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

More on the Progressive Party of 1948 in the South, and Buford Posey, et al.

 My memory can be wrong, but often it is clear and correct - though it may take me a day to retrieve it.  I recall a gathering in New Orleans at the home of a slightly older friend Jack P., and his wife Nydia, probably in summer of 1968.  It was a small group, about a dozen, and it was to greet Ann Braden, a civil rights and civil liberties activist at least since the 1940s.  She and her husband Carl  were living in Kentucky, and had blacks visiting their home, or about to sell it to blacks or something on the race issue, and their home was bombed.  The local authorities blamed it on the Bradens, and court cases ensued.  Ann had written a book on the subject, THE WALL BETWEEN, which I had read when young.  They were also activists against HUAC, the House Un-American Activities Committee.  Carl had died, but Ann was coming to NO, and Jack invited some local activists to meet her. 

 There was general chit-chat and questions, and then things changed with the arrival of Buford W. Posey from Philadelphia.  Buford first entered the national news light when in 1963 he alleged that the 3 missing civil rights workers, Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman, were murdered, and NOT as local authorities were speculating, in Havana, Moscow, or New York.  At this little meeting in NO, Buford elaborated.  He knew they were dead because he had received a phone call late into the night, to the effect: "We just killed those 3 **** and you're going to be number 4."  I don't recall the exact words but they were harsher than those in the Mississippi archives.  Buford added, he recognized the voice: it was that of a local minister.  He added, that the sheriff and authorities could have left the 3 out of custody earlier, but the authorities wanted to wait until the Sunday night religious service was over, because some of the congregation would be involved in the attack on the 3 "outside agitators."  Buford elaborated about that era.  One day a car he did not recognized pulled up in front of his home.  Buford went on the porch with his rifle, "Who are you?" he asked the stranger emerging from his car.  The stranger now seemed most nervous: "Can you put that gun down.  I'm from the Justice Department.  I have been sent here (by Bobby Kennedy) to protect you."  Buford asked, "Well, where's your gun?"  "Oh I don't have one."  Buford then told him to get out of here; I have enough trouble protecting myself without trying to protect you, too."  I think many on the Left in the South had a very different view toward weapons from the Northern Left.  Buford also said he was the only person who had lost his Mississippi citizenship; a law had been passed denying him that and the right to vote.  When someone asked him about a court case, he replied it only applied to one and was too costly to try to win just for one person.

     The Mississippi historical group maintained Buford got in trouble in 1948 when he supported Democrat Harry Truman instead of States Rights (Dixiecrat) Strom Thurmond for President.  But Ann Braden said something to Buford that he got in trouble as a Progressive, and he agreed.  Of course, they might have meant progressive rather than the Prog. Party.  I suspect he was PP.

     New Orleans had some interesting Progressives.  NO her native city, playwright Lillian Hellman was a delegated to the PP Convention that nominated Henry Wallace.  Gwen Midlo Hall was a teenage member of the Young Progressives, and she would later become a major scholar in black history.  Long before the 1963 raid on the Quorum Club on the edge of the French Quarter, there was a raid in 1949 of a Progressive Party party, in the French Quarter and about 70 were arrested for race mixing, etc.

     The Progressive Party was a popular front organization, with Communists and non-Communists, and in the South pushing for integration.  On the other side, all race mixing, mongrolization, etc. WAS COMMUNISM.  Paul Robeson was a leader of the PP, and his defense of the Soviets cost him dearly.  From the most popular black man in the world in the early 1940s, to a non-person in America by 1950.  Stalin was a dictator, even more murderous that Hitler.  Yet, for the uncomfortable question, had there been no Stalin, would there have been an end to legal segregation in the USA?  Would there have been de-colonialization of much of the world?  Would Britain still rule India, Pakistan, and half of Africa?  Would France still rule Vietnam, and the other half of Africa?  The Cold War forced change on America and the world, changes neither wanted, and some of that change was for the good.-----------Hugh Murray

Was Paul Robeson Bi-Sexual? End of Dispute.

 In spring of 2023, browsing on Google, I found this article that mentioned me in the Lambda Philatelic Journal (LPJ) for March 2011 (v.30, #1)

“Paul LeRoy Bustill Robeson (1898 –1976) Robeson was a multi-lingual American actor, athlete, Basso cantante concert singer, writer, civil rights activist, fellow traveler, Spingarn Medal winner, and Stalin Peace Prize laureate.

“In 1921 Robeson married Eslanda Cordoza Goode. The couple had one child. Robeson would not play a significant role in Gay and Lesbian history was it not for the fact of rumors concerning his bisexuality. In a 1981 issue of the left-wing magazine WIN (now defunct), an article on Robeson had referred to his bisexuality as if it were a well-established fact. Some years later The Advocate (a national gay magazine) printed the claim that Robeson had 'recently [been] revealed to have been gay.' Again in a 1990 article by Hugh Murray, the author insisted that the matter of Robeson's bisexuality remained 'an open question.' His biographer, Martin Duberman, an American historian, playwright, and gay-rights activist and himself openly gay, insists adamantly he had evidence to the contrary and that 'he found absolutely no evidence of Robeson's erotic interest in men.' and that Robeson was 'singularly, rigorously, contentedly heterosexual.' Duberman did find that Robeson had many sexual liaisons and that his most intense, long-lasting affairs were nearly all with white women and that Robeson’s wife seemingly accepted these extramarital sexual adventures. So the rumor of Robeson’s bisexuality appears to be just a rumor started and continued, but also seems to have been disproved by an openly gay scholar who was chosen by Robeson’s own son to complete the biography of the father.”

I was NOT convinced by this article, especially as relatives of the person in question, especially a wife and/or children, might be the least willing to admit that their husband or dad was bi-sexual. But I decided to make some further inquiries to see if it could be settled to the satisfaction of most.

How did I get into this dispute? I had read Duberman's biography of Robeson and was quite impressed. I wanted to review the book, as I had reviewed many others, publishing them mainly in academic journals. This was before the days of Amazon, where I have now reviewed another 80 books or so. Though much of Duberman's biography of Robeson was terrific, I was convinced Duberman had not properly assessed Robeson's political activities while the black celebrity resided in Britain. I began my review with criticism of a guest on Leonard Lopate's WNYC radio talk show, an NAACP spokesman who declared that Robeson was not involved in the American civil rights movement, and Lopate dropped the topic, allowing that distortion to stand unchallenged.

My review was intended to refute the view of the NAACP, which was so critical of Robeson. I am not going to repeat the bulk of my lengthy review here, but will give one example: the most famous civil rights case of the 1930s was the Scottsboro rape cases, in which 8 teenaged blacks were sentenced to death for raping 2 young white women aboard a freight train near Scottsboro, Alabama. The 14-year-old, also found guilty, was given a light sentence because of his age, - a light sentence of life in prison.

When Robeson was in the UK, the Scottsboro rape case continued as a prime example of American racism and injustice. The NAACP and the Communist-front International Labor Defense fought each other to control the defense; the NAACP lost; the ILD appealed all the way to the very conservative US Supreme Court, and won new trials; major civil right legal victories.

The Comintern, that is the international communist movement, had made this a global effort, like the Sacco-Vanzetti case of the 1920s. The Scottsboro case was the cause celebre of the early-mid 1930s. It was the first time since the American Civil War that America's race problems were a major world-wide issue. And domestically it was important because of the contrasts between policies of the NAACP and the ILD. The NAACP sought to provide the attorneys so it could and plead its cases in court. The ILD believed in that too, but equally important, the ILD also sought to mobilize popular opinion through plays, poems, protests, marches, telegrams to officials. The ILD even sent the mother of two of the Scottsboro boys to present the case of her boys, the background of racism in Alabama and in America, and to urge support as she spoke to audiences in London, Moscow, Amsterdam, and pre-Hitler Berlin. Support for Scottsboro defendants came from South Africa, Mme Sun Yat Sen, widow of China's first President, many of the literary figures of the era, and Einstein. The NAACP could not have conducted such an international campaign to save the young blacks, even if it had wantted to.

My purpose here is not to detail all the ups and downs of the Scottsboro case, but a few more should be mentioned. The case was appealed to the US Supreme Court a 2^nd time, and again the “horrible 9 old men” ruled in favor of the defendants in a 2^nd major civil rights case victory. FDR, the great liberal, was no fan of the Court he tried to pack. Failing that, Roosevelt finally had his chance to “improve” the court. Might Roosevelt choose a most courageous Alabama former jurist, Judge Horton, who heroically threw out a Scottsboro guilty verdict by the jury of Decatur, Alabama, causing him to lose re-election as a judge; might Judge Horton be the President's pick for the Supreme Court? Close, because FDR's first pick for the high court opening was an attorney from Alabama, but Roosevelt chose instead Hugo Black, an attorney for the Alabama Ku Klux Klan. But the liberal wing of the Klan. If there is some question re FDR's racial views, following the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, the President never invited to the White House Jesse Owens who won 4 gold medals, and who had been cheered in the huge Olympic stadium in Berlin. Nor were the other black atletes invited. Owens later complained, that Hitler did not snub him, but Roosevelt did. I mention this because academia and the historical profession are overwhelmingly Democratic, and for them FDR is a near god. America was not merely racist, it had provided inspiration for some early Nazi racial laws. It is noteworthy that Scottsboro earns some discussion in the new book by British critic Kenan Malik, Not So Black and White: A History of Race from White Supremacy to Identity Politics, in which Malik even contrasts the racial implications of the philosophies of Immanuel Kant and his pupil Johann Gottfried Herder. Not the typical work on race, but a fascinating, thought-provoking one nonetheless.

While this was occurring in the US, Robeson was in mainly in Britain, making films that could be shown throughout Africa – half of which was part of the British Empire. (He was in the US to be featured in Hollywood's 1936 version of “Show Boat,” singing Ole Man River.) Robeson in Britain and America was often on stage in plays and singing. He was aware of America's race problems too, and so it is no surprise noting the 2 co-chairs of the British Scottsboro Defence Committee were Paul Robeson and a university student from east Africa. Johnstone Kenyatta. On the set of some films Robeson, a star, met and befriended some of the extras who were African students. Here, for example Robeson met Nnamdi Azikiwe, who would later become the first President of Nigeria. Robeson surely conversed with the Africans and gained a more comprehensive notion of events in the British Empire, which in the 1930s ruled a quarter of the earth. It should be no surprise that when Robeson returned to the US, he became a leader of the Council on African Affairs. And when one student returned to his homeland, Johnstone became better known as Jomo Kenyatta, led the Mau Mau insurrection against the British, and evertually became the first president of Kenya.

No mention of Kenyatta in Duberman's book. Robeson was aware of race problems in the US and in Africa related to colonialism. The common view now is that Robeson was NOT involved in the American civil rights movement, when he lived abroad, AND when he returned to the US. Most historians follow the lead of the NAACP officials in their hostility both to Communism, front groups, and Robeson, and anyone to their Left. Not only do I disagree with this view, I see it as propaganda of the Truman Democrats and their deal with the NAACP, which would soon include creating new intelligence agenciesfor the Cold War and a Democratic Party McCarthyism before McCarthy..

During his fight to change the Supreme Court, when Roosevelt sought to pack the court with his ideological friends, VP John Nance Garner of Texas opposed his boss. When war in Europe erupted in September 1939, Roosevelt had other worries than the Great Depression to consider. And should he defy convention and run for a 3^rd term as President? If he did, Garner had to go. There was no great support for him, and the party was satisfied to dump Garner. FDR decided to replace him with his Sec. Of Agriculture, Henry Wallace. The news of spring 1940 was dominated by the swift German victories over Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium and then spectatularly over France. Europe's news brought change to the Republicans, with the nomination of a former Democrat whose foreign policy was closer to that of FDR than to the isolationist Republicans. In 1940 Congress finally passed an anti-lynching bill, but FDR chose NOT to sign it. Ending lynching was too controversial for the great liveral Democrat. Roosevelt was re-elected for an unheard of 3^rd term.

A Soviet agent in the American Treasury Dept. would play an important part in events of 1941. He was assigned to draw up terms to which Japan would have to agree so that the US would not cut off oil and metal shipments to Japan. The agent basically demanded that Japan withdraw all troops from China, which it could not do and remain a major power. It promised to let us know its answer in December 1941. Stalin knew that Japan would not attack Siberia, so he could then release troops from the Far East to defend Moscow, which was under attack by the Germans by winter 1941. The fresh troops from Siberia helped save Moscow, the USSR, and Stalin. Spies can make a difference.

Democratic President Woodrow Wilson had segregated the American armed services as he segregated the Federal Civil Service. One of his progressive reforms. Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt kept the segregated armed services and Civil Service all through WWII.

An NAACP official on WNYC radio in New York asserted that Robeson did not partake in the American Civil Rights movement. Everyone knows, the CR Movement began in the 1950s, usually with the arrest on the bus of seamstress Rosa Parks. I contend that this version of history is distorted for political reasons, and as most historians and media folks are liberal Democrats, they prefer this version. I contend, the first major post-WWII Civil Rights movement began in 1947-48, it was closely allied with the Henry Wallace Progressive Party, and Paul Robeson was a co-chair of that party. Most Americans have never heard of those civil rights efforts BECAUSE it was a movement destroyed by Harry Truman and the Democrats, with the collaboration of the NAACP.

When Robeson returned to the US, he was involved in civil rights. Moreover, I contend that the real post-WWII civil rights movement began not in the 1950s, but in 1947-48 with the founding of the Henry Wallace Progressive Party, especially with its efforts in the South. Robeson was a co-chair of the PP, and while the Wallace campaign tour of the South got some attention, the attempts by Robeson to hire civic halls for the Party and songs were usually dismissed for various reasons, but the real reason, these were to be racially integrated events. Names of Progressive supporters like Daisy Bates and Buford Posey and Floyd Mc Kissick would pop up later,(Bates during the Central High integration in Little Rock, Posey in exposing the locals in Philadelphia, Miss. who contended that the 3 missing civil rights workers were alive and well and had secretly gone to Cuba, Moscow, or New York; and Floyd Mc Kissisk who in the mid-1960s headed the CORE organization). The Progressive Party activists were in the struggle against the one-party Democrats' misrule in the South. Robeson was Co-Chair or the PP. Even in 1949-50 a 4-year old Carl Bernstein (you may have heard of the Watergate scandal) was involved in restaurant sit-downs (later called sit-ins) in the Baltimore/DC area, thanks to his Progressive mother. The Progressive Party WAS the Civil Rights movement following WWII. And it was smashed by Harry Truman, the Democrats, and the NAACP. Most liberal histories present Truman as a civil rights President, the first to address the NAACP, the first to push for integration of the military. But his Atty. Gen. List of subversive organizations meant that any who had been members of the International Labor Defense, the National Negro Congress, the Civil Rights Congress, or the Council on African Affairs might lose their jobs and suffer other consequences. Robeson stood against the Truman Doctrine on the domestic as wall as the foreign fronts. I hope some day someone will write the history of that earlier civil rights movement. Unfortunately, some of that history, is crumbling, on local newspapers that can fall apart as you turn a page and are then lost, unless also on microfilm. There was an earlier civl rights movement that the Democrats seek to deny. I hope some younger historians can become archiologists of that now hidden movement of about 75 years ago. (There was an early Freedom Ride sponsored by the Fellowship of Reconciliation) in 1947 but its participants were arrested in North Carolina, and it was forgotten until revived in the early 1960s by James Farmer of CORE. (Jim Peck, who had partaken in the earlier ride, was among the first to ride in the 60s and was severely beaten by the segregationists in the South. On some of Robeson's efforts to desegregate auditoriums in the Progressive campaign, see, https://specialcollections.buncombecounty.org/2017/11/09/baritone-singer-paul-robeson-and-the-segregation-policies-of-the-asheville-auditorium/ I hope some younger historians will shake the Democrati/liberal blinders from their eyes and research the earlier civil rights struggle in the South by the Left. The Truman/NAACP deal was clear. When Du Bois, and employee of the NAAACP refused to support Truman, and was openly for Henry Wallace, he was promptly fired. That was the kind of freedom offered by the Democrats. Robeson was against colonialism; why would he support Truman? Happily, the Trumanites did not resort to Stalin's methods of dealing with opponents. Radicals were not executed, (unless they were convicted spies). But it was not an easy time for civil liberties, or civil rights..

When I became aware of the LPJ article years after its publication, I realized my charge about Robeson being bi-sexual was still out there. I then thought, can this be cleared, one way or another before we all die?

In my review of Duberman's biography of Robeson, published in the Journal of Ethnic Studies (Summer, 1990), most of my lengthy review concerned Robeson's politics. However, I added a few pages at the end when I included information of a different sort, based on a source whom I thought would have expert, but rather hush-hush allegations. I first met Eric Gordon in the summer of 1969 in my home town of New Orleans. Eric Gordon, then a graduate student at Tulane U., in New Orleans was organizing the Students for a Democratic Society in the South, and the first such meeting was being conducted at the Tulane student center. I had been teaching the university year at Southern U. in N. O., basically the black branch of the state's black university. Once LSU had a New Orleans branch, then called LSUNO, Southern U. in Baton Rouge would get a branch too, SUNO. I had also been among several faculty members fired for supporting a lengthy student strike that began with pulling down the American flag and replacing it with a black nationalist one – black, red, and green. Of course, in the spring of 1969 many campuses throughout the nation erupted, as at Cornell U. in New York. Eric hoped the new SDS would supplant the less radical SSOC, the Southern Students' Organizing Committee. I remember that organization best for its button, - in the foreground a black hand and white hand shaking in friendship, background, the Confederate battle flag (the rebel flag) SNCC and CORE had generally expelled all their white members in the early-mid 60s, so SSOC was mainly for white Southern lefties and liberals. It was also before politically correct madness that would stigmatize as “racist” any symbol of the South, and later, any symbol of America in general. Ironically, the model for the black hand on the button was John Lewis, who became an elected Representative from Georgia. He would later have to give his denunciation of the rebel flag to satisfy the new intolerance of our times.

After being fired at SUNO, I left for Europe. In New York City in the 1980s I encountered Eric Gordon again. We were both singing in the Gay Men's Chorus. I have an extremely nasal, and limited voice, but the chorus invited all. Eric however could really sing, and we stood next to each other, sang and chatted. When he heard I planned to review the book on Robeson, he wanted to give me important information. He assured me that Robeson had a male lover. His lover lived in a separate home; it was all kept secret, but Eric was emotional in asserting that it was true. I asked the name of his lover; but Eric was not at liberty to provide that. If you check Eric's name on google, you will see he is an expert on music, and radicals, so I assumed his story was true. I also assumed that with his radical background he had inside information.

In the concluding pages of my review in the J. of Ethnic Studies (Summer 1990, pp. 125-42), I criticize Duberman for not probing into the possibility that Robeson was bi-sexual.(136) For that, Duberman would denounce me in print, and even the stamp world would read of our dispute.

Interestingly, I made another error in the final “musical “ pages of my review. I accused the wrong Robeson accompanist of being gay. Eric Gordon caught the error, wrote to the journal, and Gordon's letter criticizing me was published, along with my acknowledgement of my error. That was published a year after my article. But Gordon did NOT criticize what I had written about Paul Robeson possibly being bi-sexual.(See Journal of Ethnic Studies, Winter 1991, p. 142)

When I read the LPJ article, I thought we should settle this before we die. I wrote to an old acquaintance, and she kindly gave me Eric Gordon's address. I wrote to him, in part here is the email -

> Hello Eric,
   ...
>      I recall that you knew much more about his male lover.  Not only is he dead, 
but our time is running out.  If you know, I urge you to reveal pertinent material and 
end the debate.  Of course, I would like to claim Paul as one of ours, but truth is what 
is important.  Can you settle the issue one way or the other?

and Eric responded:

Sent to me March 3, 2023
I'm not sure I can settle this one way or another. I heard a story third hand that 
intrigued me but with no substantiation I have long since concluded that it was either a 
fantasy or perhaps my informant’s memory was faulty. So I have not put much stock in it 
ever since. I trust Duberman to have the final answer to your question. 

	In the 1990s I encountered a man who had been a paper boy in his youth for radical publications.

  He delivered to the elderly Roberson, and on one occasion, thought Paul was coming on to him.  He

 said Paul invited him for some green tea, and that in the gay community, that was an “invitation.”  

As someone who has resided in Asia, I know that many Asians believe green tea is healthy, and green 

tea is added to many items.  In Saigon I had green tea cheese cake at Starbucks.  I think you can find it

 in toothpaste.  The man who had been a paper boy, never said there was sex, just that he thought 

Paul was inviting him.  I think he was mistaken.  Moreover, IF Paul Robeson had been bi, surely over 

the years someone would have come forward with their more elaborate stories.  The absence of

 more allegations over time, basically confirms what Duberman wrote.

	I apologize.  I was wrong.  I have no evidence that Paul Robeson
 was bi-sexual.  I apologize to the Paul Robeson family and 
to Martin Duberman.       Hugh Murray

	

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.

RETHINKING THE SCOTTSBORO CASE?

   As many of you know, I am now rather conservative politically.  When I was young I wrote about a famous rape case in the US, and defended the Left.  Now that my politics have changed, should I revise my history?  A few months ago Smithsonian Mag on line published an article on the old Scottsboro case of the 1930s.  I immediately replied, and the next day.  But no replies were posted.  Today I decided to check, and my comments were there.  My own politics have changed, but history has not changed.  Facts do not change with fashions.

     Alice George wrote the article "Who Were the Scottsboro Nine?"  in the Smithsonian on line, 23 March 2020.  She has a doctorate.  My comments are below.

• humura • 2 months ago

  This is not for posting. I sent in 2 posts already. I have published several articles on Scottsboro beginning in the 1960s. My British research was never published - thus the link between the SDC, Robeson and Kenyatta. So that should be of general interest. Hugh Murray

  
  
• 
  

  humura • 2 months ago

  One more thing. In the UK in the 1930s a Scottsboro Defence Committee was established with 2 co-chairs. One was the American Paul Robeson, who had been an All American football player at Rutgers, earned a law degree, but then became known on stage as a singer and actor. In the 1930s film version of "Show Boat," he sang "Old Man River." In the UK he starred in a number of films and befriended some African students studying in Britain who were extras in the films. Britain still held the largest empire in the world prior to WWII, and many colonials would appreciate films with a Black star. The other chair of the Scottsboro Defence (Brit. spell) Committee was an African, Johnstone Kenyatta. By the 1950s, in America Robeson's career had withered because of the blacklist. And in Kenya, Johnstone became Jomo Kenyatta, the leader of the Mau Mau rebellion against British rule in that country. The Scottsboro cause had brought together many from various parts of the world.

   
• 
  

  humura • 2 months ago • edited

  Scottsboro is important for many reasons, but one reason - the role of the Communist Party and its fronts, like the International Labor Defense, in moving the case beyond the small court-room and into the streets around the world. The NAACP sought an attorney to represent the boys in the initial trials. The ILD moved in and wanted to direct the case, and fought with the NAACP to get the support of the boys and their parents. The NAACP wanted a defense in the courtroom; the ILD wanted more, not just a good defense attorney but agitation outside the courtroom. Through the world-wide communist movement, one of the Scottsboro mothers toured Europe, telling of the oppression of Blacks in America. Einstein and many of the notted intellectuals of the day signed petitions to save the Scottsboro boys, sent to officials in Alabama! The Garvey newspaper showed a Scottsboro protest in (pre-Hitler) Germany. The ILD won the first US Supreme Court case maintaining that the initial defense was no defense, and a new trial was required.
  The ILD led a March on Washington in 1933 emphasizing the Scottsboro case, and one woman who picketed the White HOuse (FDR and the Democrats were not interested in ending lynching, legal or not.) was Ruby Bates, one of the alleged victims. She had testified in the 2nd trial that there was no rape. The doctor who examined the girls told Judge Horton in private, that the girls were laughing when he examined them re the "rape." He was convinced they had not been raped, but refused to say so on the witness stand, and if the judge required that he testify, he would lie.
  The Communist led effort saved the Scottsboro boys and led to a combined, legal inside the court defense WITH an effort on the streets, on the media, agitation with which we are now familiar. The Scottsboro boys were innocent and deserved the support. In much of the 1930s and until the mid-50s Communists, were often leaders in the civil rights movement, from sit-ins in Baltimore and DC around 1950 and the Progressive Party anti-seg campaign throughout the South in 1948. The NAACP was not always the leader, and often opposed to action.

  
  

TRUMP AND TRUMAN

            by Hugh Murray

 In November 1948 a beaming Harry Truman had a photo taken of him hold the conservative Republican newspaper, the Chicago Tribune with that day's p. 1 headline: 'Dewey Wins!"  The Republicans, who had won a smashing victory in the off-year elections of 1946, took control of the House and Senate, and everyone expected them to handily win in 1948.  Dewey had run against Franklin Roosevelt in 1944 for his 4th term.  Though he was older and some suspected he was ill, FDR's doctors lied and assured the public he was ok.  WWII was still going on in Europe and in the Pacific, and most Americans thought it wiser not to change horses in the middles of a stream.  FDR won, but Dewey came closer than any of his other opponents.  And in 1948 Truman was no FDR.  The Republicans came up with the dream team, the Gov. of New York, Tom Dewey and the Gov. of California, Earl Warren.  Worse, the Democrats were not like the usual Democrats that year.  When a civil rights plank was proposed at the convention, several Southern states' delegations withdrew and formed their own convention and party, the States' Rights Democratic Party (often called the Dixiecrats).  Storm Thurmond of South Carolina would lead their efforts.  While they found Truman too left-wing, the left-wing Democrats also formed their own party, the Progressive Party.  FDR's Vice President prior to Truman was a man from Iowa, Henry Wallace, and and Wallace would lead this new Prog. Party.  For his VP, Sen. Glenn Taylor a guitar playing Democrat from Idaho would run.  Former football player All-American from Rutgers, Paul Robeson would be campaign manager.  Robeson's baritone voice and muscular physique had led him to star in several British film, and sing "Old Man River" in the 1930s MGM "Show Boat."  In the 1940s, playing Othello on Broadway to a white Desdemona, which set records for a Shakespearean production on Broadway.This Progressive Party had the support of many CIO unions, left wing organizations, AND it stimulated a civil rights movement in the South.  For example, when Sen. Taylor went to Birmingham to address the Southern Negro Youth Congress (the first Snick, before the Students Non-Violent Co-ordinating Committee of 1960), Taylor was arrested by Bull Connor for entering the Negro entrance of the building.  Wallace himself, who refused to address segregated audiences, was sometimes met with eggs or tomatoes.  In addition to unions and civil rights activists, the Progressives were also endorsed by the American Communist Party (and therefore these early civil rights efforts are not discussed in the academedia complex).  Meanwhile, the States Righters, prevented Truman from getting on the ballot in Alabama - if you voted Democrat in that state you voted for Thurmond.  The SRP tried to kick Truman off the ballot in Louisiana too, but Earl Long, a maverick, was governor, and made it easier for Truman and Wallace to gain a place on the ballot, though Thurmond carried the state.  Despite the divisions in the Democratic Party, despite the polls and the pundits, Harry Truman fooled everyone when he won.

      Today, Pres. Trump proudly displayed the first page of the hostile Washington Post: "Trump Acquitted!"  The liberal media emphasized the role of Sen. Mitt Romney, Republican, who voted to convict and remove Trump from office on one of the 2 counts submitted to the Senate by the Democratic House of Representatives.  The vote seemed so close - on one count 53 to 47, on the other 52 to 48.  BUT IT WAS NOT CLOSE AT ALL.  TO CONVICT AND REMOVE TRUMP 67 SENATORS MUST VOTE IN FAVOR.  So even the high mark of the impeachment group of 48 is far short of the 67 votes required to convict Trump.

      Trump was acquitted by an overwhelming vote, as our great President should be.

MAO'S CULTURAL REVOLUTION ENGULFS MORE OF AMERICA

Why We Need a New Civil War Documentary

The success and brilliance of the new PBS series on Reconstruction is a reminder of the missed opportunity facing the nation

y Keri Leigh Merritt

SMITHSONIAN.COM
APRIL 23, 2019

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-we-need-new-civil-war-documentary-180971996/#4YzVZ3pGROfbg4OW.99

Airing over a span of five nights during late September in 1990, Ken Burns’ “The Civil War” remains, to this day, the only documentary that claims to explain the entirety of the war that engulfed the United States in the mid-19th century. “The Civil War”’s premiere became the most-watched PBS program at the time, with the nine-episode series carrying a total running time of 11 hours, and to this day it remains one of the most popular shows ever to air on public broadcasting. Garnering scores of awards, “The Civil War” has now influenced generations of Americans and shaped their beliefs about slavery, the war itself, and its aftermath. The documentary had an outsized effect on how many Americans think about the war, but it’s one that unfortunately lead to a fundamental misunderstanding about slavery and its legacies—a failing that both undergirds and fuels the flames of racism today.

…

You can read her full article on the Smithsonian web site. Below is my comment on her article:

humura • 3 days ago

I recall the original Civil War series. Various historians were interviewed, and there were differences of opinion. My main objection was the failure to use music of the war, so many moving songs. Instead, they used a modern tune played on a violin. I suspect, they did not want to play many of the rousing songs of the Confederacy (too politically incorrect, even decades ago). Stephen Foster, the most popular of song-writers of that era, wrote the campaign song in the 1860 election, not for Lincoln, not for Northern Democrat Douglas, but for Southern Democrat Breckenridge. Let us hear it.
No series will please everyone. She complains the old series did not have university professors. When you considet the POLITICAL qualifications to teach at most universities, it is probably best they they were not so involved in the production of the series.
Dr. Merritt even brings into the conversation the accent of Shelby Foote to discredit him. I am old enough to recall when this was done by racists to discredit Blacks. Now the "good" doctor does it to discredit whites. - Hugh Murray

Philadelphia Flyers Remove Statue of Singer Kate Smith Amid Allegations of Racism

The team will also no longer play Smith’s famed rendition of ‘God Bless America’

By Brigit Katz

SMITHSONIAN.COM
APRIL 24, 2019

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/philadelphia-flyers-remove-statue-singer-kate-smith-amid-allegations-racism-180972026/#XqhBJeGTEU1dU2Ds.99

Since the late 1960s, a rendition of “God Bless America” by Kate Smith, one of the most prolific and popular American singers of the 20th century, has been a good luck charm for the Philadelphia Flyers. “The team began to win on nights the song was played,” the New York Times wrote in Smith’s 1986 obituary. Smith sang the tune live during game six of the 1974 Stanley Cup finals, which the Flyers went on to win against the Boston Bruins, taking home the coveted trophy. But as Anastasia Tsioulcas reports for NPR, the Flyers recently announced that they will no longer play Smith’s recording of “God Bless America” at games. A statue of the singer that stood outside the team’s arena has been removed.

The sudden change of heart was prompted by revelations that Smith had recorded at least two songs with racist lyrics in the 1930s. Last week, the New York Yankees, which had been regularly playing Smith’s recording during the seventh-inning stretch since 9/11, decided to switch to a keyboard version of “God Bless America” after the songs were brought to their attention. “The Yankees have been made aware of a recording that had been previously unknown to us and decided to immediately and carefully review this new information,” a spokesperson told Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News. “And while no final conclusions have been made, we are erring on the side of sensitivity.”

Quickly following suit, the Flyers said in a statement on Sunday that while the team has “enjoyed a long and popular relationship with ‘God Bless America,’ as performed by the late Kate Smith,” it had recently learned that several of her songs “include lyrics and sentiments that are incompatible with the values of our organization, and evoke painful and unacceptable themes.” The statue of Smith that had been erected outside the Flyers’ Spectrum arena in 1987—and, when that venue was demolished, had been moved to the parking lot of Xfinity Live!—was cloaked in black and subsequently taken down.

One of the songs to come under scrutiny is “That’s Why Darkies Were Born,” which was written for a 1931 Broadway revue. The song was also performed by Paul Robeson, the famed African-American actor and bass baritone, and some have argued that it is a satire of racist attitudes. But for modern listeners, it is difficult to hear a white woman sing lyrics like, “Someone had to pick the cotton/Someone had to plant the corn/Someone had to slave and be able to sing/That's why darkies were born.”

Critics have also pointed to “Pickaninny Heaven,” which Smith performed for the 1933 film Hello, Everybody!, according to CNN’s Harmeet Kaur. Smith addresses the song to “a lot of little colored children, who are listening in at an orphanage in New York City,” and croons about a heaven filled with “great big watermelons.”...For the full article see:

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/philadelphia-flyers-remove-statue-singer-kate-smith-amid-allegations-racism-180972026/#XqhBJeGTEU1dU2Ds.99

My comment at the Smithsonian site:

humura • 3 days ago

Some people hate America and its past. Kate Smith sang a song today's Left condemns as racist, so she is a racist and destroy her statue, her records, her past. The Left is criminal!

One of the "racist songs sung by Kate Smith was also sung by Paul Robeson, the radical who spoke at Snick gatherings in the early 1940s (Southern Negro Youth Congress), and a leader of the 1948 Progressive Party that attacked segregation in the South, and in the late 1930s Robeson co-chaired a Scottsboro Defence Committee in Britain with Johnstone Kenyatta (later, known as Jomo when he led the Mau Mau to end British rule in Kenya). At the time Smith and Robeson sang about the Darkies, one of the most popular radio programs was Amos n Andy. The Left would destroy all of American culture from that era because it is deemed as "racist" by many today. The Left would burn most old books in the libraries, destroy all recordings of radio and TV shows. The Left in America today is like the destructive Communists during Mao's Cultural Revolution.
Restore the statue of Kate Smith and Gen. Robert E. Lee, celebrate America's heritage, and denounce the "hate-America" Left wing that dominates the academedia complex.. - Hugh Murray