In 1920, hundreds of thousands of Americans voted for a presidential candidate locked inside the Atlanta federal penitentiary. His campaign buttons read "For President, Convict No. 9653," and he fully intended to pardon himself if he won.
This episode traces the extraordinary ideological metamorphosis of Eugene V. Debs, from a conservative railroad worker who opposed strikes to America's most famous socialist and a five-time presidential candidate. It explores the labor battles, the prison epiphany, and the unbending conviction that turned a company man into a perceived enemy of the state.
How the 1894 Pullman strike and federal troops shattered his belief that labor and capital were natural allies
The Woodstock jail stint where Victor Berger handed him Marx's Capital and changed his worldview
His historic 1912 run, winning 6 percent of the vote and beating Taft and Roosevelt in Florida
The Canton speech, his sedition conviction, and the courtroom line "while there is a soul in prison, I am not free"
How conservative Warren G. Harding, not Wilson, finally freed him on Christmas Day 1921
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