Kate Debs The Other Radical?

Abstract

Kate Metzel Debs, Eugene V. Debs’s wife, has received meagre attention from scholars. Biographers of the Socialist Party presidential candidate have portrayed Kate as a bitter woman uninterested in supporting her husband’s political career. A new look at her early life and her upbring ing in Louisville, Kentucky, suggests that Kate was, in fact, an engaged partner versed in socialist political thought and Gene’s ideological equal. Her German immigrant roots suggest an early exposure to radical and revolutionary ideas, making her a natural fit in the Socialist Party.