Great Scott! There was a summer camp in Alexander Valley where kids were brainwashed with Commie propaganda! Under a banner front page headline the Press Democrat reported July 20, 1929, “…boys and girls of tender years are taught the principles of communism and hatred of the American government.”
There were 36 kids there, ages from 8 to 17, and after morning exercises and swearing allegiance “to the Soviet flag, red with a symbolic sledge and sickle, the children paraded behind their flag and sang the Internationale,” the PD continued. Then came “weird ceremonials and class instructions on the river beach,” including an exercise where an instructor took rocks which “he pounded in his hands until one crumpled, [showing] how the ‘workers’ should crush the ‘capitalist’ government of the United States.” On a bulletin board was a poster reading, “Down with the Boy Scouts.”
“Bay Cities’ Pioneer Camp #1” was near the Alexander Valley Bridge and just one of many summer camps on the river.1 According to the PD story, there was “a near-riot” when women and girls from another one nearby “paraded behind the youngsters of ‘Pioneer Camp,’ waving the American flag while singing The Star-Spangled Banner.”
The PD story was picked up by both the AP and UP newswires and proved quite popular, appearing in papers nationwide and usually on page one. While the item was sometimes cut down to a paragraph or two, the editors always had room to mention the camp was on the Russian River. (Oscar Wilde: “The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.”)
Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner lied to readers (no surprise, there) by claiming “authorities immediately raided the place and seized propaganda pamphlets and other evidence,” but what the District Attorney actually said was he could do nothing under state law. He passed the matter to the U. S. District Attorney in San Francisco while sending County Detective John W. Pemberton to investigate. A Press Democrat reporter tagged along and the piece that appeared the next day revealed that much of the original article was either made up or grossly exaggerated. That story apparently relied only upon hearsay from Arthur H. Meese, commander of Healdsburg’s American Legion Post.
The PD writer interviewed camp director M. Martin (his name incorrectly given as “Maury” in the first PD article) who insisted there was nothing anti-American about what they were instructing:
| “This is a recreation camp for the children of workers, many of whom are communists,” Martin said. He denied, however, that the children were taught hatred for the United States government. “We had a presidential election in this country not long ago. A large majority of the people voted for one man for president. He was elected. Many thousands of people, though, voted against him. But they were not against the government. They were against the principles of the majority party. We, too, are against the present party; but are not against the United States.” |
Nor were they pledging allegiance to the Soviet flag; the kids were waving plain red flags, which had been used by leftist political movements more than a century before Russians added their hammer and sickle.
This was the third year of the camp, the reporter was told, and it was run under the auspices of the Workers International Relief organization.2 “One of the main things that we are interested in is fighting race discrimination,” said Martin. That comment may seem opaque, but I’m betting the reporter didn’t capture his full quote. The group also mainly fought antisemitism – and the previous article had identified most of the children being from families with roots in Eastern Europe. Martin added that all of the children were born in the United States, as were most of their parents.
As for the “near-riot” because of the “Star Spangled Banner” singers, Martin said the story was “ridiculous” – they were being teased because some campers were warbling a popular Al Jolson tune. “We had been taking some exercises on the beach, and two of the girls were singing ‘Sonny Boy’ when the members of the other camp interrupted us with singing and noise; but that was all.”
Martin didn’t know what was meant by “weird ceremonials,” and he never ground rocks together to demonstrate how Commies would crush the Capitalist system – although he admired the concept. “Whoever invented it, though, I think it is a clever idea,” he said.
In sum, the nosy Legionnaire got almost everything wrong except for the headcount and number of tents. He was right about the “Down With the Boy Scouts” poster, however; Martin said “We believe that the Scout organization serves the Bosses.”
The AP wire did a followup a few days later when a few kids were sent home for mild cases of scarlet fever, but not one paper mentioned the PD had reported that the original story was largely untrue.
Despite having debunked its own story, the Press Democrat doubled back and kept repeating misinformation. The next story in the paper claimed “…the principles of communism and hatred of the American government are taught. The children, more than two score of tender age, are said to parade daily, swearing allegiance to the Soviet flag, red with a symbolic sledge and sickle.” The PD also printed an editorial denouncing the camp as a “hotbed of communism, where the red flag of Soviet Russia, is paraded and her dangerous doctrines taught.”
But the PD didn’t stop there. The next Sunday they offered a think-piece that reads like the ancestor of Q-Anon conspiracy babble.
Headlined “SCHOOL HERE LINKED WITH NATION PLOT” the article claimed “investigations of the American Legion” and law enforcement revealed the Alexander Valley camp “was but one phase of a nationwide campaign of the Communist Party in the United States to breed revolution among the school children of the United States.”
The PD item quoted heavily from a magazine article by Mrs. William Sherman Walker which appeared in National Republic magazine.3 Among her startling finds were that Soviet parents dedicate their newborns to the Communist cause: “The names of children, when mere infants are inscribed on the cradle roll of revolution.” She added ominously, “Similar ceremonies have been discovered in the United States as taking place annually in various communities.”
Apparently no copies of that article survive (certainly not online) but about a year later she testified before Congress in her role as the Daughters of the American Revolution “National Defense Committee Chairman” (yes, the D.A.R. still has a National Defense Committee) and had lots to say about the camps. A sample:
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“Little children are being taught the principles of street fighting. They are urged to become proficient enough in such tactics to take over certain parts of the cities”
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Free school lunches “train children to abhor private property”
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“In playing hide and go seek children hunt for capitalists and bring them trembling before a soviet tribunal”
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Campers are given a songbook that shows how religious songs are ridiculed, such as using the melody of “Onward, Christian Soldiers” but changing it to have “vicious, obscene words”
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As the Alexander Valley camp was closing as scheduled, federal agents from the Justice Dept. showed up and warned Martin not to come back the following year. “They told me it would be better for me not to engage any more in that kind of business.” And that was the end of Bay Cities’ Pioneer Camp #1, as far as is known.
But just a week after our local furor died down, red-baiting papers worked up a new lather over news of a similar camp being raided in Southern California.
A “miniature Soviet Republic” in the San Bernardino mountains was found to have “forty scantily-clad children, described as Slavs from the Boyle Heights industrial section of Los Angeles,” according to the AP wire story.
The Press Democrat added “in every detail the camp was identical” to the Pioneer Camp here and rehashed the notion of the Communist Party USA trying to “breed revolution,” but there was a twist to the San Bernardino story: The adults running the camp were all Russian nationals. They were jailed until U.S. immigration officers could investigate to determine whether they could be deported.
It will probably come as no surprise to Gentle Reader that much of those accusations likewise turned out to be hogwash. The camp counselors weren’t genuine Soviets after all; the camp director was 19 year-old Yetta Stromberg, a student at USC. Failing to show they had captured Bolsheviks, Stromberg was charged with the misdemeanor of failing to obtain a permit from the county health department. She was also charged under California’s notorious 1919 “red flag” statute, which made it a felony to use a red flag as a symbol of opposition to the government.4
Stromberg was convicted of the felony, and while she appealed the decision she was held in San Quentin. Her case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which in a landmark 1931 decision overturned her conviction, ruling the state law was vague and unconstitutional.
| 1 Besides the big summer resort scene on the river, there were many (dozens?) children’s camps that popped up for a week or three. There were several ag camps affiliated with 4-H, camps sponsored by the YMCA, Camp Fire Girls, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, YMI (Catholic), something called the Institute Club of the Hughson Epworth League (Methodist) and plenty more. The city of Berkeley even had its own year-round camp near Cazadero. |
| 2 Martin said there were about twenty similar Workers International Relief camps around the country; there’s an interesting memoir from a boy who attended a camp in Pennsylvania at about the same time. Many parents stayed at the camps as well, although the adult campsite was separated from their children’s area. |
| 3 National Republic was a monthly magazine catering to conservative women who opposed suffrage (even after the 19th Amendment passed) and anything they considered radical or anti-American, including any form of pacifism. It grew in importance during the mid-1920s after the formation of the Women’s Patriotic Conference on National Defense (WPCND), which was mainly a coalition of the D.A.R. and the American Legion Auxiliary. By the end of the decade the magazine’s focus was on perceived threats to the nation such as subversive books, unpatriotic activities in schools, and particularly Communist plots to subvert American nationalism. For more, see: “‘So Much for Men’: Conservative Women and National Defense in the 1920s and 1930s” by Christine K. Erickson; American Studies, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Spring 2004) |
| 4 1919 California Penal Code, §403a: “Any person who displays a red flag, banner or badge or any flag, badge, banner, or device of any color or form whatever in any public place or in any meeting place or public assembly, or from or on any house, building or window as a sign, symbol or emblem of opposition to organized government or as an invitation or stimulus to anarchistic action or as an aid to propaganda that is of a seditious character is guilty of a felony.” |
I came across the article a few months ago. Really appreciate the details, great research. Thanks Jeff
These are the kinds of article the PD should be writing! Not the propaganda that they usually report on. Thank you!