Kate richards ohare biography

O'HARE, KATE RICHARDS (1876-1948)

Kate Richards O'Hare and family

Born on March 26, 1876, in Ottawa County, Kansas, Kate Richards O'Hare was one of the most popular lecturers, journalists, and socialist reformers of the first decades of the twentieth century, with her strongest support coming in the Great Plains and the Southwest.

Kate richards ohare biography

She was the daughter of Kansas homesteaders who lost their land in the late 1880s and relocated to Kansas City, Missouri. Educated in Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska, Kate taught school briefly, then turned to temperance and missionary work.

Disillusioned, she became a machinist in her father's shop, which introduced her to the labor movement. In 1901 Kate enrolled in a socialist program in Girard, Kansas, a hub of socialist activism and the home of the newspaper Appeal to Reason.

She became an organizer for the newly founded Socialist Party of America and, with her new husband, Frank Patrick O'Hare, went on the road to spread the word of s