Great Plains Quarterly

Abstract:

The agricultural crisis that began in the 1970s hastened population loss and prompted the closing of schools, banks, churches, and other institutions across western Kansas and eastern Colorado. Farmers protested these changes through activism in the American Agriculture Movement (AAM), Women Involved in Farm Economics (WIFE), and through paramilitary groups like Posse Comitatus. These and other “neopopulists” employed the symbolism of tractors, unlocked farm houses, and violent inner cities to build a sense of unified rural identity. Protestors from both states played a leading role in the “tractorcades” to Washington, DC, in 1978 and 1979, and in the militia movement of the following decade. Typically disdainful of feminism, civil rights, and the antiwar movement, farm activists ironically borrowed leftist tactics of mass demonstration and extremist rhetoric, even to the point of self-identifying as oppressed minorities. Though unsuccessful in shaping new farm policy, they lent a new, aggressive face to modern conservatism, and thereby merit historians’ consideration through the same lenses that have enhanced their understanding of other marginalized groups.