Posted on 06/24/2009 10:54:57 PM PDT by neverdem
Had Americans been able to stop obsessing over the color of Barack Obama's skin and instead paid more attention to his cultural identity, maybe he would not be in the White House today. The key to understanding him lies with his identification with his father, and his adoption of a cultural and political mindset rooted in postcolonial Africa.
ping
Maya Angelou’s brother Bailey (Johnson?) lived in Hawaii in the early 1960s, and she visited him there for 6 months in 1965 after the assassination of Malcolm X.
Pages 69-70:
He's working on the farm thing--with Waxman and Schumer helping.
Coincidentally she was studying Russian about the same time as Lee Oswald.
thank you for that link, on page 61 of the book, in the chapter entitled ‘Finding A Home In Africa’ Maya Angelou makes it clear it was the stepson of Du Bois, David, who helped her obtain work and accommodation in Cairo.
http://www.lycos.com/info/maya-angelou—wake-forest-university.html
Angelou’s civil activism extends beyond her writings and performances. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. appointed her northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1959. She served as an ambassador for UNICEF International in 1996. She is a member of several service committees including the W.E.B. Du Bois Foundation in Massachusetts. In 1981, she was appointed to a lifetime position as the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University.
I keep seeing mentions of Maya Angelou’s nomination as Best Supporting Actress in “Roots” in 1977, but that’s not so. There is no record of a nomination for her in any category. She had a bit part backing up Cecily Tyson.
Following Maya is like trying to follow Stanley Ann Dunham. Each bio I read has contradicting information and dates. All I have been able to establish is she moved to Egypt with her ‘freedom fighter’ husband - her sponsor in Egypt was the stepson of DuBois; her marriage broke up, she moved to Ghana where she held a number of positions under Nkrumha, while the elder Du Bois was living in Ghana, before he died, in 1963. In 1964 Maya met Malcolm X in Ghana where she arranged to come back to the US to work for him. She left her son in Ghana, spent some time in Hawaii with her brother - before or after Malcolm X was assassinated. Whilst in Hawaii she sang in nightclubs.
There are many bio’s of Maya. Several totally ignore the Ghana period, several have her returning in 1965 instead of 1964.
This profile has her moving to Egypt in 1961:
http://afroamhistory.about.com/od/mayaangelou/p/bio_angelou_m.htm
excerpt:
In 1961, Angelou moved to Egypt after marrying Vusumzi Make, a South African dissident. After divorcing in 1963, she moved to Ghana where she worked as a teacher at the music and drama school at the University of Ghana. She returned to the United States in 1966, ...
But the year of return to the US is clearly WRONG. In a number of interviews she clearly states she returned to the US BEFORE the MX assassination, that took place on February 21, 1965.
Curious fact: Maya and Vusumzi Make were not formally married. Another fantasy divorce?
Fred: I am at this point in your remarkable research. Your work is developing into bookworthy material; Did you notice in the letter his spelling of the father “Barak.” I don’t know if it is relevant to father or son (other than for variations on legal docs) but it is worth a mention for others pursuing that angle.
“To find an answer to that question [or any question about BHO], one must ignore all the articles published in the press, everything written does nothing but follow the narrative of Dreams From My Father. It is extremely difficult however, not to be influenced by that narrative, which has found it’s way almost into the subconscious, by being endlessly repeated, with glaring anomalies...”
Just said something similar in a post -— can’t be emphasized enough.
And:
“The more one reads of that period in history, and the lives of the people involved, the more one finds one is reading about Ghana.”
Thanks to your research, I see that now. Wow. Who knew. fascinating.
Facinating article..definitely pinging this for later.
“Coincidentally she was studying Russian about the same time as Lee Oswald.”
Yes, you are correct, some more detail:
“...Other students enrolled in the Language course for a variety of reasons, including their support of the Soviet Union. While just a matter of coincidence, it was at about this time that a young man, who had previously studies Russian in just such a course while serving in the US Marines, who later served at a “listening post” in Japan where he intercepted Soviet Military transmissions and intrepreted them for the US Government, was returning from the Soviet Union where he had gone to live after renouncing his American citizenship. That young man would become famous in a few short years, 1963 Dallas, Texas, to be exact. Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John F Kennedy in Dallas in November 1963.
Obama’s acquaintences in Hawaii rationalize his study of Russian in this manner, “Barack Obama Senior’s interest in the class seemed to make far more sense. As a future member of the Kenyan government’s technocratic elite, the ability to speak both English and Russian, the languages of the two countries vying for influence and control over his native land would certainly give him a leg up in the competition among returning scholars for plum jobs back home.” http://www.christianfaithandreason.com/obama4.html
This rationale would prove to only partially correct. English was a common language in Kenya but Russian would serve Obama’s intended course of political activity to a higher degree. Obama was a Pro-Soviet Marxist.
Fred: A blogger mentioned that in “Dreams,” OBH said that Ann’s parents came to Hawaii in 1959 and that Ann and Obama Sr married in 1960. I checked out the digital copy I have & quote below. (There is no other date references to these three events in the book) -— Everywhere else in media, dates for Ann/parents arrival is 1960 & marriage in 1961:
pg 18 (3rd parag):
But Gramps would always swear that one of the astronauts waved just at me and that I waved back. It was part of the story he told himself. With his black son-in-law and his brown grandson, Gramps had entered the space age.
And what better port for setting off on this new adventure than Hawaii, the Union’s newest member? Even now, with
the state’s population quadrupled, with Waikiki jammed wall to wall with fast-food emporiums and pornographic video
stores and subdivisions marching relentlessly into every fold of green hill, I can retrace the first steps I took as a child
and be stunned by the beauty of the islands. The trembling blue plane of the Pacific. The moss-covered cliffs and the
cool rush of Manoa Falls, with its ginger blossoms and high canopies filled with the sound of invisible birds. The North
Shore’s thunderous waves, crumbling as if in a slow-motion reel. The shadows off Pali’s peaks; the sultry, scented air.
Hawaii! To my family, newly arrived in 1959, it must have seemed as if the earth itself, weary of stampeding armies
and bitter civilization, had forced up this chain of emerald rock where pioneers from across the globe could populate
the land with children bronzed by the sun. The ugly conquest of the native Hawaiians through aborted treaties and
crippling disease brought by the missionaries; the carving up of rich volcanic soil by American companies for
sugarcane and pineapple plantations; the indenturing system that kept Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino immigrants
stooped sunup to sunset in these same fields; the internment of Japanese-Americans during the war-all this was recent
history. And yet, by the time my family arrived, it had somehow vanished from collective memory, like morning mist
that the sun burned away. There were too many races, with power among them too diffuse, to impose the mainland’s
rigid caste system; and so few blacks that the most ardent segregationist could enjoy a vacation secure in the
knowledge that race mixing in Hawaii had little to do with the established order back home.
Thus the legend was made of Hawaii as the one true melting pot, an experiment in racial harmony. My grandparents-
especially Gramps, who came into contact with a range of people through his furniture business-threw themselves into
the cause of mutual understanding.
He had already mentioned on pg 11 that Father arrived in Hawaii in 1959
Pg 12: “In 1960, the year that my parents were married, miscegenation still described a felony in over half the states in the Union.”
I can only guess how that came about...the story has it that Stanley Ann graduated from Mercer Island in the summer of 1960...therefor the parent's arrival in Hawaii has been calculated from that; some people may have found it difficult to understand how Madelyn and Stanley Armour Dunham would leave their daughter alone on Mercer Island while they went to Hawaii...
As for the 'married in 1960' date that sounds like an attempt to make the child legitimate. Born in August 1961, must have been conceived in November 1960...
Even the obots that write these stories stumble over the difficulties the chronology of 'Dreams' presents...then he himself confounds the issue by telling how his 'father' was part of the Kennedy airlift - which didn't commence until 1960.
...the carving up of rich volcanic soil by American companies for sugarcane and pineapple plantations; the indenturing system that kept Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino immigrants stooped sunup to sunset in these same fields; the internment of Japanese-Americans during the war-all this was recent history. And yet, by the time my family arrived, it had somehow vanished from collective memory, like morning mist that the sun burned away. There were too many races, with power among them too diffuse, to impose the mainland’s rigid caste system...
Conspiracy To Defraud The System.SOURCE
EXCERPT:
...The first task in need of explanation is why would Hawaii aid a known illegal of British birth in illegally obtaining a fake birth certificate? The answer is in 1961 the American public had not yet been herded by Teddy Kennedy and socialists into providing welfare benefits to illegals. Hawaii had a large population of illegals who were slave labor, but were a huge burden to the system in poverty and crime.
The Hawaiian answer, as it was a Democratic state and still is was to start registering all those foreign kids by the thousands. The purpose being to tap into all those federal hundreds of millions then which would profit the state. See all of those poverty programs flowed funds into the pockets of the retailers as the golden goose pipeline. If one makes citizens out of illegals, then Hawaii converts a debt into their asset in obtaining more funds and growing the socialist system which empowers Democratic liberals.
The fact is there are hundreds of thousands of Barack Obama’s registered in Hawaii. Do you think even a Republican governor sitting on this explosive mess wants any of this coming out? An entire state sold out the United States for filthy lucre, because they were importing Asian slave labor. That does not make a great headline, nor, did they probably ever expect a money train welfare illegal would somehow get hisself installed as President which would expose the entire Hawaiian fraud, and you know very well that all of those records would have to be gone through and verified so an Obama repeat would not occur, in all 50 states...
ditto you all you say, but it does explain your 1959 photo, unless Stanley came ahead to Hawaii & mom and Ann stayed behind for a year. Certain questions you ask linger in my memory & that photo was one of them.
Going to keep that 1959 date in mind. As for the “1960” marriage, that was my first thought, but I am also going to keep that date in mind because one thing I notice about our BHO is that he rarely speaks, acts, disguises or reveals from an emotional base; his motives are almost always political. In fact he seems to lack emotional bonds to anyone, anyone. Every person in his life becomes fodder to put into his “narrative” as he sees fit.
IMO two things can do that to one, and he's got them both. Narcissism and islam.
Given all the knowledge you have accumulated, which time period or connections do you think most fruitful for exploration? Concerned that time is short and “birther” story needs to be in hands of skilled lawyers with deep pockets who have clients with standing. Even then, we are talking about years in court; meanwhile...
From the National Guardian
March 16, 1953
On Stalin
By W.E.B. DuBois
Joseph Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature. He was simple, calm and courageous. He seldom lost his poise; pondered his problems slowly, made his decisions clearly and firmly; never yielded to ostentation nor coyly refrained from holding his rightful place with dignity. He was the son of a serf but stood calmly before the great without hesitation or nerves. But also - and this was the highest proof of his greatness - he knew the common man, felt his problems, followed his fate.
Stalin was not a man of conventional learning; he was much more than that: he was a man who thought deeply, read understandingly and listened to wisdom, no matter whence it came. He was attacked and slandered as few men of power have been; yet he seldom lost his courtesy and balance; nor did he let attack drive him from his convictions nor induce him to surrender positions which he knew were correct. As one of the despised minorities of man, he first set Russia on the road to conquer race prejudice and make one nation out of its 140 groups without destroying their individuality.
His judgment of men was profound. He early saw through the flamboyance and exhibitionism of Trotsky, who fooled the world, and especially America. The whole ill-bred and insulting attitude of Liberals in the U.S. today began with our naive acceptance of Trotsky’s magnificent lying propaganda, which he carried around the world. Against it, Stalin stood like a rock and moved neither right nor left, as he continued to advance toward a real socialism instead of the sham Trotsky offered.
Three great decisions faced Stalin in power and he met them magnificently: first, the problem of the peasants, then the West European attack, and last the Second World War. The poor Russian peasant was the lowest victim of tsarism, capitalism and the Orthodox Church. He surrendered the Little White Father easily; he turned less readily but perceptibly from his ikons; but his kulaks clung tenaciously to capitalism and were near wrecking the revolution when Stalin risked a second revolution and drove out the rural bloodsuckers.
Then came intervention, the continuing threat of attack by all nations, halted by the Depression, only to be re-opened by Hitlerism. It was Stalin who steered the Soviet Union between Scylla and Charybdis: Western Europe and the U.S. were willing to betray her to fascism, and then had to beg her aid in the Second World War. A lesser man than Stalin would have demanded vengeance for Munich, but he had the wisdom to ask only justice for his fatherland. This Roosevelt granted but Churchill held back. The British Empire proposed first to save itself in Africa and southern Europe, while Hitler smashed the Soviets.
The Second Front dawdled, but Stalin pressed unfalteringly ahead. He risked the utter ruin of socialism in order to smash the dictatorship of Hitler and Mussolini. After Stalingrad the Western World did not know whether to weep or applaud. The cost of victory to the Soviet Union was frightful. To this day the outside world has no dream of the hurt, the loss and the sacrifices. For his calm, stern leadership here, if nowhere else, arises the deep worship of Stalin by the people of all the Russias.
Then came the problem of Peace. Hard as this was to Europe and America, it was far harder to Stalin and the Soviets. The conventional rulers of the world hated and feared them and would have been only too willing to see the utter failure of this attempt at socialism. At the same time the fear of Japan and Asia was also real. Diplomacy therefore took hold and Stalin was picked as the victim. He was called in conference with British imperialism represented by its trained and well-fed aristocracy; and with the vast wealth and potential power of America represented by its most liberal leader in half a century.
Here Stalin showed his real greatness. He neither cringed nor strutted. He never presumed, he never surrendered. He gained the friendship of Roosevelt and the respect of Churchill. He asked neither adulation nor vengeance. He was reasonable and conciliatory. But on what he deemed essential, he was inflexible. He was willing to resurrect the League of Nations, which had insulted the Soviets. He was willing to fight Japan, even though Japan was then no menace to the Soviet Union, and might be death to the British Empire and to American trade. But on two points Stalin was adamant: Clemenceau’s “Cordon Sanitaire” must be returned to the Soviets, whence it had been stolen as a threat. The Balkans were not to be left helpless before Western exploitation for the benefit of land monopoly. The workers and peasants there must have their say.
Such was the man who lies dead, still the butt of noisy jackals and of the ill-bred men of some parts of the distempered West. In life he suffered under continuous and studied insult; he was forced to make bitter decisions on his own lone responsibility. His reward comes as the common man stands in solemn acclaim.
http://www.mltranslations.org/Miscellaneous/DuBoisJVS.htm
The next time I read something that tries to tell me what a great man WEB Du Bois was, I will remember the following letter. And I will remember his worshipful followers, Maya Angelou, Oprah Winfrey, Luois Gates, Paul Robeson, Harry Belafonte, Malcolm X...to name a few.
http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/cal/RMPDuBois.txt
excerpt:
The Russian Maoist Party extends its warm fraternal
greetings to the MIM and RAIL comrades at Santa Barbara and wants to congratulate you this February 23, 2001, on two dates, one connected with North America and the other with Russia, but both extremely important to all true communists worldwide.
The first is, of course, the anniversary of W.E.B. Du Bois
- one of the most prominent Black leaders in u.$. history,
a political thinker of no small caliber, educator, Pan-
Africanist, a leading figure in the Communist Party-USA at
the time it was still on the proletarian road and, last but not least, a prolific and gifted writer. In many aspects of his political thought, he was the precursor of the current line of MIM (and RAIL) on the so-called “proletariat” in the imperialist countries - a line we of the RMP fully share and believe to be the only truly revolutionary one in contemporary “leftist” politics. That is why we were among the first to become signatories of MIM’s Du Bois anniversary statement, a text seeking to reorganize the international Communist movement along genuinely scientific Marxist lines.
Du Bois’ name and work were extremely popular in the Soviet Union, especially in the Stalin times, and are still fondly remembered by Communists in the ex-USSR. Many of his works, especially his brilliant autobiography, were extensively published here, both in the original and in Russian translation, and formed an essential part of the curriculum of college and university courses in American literature.
If one were asked about three figures most readily
identifiable in the mind of Communists and anti-
imperialists here with the North American revolutionary
tradition, one would name John Reed, Albert Rhys Williams
and, of course, W.E.B. Du Bois...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.