Frank Marshall Davis: Obama's Mentor

Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).  The record shows that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971-1979, where, at some point in time, he developed a close relationship, almost like a son, with Davis, listening to his “poetry” and getting advice on his career path.  But Obama, in his book, “Dreams From My Father,” refers to him repeatedly as just “Frank.”  Frank is the black communist writer now considered by some to be in the same category of prominence as Maya Angelou and Alice Walker.

According to an interview with Dawn Weatherly-Williams, Obama returned to Hawaii in the fall of 1970 to attend Punahou School.  He first met Frank Marshall Davis after he took the entrance exams.

Davis moved to Honolulu from Chicago in 1948 with his second wife Helen Canfield, a white socialite, at the suggestion of his friend the actor Paul Robeson, who advised them that there would be more tolerance of a mixed race couple in Hawaii than on the American mainland.    Robeson, of course, was the well-known black actor and singer who served as a member of the CPUSA and apologist for the old Soviet Union.  Davis had known Robeson from his time in Chicago.

The 1951 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii identified him as a CPUSA member.  What’s more, anti-communist congressional committees, including the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), accused Davis of involvement in several communist-front organizations.

In his book, Obama writes about “a poet named Frank,” who visited his family in Hawaii, read poetry, and was full of “hard-earned knowledge” and advice.  Who was Frank?  Obama only says that he had “some modest notoriety once,” was “a contemporary of Richard Wright and Langston Hughes during his years in Chicago…” but was now “pushing eighty.”  He writes about “Frank and his old Black Power dashiki self” giving him advice before he left for Occidental College in 1979 at the age of 18.

Davis wrote, “The genuine Communists I knew as well as others so labeled had one principle in common: to use any and every means to abolish racism.”  Davis said he wrote to give “the widest possible publicity to the many instances of racism and the dissatisfaction of Afro-American with the status quo.”

Obama quoted him as saying: “Leaving your race at the door.  Leaving your people behind.  Understand something, boy.  You’re not going to college to get educated.  You’re going there to get trained.”

He added, “they’ll tank on your chain and let you know that you may be a well-trained, well-paid nigger, but you’re a nigger just the same.”
 
Is it possible that Obama did not know who Davis was when he wrote his book?  That’s not plausible, since Obama refers to him as a contemporary of Richard Wright and Langston Hughes and says he saw a book of his black poetry.

But why?  What does Obama have to say about this curious omission?  Could it have something to do with the fact that, by the time Obama wrote his book, he knew that Davis was a Communist?  And that he deliberately covered this up?  Or did he know it earlier?

This is the key question: What did Obama know and when did he know it?

Which of course raises the disturbing questions that must be asked:

Did Davis recruit Obama?

Professor Gerald Horne, a history professor at the University of Houston, noted that Davis, came into contact with Barack Obama and his family and became the young man’s mentor, influencing Obama’s sense of identity and career moves.

As Horne describes it, Davis, who wrote the memoir, “Living the Blues,” had “befriended” a “Euro-American family” that had “migrated to Honolulu from Kansas and a young woman from this family eventually had a child with a young student from Kenya East Africa who goes by the name of Barack Obama, who retracing the steps of Davis eventually decamped to Chicago.”

Dr. Kathryn Takara, a professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa who also confirms that Davis is the “Frank” in Obama’s book, did her dissertation on Davis and spent much time with him between 1972 until he passed away in 1987.

In an analysis posted online, she notes that Davis, who was a columnist for the Honolulu Record, brought “an acute sense of race relations and class struggle throughout America and the world” and that he openly discussed subjects such as American imperialism, colonialism and exploitation. She described him as a “socialist realist” who attacked the work of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Davis, in his own writings, had said that Robeson and Harry Bridges, the head of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and a secret member of the CPUSA, had suggested that he take a job as a columnist with the Honolulu Record “and see if I could do something for them.” The ILWU was organizing workers there and Robeson’s contacts were “passed on” to Davis, Takara writes.

Takara says that Davis “espoused freedom, radicalism, solidarity, labor unions, due process, peace, affirmative action, civil rights, Negro History week, and true Democracy to fight imperialism, colonialism, and white supremacy. He urged coalition politics.”

Poems from Davis are in the book “Black Moods” which was edited by John Tidwell, a University of Kansas professor and expert on Davis’ writings.  He confirmed to Kincaid that Davis joined the Communist Party but that he publicly tried to deny his affiliations.

Asked why Takara thought Obama didn’t identify Frank in his book by his full name, she replied, “Maybe, he didn’t want people delving into it.”

Stanley Dunham, Obama’s grandfather, was friends with Davis, a bohemian libertine who drank heavily and loved jazz — both had roots reaching back to Kansas and had families of mixed races — and the black writer took an interest in Obama.

“Our grandfather … thought (Frank) was a point of connection, a bridge if you will, to the larger African-American experience for my brother,” Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama’s half-sister, said during a recent interview.

For Obama, Davis was an intriguing figure, “with his books and whiskey breath and the hint of hard-earned knowledge behind the hooded eyes.”

Dunham and his grandson would spend evenings at Davis’s dilapidated home in Waikiki, Honolulu’s main tourist district.  Davis, who had raised a family with a white wife, would read his poetry and share whiskey with Dunham, Obama recalled.

Dawna Weatherly-Williams, a friend of Davis’ who also lives in Honolulu, said Dunham wanted Obama to know that there were other children like him who were part black and part white, she said.

“Stan was real proud of that,” she said, adding that it was rare to see black men with white women at the time.

“He knew Stan real well.  They’d play Scrabble and drink and crack jokes and argue.   Frank always won and he was always very braggadocio about it too.  It was all jocular.  They didn’t get polluted drunk.  And Frank never really did drugs, though he and Stan would smoke pot together.”

“Stan had been promising to bring Barry by because we all had that in common.  Frank’s kids were half-white, Stan’s grandson was half-black and my son was half-black.  We all had that in common and we all really enjoyed it.  We got a real kick out of reality.”

Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama’s half-sister, told the Associated Press recently that her grandfather had seen Davis was “a point of connection, a bridge if you will, to the larger African-American experience for my brother”

According to Miss Weatherly-Williams, Davis lost touch with Dunham some time in the 1980s.

Obama describes driving to Davis’ home in Waikiki after learning that his white grandmother was so afraid of a black panhandler she did not want to take the bus to work. Davis told the teenager that his grandmother was correct to feel scared because she understood African-Americans “have a reason to hate.”

Davis said Obama’s grandfather would never understand people like him because they hadn’t experienced the humiliations he had, according to Obama’s memoir.  As he left Davis’s house that night, Obama wrote, he knew he was completely alone for the first time in his life.

Davis appears again later in the book, when Obama recalls meeting the writer shortly before leaving for college on the mainland.  At that meeting, Davis scolded Obama for his listless attitude toward college and warned him not to leave his race behind, which he called “the real price of admission” to higher education.

“Leaving your race at the door.  Leaving your people behind…. You’re not going to college to get educated.  You’re going to get trained…. They’ll train you to forget what you already know.  They’ll train you so good, you’ll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that s**t.”  And then Frank pronounces the modern version of the one key concept which the Democratic Party, under slavery, segregation, and civil rights, has sought to ingrain in the mind of every black person: “You may be a well-trained, well-paid nigger, but you’re a nigger just the same.”

A few days later Obama left Hawaii for Occidental College in Los Angeles.

The writings and ramblings of Frank Marshall Davis.

Read more here — and here — and here.

The Frank Marshall Davis network in Hawaii.

Cliff Kincaid’s Frank Marshall Davis Files.

Certainly from the mid/late ’30s to the early ’40s Davis was involved in several Communist Party fronts including the the National Negro Congress, the League of American Writers, the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties and the Civil Rights Congress

The FBI first began tracking Davis in 1944 when they identified him as member of the Communist Party’s Dorie Miller Club in Chicago — card number 47544.

Davis taught courses at the party controlled Abraham Lincoln School in Chicago and attended meetings of the party’s Cultural Club until he left for Hawaii in 1948.

In Hawaii Davis became a columnist for a union financed, communist controlled newspaper, the Honolulu Record.

Despite going underground in 1950, the Hawaiian CP was one of the most dynamic in the US at the time.  The mainland put huge resources into the Hawaiian party because the Soviets wanted the US military presence on the islands shut down.  The Hawaiian CP was charged with agitating against the US military bases at every opportunity.  Several times the FBI observed Davis photographing obscure Hawaiian beaches — possibly for espionage purposes.

Through its control of the International Longshore Workers Union (ILWU) the Hawaiian CP had huge influence on the local Democratic Party.  In the mid ’50s, while still a confirmed communist, Davis like many of his comrades, became an official in the local Democratic Party.  The communist influence is still felt in the Hawaiian democratic party today.

At the time the underground CP was divided into two or three person independent cells.  Davis led one such cell “Group 10″ with his wife and one other comrade.

An extensive Senate Security Investigation in 1956 shattered the Hawaiian CP, driving the remnants completely underground where it remains to this day.

The FBI continued to monitor Davis into the ’60s and though they found little if any party activity on the islands, he was still regarded as a “believer.”

The FBI monitored Davis for at least 19 years.  They marked him down for immediate arrest should war break out between the US and the Soviet Union — an honor reserved only for the most dangerous subversives.

One of the longest lived communist fronts was the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born.  Active from 1935 until 1980, the ACFPFB was charged with preventing foreign communists such Davis’s friend ILWU leader Harry Bridges from deportation.

Davis was a long time supporter of the ACFPFB, apparently at least until 1973, three years after meeting the young Obama.

The ACFPFB letterhead April 12th 1973, contains Davis’ name listed under “Sponsors.”
 

Interestingly, Hawaiian lawyer, party member and long time Davis comrade Harriet Bouslog also appears on the list.

Others of the several known party members listed above include civil rights activists Carl and Anne Braden, Dirk J Struik, a mathematician and accused Soviet spy, whose daughter peace activist daughter Gwen lives in New Zealand, Hugh DeLacy a secret party member who became a Democratic Congressman for Washington State and three prominent Chicago activists, Richard Criley, Frank Wilkinson and Abe Feinglass.

When Obama decided to go to Chicago in 1983 to become a “community organizer” he was inspired by that year’s election of Chicago’s first black mayor, Harold Washington.

A long time friend of the Chicago Communist Party, Washington would have almost certainly known Frank Marshall Davis from his post-War student days.

It would be interesting to know if Frank Marshall Davis ever told the young Obama about Harold Washington and his leftist connections.

What connection did Obama have to Chicago other than his boyhood mentor Frank Marshall Davis?

Cliff Klincaid says on March 29, 2007, CPUSA writer Gerald Horne gave a speech, “Rethinking the History and Future of the Communist Party,” upon the acceptance of the Communist Party USA archives at the Tamiment Library at New York University. He wrote about black CPUSA member Frank Marshall Davis going to Hawaii in 1948 “at the suggestion of his good friend Paul Robeson” and becoming friends with a “Euro-American family” that included a child “who goes by the name of Barack Obama…” Notice the use of the phrase “who goes by the name of Barack Obama.” Why not just “Barack Obama” or “the name of Barack Obama?” Why use the phrase “who goes by the name of?” Was Barack Obama his real name?

Robeson was a secret CPUSA member and supporter of mass murderer Joseph Stalin. Davis was a CPUSA member under survillance by the FBI. Horne said, “In his best-selling memoir ‘Dreams of my Father’, the author [Barack Obama] speaks warmly of an older black poet, he identifies simply as ‘Frank,’ as being a decisive influence in helping him to find his present identity as an African-American, a people who have been the least anticommunist and the most left-leaning of any constituency in this nation — though you would never know it from reading so-called left journals of opinion.” That “Frank” was Frank Marshall Davis. Obama didn’t want people to know who “Frank” really was. We confirmed his identity and released his 560-page FBI file. Gerald Horne went on, “At some point in the future, a teacher will add to her syllabus Barack’s memoir and instruct her students to read it alongside Frank Marshall Davis’ equally affecting memoir, ‘Living the Blues’…” That is significant. Remember this was delivered in 2007, before anybody could reasonably anticipate that Obama would become the Democratic presidential candidate in 2008. What did Gerald Horne know that other people did not? Why was his speech about the history and “future” of the CPUSA? Was he saying something about Obama that only he and other CPUSA insiders knew? Did Horne know something special about Obama’s relationship with Davis? Indeed, had information about Obama been provided by Davis to other CPUSA members? For whatever reason — and perhaps Horne thought he was only taking to other members of the CPUSA — he blew the whistle on Barack Obama. But the future of Obama is in our hands. Horne also knew something that Hillary Clinton — Obama’s opponent in the 2008 Democratic primaries — did not. That is that the blacks – “the least anticommunist and the most left-leaning of any constituency in this nation” — would back Obama and help carry him to victory. Of course, it took a carefully planned financial collapse in September 2008 to help this along.

Why did Horne think Obama would go down in history? It is because, as he implied, the CPUSA had been working in the black community for decades, laying the groundwork for Obama’s candidacy. The CPUSA did this by targeting black intellectuals, entertainers, and politicians, and using a journal known as Freedomways to manipulate and influence them. Freedomways was CPUSA-controlled and Soviet-funded. We have just released a major new report that explains all of this. It begins: “Newly declassified documents from Operation SOLO, an FBI program to infiltrate the Communist Party of the United States, reveal that a journal called Freedomways, which was influential in the black community for decades, was subsidized by the Soviet and Chinese Communist Parties.” Read the entire report below. It is titled Soviets Funded Black “Freedom” Journal. Here are some of our findings: During the 25 years it served as a propaganda organ for the CPUSA and Soviet front organizations such as the World Peace Council, Freedomways published articles by such figures as:
   

Freedomways grew out of a Soviet campaign, launched after the Russian revolution, to exploit the “Negro question” in the U.S. and manipulate blacks and members of other minority groups for Communist purposes. The goal was a “Soviet America.” We have a lot more to report, based on the revelations in these FBI documents, and other information we have developed. We are on the trail of Obama. The truth is coming out. We are already coming inder attack by the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center for daring to speak the truth — and raising the tough questions — about Obama and his mentor, Frank Marshall Davis. We will not rest.

    
When Purdum mentioned the poem, which was published in 1978 or 1979 in Obama’s high school literary magazine, to Obama in 2008, he told Purdum he had no memory of it.  The question that must be asked, however, is the one that Obama himself poses, did he actually write it?

As to the content of the poem, Obama told Purdum, “it sounds in spirit that it’s talking a little bit about my grandfather.”  Note that the subject of this sentence is “it” not the expected “I.”  As he does even in the forward of his acclaimed 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama distances himself from his presumed composition.

The “grandfather” Obama refers to here, of course, is his mother’s father, Stanley Dunham, “Gramps,” the Willy Loman character with whom Obama lived during much of his adolescence.  If the critics are to be believed — they ought not be — that makes two early Obama poems about his grandfather, the other being “Pop.”

The contention that Obama’s poems are about Dunham, however, leaves a basic question unanswered: why did Obama not call the poem “Gramps.”  If I were to write about the man I knew as “Gramps,” I might not necessarily call the poem “Gramps,” but I surely would not call it “Pop.”  That latter title, after all, has obvious implications.

The case for Dunham as “Pop” is further weakened by the line in the poem, “he switches channels, recites an old poem he wrote before his mother died.”  Although Obama credits Gramps with a little poetic dabbling, Dunham was more of a dirty limerick kind of guy than a real poet.

As an adolescent, Obama did have a relationship with a real poet, Frank Marshall Davis, a Communist and pornographer but also a skilled writer.  “I could see Frank sitting in his overstuffed chair,” Obama remembers in Dreams, “a book of poetry in his lap, his reading glasses slipping down his nose.”

Obama continues, “[Frank] would read us his poetry whenever we stopped by his house, sharing whiskey with Gramps out of an emptied jelly jar.”

Cashill has done a lot to expose Obama’s suspicious literary career, but you’ll have to decide for yourself if he’s on the right track here.  He does make some very interesting points.

Seizing on the scandal involving President Obama’s “open mic” obsequious conversation with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Glenn Beck has announced that Paul Kengor’s explosive new book on Frank Marshall Davis will be published this summer through Beck’s Mercury Ink outlet. Davis was a pro-Moscow communist who helped raise and mentor Obama.

Davis, Beck says, is the key to understanding Obama’s pro-Russian foreign policy.

The new Kengor book carries the title, THE COMMUNIST Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor. Mercury Ink, which is publishing the book, is the publishing imprint of Mercury Radio Arts, Inc., a multimedia production company owned by Beck.

In the embarrassing “open mic” incident, Obama told Medvedev that he needed some “space” from the Russians before meeting any more of their demands, and that he would have more “flexibility” after being re-elected. Medvedev promised to transmit the information to “Vladimir,” meaning Vladimir Putin, the former KGB officer who is going to assume the Russian presidency for the second time on May 7. Putin has described the fall of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

One of the leading analysts of the international communist movement, Kengor has written that the evidence, including Davis’s 600-page FBI file, demonstrates that “…a mentor of the current president of the United States was a Communist—and not only a party member, but an actual propagandist for Stalin’s USSR…”

Kengor, who is also a professor at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, has written extensively on “progressives” who came under the influence of the old Soviet Union. His most recent book, Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century, has a chapter on Davis.

A member of the Communist Party USA and under FBI surveillance for 19 years, Davis was a mentor to young Barack Obama while he was growing up in Hawaii, for as many as eight years. Kengor’s new book on the subject could be an explosive development in the presidential campaign and possibly jeopardize Obama’s chances for re-election.

Davis, who advised Obama on matters like race relations and college, was listed on the FBI’s security index, meaning that he could be arrested or detained in the event of a national emergency. The FBI material documents Davis’s anti-white and pro-Soviet views, infiltration of the Hawaii Democratic Party, and other activities.

One document from the surveillance of Davis in Hawaii reveals, “Informant stated that DAVIS…had been observed photographing shorelines and beachfronts. Informant advised that it did not appear he was photographing any particular objects.” The information strongly suggests the possibility of espionage or some other form of illegal activity on the part of Davis.

Kengor tells Accuracy in Media that he continues to see Davis’ influence on Obama.

“I do indeed see similarities between Obama and Frank Marshall Davis in that both men made favorable overtures to the Russians at the expense of both our interests and our allies,” he said. “Davis did this far more blatantly, taking Russia’s position against ours on matters ranging from the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan to NATO and Poland and Czechoslovakia, among many others. Obama is giving in to the Russian position on American missile defense, including joint missile defense with Poland and Czechoslovakia.”

He went on, “By the way, remember that Obama had cancelled U.S. plans for that joint missile defense back on September 17, 2009. That day just happened to be the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland. Poles painfully noticed the historical irony. Frank Marshall Davis joined CPUSA and sided with the Russians AFTER that invasion of Poland. The invasion, and the Hitler-Stalin Pact that precipitated it, launched WWII. And none of that dissuaded Davis from joining the Party, which he did in the middle of WWII.”

A political ad from the Republican group American Crossroads, which also highlights the “open mic” controversy, seems to suggest that Obama is acting like a secret Russian agent.

video

Although the ad is designed to be funny, the subject is a deadly serious one, as it involves relations with an adversary in possession of nuclear weapons that can destroy the United States and which is currently supporting such rogue regimes as Iran and Syria.

Beck’s publication of the book demonstrates his willingness to tackle subjects many would rather avoid.

Beck left Fox News after being told to mute his hard-hitting criticism and scrutiny of billionaire George Soros, a major funder of the progressive movement in the U.S. He now hosts GBTV, an Internet-based television network.

Accuracy in Media published the column, Obama’s Communist Mentor, on February 18, 2008, examining the nature of the Davis-Obama relationship and why it was covered up by Obama. This continues to be one of the most-read columns ever published by Accuracy in Media.

Anti-communist blogger Trevor Loudon had broken the story wide open, noting that a communist writer had given a March 2007 speech that mentioned Davis’s influence on Obama as possibly having a major historical impact. Obama was then a U.S. senator from Illinois with political connections to communist networks in Hawaii as well as Chicago, where he had been a community organizer and associate of Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

Davis had lived in Chicago, where he was also active in Communist Party actvities, before moving to Hawaii.

Loudon said the information proved beyond doubt that the mysterious “Frank” in Obama’s book Dreams from My Father, a figure influential in Obama’s young life, was actually Frank Marshall Davis, a fact confirmed through sources in Hawaii by Accuracy in Media. The Obama campaign acknowledged the identification while insisting that Davis was just a civil rights activist.

The major media, including many conservative media personalities, did not want to cover the incriminating information about Obama because of its ominous implications and questions about Obama’s loyalty to the U.S. Hence, Obama was elected to the presidency in 2008 without an adequate vetting of his relationship to a major figure in the Moscow-funded Communist Party. Equally significant, as a candidate for a federal political office, Obama did not have to undergo an FBI background check.

We have continued these investigations, noting that a mysterious Obama trip to Russia in 2005 continues to generate concern, as well as the President’s handling of a Russian spy scandal that broke in 2010 and that may have been tied to passage of the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia. Critics say the treaty damaged America’s strategic interests.

One of the spy scandal documents said Moscow wanted its agents to obtain information from sources “close to State Department, government, major think tanks.” The Russians were interested in sources “who are in, or able to infiltrate, United States policy-making circles,” and one of the Russian agents “met with an employee of the U.S. Government with regard to nuclear weapons research.”

But because the Russian spies were quickly sent home, in a development that prevented the high-level nature of the scandal from being examined publicly, the American people were never able to find out how high up in the Obama Administration it went.

Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona said:

“We know the President cancelled plans to station an anti-ballistic missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic. We know the President supported language in the New START Treaty to link missile defense to nuclear reductions. We know the administration is sharing information with Russia, including plans to deploy missile defenses in Europe. We know the President has significantly reduced funding and curtailed development of the U.S. national missile defense system, undermining our ability to effectively intercept long-range ballistic missiles. And we know the President has doubled-down on efforts to reduce our nuclear arsenal while failing to honor his promises to modernize the aging nuclear weapons complex.

    

“But what we don’t know is what President Obama has in mind for after the election, when he would gain some ‘flexibility’ in negotiating with the Russians. Perhaps the Russians, in whom President Obama recently confided, could shed some light on his missile defense plans for the American people who otherwise have been left in the dark by this President.”

    

Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma has cited Obama’s statements to Medvedev in a warning about the direction Obama is taking the country.

“Our nuclear arsenal is as much about deterrence as it is about strike capability,” said Inhofe. “Under the New START deliberations, Congress was assured by President Obama that our remaining nuclear assets would continue to be modernized. Based on the cuts and delays to our nuclear arsenal and facilities in his Fiscal Year 2013 budget, President Obama is once again going back on his word.”

    

Inhofe added, “Another key concern is the reduction of our assets below the New START approved level of 1550. It seems that President Obama is looking at unilateral reductions even further below the agreed upon limits under the treaty. I remember back in 2008 when Secretary Gates said that we must maintain some level of these weapons ourselves to deter potential adversaries and to reassure over 30 allies and partners who rely on our nuclear umbrella for their security.”

Obama dismissed the controversy and claimed he wasn’t hiding anything. “I’m on record,” he said. “I want to see us over time gradually, systematically reduce reliance on nuclear weapons.”

After he was already elected president, The New York Times wrote about how Obama, when he was in college, had written the article, “Breaking the War Mentality,” about his involvement in the anti-nuclear cause on the campus of Columbia University. The article attacked the “military-industrial interests” with their “billion-dollar erector sets” and agitated for a nuclear-free world. The Times noted that Obama “explored going further” than the so-called nuclear freeze movement, an effort on some U.S. campuses that was backed by the Soviet Union and designed to defeat President Reagan’s defense build-up in the 1980s.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected]