Go to the link, a must read.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/07/what_barack_obama_learned_from.html
What Barack Obama Leared from the Communist Party
(snip)
“...in Hawaii was an African-American poet and journalist by the name of Frank Marshall Davis, who was certainly in the orbit of the CP (Communist Party) — if not a member — and who was born in Kansas and spent a good deal of his adult life in Chicago, before decamping to Honolulu in 1948 at the suggestion of his good friend (and Communist Party member) Paul Robeson.
(snip)
Excerpt:
Family Ties
Obama’s grandparents, Stanley Armour Dunham and his wife Madelyn are another piece of the puzzle. Key details come from interviews in The Chicago Tribune and Seattle Times.
Done bouncing around Kansas, California and Texas in the years after World War Two, Stanley and Madelyn in 1955 picked up and relocated 2,000 miles from Texas to Seattle. The next year they relocated to Mercer Island specifically so their daughter, Obama’s future mother, Stanley Ann Dunham could attend Mercer Island high school.
One year earlier, Mercer Island schools had distinguished themselves in a way which might have caused others to avoid them. The Chicago Tribune explains,
“In 1955, the chairman of the Mercer Island school board, John Stenhouse, testified before the House Un-American Activities Subcommittee that he had been a member of the Communist Party.”
After intense debate, Stenhouse decided not to resign from the school board according to an April 11, 1955 account in Time Magazine.
Stenhouse was not the only leftist connected to the school. The Seattle Times explains:
One respite (from Americans Stanley Ann Dunham looked down on) was found in a wing of Mercer Island High called “anarchy alley.” Jim Wichterman taught a wide-open philosophy course that included Karl Marx. Next door, Val Foubert taught a rigorous dose of literature, including Margaret Mead’s writings on homosexuality.
Those classes prompted what Wichterman, now 80 and retired in Ellensburg, called “mothers’ marches” of parents outraged at the curriculum.
Dunham thrived in the environment, Wichterman said.
“As much as a high-school student can, she’d question anything: What’s so good about democracy? What’s so good about capitalism? What’s wrong with communism? What’s good about communism?” Wichterman said. “She had what I call an inquiring mind.”
She also showed her politics, wearing a campaign button for Adlai Stevenson. And despite flirting with atheism, she went to services at East Shore Unitarian church, a left-leaning congregation in Bellevue.
The Chicago Tribune mentions a description of the Dunham’s chosen church as “The Little Red Church on the Hill”. According to its own website, East Shore Unitarian Church got that name because of, “Well-publicized debates and forums on such controversial subjects as the admission of ‘Red China’ to the United Nations....” The fact that Mercer Island’s John Stenhouse, according to his 2000 obituary, once served as church president might also have contributed to the “red” label.
Obama often says his mother’s “parents were non-practicing Baptists and Methodists....” At best, Obama was twisting the facts. Describing his grandfather in Dreams (p17), Obama writes:
“In his only skirmish into organized religion, he would enroll the family in the local Unitarian Universalist congregation....”
Over thirty years later, Barack Obama would make his “only skirmish into organized religion”, joining Chicago’s Trinity United Church, inspired by anti-American church leader, Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
You were pondering why Dunham was in a Russian Language class.
This might lend some insight:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2040486/posts?page=2615#2615
Paul Robeson’s big shoulders. So out of Jim Crow’s affect on a gifted man like Robeson and his weakness for the Marxists — he was prey to them — there is begat Chicago’s Trinity, and also begat Mercer Island High School, and they begat Obama.
The apple doesnt fall far from the tree: Socialist economist Dad, left-leaning Mom.
Obama’s true religion? Leftism.