With concern about the elimination of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, Clarence Roberts organized a meeting held on the balcony of the Frederick hotel in Frederick, Oklahoma, which led to the creation of the Oklahoma Farmers Emergency Association. Carl Wright of Sentinel, who later headed the Federal Crop Insurance Corp., was elected chairman, with Claude Ingram of Hollis as vice-chairman and Lyle L. Hague of Cherokee as secretary/treasurer.
The first objective of the organization was to persuade Congress to enact another farm program to replace the AAA. With a small membership and dues of 50 cents a year, OFEA had little cash to tackle a big job. Roberts and his secretarial staff wrote more than 5,000 letters, signed by Wright and Hague, were sent to farmers urging them to write their senators and representatives to request a new farm program. Within a week a flood of letters was on the way to Washington. With publicity from the media, farmers of other states also began writing and within weeks Congress had enacted the “Corn and Hog Program.”
With this notable success on its first political outing, OFEA continued to meet. Roberts wanted to make OFEA a permanent organization and affiliate with AFBF. When a meeting was called to consider this in the summer of 1941, leaders decided to dissolve OFEA and invite the membership to join the Farm Bureau. Most of them did.