Who was called the most dangerous person in America by California agricultural associations of the 1930s?

John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. (February 27, 1902 - December 20, 1968) was called the most dangerous person in America by California agricultural associations of the 1930s.

Specifically, California agricultural associations disliked Steinbeck's concern over and compassion for the sufferings of those who had either no livelihood or livelihoods in which they were underpaid, overworked and mistreated. The associations feared that Steinbeck's writing skills and Stanford education actually might work to get an audience to see the California power holders for what they were: people who did not share and who cared only about their own pockets and their own bloodlines.

The associations had reason for their fears. "The Grapes of Wrath," Steinbeck's monumental tribute to the have-nots, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940. The continued publication of Steinbeck's writing and the translation of some into stage and screen productions quickly turned the California-born author into a national and then international figure. Twenty-two years later after the Pulitzer, the love and respect that Steinbeck had won worldwide through his "dangerous" writings culminated in his being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.