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WHITE SLAVES IN AFRICA - STOPPED!

THOMAS JEFFERSON AND THE TRIPOLI PIRATES: THE FORGOTTEN WAR THAT CHANGED AMERICAN HISTORY (New York: Sentinel, 2015) by BRIAN KILMEADE ...

Monday, March 11, 2024

FROM MY FORTHCOMING BOOK - HUGH MURRAY

What do Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Paul Robeson, Lorraine Hansberry, Bayard Rustin, W. E. B. Du Bois, Mrs. Raymond Parks,, and Martin Luther King, Jr. all have in common? Yes, they were all blacks, or Negroes as the more common term used in the earlier era. And many would have had other common experiences, but one I want to stress here – they were all, at some point in their lives, in the orbit of the Communist Party of the USA. My point is that the CPUSA, though a small political party, had influence far beyond its numbers, which at its height, was only 100,000. McKay, a West Indian native who came to the US, in November 1922 traveled to Moscow to present “A Report on the Negro Question” to the 4th gathering of the Comintern (the Communist International). His bitter poem, “If we must die,” had stirred black reaction to continued oppression following victory in the Great War, the war to save the world for democracy. His novels explored race and he then became something of a black nationalist. Four years before his death in 948, Mc Kay was baptized and received into the Roman Catholic Church.

Langston Hughes also wrote some bitter poetry, like “Christ is a n*****,” and a play about the Scottsboro boys facing electrocution because of false accusations of rape in Alabama in the 1930s. Even earlier, in the 1920s Hughes partook in a sit-in in North Carolina. But by the late 1940s, he is denying any connections to the CP. Author Richard Wright, who had portrayed some individual communists heroes in his novels, turned against the party and its ideology, even contributing a chapter to the influential, strongly anti-communist collection, The God that Failed. Robeson had been an all-American football player for Rutgers University in the 19teens while excelling in academia, graduating cum laude. He then earned a law degree from Columbia U., while playing in early professional football leagues. Robeson found limitations in the legal field; he had a bass/baritone voice and sang professionally, performed in the theater more and more, and then in films, singing “Ol Man River” in the 1935 film version of Show Boat. He and his wife lived in Britain as he performed on the stage there, and in British films, where, ruling half of Africa, they wanted films with black stars – and Robeson became one. He met and befriended some film extras, African university students studying in the U.K. But he did not forget America. Robeson and a student, Johnstone Kenyatta, headed the British Scottsboro Defence Committee in Britain. (Somewhat later, Johnstone would later return to his homeland, become known as Jomo, and lead the Mau Mau rebellion against the British in Kenya.) Robeson himself became more political and decided it best if his son grew up without racism, so Paul sent his son to live with his grandmother in Moscow in the late 1930s. The father generally defended anti-colonialist policies, and supported Soviet approaches into the 1940s and during the Cold War.

Lorraine Hansberry used a line from a Hughes' poem as the title of her major play (and film), A Raisin in the Sun. She also wrote for Freedom, the Harlem newspaper founded by Robeson during the Cold War. She became a spokesperson for Southern civil rights activists, when she, other celebrities, and activist Jerome Smith met with Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy in the early 1960s. Bayard Rustin, from a Quaker family, opposed the war clouds brewing in the late 1930s. When Nazi Germany attacked Poland (usually given as the start of WWII), while most of the West and many Americans supported Britain and the other “democracies,” the CPUSA followed the notions of Moscow, refusing to support the imperialist, colonialist powers (Britain, France, Netherlands, Belgium, and America). To the pacifist, Ruston, this seemed reasonable, and he joined thethen  anti-war Young Communist League. In summer 1941 Hitler attacked the USSR, and suddenly communist policy changed – the “imperialist” powers had to be helped as allies in order to destroy Nazi fascism, the old popular front with liberal democracy was revived to defeat Hitler. The YCL now became all out for support of war, and Rustin ceased to be a part of it. He would continue to protest in various ways, and eventually organize the influential 1963 March on Washington.

Du Bois had supported the drums of the Great War, but soon discovered that Wilson's notion of democracy did not extend to black people. The new NAACP gave him a platform, and provided some national center to fight violent and overt racism. The organization's magazine, The Crisis, was edited by Du Bois, and he wrote much of the material as well. Still, the virulently black nationalist Universal Negro Improvement Assn., founded by a very black Marcus Garvey, won a larger following than did the proper middle-class NAACP. Worse, Garvey made deals with the growing Ku Klux Klan, supported segregation, and even championed a return of Negroes to Africa. Du Bois was certainly not chagrined when the US deported Garvey. In the 1930s Du Bois was critical of the CP, especially in its defense of the Scottsboro boys. Du Bois had hoped to regain control of the defense from the CP, but the boys and their moms chose the communists instead of the NAACP. Du Bois traveled in Germany in the 1930s, and had kind words for the people of color of imperial Japan. But with WWII, he became more anti-imperialist, and certainly more skeptical of the Missouri Democrat, Harry Truman, who became President opon FDR's death in spring 1945. Truman, who had a Confederate heritage, was close to leading segregationists like South Carolina's Jimmy Burns, whom Truman appointed as Sed. of State.  But in 1948, hoping to win another term in office, Truman began to seek black votes, addressed the NAACP, the first President to do so. When Du Bois refused to support Truman and backed a previous FDR VP, Henry Wallace for President in 1948 against Truman, the NAACP fired Du Bois. With that, the NAACP in effect, became a Democratic party front-group.  Truman got further revenge when his Atty. General had Du Bois arrested as a foreign agent in 1950. Just before Du Bois chose to leave the US for the Gold Coast, now independent Ghana, he joined the CPUSA.  Ironically, Du Bois, who had opposed Garvey's Back to Africa campaign of the 1920s, became the most prominent American black to return to Africa in 1961.

Rosa Mc Cauley married Raymond Parks, a barber in Montgomery, Alabama in 1932. The Scottsboro rape cases had become international news, thanks to the International Labor Defense, a CP front organization. Alabama authorities had raided some CP attempts to organize share croppers into unions, and sheriffs and deputies and some of their posses had killed those who dared attend such subversive meetings. Raymond worked with the ILD to bring food and fresh clothing to the 9 jailed black boys. He also had meetings at his home. Rosa was sometimes look-out to warn if any strange cars were coming. With her husband, Rosa Parks also attended some CP meetings.

In 1948 the civil rights movement in the South WAS the Henry Wallace Progressive Party. The 1948 PP was endorsed by the CPUSA. That year, Virginia Durr ran for the US Senate from Virginia on the PP ticket. She and her husband were Alabama natives who had moved to the Washington area when Clifford was appointed to a federal agency in 1933, and they remained during the New Deal era. When FDR sought to gain support in the South (after many in Congress had rejected his court-packing bill), the New Deal sought to promote uplift to the South, the poorest part of the nation. As part of this effort, Eleanor Roosevelt was also involved in the creation of the Southern Conference on Human Welfare, and Virginia Durr was on its civil rights committee. Of course, to many Southerners, integration was communism, or often called race-mixing or mongrelization. Harry Truman's Attorney General would place the SCHW on his list of subversive organizations, so it would be targeted for destruction. Durr did not the Virginia Senate seat she sought. She and Clifford then returned to Alabama, Montgomery. She required a seamstress to help, and then she helped the seamstress get a scholarship to Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, a “progressive” school where one might learn about protest. So seamstress Rosa Parks went. The rest is history.

Martin Luther King, Jr. also attended Highlander. There was a famous photograph taken of him seated beside a member of the CPUSA. If you drove through the South in the 1950s or 60s, you might have seen the bill boards showing King at the "communist" training school. (They may have been the same bill boards that had earlier displayed IMPEACH EARL WARREN signs after the Supreme Court ruled against segregation of the public schools. King was a young minister, thrust into the fire of the Montgomery bus boycott, with all its dangers. If there were threats, there was also help, and one helper became one of King's chief advisors, Stanley Levison. According to the FBI, Levison was s secret member of the CPUSA, and handled some of its hidden funds. Levison was now fund-raising for King. More, he was advising on tactics, writing some of King's speeches, perhaps chapters of his books. Both Pres. John Kennedy and Atty . Gen. Robert Kennedy told (ordered) King to break with Levison. King lied, said he had split with his advisor, but King maintained his contact with the controversial, and quite influential Stanley Levison.


CAN THERE BE ANY DOUBT THAT THE CPUSA HAS HAD GREAT INFLUENCE ON AMERICA?


It was not only blacks who were swayed by the CP. For whites, I shall mention only one name of a person involved in the communist orbit. Some disagree.  However, his wife was a member of the CP; his mistress was also a member of the CP, and his brother was a member of the CP.  Was he in the orbit of the Communist Party?  The man I am referring to is J. Robert Oppenheimer.  With a wife, mistress, and brother all party members, did that color his thinking closer to red?  Moreover, according to an article in the September 2023 Commentary magazine, "Oppenheimer Was a Communist," by Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, not only did J. Robert contribute healthy sums to communist front organizations in the 1930s, they contend that he himself was also a member.  Then, which is it; CP leaders told him to drop out of the organization, for he might have to pass an important security check?  Or he heard of the major scientific project, and on his own, decided to keep a distance from the CP?  He did pass the test, and was soon working in the Manhattan Project.  The rest is history, and a movie.

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

MICHIGAN PRIMARY RESULTS, FEB. 2024, REPUBLICAN AND DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES

 Most tv analysts of the primary results miss the obvious, probably because they prefer to not see it.  The following is my comment on Newser re the primaries in Michigan. - Hugh Murray

What most news sources ignore - Biden 620,000; Trump 755,000. Biden had carried Michigan in 2020, according to the "official" count. Most discussion concerns, what will the Haley voters do, and what with the Dem. uncommitted do. The basic vote - Biden, the sitting President, got far fewer votes than Trump, the man he allegedly defeated in Michigan in 2020. I would conclude, not a good omen for Biden for November 2024.

Friday, February 23, 2024

ON MATH HISTORY - BUT DID WE LOOK FAR ENOUGH?

The following comes from Newser, and my comment is below it, and also that of Delta.  

Hugh Murray 

Math Historian Saw Decimals in 1440s Treatise and Freaked Out

Glen Van Brummelen uncovers earliest known use of decimal to indicate base-10 number system

By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 23, 2024 4:15 PM CST


How old is the decimal? It's a question you've probably never pondered but one that has fascinated certain historians. Fascinated isn't overstating it. When Glen Van Brummelen, a historian of mathematics at Canada's Trinity Western University, spotted a decimal used to indicate tenths of a number in a 15th-century treatise while teaching at a math camp for middle schoolers, "I remember running up and down the hallways of the dorm with my computer trying to find anybody who was awake, shouting 'Look at this, this guy is doing decimal points in the 1440s!'" he tells Nature News. This early appearance of such a decimal, it turns out, is a very big deal to math historians. Science Alert calls "a mind-blowing discovery."


While versions of the decimal have been used as far back as the 900s, German mathematician Christopher Clavius was thought to have been the first to break down whole numbers by tenths, hundredths, and thousandths, in a 1593 treatise on the astrolabe, called Astrolabium. What Van Brummelen had discovered was the same usage in a much older text. In the 1440s, European astronomers made calculations using the sexagesimal numeric system of dividing a 360-degree circle into 60 minutes and dividing minutes into 60 seconds. The system uses 60 as its base in the same way our modern decimal system uses 10 as its base, though this makes multiplication difficult, requiring multiple conversions of values, per Nature News.


Giovanni Bianchini, a Venetian merchant who practiced astrology, found a simpler way—one that marked "a step forward for humanity," José Chabás, a historian of astronomy unconnected with the discovery, tells Live Science. It was while reviewing Bianchini's treastise Tabulae primi mobilis B that Van Brummelen and a colleague noticed he was dividing angles into minutes and seconds but giving the values as numbers with decimals using the base-10 system. Van Brummelen, author of a study published online for Historia Mathematica, believes the method originated with Bianchini, who would've learned calculations using real-world measures through his background in economics. Clavius would've been aware of his work, Chabás says. (More mathematics stories.)

 

My comment:

I know little of the history of the abacus, but I recall on the early days of tv, the race between someone using the abacus and a new machine for adding numbers, and if the person using the abacus lost, it was very close.
Might early abacui been set for a base of 10, or 6? If 10, then special operations might have used the tenth system for fractions, and tenths. Where are there archives that might contain such info? Congrats to the man who found the use of the decimal 150 years earlier than known. And that usage might have come from the Muslims or even the ancient would. But the Asian world might provied an earlier application, but using an early calculating machine.


That's actually interesting. I was reading last month of Anctient Sumeria using Base 12 arithmetic. Much more convenient than 10, as it has more factors.


Wednesday, February 14, 2024

RUSSIA'S PUTIN FINDS TUCKER CARLSON DANGEROUS

 14 Feb, 2024 21:25

Tucker Carlson ‘is dangerous’ – Putin

The American journalist chose an unexpected tactic for his interview, the Russian president has said
Tucker Carlson ‘is dangerous’ – Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted on Wednesday that X host Tucker Carlson caught him by surprise during their interview last week.

The final interview was two hours long and has been seen by hundreds of millions of people. Before it, Carlson was criticized for speaking to Putin at all – and afterwards, for not asking the Russian president certain things.

“I think your Carlson – I say yours, since he’s a member of your profession – is a dangerous man,” Putin told journalist Pavel Zarubin on the sidelines of the Future Technologies Forum in Moscow.

“I thought he would be aggressive, ask me sharp questions. I was not just ready for that, I wanted that, so I could give equally sharp answers,” Putin explained. “But he chose a different tactic.”

Carlson ended up patiently sitting through Putin’s lengthy digression into history and “did not give me an occasion to do something I had prepared for,” Putin said. “Frankly speaking, I did not get the full satisfaction from this interview.”

Commenting on reactions to the interview from the West, Putin said it was a good thing that the leaders there watched and listened to what he had to say – but bad that they felt the need to twist his words.

Asked if Carlson could face reprisals in the West, the Russian president pointed out that WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange “still sits” in a British prison.  

While the US has tried to accuse Assange of revealing state secrets, which is more difficult to pin on Carlson, “anything is possible in today’s US,” Putin said. While this kind of persecution would certainly be a bad thing for Carlson himself, it would be good for the world, because it would reveal the true face of the “liberal-democratic dictatorship” embodied by the ruling class in the US, the president concluded.

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

COMMENT ON PBS TV PROGRAM ON "THE NIAGARA MOVEMENT"

 I watched the PBS hour-long account of the formation an important, though short-lived organization, the Niagara Movement.  In begins with discussion of 3 important Negroes of that era: Booker T. Washington, the man who essentially made Tuskegee Institute into a major black university; W. E. B. Du Bois, then a young scholar; and William Monroe Trotter, a Boston journalist.  The narrative rightly contrasts the backgrounds of the 3; Washington born into slavery and struggling to gain an education at a newly founded univeristy following the Civil War and Emancipation; while Du Bois and Trotter were raised in New England towns that had few blacks; towns in which they excelled, and both attended Harvard U. 

    At the Atlanta Exhibition of 1895 Booker Washington presented a speech that would be called the great compromise.  He blamed earlier black leaders for attempting to exert their new freedom by beginning at the top, running for political office, orating, becoming senators, representatives, etc.  This was wrong-headed.  Blacks should have begun at the bottom.  The tv program acknowledged it was a major speech, but did not quote it.  In that speech, Washington told a story of a ship in distress that comes across a friendly vessel as requsts fresh water, as they were dying of thirst.  The other ship urges the distressed vessel to cast your bucket where you are.  The captain of the distressed vessel refuses - they cannot drink ocean water.  Eventually, they cast they bucket, and it is fresh water, as they have floated near the flow of the Amazon River when it empties into the ocean.  He then urges blacks to cast their bucket in the South with their white neighbors; and he urges the whites not to look to foreign immigrants, but to the 8 million Southern blacks whom they know and who are ready to work for them without causing strikes and labor troubles; people who were loyal to them in the past.  Moreover, in this way the races could be separate as the fingers on the hand, but united and strong when needed for the power of the hand.  This was interpreted as a policy of avoiding politics, and getting basic education for employment in the South.

    The highly educated New Englanders may have been somewhat ambivalent, but with continued lynchings and civil rights retreats and violations, eventually they formed the Niagara Movement to promote legal protest against growing white racism.  There were divisions in the new NM between Trotter, who opposed female memberships, and Du Bois, and eventually the Niagara Movement was nigh bankrupt.  After anti-black pogroms in Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln's former base, white liberals also saw aneed for an organization to defend black civil rights, and the NAACP was formed with Du Bois on its board, while what was left of the Niagara Movement falls.

    The program gives the illusion that protest was basically a New England obscession.  No mention on the program of Ida Wells, born a slave in Mississippi, moved to Memphis and writing and part owner of a black newspaper.  She had been dragged from the White Ladies car on a train, sued, won a civil rights case, and then lost it.  In the 1890s a mob wrecked her press and she had to flee north.  In 1898 a fusion ticket won in Wilmington, N C., white Populist and black Republicans, but it was literally overthrow and run out of town by white racists.  Not all Southerners were advocates of Washington, but to survive, some had to flee north. 

    Ida Wells wrote much against lynchings of blacks.  But the largest single lynching, of 11 men who had been found innocent in court, occurred in New Orleans in 1891, a lynching of 11 Italians - members of the black hand, probably an earler name for the Mafia.  What was different - the newly created nation of Italy protested this act to Washington, and the Federal government tole New Orleans to lay off the Italians.  Abyssinia, the only independent black African nation at that time, was not strong enough to protest lynchings of blacks in the US.

    When West Indian Marcus Garvey arrived in the US, he planned to visit Booker Washington, and was quite dispppointed to learn of the death of the leader of Tuskegee.  Garvey would go on to found the Universal Negro Improvement Assn., which in the 1920s far surpassed the NAACP in memberships.  Garvey's black nationalism was om some ways a continuation of the Washington approach and his disdain for the light-skinned Du Bois was mutual.  In the 1930s the NAACP would be challenged by a more vigorous protest group, the International Labor Defence (a Communist Party front), but the CPUSA would also play with the black nationalism with its promotion of an Black Belt inside the US.

    In 1948 the NAACP was captured by the Democrats and became a Dem. front group, in opposition to the Henry Wallace Progressive Party - which was the civil rights movement in the South of that era.  Du Bois supported the Progressives, not Truman, and the NAACP fired Du Bois.

    Garvey was deported, but black nationalism rose again with the Black Muslims.

Hugh Murray

Saturday, February 3, 2024

SEASON'S GREETINGS, AND SOME SERIOUS THOUGHTS ABOUT SURGERY

     When I was young, I had to wait till I was 21 to vote, but I could buy beer and all the drinks at age 18.  Then because so many young people drove recklessly when they were teens, insurance companies pressured politicians to raise the driving age, AND worse, raise the age to purchase alcohol to 21.  Perhaps because late teens were so reckless, they lowered the voting age to 18.  So instead of wrecking your car, you can vote to wreck the nation.

     At my age of 85, I think they should lower the drinking age to 18.  If you are old enough to be drafted into the armed services, and shoot people or be shot, surely you are old enough to drink a beer or order a shot.  But that does not mean that the late teens have the wisdom to choose the leaders of our nation.  For that, we should want a mature electorate.  So I suggest the voting age be raised a bit to say 65, when many will retire and have time to follow the political debates.  And this way we can have the wisdom of the many old Bidens and Trumps!  Or, is this a good idea?

     As of now, one must be 21 to order alcohol.  However, in some states, a 10-year-old, with encouragement from a teacher or counselor and a medical official, may pressure the child, without the knowledge of his or her parents, into making a life-altering decision.  In some places a child can be pushed into getting operations, which are not reversible, which will  require a lifetime of different hormones and other medicines.  A girl who goes through this will not only have her breast cut off, but will lose the chance later to have a child.  A boy will lose his bat and balls.  True, he may enter some girl's sports and set new records, but those new records by trans in girls' sports are fraudulent ones, just as the trans are not real girld; and the trans boy, not a real boy.  If they desire to join in sports, led there be a 3rd category of trans sports.  I strongly believe these operations should be stopped unless it is for an adult, or both parents and the child believe it is a necessary operation.

     Instead of trans operations, I suggest a solution  This year, Tuesday Feb. 13 is Mardi Gras.  Many folks wear costumes, funny, dull, whatever.  For a cheap one, I recall young men wearing bathing suits, and then they would glue and cover their exposed skin with Spanish moss, to look something like gorillas.  Trouble with that, and other costumes, if it turns cold. you may have to wear a coat atop it, ruining the image.  Not many gorillas wear overcoats.  As a kid, I wore an Amerindian costume, but it turned cold, and head to wear an overcoat so - well life has its disappointments.

     But to those who they are a woman trapped in a man's body, or a man trapped in a woman's, rather than surgery, try Mardi Gras for a day.  The boy can wear his dress and catch some beads to wear round his neck.  The girl can wear her cowboy outfit.  Or go as a Martian, or a Frankenstein monster or whatever.  Be someone else for a day, and have fun - after all, it will be Mardi Gras.  Return to reality on Ash Wednesday.  If you still have the urge to change, you can do it every year, for a day.  If you want it permanent, then you should wait till you are an adult.  However, whenever a person has such a life altering operation, there will be consequences, some unexpected. 
                    HUGH MURRAY

Friday, January 19, 2024

NIKKI HALEY SHOULD HAVE USED A CIVIL RIGHTS PRESIDENT'S EXPLANATION OF WHAT CAUSED THE CIVIL WAR

  Former Governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley recently got into trouble after she discussed the cause of the American Civil War but did not mention slavery.  Democrats, Republicans, the press, all criticized her for her ignorance on the topic, and some implied that her immigrant background did not make her fully aware of American history.  Perhaps, Haley should have studied the words of the first civil rights President of the 20th century, the first since Pres. Grant.  Had she made a slight effort, Haley could have discovered the cause of the civil war as maintained by Harry Truman, the first civil rights President of the 20th century, the first President to address the NAACP, the first to order the racial integration of the American armed services and Truman also ordered desegregation of the federal civil service, reversing the separation policy instituted by Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, a few years prior to his leading the nation into the war to save democracy.  Most of the implementation for integrating the armed services would not occur until after Truman left office and Gen. Eisenhower, a Republican replaced him.  Truman also appointed a committee to study the race problems in America, and it produced, "To Secure These Rights," a short, easy to understand presentation of problems Negroes faced.  True, not all were impressed; Dr. W, E. B. Du Bois indicated he would not support Democrat Truman for President in 1948, but instead favored another FDR VP, Henry Wallace, who was running as the left-wing Progressive Party candidate. The NAACP then promptly fired Du Bois.  A few years later, Truman got his revenge when his Justice Department arrested Du Bois as a foreign agent.  At a time when many Americans worried about Commie fronts, by firing those who rejected Truman, the NAACP became a Democratic Party front group.


     So, what caused the Civil War?


      In mid-September 1963 former Pres. Truman was invited to be a speaker at a fundraiser for Ohio's Dem. Senator Stephen Young.  He was the last person to speak., after a glowing introduction..  As the Baltimore Sun (16 Sept. 1963, p.5) reported, "We are living in a very troubled age of world history.  The argument on civil rights has been stirred up by Boston and New England demagogues just as the War Between the States was brought about by Harriet Beecher Stowe and William Lloyd Garrison."  So Northern Abolitionists caused the American Civil War.  Slavery was  not the cause of the war; those who objected to slavery were the trouble-makers.  In the 1960s, when Truman no longer required black votes, he made his views explicit on current events too.  He denounced Northern Freedom Riders as trouble-makers who should stay home.  He called the March on Selma, "silly."  He asserted that if any sit-in protestors came to his store, he would physically throw them out.  And he denounced Martin Luther King, Jr. as a liar, etc.  To place Truman's speech in context, he made it one month after the massive March on Washington (in which King presented his "I Have a Dream" address), and Truman's speech was two months before Pres. Kennedy would be murdered in Dallas.

  

      To shore up Truman's reputation, liberal Republican historian William Leuchtenberg wrote and article for American Heritage, "The Conversion of Harry Truman," (Nov. 1991) in which he cites Truman's early racist comments.  For example, in 1911 he wrote his girl friend, soon to become his wife, that he could get along with most people, so long as they were white.  He elaborated on the creation, that God made the whites out of the dust, the n*****s out of the mud, and the Chinese out of what was left over. He added, God hates Chinese and Japs, and so does Mr. Truman. Truman was no child when he wrote this; he was an adult, 27, and a few years later, would volunteer to join American forces in the Great War; Truman would be promoted as an officer in the artillery.  The liberal Leuchtenberg sees Truman's conversion on race after WWII when he learns of a black soldier who returns from war and has both eyes gouged out by racists in America.  And so Truman embraces a more liberal view on race, and as President, tries to implement more sympathetic policies.

   

      For the first Presidential election after victory in WWII, many found Truman a weak candidate, certainly no Franklin Roosevelt.  Truman's Democratic Party had been in power since 1933, but the party of FDR had now split 3 ways.  The left, including many CIO unions, supported Henry Wallace, who had been FDR;s VP in the early 1940s.  Had Roosevelt died a year prior, Wallace would have become an American President.  Wallace was liked by the left and endorsed by the American Communists.  Meanwhile, many Southern Democrats, disgusted by Truman's sudden conversion on the race issue, chose to vote against the official Democratic ticket, hoping to throw the election into the House of Representatives, where they would make a deal with one of the candidates to not interfere with the Southern way of life.  Confident, they made sure Truman was not on the ballot in Alabama - if you voted Democrat there, you voted for Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats.  It would make no difference, for all the polls showed that Gov. Tom Dewey, who had signed the nation's first state civil rights act of the century, would easily glide to election victory over Truman.  To the surprise of most Americans, Truman won the election (and with the help of the black vote in many crucial Northern states).  Both Wallace and Thurmond had about the same % of the vote, 2.4% each, Truman 49.6%, Dewey 45.1.  Dewey had received a higher popular vote and percentage in his 1944 race against FDR, 45.9%  The opinion polls had been proven wrong.  Truman won even though he was not on the ballot in Alabama.


      During the campaign, Truman publicly sounded like a liberal on race.  Leuchtenberg's conversion?  But when he no longer required black votes, Truman blamed Northern abolitionists for the Civil War, and denounced sit-ins, Freedom Riders, and Martin Luther King.  Either a short "conversion," or no conversion at all, simply a cynical politician seeking to win elections.  But academia will always seek to make the liberal look good.

      HUGH MURRAY