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Obama Once Visited '60s Radicals (Weather Underground Terrorists)
Politico ^ | Feb 22, 2008 | Ben Smith

Posted on 02/24/2008 8:27:17 PM PST by Travis McGee

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To: Max Friedman; Travis McGee
The "mentor" was Frank Marshall Davis, a poet and writer who died in 1987. Obama apparently mentioned "Frank" in his book and Cliff Kincaid was able to weave together the facts to determine that "Frank" was Frank Davis Marshall. (See Obama’s Communist Mentor).

Davis reportedly was influenced to move to Hawaii by Paul Robeson (CPUSA), who he knew in Chicago. [source]. I've read much of Robeson's FBI files and don't remember ever seeing Frank Davis. The labor movement was big in Hawaii about that time (with Jack Hall) but I haven't seen any evidence that Davis was active in that. Davis also married a white woman so I wonder if that might have not been some of the attraction of Obama, dealing with interracial biases.

Below are some more acquaintances mentioned in a book review:


Livin' the Blues: Memoirs of a Black Journalist and Poet. By Frank Marshall Davis. Ed. by John Edgar Tidwell. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992, xxxii, 373 pp. $27.50, ISBN 0-299-13500-4.)

Frank Marshall Davis (1905-1987) was a political activist, editor of African-American newspapers, and author of four volumes of poetry. He developed a considerable reputation in Chicago and Atlanta in the 1930s and 1940s, before moving to Hawaii and obscurity in 1948. There was a brief flurry of fame in the late 1960s and early 1970s when this "mystery man," as he was labeled, was taken as a father figure by black nationalists. The publication of his autobiography five years after his death is, in a sense, part of the recent effort to recover some of the "lost" figures of African American literature, history, and culture. He himself largely completed the book in 1973 but could never interest a publisher in it.

Livin' the Blues is as much a social history of early twentieth-century black America as it is a life story. Davis vividly describes the worlds of business, politics, sports, music, literature, and the military. He knew, or knew much about, such figures as Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Louis Armstrong, Oscar DePriest, and Angelo Herndon and Ben Davis, Jr., of the Communist party. In addition to being a journalist, he worked as a publicist at various times for the major political parties, taught the nation's first history of jazz course, and was active in left-wing literary organizations.

One of the noteworthy aspects of such an active public life is that both Davis and John Edgar Tidwell, the book's editor, define Davis repeatedly as a loner with a racial inferiority complex. They insist on this perhaps because the text itself does not clearly lead to such a conclusion. There is no question that Davis encountered discrimination growing up in Arkansas City, Kansas. He generally seemed to get along well with white children and teachers, however. More important in some ways is that he was exposed to central aspects of black culture, including religion and secular music, especially blues and jazz. This dichotomy of hostility and enrichment is evident throughout his story. But it is his individuality, assertiveness, social and political engagement, and wit, rather than his isolation and inferiority, that are most obvious.

The emphasis on the negative aspects may be based on the need to justify the decision to move not only off the mainland but out of the mainstream of political action at the very moment the civil rights movement took off. Both Davis and Tidwell are at pains to insist that this is not the case, but in fact Davis chose to live in a place he called a kind of racial paradise at the time that the battle he had been urging so courageously for so long had finally begun. In the end, despite Davis's candid style and Tidwell's admirable editorial efforts, it is on these political and moral grounds that Frank Marshall Davis remains one of the "mystery men" of African-American history.


41 posted on 02/24/2008 11:42:44 PM PST by calcowgirl ("Liberalism is just Communism sold by the drink." P. J. O'Rourke)
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To: cookcounty

Obama’s Communist Mentor
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1973437/posts

See also post above.


42 posted on 02/24/2008 11:45:12 PM PST by calcowgirl ("Liberalism is just Communism sold by the drink." P. J. O'Rourke)
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To: calcowgirl

I see now there are several threads related to the Kincaid article:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=frankmarshalldavis


43 posted on 02/24/2008 11:51:54 PM PST by calcowgirl ("Liberalism is just Communism sold by the drink." P. J. O'Rourke)
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Comment #44 Removed by Moderator

To: Max Friedman
The labor movement was big in Hawaii about that time (with Jack Hall) but I haven't seen any evidence that Davis was active in that.

Duh! Perhaps I need to read my own links. Yes--he was involved in the labor movement in Hawaii, specifically the ILWU to begin with. The RED Trials in Hawaii were in 1951 (and the "Free the Hawaii Seven" movement). Davis arrived in 1948.

Frank Marshall Davis: Black Labor Activist and Outsider Journalist: Social Movements in Hawai`i

45 posted on 02/25/2008 12:12:27 AM PST by calcowgirl ("Liberalism is just Communism sold by the drink." P. J. O'Rourke)
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To: Max Friedman; Calpernia; Liz; indylindy; nicmarlo
More Frank Marshall Davis
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~takara/frank_marshall_davis.htm

Davis himself recalls that even before he left for Hawai'i, "[Paul Robeson] and [Harry] Bridges who was head of the ILWU and the CIO in the Pacific Region,[5] suggested that I should get in touch with the Honolulu Record and see if I could do something for them."

When Davis became a columnist for the Honolulu Record...

...in [Davis's] own words, "Not long after arriving in Hawai`i, I began writing a regular weekly column for the Honolulu Record, supported mainly by the ILWU membership, and was openly friendly with its leadership." This was hardly a career move, since "The Record, of course, was not financially able to add me to its payroll." But Davis felt an affinity with Koji Ariyoshi and Ed Rohrbough, "who were its editorial mainstays" (Davis 1992, 323), and since the Record was created to provide an alternative perspective to the news, Davis found it to be the medium through which he could critique the socio-political structure of the Territory of Hawai'i and keep in touch with the common people. When Ariyoshi offered him a column, which became known as "Frankly Speaking," therefore, Davis couldn't resist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koji_Ariyoshi

The Second World War

At Manzanar, [Koji] Ariyoshi met and married his wife, Taeko Ariyoshi, and sought an opportunity to help the war effort. The opportunity presented itself in the United States Army Military Intelligence Service, where Ariyoshi signed on as a language specialist. Through the course of his service, he was transferred out of Manzanar to India, Sri Lanka, and to Burma. It was while he was stationed in the British Colonies, that Ariyoshi witnessed what he believed to be the inequality of the colonial system. His final transfer of the war led him to China and exposed him to the Communist movement.

The Dixie Mission

Koji Ariyoshi spent the majority of his time stationed at the Dixie Mission in Yan'an, where he met and interacted with both Chinese and Japanese Communists, chief among them Mao Zedong and Nosaka Sanzo. His primary duty in Yan'an was to learn more about the Communist activities to train Japanese prisoners of war, translate Japanese source materials, and develop Allied propaganda targeting the Japanese. In China, Ariyoshi had first hand experience with the positive differences between the peasants under the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communists, and came away with an appreciation for what Communism, or at least, progressive Socialism could accomplish.

Post War Life

Ariyoshi returned to Hawaiʻi in 1948 and inspired by the progressive Japanese language paper, Hawaiʻi Hochi, started a labor-oriented newspaper, the Honolulu Record. As editor, Arioyshi lambasted labor conditions for the working class, the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, and other social inequalities in the islands. His socialist stance achieved two things; first, it bolstered the growth of the local labor movement, as well as the Democratic Party in Hawaiʻi; second, at the height of the Second Red Scare and McCarthyism, he and six other Nisei were arrested under charges of attempting to overthrow the American government under the Smith Act. The case later became known as the Hawaiʻi Seven. Ariyoshi remained only one night in jail and after release, persisted in his writings to defense the stances of the Record. He was found guilty by the court, but on appeal found innocent of all charges against him.


46 posted on 02/25/2008 12:57:39 AM PST by calcowgirl ("Liberalism is just Communism sold by the drink." P. J. O'Rourke)
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To: All
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~takara/frank_marshall_davis.htm

The word was in fact correct, for Davis's initial contacts with Hawai'i all had extremely strong ILWU ties. Paul Robson's (sic) own Hawai'i acquaintances, which he passed on to Davis, insured that "when I came over, one of the first things that I got involved with--well, I met all the ILWU brass, Jack Hall and all of them, and I went--they had both of us over to various functions for them--Harriet Bouslog was also a good friend" (Davis 1986a, 5:29-30).[3]

Star Bulletin, 1999.

ATTORNEY Harriet Bouslog, a feisty advocate for ILWU strikers and other working people at a time when it was unpopular and unpolitic, is credited with playing a part in changing Hawaii from a near-feudal society led by powerful landowners. ... Florida-born Bouslog was the rare woman lawyer when she was admitted to the Hawaii bar in 1941. After working for the International Longshore and Warehousemen's Union in Washington, D.C., during World War II, she was recruited to return to Hawaii in 1946 to defend 400 union members charged under a century-old law against unlawful assembly and riot for their picket line activity. ... In the 1949 ILWU dock strike, Bouslog challenged the mostly Caucasian makeup of the grand jury that indicted Asian workers, which led to reform in the constitution of jury. ... She was part of the defense team for the "Hawaii Seven" who were convicted under the Smith Act of conspiring to teach the violent overthrow of the U.S. government -- convictions later overturned by a federal appeals court. Bouslog and her law partner Myer Symonds represented the underdog throughout their 30-year association ...

National Lawyers Guild - Membership - Resolutions (PDF)

...the "Landmark Cases" book describes the successful suit against the Attorney General for trying to list the Guild as "subversive" -- National Lawyers Guild v. Brownell, and the effort to disbar Hawaiian Guild lawyer-- In re Harriet Bouslog Sawyer, and many other landmark cases handled by Guild lawyers, from Ernest Goodman and Arthur Kinoy, et al. to Paul Harris and Marc van der Hout, et al...

47 posted on 02/25/2008 1:35:23 AM PST by calcowgirl ("Liberalism is just Communism sold by the drink." P. J. O'Rourke)
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To: All

Star-Bulletin file photo
Red paint defaced the Bouslog & Symonds office as
the lawyers defended the "Hawaii 7" in the 1953
Smith Act communism case.

48 posted on 02/25/2008 1:39:53 AM PST by calcowgirl ("Liberalism is just Communism sold by the drink." P. J. O'Rourke)
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To: All
There is a lot of biographical information about Davis, including activities in Chicago and his dust-ups with the HUAC, in the Introduction to his book, Black Moods: COLLECTED POEMS. There is also a detailed chronology right after the Table of Contents. The text is available at google books.
49 posted on 02/25/2008 2:05:21 AM PST by calcowgirl ("Liberalism is just Communism sold by the drink." P. J. O'Rourke)
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To: Travis McGee

I assume you’ve seen Beckwith’s page on Obama?

http://www.freedomsenemies.com/_more/obama.htm

It looks like it has been reworked. Will have to look for new content.


50 posted on 02/25/2008 2:33:41 AM PST by FreedomPoster (Guns themselves are fairly robust; their chief enemies are rust and politicians) (NRA)
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To: The South Texan; Max Friedman

Wasn’t Hillary in on paroling some Puerto Rican terrorists?

This weakness might prevent her from openly attacking BO on this front.


51 posted on 02/25/2008 5:07:20 AM PST by Travis McGee (---www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com---)
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To: genghis
Obama graduates as editor of harvard law review, is courted by every major law firm in the country, has no wealth, and decides to be a “community organizer” in south side chicago. How far out of the mainstream do you think he is??

I think some VERY powerful people/foundations (Soros et al) had been grooming him for a long time, and this was part of the grooming process.

52 posted on 02/25/2008 5:08:51 AM PST by Travis McGee (---www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com---)
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To: calcowgirl

Good work! Thumbs up!


53 posted on 02/25/2008 5:10:27 AM PST by Travis McGee (---www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com---)
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To: FreedomPoster; Max Friedman

Great BO “red roots” website at 50.


54 posted on 02/25/2008 5:12:24 AM PST by Travis McGee (---www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com---)
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To: KayEyeDoubleDee

Sheesh! Incredible!


55 posted on 02/25/2008 5:13:21 AM PST by Travis McGee (---www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com---)
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To: Travis McGee
“I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough,” Ayers told the New York Times in 2001.

I believe he said that on Sept.11, 2001. Really. At least that's when the NYT, published the story, IIRC.

56 posted on 02/25/2008 5:14:41 AM PST by Tribune7 (How is inflicting pain and death on an innocent, helpless human being for profit, moral?)
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To: Tribune7
Amazingly serendipitous/ironic timing.
57 posted on 02/25/2008 5:24:40 AM PST by Travis McGee (---www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com---)
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To: Travis McGee

“This weakness might prevent her from openly attacking BO on this front.

Yep. But we should now that doesn’t prevent a Clinton from using what they have anyway. Go ask your average Democrat about that pardon, and they probably blame Bush for it.


58 posted on 02/25/2008 6:13:05 AM PST by The South Texan (The Drive By Media is America's worst enemy and American people don't know it.)
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To: Travis McGee

More and more, my feeling that Barry O is a Manchurian Candidate seems vindicated.


59 posted on 02/25/2008 6:17:34 AM PST by sono (The Future Ain't What It Used To Be - Yogi Berra)
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To: geopyg

HILLARY is the socialist. Obama is the Communist. With McCain being way to the right.... as a liberal.


After all the thousands of gallons of ink spilled in this election cycle I think you have nailed it with one simple English sentence.


60 posted on 02/25/2008 6:23:35 AM PST by 2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten
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