In recent weeks there has been a spate of attacks on Senator Barack Obama, most notably through the Accuracy in Media Website by Cliff Kincaid, president of the conservative group America 's Survival Inc. These allegations have been recycled in the blogosphere and, on June 8, 2008, by a column by Mr. Bill Steigerwald in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review .
Some of these allegations have to do with Senator Obama's life while in Hawai`i . The claims made by Mr. Kincaid and recycled by Mr. Steigerwald referred to Mr. Frank Marshall Davis, Hawai`i poet and journalist, as a lifelong communist and mentor to Mr. Obama. We find that there is no substance to these claims.
The allegations relate to Mr. Obama's relationship, while a high school student, with Frank Marshall Davis. Mr. Davis, now deceased, was a prominent African American poet, journalist, and advocate for civil rights in the US . He was born in Kansas in 1905. Among his many accomplishments, Davis wrote and published four highly acclaimed collections of poetry and was editor of several Black-owned newspapers like the Atlanta World , the Chicago Evening Bulletin , the Chicago Star and others. He headed the Associated Negro Press organization, a press association serving the black press, in the 30's and 40's. He worked for the Republican National Committee in the Wendell Willkie campaign of 1940.
In 1948, Mr. Davis moved to Hawai`i from Chicago with his wife, in part to seek a climate more favorable to his mixed-race marriage. In Hawai`i , he ran a small business in office supplies and wrote a column for the Honolulu Record , a local newspaper. He was well respected in Hawai`i and had many friends, including Barack Obama's grandfather. He died in Hawai`i in 1987.
Frank Marshall Davis is mentioned in Senator Barack Obama's book, Dreams from My Father. Steigerwald and Kincaid attach some cynical motive behind Obama's decision to use only Davis ' first name, “Frank,” in his book, suggesting some effort at a cover-up. But the book relates in a number of memories about this time in Hawai`i in which friends and acquaintances are referred to only by first name.
Further, if there had been an attempted cover-up as asserted by Kincaid and repeated by Steigerwald, we doubt that the author would choose to identify the man as Frank, his real first name. Obama goes on to make the identity certain in identifying Frank as a “poet…who had enjoyed modest notoriety once and was a contemporary of Richard Wright and Langston Hughes.” A cover-up would have entailed renaming him and leaving off the historical references.
Steigerwald quotes Kincaid as saying Davis “mentored” Obama in Hawai`i . Nowhere in the text of the book or in the context in which it is written does Obama suggest that Davis was a “mentor.” As Obama explains, Davis was a friend (and drinking buddy) of his grandfather.
Obama was by his own account intrigued by Davis . At the same time, Obama says, “The visits to his house always left me feeling vaguely uncomfortable, though, as if I were witnessing some complicated, unspoken transaction between the two men, a transaction I couldn't fully understand.” This seems more a thoughtful reflection on the relationship between his grandfather and Davis than radical indoctrination. Moreover, Obama says “it made me smile, thinking back on Frank and his old Black Power, dashiki self. In some ways he was as incurable as my mother, as certain in his faith, living in the same sixties time warp that Hawai`i had created."
Kincaid makes much of the fact that Davis was subpoenaed before the Senate Internal Security Committee on November 27, 1956. He took the Fifth Amendment, as was his right under the Constitution, but issued a statement on the hearing conducted by Sen. James Eastland of Mississippi . In part, Davis said:
“I do not like being kicked around, nor do I like to see other people get kicked around. For 30 years as a working newspaperman I have fought for civil rights. In this battle for my rights as a Negro American, I have accepted the aid and support of any man of good will who is willing to fight beside me. I do not care about his color, religion or politics. When the octopus of prejudice crushes me with his tentacles, I will welcome the help of the devil himself in order to get loose.”
This statement reflects the life-long struggle waged by Mr. Davis against racism and for civil and human rights for all.
According to Mark Davis, Frank's son, “there is no proof, but some credible claims that he was involved with the Communist Party USA during WWII” and Frank did support some members of that party for elected office. But he also supported members of the Democratic Party. And, Mr. Kincaid and Steigerwald conveniently ignore the fact that Davis also worked for the Republican National Committee in the Wendell Willkie campaign of 1940.
Further, Mr. Davis was always a fierce champion of individual rights. He was very much opposed to the US involvement in the Vietnam War, but did not attempt to stand in the way of his son's decision to enlist the US Air Force in 1969. Mark subsequently had a 14-year enlisted and 10-year commissioned career as an Air Force Intelligence officer, retiring as Captain in 1993. Along the way, Captain Davis held the highest level (TS/SCI) security clearances, worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency, and received CIA Deception Analysis training, hardly possible if his father were somehow a communist agent.
The idea that Mr. Davis “taught” Obama that black people had the right to hate whites is likewise untrue. Mr. Davis certainly said that you had to recognize that black people had reason to hate whites, given a history of both slavery and the harsh realities that included lynching in the Jim Crow era. However, Mr. Davis was known for his fair treatment and friendship with members of all ethnic and racial groups including white men, like Senator Obama's grandfather.
Frank Marshall Davis was a complicated man, a man with his “hint of hard-earned knowledge behind the hooded eyes” when Obama met him in the Seventies. The story of Davis and his relationship with Obama in the Steigerwald-Kincaid piece is a caricature and distortion of history.
A fundamental tenet of journalism is verification. In other words, check it out before you publish. That's what separates journalism from propaganda and fiction. Bill Steigerwald of the of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival Inc., do little more than use innuendo, speculation, and assertions in place of facts in the article about Sen. Barack Obama's time as a youth in Hawai`i. In so doing they discredit their own cause and shamelessly try to tarnish the memory of Frank Marshall Davis while trying to question the patriotism of Sen. Barack Obama.
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This statement was prepared to present the facts. This Honolulu Community-Media Council (HCMC) statement was prepared by the following members of HCMC's Board of Directors:
Gerald Kato, University of Hawai`i Department of Communications, Professor of Journalism
Email at: kato_gerald@yahoo.com
Beth-Ann Kozlovich, Talk Shows Executive Producer, Hawai`i Public Radio, and host of HPR's Town Square .
Email at: emailbkoz1@aol.com
Chris Conybeare, Media Specialist, Center for Labor Education and Research (CLEAR), University of Hawai`i-West Oahu . Mr. Conybeare met and interviewed, Frank Marshall Davis in 1987, shortly before Mr. Davis's death.
Email at: factbear@yahoo.com
