Column by John Warren
You would not be surprised to hear the Chautauqua season was populated with remarks from the Amphitheater podium about Iran, oil, a military stand-off and a blockade in the Strait of Hormuz.
You might be surprised to learn that season was 75 years ago.
A 1951 crisis in Iran bore some striking resemblances to the present-day U.S. war with Iran and similarly captured Chautauquans’ attention. A notable exception is that, in 1951, the U.S. was not the chief antagonist.
In the 1951 episode that spurred much pontification from the Amp stage, Iran took a stance against the British and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. (the predecessor to British Petroleum, or BP), which had long exploited Iranian oil following the discovery of oil in that country in 1908. 75 years ago, Iran had had enough, and Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh announced the country would nationalize its oil industry, which included the world’s largest oil refinery, at Abadan.
The Brits, for their part, sent the Royal Navy to block the port of Abadan and to prevent tankers from passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
Mosaddegh became a national hero, and his supporters drove away the Shah, said to be a puppet for Western oil interests. In 1953, a CIA-backed coup would overthrow Mosaddegh and reinstall the Shah, and profits were split evenly between Iran and Western oil companies.
The trouble in Iran was very much on the minds (and knitting needles — more on that) of Chautauquans 75 years ago.
At the opening of the 1951 Season, Carol Wyman’s Chautauquacade personals column in the Daily led with:
GREETINGS TO CHAUTAUQUANS, old and new, on this our seventy-eighth annual session. From all over the country they came streaming through the gates yesterday, children, mothers, grandmothers, aunts, uncles and friends. Each in his or her own way to seek the help and inspiration that Chautauqua has to offer. Forgotten for the moment were the problems of Malik, Iranian oil, Tito’s request for arms as the organ strains announcing the first service of worship were heard from the Amphitheater. Eight short weeks in which to regain our perspective and to rebuild ourselves both morally and physically.
The first lecture of the season, on Independence Day, from Edward H. Litchfield, was “Is Our Foreign Policy Adequate? What Are Its Premises?” In it, he suggested siding with the Iranian cause, and prophesied that the principle of freedom for all men could be propagated abroad through Voice of America radio broadcasts.
For weeklong lectures during Week Two, political scientist and New York Times analyst Edgar Fisher took to the Amp stage to talk about “the Iran oil crisis.” Fisher had taught in Turkey and Lebanon, and by 1951 was retired from New York’s Institute of American Education; he was also a leader in the American Friends of the Middle East.
Given his background, it is not surprising he was sympathetic to the Iranian plight.
He told Chautauquans the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. had long been exploiting the oil deposits in Iran. In one lecture reported in the Daily, Fisher said the conditions were “a fateful and dangerous brew.”
He said the brew included in Iran “a fabulously rich class unmindful of the poverty-stricken, miserable masses,” “a notoriously corrupt political system,” “incompetent civil service,” “a groping middle class,” “boiling extremist nationalism,” “bitter hatred against a British company and government that has been too grasping” and “fanatical Moslems (sic).”
Appealing to a dog whistle of the era, Fisher warned that both the U.S. and England had lost credibility in the Middle East, and that Western intervention was making conditions ripe for communism.
In mid-July, Dwight and Bess Donaldson spoke on “Iran — Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow” at the Presbyterian Chapel. The two had lived in Tehran, working for schools that introduced a Western influence.
Litchfield’s early-season assertion that the U.S. would do well to side with “the Arabs” was refuted later in the season by another speaker, James G. McDonald — not to be confused with the Donaldsons. In his morning lecture titled “Oil, and Russia in the Middle East,” McDonald struck a tone that might enamor him to President 47.
“The Arabs are and always have been difficult to make friends with,” McDonald said. “They are suspicious and almost impossible to placate.”
Alas, what did Chautauquans do with all this 1951 Amp-stage intel? They knitted scarves — scarves that served an historic purpose. Selling handmade “Federation” scarves was part of a national General Federation of Women’s Clubs movement to make American and Western radio programs accessible to Iranians so they could hear “the Voice of America,” both figuratively and — given the U.S. radio broadcast by that name — literally.
Carol Wyman followed the season’s scarf-knitting in her Chautauquacade column. Early in the season, she wrote:
“IF YOU SEE SOME UNUSUAL SCARFS being worn during the General Federation of Women’s Clubs Institute, they are no doubt The Federation Scarf. The Radio Scarfs Project is sponsored by the Federation to purchase radios to strategic countries threatened by Communism so that the people themselves may hear and know what a free people really believe.”
The organizer, Mrs. Sterling M. Hamlet, could be found at the Gleason Hotel, Wyman advised. Later in the season, Wyman reported:
“ANOTHER RADIO FOR IRAN is the good news reported by Mrs. Sterling M. Hamlet, who is in charge of the scarf project for Chautauqua sponsored by the National Federation of Women’s Clubs. Mrs. Hamlet, who is the West Virginia State Chairman of the project, has sold enough scarfs to purchase a radio to send to Iran.”
It’s fantastic to imagine one radio would have had much impact on international affairs, until you know these were shortwave radios, several hundred dollars in today’s currency.
Attached to loudspeakers and installed in large public spaces, the Voice of America Farsi Service broadcasts offered a counter to state reports. In time, they formed a radio infrastructure that spread American influence and helped lead to the prime minister’s overthrow.
This might ring more heroic for present-day Chautauquans, save for a footnote. Almost 50 years later, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright issued a public apology for the CIA’s involvement in the coup.
The author’s family landed in Chautauqua in 1956. Write to chqhistoriographical@gmail.com.
