[lbo-talk] more on OK red scare

[Dennis Claxton]

Botkin was born in Boston and took a job at the 
University of Oklahoma.  He was also associated 
with the Progressive Bookstore, the store 
discussed in my previous post that was raided in 
1940,  Crime writer Jim Thompson, who also worked 
with the Federal Writers' Project and was for a 
time a CP member, used to hang out there 
too.  This whole article is available at the link:

Susan G. Davis
Ben Botkin’s FBI File
Journal of American Folklore - Volume 122, Number 487, Winter 2010, pp. 3-30

<http://130.102.44.247/about/muse/publishers/afs>American Folklore Society

Abstract:

A reading of the recently declassified FBI file 
of prominent folklorist Benjamin A. Botkin 
suggests that his career was powerfully shaped by 
government surveillance and the midcentury Red 
Scares. Botkin’s file reveals connections to 
cultural experiments that fed into his regional 
miscellany Folk-Say (1929–32) and his work with 
the Federal Writers’ Project. Considering the 
tensions between radicalism and repression in the 
mid-twentieth century allows new insights into 
the development of folklore as an American discipline and profession.

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:cxD6Lh-VtOMJ:130.102.44.247/journals/journal_of_american_folklore/v123/123.487.davis.pdf+%22Progressive+Bookstore%22+%22jim+thompson%22&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us