Rethinking about the Past

 It was fall 1955 and I was beginning my senior year at Warren Easton Sen. High School in New Orleans.  A new movie was to play at the huge Saenger Theater on Canal and North Basin Sts.  I would be double dating with Tex Sanders, a tall, friendly guy, and someone with whom I bowled now and then.  My date was someone I'd dated before, and was talking some to Mary Jane, a gal I did  not know.  The theater was packed, and when it ended, it seemed the vast audience let out a collective sigh of relief.  Unlike the tv families, where each week the problems of the family were solved within a half hour, not counting the commercials.  Perhaps the problems portrayed were not too serious, and the family is happy with the dad's solution.  Yet, in this film, 3 families are portrayed, and none are anything like the tv's version of Father Know's Best, Ozzie and Harriet,  et al.  Sal Mineo's parents send him a check for his birthday, Natalie Wood's dad slaps her and calls her a whore; and James Dean's dad is hen-pecked, dominated by his wife while he wears the apron.  The 3 try to form their alternate family for a night or 2.  A rare critique of the family of the 50s.

As we all attended the same school, we saw each other after.  Mary Jane was a pleasant your gal, and she was worried about me.  She had heard I was pushing race-mixing, for example.  She explained, that is communism, and I should talk to her dad who knew about the topic.  He could set me aright.  I did not realize, but her dad was Guy Banister.  She elaborated, he had been a leader of the FBI in Chicago, and knew about the Communist ways of causing trouble.  She wanted me to meet her father.  After Chicago, Guy Banister had served as temporary Supt. of the New Orleans Police Dept.  He then opened a detective agency.

It was possible her dad had already heard of me.  During the summer of 1955 I had attended Pelican Boys State, sponsored by the American Legion.  I had been elected to the Senate, and we were supposed to debate a proposed law in the Louisiana Legislature on our last day.  The Legion was hoping the topic would be required ROTC in all public schools.  I thought a more pressing issue was at hand and should be debated; I proposed the integration of the public schools of Louisiana.  A fellow senator was aghast, and said my proposal should NOT be debated as I was the only person in favor of it.   Suddenly, many other senators stood up and disagreed with my opponent.  We decided to debate integration on the last day.  How would the vote go?  I had no idea.  Nor did the pro-segregationist Legion, but they must have been sufficiently worried, so that they demanded we close the meeting before a vote could be held.

To satisfy Mary Jane, I went to her hope.  Mr. Banister was sorting mail.  I went to him, introduced myself, he grunted.  There was no real dialog, but we both went through the motions to satisfy Mary Jane, who was a sweet, concerned you gal.  

One forgets the turmoil stirred in the South following the 1954 Supreme Court decision overturning a precedent of over half a century, that separate and equal was the proper way to manage racial affairs.  Segregation was actually older than that, but the Plessy decision had made it national policy.  However, in 1954 syddebkt segregatuib was deemed unConstitutional.  The new decision was seen as a threat to our way of life in the South; part of a Communist plot to cause trouble at home.  In May 1955, to commemorate the Black Monday decision of 1954, most Easton students left the school to march downtown to show how they felt about Earl Warren's horrible decision.  The state got time on  the radio to educate the public on this major issue.  Thus, the State Sovereignty Commission had expert witnesses expose the origins of the American Civil Liberties Union.  Founded by a Communist during the era of WWI, it continued to this day as a trouble-making Commie front.  At least 3-hours of radio time were devoted to this expose.

Some leaders of the American Legion were also leaders of LUAC, the Louisiana Un-American Activies Committee.  In 1963, along with the newly elected DA of NO, Jim Garrison, they would raid the offices of the Southern Conference Education Fund, a pro-race mixing group.  Strangely, LUAC did not go after an open Marxist who was then handing out pro-Castro panphlets, and even given an-hour-long interview on WDSU radio.  Strange that LUAC was not interested in Lee Oswald!  Oh, and the pro-Communist Oswald was getting the leaflets from the office of the staunch anti-Communist, Guy Banister.  How strange!    

MORE TO COME,   HUGH MURRAY

Meanwhile, you mifht find related material that will explain the Oswald-Guy Banister alliance in New Orleans in summer 1963, and much else in an article recommended by Texan Robert Morrow - The latest exposition on this important topic by Jeremy Kuzmarov of Covert Action Magazine: Should Lee Harvey Oswald Be Exonerated? - CovertAction Magazine

In high school, I found the Unitarian Church and joined it.  My first visit, a Black couple sat beside me.  I thought, should I leave?  Isn't this against the law?  I could feel the blood rush to my face.  I decided to stay, and returned, knowing the church was for integration.  I attended Tulane U. on a scholarship.  Met 2 professors at church, one taught at Dillard (HBCU) and his wife taught at Xavier U. a RC HBCU.  They were both of Jewish heritage, refugees from Nazi Europe.  I asked if I could sit in Dr. Iggers history class at Dillard.  A Black who tried to enter Tulane would have been arrested.  I had no trouble at Dillard, sat in the class for a year and made friends.  No arrest.  In spring 1960 I picketed with the new Consumers' League, don't buy where you can't work group.  Sit-ins begin in North Carolina, and spread south.  But nothing happens in New Orleans.  The local NAACP  opposes such actions.  In the Negro Y on Dryages St. in NO, a local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality CORE is formed.  CORE would sponsor a major training camp for August 1960; 7 members from NO will attend.

One day our teacher/speaker was Jackie Robinson, the baseball player who integrated the major leagues.  It was an election year, and he was openly for Nixon and the Republicans, as were many if not most Blacks in the South who experienced the Democrats as white supremists.  A few days later, to a far smaller audience, Martin Luther King spoke to our CORE group, about his experience in changing the rules with the Montgomery bus boycott.  The reason for the small audience - half of our  CORE folks were in jail.  We had sought to integrate a restaurant inside Shell's City super market.  Most of our goup sat at integrated tables, and they were arrested.  New Orleans Ruth Dispenza and I sat at a table; she was a light-skinned Black, and the waitress thought we were a white couple.  So, no arrest.  King told us he was quietly for Kennedy and the Democrats, though his dad, minister of a major church in Atlanta, favored Nixon and the Republicans.  One reason, Kennedy was a Roman Catholic, and that proved a big drawback even when Al Smith ran against Hoover in 1928.

We returned to NO, and within a week conducted the first sit-in in modern NO history, despite the NAACP's opposition.  The NAACP Youth Chapter quicky supported us with picketing, and the adult organization quietly ended its opposition.  The Mayor and Chief of Police remained hostile, denouncing the violation of state law, and asserted such lawlessness would not be tolerated.  We were arrested, but at night released on bail.  We had missed all meals in jail.  Archie Allen, Black from Dillard, one of the 7 arrested, Carlos Zervigon, Hispanic sympathetic supporter, and I went to a Black place to eat.  We entered and sat at a table.  The waiter approached, "I can serve you (to Archie), but not you two.  He looked again, Wait, I can serve you (Archie) and you (to Carlos), but not you (to me).  Are we going to have a 2nd sit-in the same day.  No.  We just left without eating.

Tulane's policy - students arrested are suspended until proven innocent.  I hhad a weekend job at a Tulane library and was a grad student, but now all was up in the air.  I could not stay home, so went from one friend to another that week.  My dad let me keep the car.  Tulane's Board relented - the old rule for usual crimes would remain, but these were political crimes, so the punishment would not occur.  Meanwhile the local judge had other ideas.  When the 7 of us sat together in his court room, when he entered, he began shouting at us for integrating his court in violation of state laws, and he would hold us in contempt if we did not sit properly.  The 2 whites moved to the side.  We were all found guilty and became convicted felons, years before Donald Trump would be given the same title.

Meanwhile, Oliver, the other white from NO who had gone to Miami, and was arrested there, was tired of living in a distant burb and wanted to live in the city of NO, and I needed a place,  We decided to look for a place together.  Found one, furnished, $45 a month, living room, bed room, kitchen, bath.  2 blocks from the St. Charles street car line.  I barely knew Oliver.  In Miami we were assigned rooms to integrate the conference, so I roomed with 2 Black students and was surprised when they did not shave in the morning but used a depilatory cream to dissolve the hair.  I learned more about Oliver when we moved together.  First, his annoying habit of never looking at you directly when speaking to you, I found the reason - he was legally blind.  He probably did not know precisely where my eyes were.  I learned he had a rough time growing up, was on the path to becoming a juvenile delinquent, quitting school, etc.  There were 2 people who would set him on the proper path, one a relative, who taught him the basics so he could be an electrician.  If all else failed, he would have a job.  Second, he joined the Civil Air Patrol, and its leader David Ferrie, a pilot who seemed to know so much, pushed Oliver to return to school and go on despite his disability.  David Ferrie was gay, but Oliver, I found out as his roommate, was strictly straight.  Ferrie pushed Oliver to go on, and he did so at Loyola U. (next door to Tulane U).  In time, I was paid to read some of Oliver's sociology text books to him.  Father Fichter at Loyola was pushing him too.  Oliver was a year or 2 older than I was but seemed much more self assured of himself.

One night I returned, and Oliver said, "*i want you to learn how to use this," as  he handed me a box.  I opened it, and surprise, it was a pistol.  A Ruger, like the famous German Luger.  But I had applied for a draft status as a conscientious objector.  Our efforts in CORE were using non-violence to change society.  How can I now start to use a gun?  My parents were getting threating calls on the phone all the time, but no one was after them - it was me they wanted.  We never got such calls, but the reason: we had no telephone.  Maybe the enemy was outside just outside, but we would not know until too late..  Am I supposed to let the blind guy defend us?  While I do nothing?  No, I could not throw this burden on a legally blind man.  I would have to learn how to use the pistol.  And a few weeks later, I wrote my draft board, I was no longer claiming a CO status.  

Around 1952 or53 I graduated from 8th grade at Benjamin Elementary, a co-ed public school.  Next year I planned to attend S J Peters Boys High, for 4 years of high school.  But the entire school system changed, no more boys and girls separate highs, all public highs would be co-ed.  And junior highs were introduced, So K-6, followed by 7-9 for jun. high, and then 10-12 for sen. high.  All co-ed.  So instead of boys high, I went to 9th grade at Beauregard Jun. High, for one year.  That same year in the 8th grade classes was Lee Harvey Oswald.  It is possible we spoke, perhaps in a lunch line, "How much is that?"  In reality we never met, nor did we converse.  Oswald attended Beauregard for 2 years.  At the same time he became a member of the Civil Air Patrol, headed by David Ferrie.  If Ferrie could help other troubled youths, why not Oswald?  Some say while in NYC Oswald had become a juvenile delinquent and was influenced by communists.  Ferrie was strongly anti-Communist, working with refugees from Castro's Cuba, working for Carlos Marcello's mafia, and with Guy Banister and other anti-coms.    When Oswald finished junior high, he could go on to Easton - my high school.  Instead he wanted to join the marines.  How many 17-y-o American communists want to join the marine corps?  I suspect, far more probable, the patriotic Ferrie pushed Oswald in the patriotic direction.  Oswald's mom said a man in a uniform urged her to sign papers so he could join up younger than the usual age.  She did so.  And Oswald joined up.  A patriot!

What did Oliver do after graduation from Loyola, - he signed up with the US Aide for International Development, and he would go to Laos (next to Vietnam) in 1962+.  When he returned, he married, had children and led in improving computers and other devices for the blind and other handicapped.  There is a building named for him on the UNO campus.

Was Oswald following a similar path?  What went wrong?

One more thing re the Oswald-Banister connection.  In summer of 1963 I finally finished my MA Thesis and would be able to graduate in August with a Master's degree.  My thesis was long, some 260 pages on the Scottsboro, Ala. rape cases of the 1930s, in which I discussed the conflict between the NAACP and a Communist front group, the International Labor Defense, for control of the case and contrast in tactics. Summer in NO is hot and humic, but I was going to the Tulane Library, which like most air-conditioned buildings of that era, was cold, so I had to carry a sweater on entering.  Summer break, and few were in the library.  I opened the door and no one.  Near the stairs was a small table, and today there was a stack of leafets on it.  As I passed it, I read, "Hands off Cuba, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee."  I only knew one person who had been involved with Fair Play in another city, a Tulane U. grad student in philosophy.  I took a leaflet, and went to look for him in the library's closed area except for grad students.  He was at his desk.  I raised the leaflet so he could see it, and asked, "What are you putting out?"  "Iet me see that."  He knew nothing about it, nor did I.  Should we send our names to the PO address on the leaflet?  I joked, well, it might be the FBI.  We decided to do nothing till we knew more.  He took the leaflet and taped it to the door to his dorm room.  Where it remained until November. 1963.

On Tuesday, 26 November I was back from my new teaching job, and my mom told me 2 men at the front door wanted to speak with me.  They wanted to know about the leaflet.  I explained, I had thought it was published by a friend, Harold Alderman, a philosophy student at Tulane, but he knew nothing about it.  Nor did I.  I did not follow up with an letter to the address on the leaflet.  They asked of my views on Kennedy, and I said, look at the back of my car, I retained the Kennedy sticker for the 1960 election.  They left.  Soon after, the phone rang.  It was Alderman telling me he had given my name to the FBI.  Neither of us knew about the origin of the leaflets.  The irony, had we written to the address, it would have gone to the office of Guy Banister, anti-com so he could have added our names to his list of local commies.  The first book that mentions me is a volume of the Warren Report, perhaps v. 26, that describes this incident.  I suspect I was already on Banister's enemies list.

One ajent asked me if I had heard of anyone having connections to Oswald.  I had gone out Friday night to a bar looking for friends.  "Who the hell is Oswald?" was my question.  One person told me they had heard Bob Heller, a Tulane student had seen Oswald distributing leaflets in NO and had spoken to him.  The agent took notes, and later interviewed Heller.  Heller had seen Oswald leafletting and wondered if he might need legal help, but did not talk to Oswald.  Sineibe called me a fink every time he saw me on campus.  I have no regrets about cooperating to find what happened in Dallas.  Would I have a right to criticize the Warren Commission if I had not cooperated with its inquiry? 

THE MIDDLE EAST IN WWII

I have been ill for several days.  Perhaps I can begin to repair this post.  The reason for it, I recall an old map of the area during WWII.  Iran was divided into 3 parts - the northern third of the country was occupied by Joseph Stalin's forces.  The sourthern third by those of Winston Churchill's British Empire, and the middle third was what was left of independent Iran.  Churchill, some decades earlier, had thought that the communist menace should have been smothered in the cradle in the early years of the Russian Revolution.  The Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939 was a great surprise to the world, the 2 fiercest foes were suddenly "friens," and all the propaganda they had raged against the other was now buried, as each would use their hatchets on other nations.

     Interestingly, when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Britain declared war on Germany.  Stalin was supposed to invade too, but the Soviets were involved in an undeclared war in Asia, officially Mongolia vs Manchukuo, a Soviet satellite vs a Japanese satellite.  The Soviets beat the Japs rather handily, and some 6 weeks after Germany invaded Poland from the West, Soviets invaded from the east.  There is a telling moment in the film, Europa, Europa, as Poles are seen swimming across a river to the East to flee the incoming German troops.  Suddenly, some are not swimming back.  What happened?  News of Soviets invading from the East.  Many Poles now thought it preferable to head toward the Germans, while Jews kept fleeing eastward toward the Soviets and away from the Germans.  Hitler and Stalin divided Poland and much of Europe.  In summer 1941  Hitler launched his surprise attack against the Soviets; not Germany alone but Finland, Roumania, Bulgaria, etc., civilized Europe against the communist menace.  And Stalin's forces lost, surrendered, and were swept out of their positions. Others content the reason the Soviets did so poorly then, they were preparing their own sneak attack on Hitler, and were prepared for offence, parachutes, other types of equipment, but not for defense.  Since Hitler struck first, his forces suddenly had millions of POWs, and the armies of Europe marched to crush the Soviet empire.  By December, Moscow itself was in sight.  The end of the war, in Germany's favor might be concluded by early 1942.  As many Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians, and especially Ukrainians joined the Germans, things were dire for Stalin.  It was decided a quick way to supply Stalin with needed material would be through Iran, so Stalin and Churchill agreed ib tge 3part division of Iran.

     There was a famine in Iran, 1942-43.  Were the Soviets diverting food for Iranians to shipments to the USSR?  Or a natural drought that can occur in the Middle East.  Meanwhile, in India Churchill is still blamed for a famine killing millions in the Jewel in the Crown of Britain.  A friend recently thought the defacing of a London statue of Churchill was quite fitting.

     The Teheran Conference from 28 Nov. to 1 Dec. 1943 had the first meeting of the Big Three, Churchill, Stalin, and America's Pres. Franklin Roosevelt.  Each nation agreed to the implementation of further plans to weaken and defeat Germany, and Stalin promised to enter the war against Japan after the European war concluded.  The Allies won the war, and Britain withdrew on time from the southern third of the nation.  Stalin delayed about 9 months and more negotiations, but eventually left the northern sector of Iran too.

     My point, in all the discussion now about Iran, almost no one mentions that the nearest major power is Putin's Russia.  Admittedly, Putin has had his hands full in Ukraine, but how tempting is it for him to think of Iran perhaps 90 miles across the Caspian Sea???  It is not that close, but Russia is the only major power that close to Iran, juar a Caspian away.  And in a nation that was once 1/3 Russian (Soviet)  Hugh Murray

FROM RT - THE HORRIBLE CONSEQUENCES OF RACIAL QUOTAS

 

UK released killer because ‘detaining him was racist’ – inquiry

Valdo Calocane, a migrant who killed three people in 2023, was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, but was not institutionalized

©  Zac Goodwin / PA Images via Getty Images

Valdo Calocane, a migrant diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia who went on a deadly stabbing spree in the UK in 2023, was previously released by mental health workers for fear of being labeled racist, an inquiry into the Nottingham triple murder has heard.

Calocane, who went to the UK from Guinea-Bissau in 2007, fatally stabbed teenage university students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, and another man, Ian Coates, on June 13, 2023. He went on to steal Coates’ van and ran down three pedestrians, leaving them with serious injuries.

On Monday, a public inquiry heard that Calocane was pronounced a paranoid schizophrenic in July 2020 and placed under the care of Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. It transpired that the man, who had failed to turn up to appointments and refused to take his medication, was later discharged by the NHS.

During the proceedings, it also came to light that at one point in 2020, mental health professionals considered isolating the aggressive patient after he attempted to kick down a neighbor’s door. However, the NHS staff decided to release Calocane into the community over concerns related to the “over-representation of young black males in detention,” the inquiry learned. The decision was made despite one psychiatrist warning that “perhaps [he] will end up killing someone.”

READ MORE: Dutch Starmer critic barred from UK

On top of that, the bereaved families accused the Nottinghamshire police of attempting to cover up their failures to arrest the paranoid schizophrenic before he went on the deadly stabbing spree.

Calocane had a history of violent assaults as well as stalking and harassment complaints. None of the incidents apparently attracted the police’s attention.

The pedestrian survivors alleged that the local authorities originally told them that they had no prior dealings with Calocane. During the inquiry, however, a representative of the Nottinghamshire police acknowledged that the force had been aware of a series of “unpleasant and antisocial” incidents involving him. The official insisted, however, that “they did not reasonably herald that he would become a triple killer,” and that it was “simply not correct” to suggest a cover-up.

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H L GATES PBS SERIES BLACKS AND JEWS - PART3 & 4 - MY REVIEW

  I have enjoyed listening to 4 great orators: first, when I was about 13, I walked across the Airline Bridge to Pelican (baseball stadium) to attend a Billy Graham rally in New Orleans.(1951?)  Seating was segregated, so as not to violate the race laws in the state.  The then young Graham used his knowledge of the Bible with current analogies, at times interrupted by the choir or the powerful voice of George Beverly Shay.  His magnet of salvation caused many to abandon their seats to join the growing mass on the grass who wanted to join up for the Kingdom.  I came near to joining them.     

     On Sunday nights on tv I watched another such speaker, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen.  Because New Orleans was the largest city with only one tv channel, I do not know on which network he appeared.  He was a Roman Catholic bishop, but mixed into his message of religion was politics, especially, oppression of the people in Eastern Europe under Communism.  He was most effective with the use of the pause, which made you think more than him shouting.

     3rd was Ronald Reagan.  In 1960 I had cast my first ballot for President, JFK.  In  1964 I favored LBJ, but not as enthusiastically.  Sen. Goldwater, the Republican candidate, was scheduled to speak at Tulane stadium, and as a TU student, I planned to go, to boo if nothing else.  The crowd was for Goldwater, and Louisiana was one of the few states he would carry in November.  The stadium was enthusiastic for Goldwater.  He spoke.  What a bore!  He might have been giving a report to a Senate committee over trivia.  The crowd waited to erupt; but he never gave them a chance.  Only later in the campaign when I heard the radio address on why vote for Goldwater, delivered by Ronald Reagan, did I appreciate the rhetorric of Reagan.  He did not convince me to vote for Goldwater, but he did get me questioning some of my political assumptions.  Reagan was a great orator.

     4th was unexpected.  I was working in China, and provided a computer, expanding my knowledge of how to use it, etc.  In my exploration, I began to listen to some old speeches of Malcolm X.  I do not mean that I agreed with him.  Malcolm did include some of the bitter contempt for opponents, heard in Elijah Muhammad's or later, Minister Farrakhan's sermons.  But Malcolm's political analyses made one think.  Pause, even without a visual cue to do so.  I am white, and I did not agree, but I could see how others could be readily moved by his speeches.  See Anthony Flood's depiction of the 1961 Black Muslim mass gathering at Uline Arena in Washington. DC, at which the honored guests were George Lincoln Rockwell, leader of the American Nazi Party, he and several members sitting in the audience wearing their uniforms with the red armbands and black swastikas.  From the platform Malcolm spoke friendly words to Rockwell, and Rockwell made a pledge of $20, (perhaps about 7 cartons of cigarettes in those days values).  Malcolm was basically telling the congregants that the good whites were the Nazis.    What could that possibly have to do  with Black-Jewish relations???

     Yet, in the 4-hour program on PBS by Henry Louis Gates, I do not recall seeing Malcolm at all.  What might he have had to do with the topic?  In the early 1960s the Black Muslims held a number of huge gatherings of the faithful for their Founders Day.  A small number of whites were invited guests to these gatherings, and they were not Jews.

http://anthonyflood.com/murraynoifascism.htm

"American Nazi Party Commander George Lincoln Rockwell (center) at a Nation of Islam (NOI) rally, Uline Arena, Washington, DC, June 25, 1961.  During the collection, he shouted: “George Lincoln Rockwell gives $20!” (almost $135 in today's money).  Malcolm X, noting the applause, asked him: "George Lincoln Rockwell, you got the biggest hand you ever got, didn’t you?”        Elijah Muhammad, NOI founder, invited Rockwell to speak at their next Savior's Day Convention, which he did on Sunday, February 25, 1962, before 12,175 people in Chicago’s International Amphitheater.  (Muhammad Speaks, April 1962, p. 3.)  At the podium, in full Nazi regalia, Rockwell opined “that Elijah Muhammad is to the so-called Negro what Adolph Hitler is to the German people.  He is the most powerful black man in the country.  Heil Hitler!” (Black History and the Class Struggle, Spartacist League, August 1994, p. 37.)   Anthony Flood"

     MORE TO COME

A Personal Aside - What do Malcolm X, Bernadette Devlin (McAliskey), and I have in common?  By the way, Bernadette Devlin was the leader of the Northern Irland Civil Rights Assn., which in the late 1960s had become militant in demanding equal rights for Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland.  I had gone to Edinburgh to work on my controversial thesis and hopefully receive a doctorate there.  Upon arrival, I was confused by the grafitti on buildings, "Kick the Pope," and "Kick Billy."  I asked.  Billy was King William of Orange, the Protestant Leader who replaced a James II Stuart, after defeating him at the Battle of the Boyne in N. Ireland in 1690.  England remained Anglican, Scotland Puritanical with a RC minority; and Ireland, Protestant with a large RC majority.  It was not until the late 1960s, when I was there that the ABC Cinema became the first movie theater permitted to show films on the Lord's Day.  Pub's were closed on Sundays too, and even closed at 10pm Saturday nights (be up early on the Sabbath to get to the Kirk on time).  A friend, a young man smaller than I, was scouted by a major football team (soccer).  All went well till the final question.  "Do you attend mass on Sunday?"  With yes, he was told they could not have a Roman Catholic on the Ranger's squad.  QUESTION - What do I have in common with Malcolm X and Bernadette Devlin?  Answer - We all were featued speakers at Trotskyist forums in NYC.  Malcolm X sponsored by Militant Labor Forum in Jan. 1965; I was sponsored also by the MLF in Aug. 1966, and Bernadette Devlin (McAliskey) by International Socialist, I think around 1980.  What do I not have in common with Malcolm and Bernadette?  I was not shot.  Malcolm was shot and killed in Feb. 1965.  Bernadette was shot by 3 Ulster Freedom Fighters who invaded her home and she received between 7 and 9 bullets, and lived.  I was not shot or killed.  I had had supper with Bernadette and 4 other university folks at Edinburgh 1969?

    For the record, I was never a member of a Trot political party or of the CP.

 I think it fair to say that Malcolm was NOT in the middle on the Blacks/Jews issues.  He sided with the Nazis as his fave whites.  But Malcolm X is not the only important figure omitted from the PBS series.  Nowhere did I see mention of Harold Cruse.  Cruse wrote a large volume, which in part complains about the dominant influence of Jewish intellectuals inside the Communist Party, USA, which prevented Blacks from establishing their own analysis of their role as a racial minority in the US.  Cruse concedes the importance of the CP, especially in the 1930s, but also the 40s and beyond.  But he sees the CP winning over middle-class Blacks, who are generally interracialists, pushing for integration.  However, by the 1940s Cruse contends, Harlem Blacks not in the middle class, were overwhelmingly segregationists, nationalists.  This was no new division, as in the 1920s the divide between Garvey (and his UNIA) vs. Du Bois and his NAACP.  Cruse implies it is a major lasting divide.  The Communists with their emphasis on the international scene, integration, and following approved moves for minorities, they have abandoned their on analysis, and the essential development of their own culture.  Jewish Communists are responsible for this failing.

     Needless to say, I over simplify, Cruse's view in his 565 page book.  In many ways, I do not aggre with it, but I urge you to read at least one chapter to decide for yourself.  I was teaching at a university, when one morning students pulled down the American flag and replace it at the main entrance with the black, red, and green black liberation flag.  Thence began a student boycott of classes, the Governor, McKeithern, coming to the campus for the first time, and confronting this challenge for the first itme.  I was scheduled to teach that summer, but due to my support of the strike, I was told I was blacklisted.  Have no idea if that was true, just that I never taught in the US again.  Another supporter of the strike, a Lebanese, would be arrested and deported.  But that summer, Black cultural groups began to form in New Orleans.  Before I leave the issue of Black Nationalism, should it be restricted to the US?  What about black support for independence for Black African nations (colonies)?  When Robeson was making films in Britain in the 1930s, he met and befriended some of the extras,  who were students attending British universities.  One was Johnstone Kenyatta, who with Robeson led the British Scottsboro Defence Committee, trying to save the lives of young Blacks accused in Alabama of raping 2 white young women.  A few decades later Johnstone, now known as Jomo, led a Black rebellion against Britain.  Should American Blacks have supported Jomo?  My point - Gates should have mentioned and discussed the important Cruse book, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual.

     The Gates series rightly stresses the importance of Freedom Summer in Mississippi in the mid-1960s.  The appearance of West Indian Stokely Carmichael and his push for new leadership summarized with the slogan: Black Power.  This electrified the movement.  The phrase was all over the major tv networks and newspapers.  I was then in NYC and bought the Militant (Trot) and the Daily World (CP, heir to the Daily Worker).  Both were small papers. only 6-8 pages.  The Militant coverage was actually similar to the major media's, stress on Black Power, and possible shake-up of the movement.  The DW coverage was also extensive, but I could not find once in the paper the phrase Black Power.  The CP was not on board with this rejection of interracialism at that time.  On board or not, soon whites were expelled from SNCC.  Even the dedicated Dottie Zellner and her husband were about the last whites to be evicted from SNCC, but evicted they were.

     Though it received little fan-fare, New Orleans CORE had basically gone all Black much earlier.  Founded in 1960 and defied the NAACP to stage the first sit-in in the modern era, it remained quite integrated for the first university year.  When some Black young men were giving unwanted attention to some Newcomb gals, they complained, and the Black male CORE leaders told the guys to lay off.  And they did.  Next year, white guys in CORE  were dating Black gals.  The gals did NOT complain, but went out with the white guys.  Oretha Castle, the Black woman then leading NO CORE objected, as did a Black minister.  When election time in CORE came, Oretha managed to disqualify all white males, and only a few white women were allowed to remain as members.  They soon dropped out.  There was no sloganeering of Black Power, but NO CORE was essentially a Black organization by 1962.  LSUNO, unlike the main school in Baton Rouge, had some Black students, and a British socialist professor provided some interracial meetings.  I brought a Black student from Dillard to a meeting of Young Liberals at Tulane, addressed by Rev. Shuttlesworth.  After a few of us went to a pizza place in the Tulane neighborhood, Maple St., and we were denied service.  So began many picketings and protests.  But these were localized, not at all under the old CORE or NAACP umbrellas.

    By the late 1960s, dashikis, Afros, and the biggest thing on tv by Jan. 1977, Alex Haley's Roots, even if it was fiction.

In Part 4 the question of Jews involvement in the slave trade becomes an issue, as the publication of The Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews stressed the Jews role in the slave trade and slavery.  The Nation of Islam (NOI) was not the first to make such claims.  Henri Pirenne argued that with the fall of the Roman Empire and expansion of Islam into former Christian Africa there rose new merchants - the Jews.  They were particularly involved in the slave trade, and the slaves were Slavs, from whence we derive the word slave.  Arabs would be involved in the African slave trade, and African male slaves to guard harems would of course be castrated.  Indeed, in parts of Asia, to prevent thieving family values, castration might be a qualification for government employment.  Noteworthy, Admiral He, the most important Chinese Admiral who probably gave the PRC its claims to the South China Sea, and who headed a fleet with 30,000 sailors (while Columbus  had about a total of 90 on all 3 ships, sailing 50 years after the Chinese.

     On the role of Jews in the Atlantic slave trade.  I do not know.  But when the Brits attempted to end it, I know of no rioting in the synagogues.  But there was rioting on the slave coasts of West Africa by the African slave traders!  They wanted the lucrative trade to continue.

     Yes, there were Jews in the American South and some owned slaves.  But as conservative politician Leander Perez used to remind the Roman Catholic hierarchy in New Orleans when it began to speak against segregation, the Jesuits had been slave owners too.  The vast majority of Southerners 

were Christians, and many of them were slaveholders.

     Hatred of Jews is often a version of hatred of integration, of mixing races.  Sometimes it is hatred of the other race; sometimes just feeling more relaxed around your own; like being with family.  Can we be friends beyond?  Can they?  Probably sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Hugh Murray

REVIEW OF H L GATES BLACKS AND JEWS ON PBS ---PART 2

     A Jewish family certainly helped Louie Armstrong when he was young, and I understood, they bought him his first instrument,  An American Army band thay played jazz in Europe during WWI made a powerful impression, and more research might go into intellectuals' reaction to the new music, and that would include Jews.

     Some would contend that jazz began in the cat houses of the NO French Quarter, with musicians playing music to amuse customers and xxx.  Ragtime was popular, but with syncopation and other alterations a new name was required.  When residing in China a decade or so ago, I was surprised to see in a supermarket at the end of a counter a string of condoms; the brand Jiz Bon.  And was reminded of one of the early origins of the term jazz, and its early surroundings.  The American Black Army Band brought the new music to Europe during WWI, to immense popularity.  Also during that war, Pres. Wilson, to protect our young service men, cracked down on the cat houses (something locals would not do), which caused musicians to depart for Kansas, Memphis, Chicago, and New York.  And it was George Gershwin, a Jew, who brought the new music to classical halls.  From humble surroundings to the Stadts Oper in Berlin (where I saw Porgy and Bess).

     A pivotal point is omitted  in Chapter 2 of Gates' series.  For years now, if someone calls you a racist, especially in print, you had better defend yourself or be prepared to lose your job and your standing in most communities.  Yet, there is no law about being a racist.  When did this begin?  In spring 1931 when August Yokinen was brought up on charges of racism.  He was janitor to a Finnish social organization located in Harlem during one of the groups dances.  Two Blacks entered the hall, the band stopped, so did the dancing, and Mr. Yokinen told the two young men to leave.  Yokinen, a member of the Communist Party, USA, was brought up on charges, and a show trial in Harlem was prepared.  Well publicized, many Black newspapers covered the story and hundreds sat in for part of the trial.  Yokinen was not expelled, but had to make up for his racism before being fully restored to membership in the CP.  Meanwhile, US immigration realized that in joining the CP, Yokinenhe  had violated his oath not to try to overthrow the US government, and was deported to eastern Europe.  It was not American law that racism was a crime, but in time the communist policy became de facto law in America.

     Shortly after, the cause celebre of the decade.  Also spring 1931 on a freight train from Chattanooga south, a fight breaks out between young folk hoboing.  Some Blacks won and threw several white boys off the moving train.  They told the sheriff, and to stress their point, - some white girls remained on the train.  Authorities stopped the train, found the girls (or young women), and 9 Blacks.  The women said they were raped, the 9 Blacks quickly put on trial, and so began the Scottsboro Cases.  THE BIGGEST AMERICAN CASE OF THE 1930S.

     The NAACP, not especially interested in low-lifes that would tarnish the organization's reputation, put up a weak defense.  8 were given the death penalty, the 14-year-old got life.  Scottsboro, home of the trials, took pride that no one had been lynched.

     Then, a new kid intervenes, the International Labor Defense, a CP front group, promised to defend the boys, with a 2-pronged approach, excellent attorneys inside the court room, AND agitation, protest, mobilization of masses outside.  The ILD got intellectuals from Europe, including Einstein, Thomas Mann, Kathe Kollwitz, to protest the verdict, marches in Harlem, telegrams from South Africa, an Amerindian chief, Mme. Sun Yet Sen to denounce the Alabama verdict.  The Scottsboro newspaper ran a story that they might have to prepare for a Communist invasion from Chattanooga (presumably a Red center).  The ILD hired a top NY attorney, a non-Communist Jew Samuel Leibowitz to defend the boys.  He was a Democrat, but the other ILD attorneys may have been affiliated with other parties, but some of the were Jewish, too.  

     What were they facing in the 1930s?  Not what you think.  The Supreme Court was so conservative then that Dem. Pres. Franklin openly sought to pack the court with Dems like himself.  And what was that?  PBS had an excellent special on the battle in Wilmington, NC in 1898.  The election had been won by a fusion ticket of Populists and Republicans, and in the South Republican  meant Black.  The Democrats decided to do there what they had been doing ever since the end of the Civil War, certainly since the Republican promise to remove Yankee troops from the South after the disputed 1876 election.  One by one "civilization" was restored by the KKK and similar groups overthrowing black run communities.  By 1898 Wilmington was the last black domino standing, but white Democrats like Josephus Daniels led a physical rebellion, overthrowing the elected government, and ensuring white supremacy and the Democratic Party's Solid South.  When Dem. Woodrow Wilson is elected Pres. in 1912, he soon appoints Josephus Daniels as his Sec. of the Navy.  In some ways Daniels is progressive, opening promotions to ill-educated but intelligent poor whites.  My oncle, who finshed schooling at 5th grade learned on the job to become an engineer on ships.  Same time, Daniels closed the door to Blacks.  Pres. Wilson openly segregates the Civil Service, and  demanding photographs of applicants, and thus not hire Blacks.  As war in Europe looms, the navy grows in importance.  Daniels says America's greatest crime was allowing Blacks to vote.  And who is Undersecretary of the Navy under Daniels.  FDR.  And when FDR becomes President, he keeps the photo requirement, and retains segregation of the Civil Service, AND THE MILITARY.

    How could anyone, much less a Red ILD save the Scottsboro boys?  Their good Jewish attorneys made better arguments up the appeals process, until the US Supreme Court ruled that in a trial with a death penalty, the defense had to have a real legal defender.  A few years later, the ILD and others got another fantastic ruling from the conservative court, Blacks have to be in the pool of possible jurors.  These were possibly the first pro-civil rights rulings by the US Supreme Court since the early days of Reconstruction, and the CP had a hand in these victories.

     The Scottsboro Case was to the 1930s what the Scopes trial, Sacco/Vanzetti, and Loeb/Leopold were to the 1920s.  And the Communists led the way.

    Happily, time is spent on Paul Robeson, probably the best known Black in the world by 1940.  In Europe he made films for African showing (half the continent was British).  He befriended some of the extras in his movies, who were attending universities in Britain.  One was Johnston Kenyatta, and he and Robeson led the Scottsboro Defence organization in Britain.  After WWII, that student became better known back in Africa as Jomo Kenyatta, and led the way to an independent nation. But anti-colonialism for Robeson in the US made him an enemy of the statte.

      I had never heard of Cafe Society and its integrated threats to the un-American activities committees.  HOWEVER, Gates misses the big point - the 1948 election.

     Harry Truman was a typical racist before being elected Pres. AND after.  Only for a short time on the changed international stage did he try to be egalitarian.

     During WWII Hitler offered to let the British continue with their empire; Hitler was aiming eastward.  Indeed, Hitler admired how small Britain had conquered India and other places.  Churchill did not trust Hitler, and thought with American, and even Soviet help, Hitler would lose.  The big 3 was to meet in Potsdam, but FDR died and it was Churchill, Truman, and Stalin.  Soon while meeting still ongoing, Churchill loses the Parliamentary elections to Labour.  Clement Atlee to be the new PM of Britain, and he wants to allow greater India to become independent.  In 1947, with millions dead in disputes of borders, India and Pakistan become independent nations.  Anti-colonialsm, a demand of the communists since the early 1920s, is a new problem to be faced by any American President.  If there are African embassys in Washington, DC, what happens when grand hotels reject their guests, or restaurants request that they go to the back door? 

     Gates discusses Cafe Society in NYC, the first integrated club where notable Blacks were closed to the CP orbit, and they would be called to testify before HUAC, the House Committee on Un-American Activities.  People who took the 5th Amendment, often lost jobs and a place in society.  HUAC helped destroy the Cafe Society and the lives of others round the nation, some of whom were indeed members of the CPUSA.

     Harold Cruse was quite critical of the many Black intellectuals who were in the orbit of the CP.   According to GoogleAI "He was famously critical of Marxism and the American Left, arguing that these ideologies failed to account for the unique "American" character of racism. He particularly targeted Jewish intellectuals in the Communist Party, claiming they had misdirected Black radical energy."  Some of the phrases he used against a Jewish Communist writer of Black history, Herbert Aptheker, made Cruse seem like Dr. Goebels.  Indeed, the issue of Black Fascism is never really mentioned on PBS.  Marcus Garvey, leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Assn. declared "we were the first fascists."  In the early 1960s, Black Muslims invidted as special guests to major BM gatherings members of the American Nazi party in their uniforms with swastika armbands.  Malcolm X spoke directly to the Nazi leader in pleasantries so the mass audience could hear.  Often whites in cartoons in Mohammad Speaks had a hooked nose. showing the evils of integration were pushed by Jews.

     One more thing, a most important one.Time to forget the Dem. propaganda of Truman as the great civil rights President.  1948 was the civil rights movement before the later more successful one.  It centered round the run for the Presidency of a former VP under FDR.  Henry Wallace was VP of the USA from Jan 1941 to Jan. 1945.  Had Franklin Roosevelt died a few months earlier, Wallace would have become Pres. of the USA.  Roosevelt, at the Dem. convention in 1944 had decided to dump Wallace in favor of Truman, and so Truman became Pres. in spring 1945 upon the death of Roosevelt.

     Truman had to learn quickly, about A bombs, the new Labour govt. in Britain, Stalin and his armies in eastern Europe, AND how he might win an election in 1948.  Happily for Truman, he had Clark Clifford, an excellent political strategist, who would recast the mild racist Truman into a civil rights leader, the first President to address the NAACP.  Anti-colonialism was becoming a reality; in 1947 both India and Pakistan became independent.  What happens when an African embassy opens in segregated Washington, DC?  1948 seemed like a shoe in for Republican Tom Dewey, who supported the first civil rights law to be enacted by a state.  Many Southern Dems disliked the trend and bolted from the Truman party to establish the Dixiecrats.  Other Dems bolted from Truman to for the Henry Wallace Progressive Party, which was endorsed by the CP and its friendly trade unions.  I contend, the Wallace campaign in the South was THE civil rights movement of that decade.  Robeson was a leader of the PP.  Dem. Sen Sen. Glen Taylor of Idaho became the VP candidate.  When he went to Birmingham to address the Southern Nego Youth Congress, Police Chief Bull Conner had him arrested for entering the Black entrance to the building.  Neither Robeson, nor Wallace, nor Sen. Glen Taylor, the singing cowboy would appear before segregated audiences.  Many of their meetings had to be in the open, and former VP Wallace was the target of rotten eggs, tomatoes, etc.  There were a few stabbings.  Unlike the later CR movement, tv was too new to have an impact on seeing racism in action.  Truman dismissed the problems as due to Wallace and his communists trying to stir up trouble.  (After he was no longer Pres., Truman said if any sit-in came to his store, he would throw them out.  He also said the Civil War was caused by busy bodies in New England, i.e., the Abolitionists were the cause of the war, not slavery).  But when W E B Du Bois endorse Wallace, not Truman, Du Bois was fired by the NAACP, an organization he helped found.  Truman later had him arrested as a foreign agent.  After Truman's victory, in Feb. 1949, in the NO French Quarter some 60 people were arrested for attending a Progressive Party social that was violating the segregation laws of the state.

     But in 1950 in Washington DC and Baltimore, led my the elderly Black leader Mary Church Terrell, but also including a 4-year old Carl Bernstein, whose mom was a leader of the PP (he would gain fame later as a reporter in the Watergate scandal), they were engaged in a new tactic called sit-downs in restaurants.  These are forgotten,  Too soon. A decade later they will help change America.

EXTRA - I watched the H L Gates series on Blacks and Jews, Parts 3 and 4 on Tuesday night on my local PBS station.  I will review them both, but  in one review.  Extra busy at moment, so I will post it in a few days.  HM