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Hellraisers Journal – Friday September 24, 1909
Farmers Come from Miles Around for Oklahoma Socialists Encampments
From the International Socialist Review of September 1909:
The Oklahoma Encampment
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SOCIALIST ENCAMPMENTS. Three meetings a day, five days a week for four weeks, makes a total of sixty red hot propaganda meetings a month, with an attendance of from 500 to 10,000 at each lecture. This is what they are doing at the Oklahoma Socialist Encampment.
Successful encampments have already been held at Waurika, Snyder, Elk City, Aline and Woodward and the country for miles around has been showered with literature. The big canvass tent with a seating capacity of 1,000, is always pitched in a shady, well-watered grove, and from every pole top a red flag floats toward freedom.
Scores of covered wagons file into camp during Monday and far into the night, so that by the time the speaking begins on Tuesday, we find ourselves in the midst of a big, happy and seriously-minded family, happy because they have given the capitalist system the slip for a few days and serious because they realize that they are becoming landless farmers.
Comrade Eugene V. Debs gives his usual sledge-hammer speeches at every encampment, and the folks come 100 miles to hear him. Comrade Oscar Ameringer’s lectures on the “Land Question” and “The Race Problem” are particularly effective owing to his knowledge of the conditions which confront the Oklahoma farmer and to his continuous humor. Comrade Caroline Lowe appeals to the heart of her audience and drives home each point with unswerving earnestness. State Senator Winfield R. Gaylord’s lectures are of especial value to Socialists. Music is furnished by the Ameringer Orchestra and is a big factor toward the success of the meetings. Comrade D. O. Watkins is ably engineering these encampments in the capacity of General Manager, and with the experience gained this year, he will no doubt be able to put up a whirl-wind campaign at next year’s encampments.
A fine line of Socialist literature is on sale at all meetings and is in charge of Comrade R. E. Dooley, ably assisted by L. H. Harvey.
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Quote EVD Slave is My Brother, AtR p1, May 1, 1909
https://www.newspapers.com/image/66981839
The International Socialist Review, Volume 10
(Chicago, Illinois)
-July 1909-June 1910
C. H. Kerr & Company, 1910
https://books.google.com/books?id=MVhIAAAAYAAJ
ISR-September 1909
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=MVhIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA193
page 278-“The Oklahoma Encampment”
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=MVhIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA278
See also
Oscar Ameringer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Ameringer
Socialism for the Farmer Who Farms the Farm
-by Oscar Ameringer
Saint Louis, 1912
https://archive.org/details/socialismforfarm00amer/page/n3
Class Struggle and the Color Line
American Socialism and the Race Question, 1900-1930
-by Paul Heideman
Haymarket Books, Apr 6, 2018
(search: “the socialist party and the race question”)
(search: “the most exceptional group of southern socialists were in Oklahoma”)
(search: ameringer)
https://books.google.com/books?id=1dVTDwAAQBAJ
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Better World A Comin’ – Woody Guthrie