Title: Thanksgiving song Title: Swing the shining sickle Composer: Gaynor, Jessie L., 1863-1921 Arranger: Schaum, John W. Publisher: Belwin, Inc. Place of publication: Rockville Centre, NY Date of publication: 1954 Call Number: M1 .D48 Box: 238 Item: 025 Performance Medium: Piano and Voice (with lyrics) First Line: Swing the shining sickle, cut the ripened grain, Genre: Popular song Subject term: Thanksgiving
It's odd that the publication date is 1954 when the composer died in 1921. This might mean it was the second time the song was published, owing to some sort of revival of popularity.
[In 1963] The Los Angeles Herald and Express (later the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner) printed a series of editorials urging that thirteen schoolbooks be banned as un-American. The newspaper even found one music book subversive, as it contained a song entitled "Swing the Shining Sickle." As it turned out, the song was not a hymn of praise to the Soviet Union; it had been written twenty years before the Russian revolution as a Thanksgiving harvest song.
Apparently this was a famous incident, mentioned in several other books, but I couldn't get a long quote from any of them.