[Calpernia]

Mercer Island isn’t in Seattle. I’ve posted a lot on Paul Robeson and have cited my sources. Can’t dig up my cites at the moment.

[browardchad]

Mercer Island isn’t in Seattle.

That's splitting hairs, isn,t it? It's a tiny island separated from downtown Seattle by a bridge, and it's considered part of the Seattle metro area.

If Robeson had taught there, it would certainly have been remembered, and celebrated, by Seattle historians. According to his bio, he underwent major protrate surgery in 1955, and became increasingly mentally disturbed. When his passport was restored by a Supreme Court ruling, he gave concerts in the both the Soviet Union and Carnegie Hall in 1958, then moved to England sometime before 1960. There's no evidence of, or rationale for, his teaching at Mercer High School during the years Ann Dunham attended.

[curiosity]

Mercer Island isn’t in Seattle.

Talk about splitting hairs. It's a suburb about 10 minutes from downtown, less than five minutes from the city limits. I know because I live in Seattle and go there all the time.

It sits on an Island in Lake Washington, whose western shores mark the Seattle city limits. You just go west from Mercer Island accross the I-90 floating bridge and you're in Seattle.

[Fred Nerks]

"Davis's initial contacts with Hawai`i all had extremely strong ILWU ties. Paul Robson's own Hawai`i acquaintances, which he passed on to Davis, insured that "when I came over, one of the first things that I got involved with -- well, I met all the ILWU brass, Jack Hall and all of them, and I went -- they had both of us over to various functions for them -- Harriet Bouslog (ILWU lawyer recruited by Bridges who defended the Smith Act case) was also a good friend" (Davis 1986a, 5:29-30). Davis soon realized that he had arrived at a very important moment in Hawai`i labor history. The huge International Longshoreman's Workers Union (ILWU) strike was imminent, pitting labor against the Big Five. For Davis, this was the kind of political ferment and struggle between the powerful and powerless that he thrived upon...."

WHAT BARACK OBAMA LEARNED

It's a very long trail that runs from DuBois, Robeson, Malcolm X, Frank Marshall Davis to Chicago and into the White House.