Replies

It is now well established that Barack Obama was linked to the Hawaiian Communist Party network through his boyhood/teenage mentor Frank Marshall Davis.

It is also well known that after moving to Chicago, Obama linked up with the local communist networks.

Manning Marable, a leader of the Communist Party offshoot Committees of Correspondence for Democracy&Socialism claims that Obama “understands what socialism is. A lot of the people working with him are, indeed, socialists with backgrounds in the Communist Party or as independent Marxists. There are a lot of people like that in Chicago who have worked with him for years...”

This leads to two key questions.

A Were the Hawaii and Chicago networks connected?

B Did Obama’s connection to Frank Marshall Davis in any way influence his progress up the Chicago political ladder?

If the answer is yes to both, there are significant implications.

It means that that the Communist Party USA was watching Obama from an early age and was willing to help his political career.

Frank Marshall Davis was active in the Chicago Communist Party until he moved to Hawaii in late 1948.

I speculated in this post that Davis may have known left wing journalist Vernon Jarrett in post war Chicago. A connection would be significant because the Jarrett family has played a very important role in Obama’s rise to power.

Both Jarrett and Davis worked in the communist dominated South Side Community Art Center and on the communist influenced Chicago Defender newspaper, in late 1940s Chicago.

Posted before but well worth another look:

Barack Obama’s Visit to the Other Ayers House

KING HARVEST ^ | SEPTEMBER 25, 2009 |

by STEPHEN DIAMOND
Posted on October 29, 2009 8:54:26 PM GMT+09:00

by Jet Jaguar

“Mrs. Ayers told me that her family had been helping out a brilliant young black man,” Hulton said and whom he believes she said was from Kenya. Hulton said that over the period of six to ten years that he delivered mail to the Ayers home he had numerous conversations with Mrs. Ayers, one conversation with Thomas Ayers and several brief encounters with Bernardine Dohrn who he said lived at the home for several months at one point in time. He never met or saw Bill Ayers at the home.
Hulton explained that he knew Tim Ayers, the son of Tom and brother of Bill, when they were both students at Glenbard High School, which draws students from the towns of Glen Ellyn and Lombard, Illinois. Over time the Ayers’ parents became aware of the connection to their son Tim and that led to a friendlier relationship between Hulton and Tom and Mary Ayers.
“They tipped me generously at Christmastime,” Hulton recalled.
One day Hulton found himself on the sidewalk outside the Ayers home at 199 N. Montclair Avenue near the corner of Revere Road just after he had delivered the mail. The house was “very nice and attractive and more expensive than some in Glen Ellyn because it was closer to downtown, but it did not stand out among the houses on that block.” He said the largest and most expensive homes were actually on Revere, around the corner from the Ayers’ home.
As Hulton was on the sidewalk walking away from the Ayers house a tall and thin young black man was coming up the same sidewalk towards the Ayers house.
Hulton recalls that Obama said hello and introduced himself and stopped to chat with him in front of the Ayers house. “I recall that his ears stuck out a little bit. He was more gaunt then than he appears now. His name was an unusual one and when I saw his photo during the campaign it brought back my memory of the event,” Hulton said.
Mr. Obama explained that he had taken the train out from Chicago to visit the Ayers’ in order to thank them for their help with his “education.” At this time, Mr. Obama had recently graduated from Columbia and would soon enter Harvard Law School. Hulton and Obama “spoke for a few minutes, first chatting about the Ayers family,” Hulton said. Hulton said he did not learn whether the help Obama received from the Ayers’ was financial or in some other form.
Hulton agreed that it was an exceptional event to encounter a black man on his route.

Dohrn is a member of the law school faculty at Northwestern although she was prevented from becoming a member of the New York bar because of her criminal record and background in the Weather Underground. Hulton said that Mrs. Ayers told him that her husband Tom was trying to help Dohrn become a member of the bar.

Dohrn and Ayers surfaced from the underground and turned themselves into the authorities in the early 1980s. Charges against Ayers were dropped and Dohrn entered into a plea bargain that allowed her to avoid jail time.
But later she was jailed for six months for her refusal to testify in front of a grand jury about her possible role in providing false identity cards to several former Weather Underground comrades who participated in a bank robbery where two police officers and a security guard were killed.

Mrs. Ayers told Hulton that she and her husband had been in contact with their son Bill and Bernardine while they were underground using “code” to communicate. “They had ‘ways to communicate’ she told me,” Hulton said. Hulton encountered Dohrn three or four times during his time as the Ayers’ letter carrier because he had to confirm that she lived there and secure her signature for certified mail deliveries to her at the Glen Ellyn home. Hulton said Dohrn was never friendly with him but rather “was a sourpuss, she never smiled.”

Hulton had one encounter with Tom Ayers who politely asked Hulton about his work. Hulton said he told Ayers that he thought there were problems with the senior management of the Post Office and that he wasn’t always happy about the work habits of some of his fellow workers. “You know, ordinary gripes about work,” Hulton recalls. “I couldn’t believe how he responded. He started to talk about workers having to struggle to survive, and about peasants and the proletariat. It made me think later that he might be a Marxist!”

I have more if you are interested ...