AMERINGER, OSCAR

Oscar Ameringer (August 4, 1870–November 5, 1943) was a Socialist labor organizer, journalist, and architect of the Socialist Party in Oklahoma. Born in Germany, Ameringer immigrated to Cincinnati, Ohio, as a teenager, furthering his education at public libraries. He made unsuccessful bids for the Ohio legislature and mayoralty of Columbus. Married to Lulu Woods, he fathered three sons and supported his family by selling insurance. In 1901, Ameringer joined the Socialist Party and embarked on full-time labor activism.

In 1934 and 1935, H. L. Mitchell and Clay East, founders of the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, turned to Ameringer's organizing tactics and writings for guidance. Ameringer had organized poverty-stricken Oklahoma tenant farmers by blending Jeffersonian theories, Socialist positions, Marxist philosophy, and homespun humor into a unique agrarian socialism. Ameringer reached rural people through speaker encampments and numerous publications. Although Ameringer lost the 1911 race to become mayor of Oklahoma City by a narrow margin, by 1914 he had so broadened the appeal of the Socialist Party that it won six seats in the state legislature. Rebuilding after World War I, Ameringer merged socialists with progressives in the Farmer-Labor Reconstruction League to win the Oklahoma governorship for the Democrat fusion candidate, John Walton.

Throughout the 1930s, Ameringer, with his second wife, Freda Hogan, published a variety of newspapers, including the influential weekly The American Guardian. His acclaimed columns, written under the cryptic pseudonym Adam Coaldigger, reached across the United States. Ameringer supported Frank Farrington over John L. Lewis for control of the United Mine Workers, losing an Illinois publication because of the schism. Ameringer campaigned extensively for Socialist candidates in other states, and he testified about the desperation of labor before the House Subcommittee on Unemployment in 1932. Borrowing $55,000, he launched an agricultural relocation project in Louisiana on behalf of destitute miners and farmers. The enterprise succeeded without endorsement from the New Deal Resettlement Administration. By the end of the 1930s, Ameringer had completed his memoirs, If You Don't Weaken, found rapprochement with John L. Lewis's leadership, and expressed interest in the War Resisters League.

See Also: SOCIALIST PARTY; UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA (UMWA).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ameringer, Oscar. If You Don't Weaken: The Autobiography of Oscar Ameringer. 1940. Reprint, 1983.

Bissett, Jim. Agrarian Socialism in America: Marx, Jefferson, and Jesus in the Oklahoma Countryside, 1904–1920. 1999.

Green, James R. Grass-Roots Socialism: Radical Movements in the Southwest, 1895–1943. 1978.

Thompson, John. Closing the Frontier: Radical Response inOklahoma, 1889–1923. 1986.

Linda Reese