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The Minnesota Farm-Labor Party: The Role Of Third Parties In The Americanization Of European Labor Radicals In The Great Lakes Region, Paul Lubotina

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

This paper examines the political transformation of former radicals from Ethnic Socialist Parties, Industrial Workers of the World, and the Western Federation of Miners during the 1920s and 1930s, as they joined mainstream third party organizations such as The Nonpartisan League and Farm-Labor Party of Minnesota. Former resident of Copper Harbor, Michigan and mayor of Hibbing, Minnesota, Victor Power led a coalition of Americans and immigrants in a struggle to circumvent the burgeoning power of Ku Klux Klan members who dominated local government in the city, with the support of the United States Steel Corporation. This political battle between progressive …