“I just really felt like I was doing something important, [it was] so close to where we lived, like I was really doing something important for our country and people in general”
My Nana, Kelly Hodge, was an American teenager during the Vietnam War. During this time, before his Watergate days, President Nixon campaigned to use nuclear warfare in the ongoing Vietnam War. Kelly was a young adult when government energy operations began putting nuclear plants in the United
States to provide ‘unlimited energy’. In some extreme cases, landowners would be contacted and paid by the Government to put a nuclear silo ‘in their backyard’. Nuclear power plants would provide unlimited energy preventing potential power outages at the cost of the environment, while the public feared a
catastrophic nuclear plant meltdown.
In 1979, Kelly was 19 years old with a newborn baby. As a young woman and mother she decided to join the antinuclear movement. She went to Tulsa and joined the Sunbelt Alliance. At this time, Kelly was living in Catoosa, just a few minutes drive from Inola where the Public Service Company of Oklahoma was building a large nuclear power plant: Black Fox. As a member of the sunbelt alliance, Kelly would participate in fundraising and public awareness events. Her small group was called the Solar Bears. (She laughed when she told me that). She recalls sewing a quilt with the group that read: NO MORE NUKES. The Sunbelt Alliance hosted a concert, featuring Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt- a smaller scale of Bruce Springsteen’s NO NUKES concert at Madison Square Garden.
On the other side of the country, Three Mile Island was a nuclear power plant in Middletown, Pennsylvania. In June of 1979, electrical malfunctions at Three Mile Island caused the system to overheat and release increased amounts of radiation. People in the area reported sickness and deformation appearing in both humans and wildlife. This event meant that tension was high for the Sunbelt Alliance. So, The Sunbelt Alliance organized a peaceful protest event: they would occupy the land where the Black Fox plant was being built. They didn’t want to have any harm or destruction, so nonviolent training was required to attend.
On June 2nd, 1979 in Inola Oklahoma, 352 sunbelt alliance members including many news reporters, cameramen and actor Wes Studi hiked to Black Fox power plant chanting things like, “NO MORE NUKES!” and “2468 WE DON’T WANT TO RADIATE!” They walked a few miles to the Nuclear Power Plant before being met with a barbed wire fence. Kelly talked to a Tulsa News Reporter (later she saw herself on TV). Everyone climbed over a ‘tee-pee shaped’ ladder to get over thebarbed wire fence into the plant construction site.
Nana says she brought food, water and a tent- they planned to sleep overnight. As everyone was climbing over the fence, the Rodger’s County Sheriff’s Department came in and arrested everyone for “trespassing and treason”. The protesters stood trial and received a split jury: A mistrial. No one was convicted.
Though cut short, the Black Fox protest raised public awareness and was seen as a success for the Sunbelt Alliance. The Public Service Company eventually ran out of money for the Black Fox nuclear power plant and in 2017 built a much safer paper plant instead. The antinuclear movement became popular in the 70s in religious groups and environmentalist groups. People supporting the antinuclear movement aimed to raise public awareness. In 1979, the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Middletown, Pennsylvania malfunctioned, further intensifying the antinuclear movement. Inspired by the Three mile island meltdown, activists from Tulsa, Oklahoma, protested construction of the Black Fox Power Plant in Inola. The antinuclear movement influenced public opinion on nuclear technology in America and in Oklahoma it stopped the construction of the Black Fox nuclear power plant.
Sources Cited
Hodge, Kelly. Interview by Amelia Nicolas. “NO NUKES antinuclear movement.” Dec 6th, 2025.
Walker, Samuel. 3 Mile Island: a Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective. California: The University of
California Press Berkeley, 2004
Town of Inola, “Protests of Black Fox,” Inola Oklahoma https://www.inolaok.com/black-fox-protest
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