In recent weeks there has been a spate of attacks on Senator Barack Obama, most notably through the Accuracy in Media Website by Cliff Kincaid, president of the conservative group America’s Survival Inc. These allegations have been recycled in the blogosphere and, on June 8, 2008, by a column by Mr. Bill Steigerwald in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
Some of these allegations have to do with Senator Obama’s life while in Hawai`i. The claims made by Mr. Kincaid and recycled by Mr. Steigerwald referred to Mr. Frank Marshall Davis, Hawai`i poet and journalist, as a lifelong communist and mentor to Mr. Obama. We find that there is no substance to these claims.
The allegations relate to Mr. Obama’s relationship, while a high school student, with Frank Marshall Davis. Mr. Davis, now deceased, was a prominent African American poet, journalist, and advocate for civil rights in the US. He was born in Kansas in 1905. Among his many accomplishments, Davis wrote and published four highly acclaimed collections of poetry and was editor of several Black-owned newspapers like the Atlanta World, the Chicago Evening Bulletin, the Chicago Star and others. He headed the Associated Negro Press organization, a press association serving the black press, in the 30’s and 40’s. He worked for the Republican
National Committee in the Wendell Willkie campaign of 1940.
In 1948, Mr. Davis moved to Hawai`i from Chicago with his wife, in part to seek a climate more favorable to his mixed-race marriage. In Hawai`i, he ran a small business in office supplies and wrote a column for the Honolulu Record, a local newspaper. He was well respected in Hawai`i and had many friends, including Barack Obama’s grandfather. He died in Hawai`i in 1987.
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