How to Spot a Communist Using Literary Criticism: A 1955 Manual from the U.S. Military

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42. We lefties can't forget the history of this term

Hootenanny was a term you used if you couldn’t think of the right word, like thingamabob, gizmo or whatchamacallit. Its use to describe a folk music jam originated in Seattle.
Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie came to Seattle in 1941. In The Incompleat Folksinger (Seeger, Pete; The Incompleat Folksinger; Edited by Jo Metcalf Schwartz; University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1992; p. 327) Pete tells how he encountered his first hootenanny:
“In the summer of 1941 Woody Guthrie and myself, calling ourselves the Almanac Singers, toured Seattle, Washington and met some of the good people of the Washington Commonwealth Federation, the New Deal political club headed by Hugh DeLacy. They arranged for us to sing for trade unions in the Puget Sound area, and then proudly invited us to their next hootenanny. It was the first time we had heard the term. It seems they had a vote to decide what they would call their monthly fund-raising parties. Hootenanny won out by a nose over ‘wingding’.”
“The Seattle hootenannies were real community affairs. One family would bring a whole pot of some dish like crab gumbo. Others would bring cakes, salads. A drama group performed topical skits, a good 16-mm film might be shown, and there would be dancing, swing and folk, for those of sound limb. And, of course, there would be singing.”

http://pnwfolklore.org/Hootenannies.html

A play by J C McMullen of 1920, Turning the Trick, includes the lines “‘Have you any visitors at present?’ ‘No one. Wait a minute though. I forgot that bolshevik hootenanny Kathleen’s brought in’”; the young woman so described is rebellious (one sense of Bolshevik at the time, abbreviated to the British bolshie) as well as wild and unconventional and is seen as a bad influence.

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-hoo6.htm

Paul Robeson sings at the International Peace Arch on the border-crossing between the United States and Canada at Blaine on May 18, 1952.

On May 18, 1952, singer, actor, athlete, scholar, and political activist Paul Robeson (1898-1976) performs an outdoor concert for more than 25,000 people (estimates range as high as 45,000) gathered on both sides of the United States/Canadian border at Peace Arch Park in Blaine. An outspoken supporter of civil rights worldwide and an admirer of the Soviet Union, where he perceives there to be no racism, Robeson has been increasingly persecuted for his political views since the late 1940s. His passport has been confiscated by the State Department, denying his right to travel and perform outside of the United States, and he has recently even been prevented from crossing the border to Canada, which at the time does not require United States citizens to show a passport.

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As Robeson's domestic arrest continued, he gave three more concerts at the Peace Arch, in 1953, 1954, and 1955. In 1956 he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). In June of 1958, after the Supreme Court ruled in another case that the Secretary of State could not withhold the passport of a United States Citizen because of their political beliefs, Robeson's passport was restored.

http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=8163