Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday August 15, 1922 Christmas Eve 1920: Eugene Debs Is Guest of Honor at Prison Banquet
From the Appeal to Reason of August 12, 1922:
Christmas in Prison
By EUGENE V. DEBS
[Part II of II]
Eugene Debs Leaving Atlanta Penitentiary Christmas Day 1921
Some weeks before Christmas [of 1920] a case containing 500 copies of a book, entitled “Debs and the Poets” was shipped to the prison. It was an anthology of verse and comment collected by Ruth Le Prade and published by Upton Sinclair at Pasadena, Cal.
It was the desire of the author and publisher that I autograph the books to be sold by them in the interest of a fund being raised to continue the agitation for general amnesty for political prisoners.
When the books arrived, a copy was scrutinized by Warden Zerbst, who decided that the introduction supplied by Upton Sinclair was not particularly complimentary to the prison idea, nor was some of the poetry. So a copy was sent to Attorney General Palmer, who ruled there was nothing objectionable in it, and that I might be permitted to autograph the copies.
Some friends outside the prison asked the warden if I might be permitted to inscribe the books Christmas Eve night. The request was granted and the hour to begin was fixed at seven o’clock. I went to the clerk’s office, where I found my friends.
The books were piled on either side of me at the clerk’s desk and the work of autographing them commenced.
Ginger Ale Suspected.
In the corridor outside a dozen or more prisoners were assembling the last of the Christmas packages for the convicts and there was an atmosphere of fellowship that pervaded the entire scene.
From time to time prisoners slipped in and out of the room where I was at work to drop a kindly word, and my friends from the outside world remarked upon the amiable manner in which every convict conducted himself.
Later that evening it was suggested by one of my visitors that maybe the prisoners assorting Christmas boxes would like to have a soft drink, so the matter was put up to the chief clerk, who was superintending the work, and he agreed to it. Thereupon my friends went out of the prison and down to a little store outside the gates, where they purchased two dozen bottles of ginger ale.
It happened that when they asked to be readmitted to the penitentiary Deputy Warden Gregory was in the main corridor and he came to the gate to inquire what was in the box they carried.
He was told of its contents and that permit had been secured to bring it in the prison for the men who were at work over the Christmas gifts. The deputy warden felt that he should have first been consulted about the matter and he refused to allow the refreshment to be given to the convicts.
This is but one indication of how senseless and needlessly harsh are prison rules.
Later the deputy attempted to explain in a somewhat apologetic manner to one of my friends that: “Who knows but that those bottles might contain ‘dope’ and ‘files’!”
This, in spite of the fact that he could have reassured himself on that score in a moment by observing that every bottle was sealed.
Kept at the Task.
My visitors and I kept at the task of signing the books, every copy of which was numbered, until midnight and then they presented me with their own inscribed copy-number “65”-as significant of the total of my years.
There are certain occasions in my prison experience that are vividly preserved as beautiful pictures. One of these was the celebration of Christmas Eve, 1920, in the basement of the prison hospital.
Permission had been secured by the inmates of the hospital from the officials to hold a Christmas Eve communion and spread a banquet, to which the prisoners contributed the gifts that came in their boxes from their families and friends.
So quietly had all this been arranged that I was in blissful ignorance of it until I was escorted to the spacious and brilliantly illuminated basement, where I beheld with astonishment and delight an extended table spread with a banquet of delicious dishes that was equally tempting to the eye and palate.
Every hospital inmate who had received any gifts at all contributed them to the common lot. The holly-stamped paper in which the gifts had been wrapped was carefully preserved by the prisoners, one of whom fashioned fancy doilies out of it and spread them under each plate.
The myriad colored ribbons were used as part of the festoons, and from somewhere flowers had been obtained for decorating the table. Each prisoner had brought his own little iron chair from his room or the wards.
Convicts Honor Debs.
When they were all seated the convicts held consultation as to who should come to my room to escort me to the festive board.
Every prisoner wanted what he considered was that honor, and since the dispute could be solved in no other way they decided to hold nominations and elect an escorting committee of two.
It happened that an Irishman and a Chinese were chosen. I was sitting in my own room when the two convicts came to my door and told me that I was wanted in the basement. The Irishman tried his best to appear solemn, but the face of the Mongolian beamed with anticipatory delight over the surprise that he knew would be mine in a few moments.
Flanked on either side by my escort I walked through the silent corridors of the now deserted hospital, and down the stairs to the basement, where for the first time I realized the purpose of my being summoned.
In every eye there was an expression of delight and kindness, and if I had never before understood the meaning of human happiness and the radiant heights to which it may ascent, I perceived it that night before me in the faces of my fellow prisoners who had, in this loving and simple way, translated the thought of “good will among men” into kindly deed.
The convict committee escorted me to the head of the table where I was informed that I was their guest of honor.
Sometimes there come to all of us feelings that sing in the hearts and sigh for expression when only our silence really registers the depth of our emotion and our moist eyes suggest what the world could never reveal.
So I cannot tell you of the deep stirrings within me as I looked down the lanes of that burdened board and beheld in the countenances of those convicts a joyous unselfishness that passes all understanding in the outer world.
I am sure my eyes never rested upon a more beautiful and inviting feast. If I had never before forgotten that I was enclosed inside prison walls it certainly did not occur to me during that extraordinary evening that I was being held in custody.
In all the more than three score years of my life there had been but two Christmas eves that I spent away from home. It had been an unwritten rule in our large family to gather under the rooftree of the old home at Christmas time and spend the holidays there. It was always the occasion for a beautiful family reunion, the memory of which is treasured by me and will be “until it empties its urn into forgetfulness.”
The first was in 1897 when I was filling a series of speaking engagements in Iowa, and had the detectives of the railroad companies at my heels; they followed me from point to point to assist me in my work in the way peculiar to those functionaries.
This was due to my former activities among railroad men, organizing them into the American Railway Union which had sponsored the great strike of 1894 and resulted (so far as I personally was concerned) in my imprisonment in McHenry County Jail, Illinois, for six months for disregarding an injunction issued by a Federal court which had held me in contempt.
Christmas eve, 1897, found me in Des Moines without money to pay my railroad fare, and that accounts for my missing the celebration at home. The second occasion of my absence was in 1919, when I was in Atlanta federal prison.
Brothers Indeed.
I have mixed feelings as to the compensation that was awarded me in 1920 for my inability to be at my own fireside but I am sure I shall never forget the manner in which my fellow prisoners exerted themselves at that prison banquet for my surprise and happiness.
The scene presented aspects so unusual that I felt myself not only highly honored, but there was a silent and subtle appeal to my emotions that cannot be expressed in words.
I had never before been the recipient of such bounty, nor from such a source, nor more graciously and tenderly offered. Each had contributed his all for the enjoyment of all.
A noticeable incident that impressed me was the insistence of the prisoners to serve at the tables instead of being seated as guests. That concrete and steel-barred prison basement was a temple of spiritual fellowship in blessed reunion that night.
Seated around that hospitable board we were brothers indeed, and I only wish it had been possible for those who think of inmates of prison in terms of crime to have looked upon that gathering of convicts and then have been asked in what essential particular they were inferior to or different from any similar number of human beings who were celebrating in stately edifices dedicated to his name, the natal day of the Man who was born in a stable.
It may be a fancy, but I somehow felt that Jesus Christ was in prison that night.
—————