden City Herald, Aug 24, 1911, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com.

^[60] “Oakford is out of newspaper business,” Garden City Telegraph, May 10, 1912, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com; “Dr. Oakford has quit,” Garden City Telegraph, Mar 5, 1912, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com.

^[61] “Socialist Oakford Is Fatally Injured,” Garden City Herald, Oct 30, 1913, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com; “Couldn’t “get” the Garden City Socialist,” Garden City Telegram, Nov 4, 1913, Kansas Historical Society via Newspapers.com.

^[62]  Pratt, William C. “Historians and the Lost World of Kansas Radicalism.” Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 30 (2007): 284.