by Paul Kengor
Personal attacks on Harry Bridges and other so-called innocents were merely a “divisive Big Business weapon of Red-baiting” aimed at “working people.” Davis stoically assured his readers, “So long as I believe that my cause is just, I shall not be halted by name-calling”—presumably referring to accusations that Davis, too, was a Communist. People like Davis and those ILWU members “will be labeled Marxists,” he lamented, simply because “they want higher pay and better working conditions.”
This was a recurring theme in Davis's columns: supposedly unmerited allegations of being a Communist. On July 7, 1949, he wrote: “I don't know about you, but I personally am tired of the wolf cry of Communism raised by those in power to justify their refusal to grant equality, whether to a territory, a minority group, or an individual. And I am not alone in this stand. Increasing numbers of Americans are becoming angered when they are thrown the same old smelly Red herring each time they ask for a helping of democracy.”
But with this plea for fairness, Davis was covering for truly suspicious individuals.
For instance, he went directly to the case of the Reverend Thomas S. Harten, whom he called “for many years one of the most noted Negro pastors.” He quoted the pastor: “I say to America that before she preaches to Russia or to any other nation, she must remove the mote from her own eye, and clean up the dirt in her own backyard.”
Davis did not mention the fact that Reverend Harten was a member of the board and general assembly of the radical, Communist-infiltrated National Council of Churches. Nor did he note that the reverend was an active supporter of the candidacy of Benjamin Davis Jr., the longtime Communist who campaigned for New York congressman-at-large in 1942, and who was a regular in the Daily Worker.30 Harten peered at the eye of the USSR from his pulpit and saw no mote there at all.
Davis said that Reverend Harten and his ilk “feel their cause is just and are ready to face crucifixion, if need be, for what they believe in. They have no fear of the Pontius Pilates of 1949.” Yes, in Frank Marshall Davis's world, the Pontius Pilates were the anti-Communists, not the Communists conducting show trials of priests and bishops and sentencing them to execution or prison camps. Here he was making a bid for the support of the biggest suckers of them all: the Religious Left.
Sometimes Davis lashed out at “Red-baiters” for their “paranoia” over people he surely knew were Communists, whereas other times he did so when citing a liberal (often a duped liberal) who was defending the rights of Communists or, better, blasting anti-Communists.
Consider his reference to Dr. Robert Hutchins, chancellor of the University of Chicago, in his August 4, 1949, column. He hailed the renowned educator for “fearlessly” maintaining his “independence of thought” in an era “of rising reaction, of liberals being scared into silence by un-American committees and the weapon of Red-baiting.” (There was the “un-American committee” again, a label Davis had also used at the Chicago Star.)31 In a recent commencement address, Hutchins had excoriated the “dragnet philosophy of the witch-hunters,” which he said ran contrary to the American way of life: “We do not throw people into jail because they are alleged to differ with the official dogma.”32
Davis reveled in Hutchins's message to the graduating seniors. He seemed especially pleased that Hutchins had quoted Karl Marx. Davis recorded:
[Hutchins stated:] “For example, the Communist Manifesto demands free education for all. Are we therefore, to recant and renounce the American doctrine of free education for all?” Speaking of the cold war, Dr. Hutchins said: “It has never been shown that there are so many spies and traitors in this country, or that the external danger is so great and imminent that we have to divert the entire attention of our people into one great repressive preoccupation, into one great counter-revolution in which the freedoms of our citizens must be thrown overboard as too burdensome for the floundering ship of state to carry.”
What Dr. Hutchins apparently did not know, but Davis likely did, as did every member of CPUSA, is that nearly every American spy successfully recruited by the KGB came directly out of the American Communist Party.
Davis was thrilled that Hutchins had said what he said, with credibility that the columnist and his comrades did not possess.33 This “significant speech,” said Davis, was a sharp warning against “growing fascism here in America.” And “if fascism and World War III are to be averted,” he added, publications like the Honolulu Record, which had the courage to print the dire warnings of men such as Dr. Hutchins, “will play a leading role in their defeat.”
Harry Truman's “Program for World War III”
Throughout August 1949, Davis insisted that President Truman was itching to launch World War III, targeting the innocent lambs running the Soviet Union and its affiliated “new democracies” in Eastern Europe.34
In his August 4 piece, he said that Truman was part of an American propaganda machine “aimed to deceive the American people into supporting a new world war, if need be, to bail Big Business out of a depression.” This charge bore an uncanny resemblance to the Stalinist line. In the February 1946 Bolshoi Theatre speech, Stalin had claimed that capitalist countries had started World War II to advance big business. Now, with the advent of the Cold War, Communists worldwide had begun arguing that the capitalist countries were pining to repeat the crime—precisely the charge that Davis leveled here.
Two weeks later, on August 18, Davis stepped up the attack on “the double-talking Truman administration with its program for World War III.” He said that the “the Truman doctrine in Greece and Turkey and then the Marshall Plan” were “based upon the continuation of colonial slavery by the ruling classes of Western Europe.” He also blasted non-Communist labor unions, which he contrasted with the freedom-loving folks at ILWU in Hawaii, for backing this neocolonialism: “Instead of leading the fight for peace and security”—that is, by siding with Stalin—“and opposing profit-grabbing and world domination by the billion-dollar corporations, the top leadership of organized labor still swoons to the siren songs of the Truman gang.”
As Moscow stepped up its attack on the Marshall Plan, so did Davis. In his next column, on August 25, he zinged the Truman administration's alleged pro-war propaganda effort: “We Americans have no yearning for war despite the propaganda barrage intended to whip up hysteria. Leading scientists and military experts have warned that nobody can win the next global conflict, despite the pipe dreams of our Big Business and Big Brass.”
Echoing a call that the American Peace Mobilization's closet Communists had used in opposing U.S. involvement in World War II—and that would resonate with the political Left for generations to come—Davis protested that he would not die for oil: “I have no desire to give my life to maintain high profits for Standard Oil.… I shall not help England and France keep millions of my colored brothers in Africa and Asia in colonial slavery. Yet that is what our dividend diplomats ask of you and me when they demand our support of the bi-partisan Marshall plan, Atlantic pact and a shooting war, if necessary, to bail us out of depression.”
Once again Davis brought China into the picture, urging imperialist America to dump Chiang's Chinese nationalists. Of course, such would result in a Communist takeover of China, which, at the time of this article, was perilously close to becoming a reality. Davis urged that the Truman administration and Congress divert money from Chiang to more worthwhile endeavors, like inner-city poverty: “Billions poured down the rat-hole in China to aid the corrupt Nationalist regime of Chiang Kai-shek could have completely eliminated the slums in a number of major American cities, not only providing decent housing but employment in the construction of this housing.”
Davis went a step further, suggesting that America not only abandon Chiang but also trade with a “Liberated China”—meaning Mao's China—with Russia, and with the “democracies” of the Soviet empire. To ensure trade with Eastern Europe, he advised, “We must reject all war alliances such as the Atlantic pact” and “fake ‘recovery programs�
� such as the Marshall plan.” So Davis wanted U.S. aid (in the form of trade) to Stalin's Russia, to Mao's China, and to the Soviet Communist bloc, but opposed U.S. aid to the non-Communist democracies of Western Europe.
Truman's “Aggression” Against Stalin
On September 1, 1949, Davis ratcheted up the vitriol. Going beyond even earlier claims of Truman warmongering, he suggested that the United States wanted to take over Russia: “It has also been asked how the U.S. expects to rule Russia when the federal government can't rule Mississippi.”
The same column illustrated another tactic common among Communists, one that often duped liberals beautifully: Davis took the case of certain black Communists, who had been rightly suspected of Communist activities and foreign loyalties, and characterized their investigation as racially motivated. He pointed to a federal case against twelve known CPUSA leaders. Two of the twelve were black—just enough for Davis to convert the case into a racist junta. He borrowed language from an ad defending the two in an influential left-wing African- American weekly in Los Angeles, the California Eagle. The ad, here quoted by Davis, declared:
“While allowing those guilty of violent acts to go free, our government is now trying 12 national leaders of the Communist party. Among them are two of our brothers.
“They are Honorable Benjamin J. Davis, Communist member of the city council of New York, and Henry Winston [of the Young Communist League], youthful veteran of World War II, who holds one of the three leading posts in the Communist party nationally.… The Communist party has a long record of vigorous advocacy and struggle for the democratic rights of Negro citizens. We feel that this fact is not unrelated to the current persecution of its leaders.…
“Anyone who dares to think for himself and to say what he thinks is in danger of being fired from his job, branded as a Communist subversive, and thrown in jail.
“Freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights are now, once more, in serious danger. There is no hope for Negro freedom if the liberties of our country are now snuffed out behind anti-Communist hysteria.
“If the freedom of Davis and Winston can be taken away today, the gains we have made in our battle for full equality will be taken away tomorrow. We therefore call upon you to stop this unconstitutional prosecution of Benjamin Davis, Henry Winston and their associates because of their political beliefs.”
Note that neither Davis nor the California Eagle disputed that these black Americans were Communist Party leaders. They simply created a red herring, alleging that the Communist Party functionaries were enduring “persecution” only because they were black.
The cries of racism worked nicely with many non-Communist liberals.
Truman's “Fascism, American Style”
Davis picked up the race argument with vigor in his September 15 column, where he announced that anti-Communism was really veiled racism—and fascism: “Several weeks ago I pointed out that it was considered subversive in some quarters to fight against white supremacy, and that campaigning for peace was labeled ‘un-American.’ The advocates of peace and equality are termed ‘Communists’ and every attempt is made to silence them.”
“This,” declared Davis, “is fascism, American style.”
Davis cited an incident from the summer in Peekskill, New York, which the Left immediately turned into a symbol of postwar repression by a “hysterically” anti-Communist culture.35 Paul Robeson was scheduled to sing for the benefit of the Harlem chapter of the Communist front group the Civil Rights Congress. During a recent trip to Paris, Robeson had claimed that black Americans would be unwilling to fight in a war against the USSR. The party line ever since, which many liberals have dutifully echoed, was that Robeson (as Davis himself put it) was “taken out of context.”36 He was not. As Robeson carefully reiterated in a speech at a “Welcome Home Rally” in New York on June 19, 1949, “I said it was unthinkable that the Negro people of America or elsewhere in the world could be drawn into war with the Soviet Union. I repeat it with hundredfold emphasis: they will not.”37 In the wake of such inflammatory comments, Robeson's Peekskill appearance was protested by angry local townspeople, or what Davis characterized as “a group of young white storm troopers … operating under Ku Klux Klan direction.” Davis portrayed the townspeople as irate not because of a Robeson statement that many regarded as unpatriotic or even traitorous, but because they were driven by racist rage against a black man. Davis reported that “a lynching spirit was aroused” against Robeson, “but not a single policeman or state trooper was on hand to maintain law and order.”
And who was to blame for this? The Democrats.
Davis fired at Harry Truman, and especially his former attorney general, Tom Clark, for having dared to label the Civil Rights Congress a subversive organization. “This was interpreted as government sanction for violence,” argued Davis. He quoted Robeson, who likewise blamed Truman: “It's clear now who uses force and violence,” said the singer. “Let it be equally clear who advocates its use. The money crowd pulls the strings, right up to the White House. President Truman talks a good game of civil rights, but that's just talk. He gives the lynchers the green light. More than 100 Negroes have been lynched since he fell into FDR's shoes. For doing nothing about that, his attorney general was promoted to the supreme court.”
Davis agreed with Robeson, charging that this “fascism” had “the silent backing of President Truman, Democrat, whose loyalty order, witch-hunts and promotion of Tom Clark to the supreme court indicate his real attitude on civil rights.”
To top off the point, Davis, as he and the Communist movement so often did, held up the USSR as an enlightened, multicultural polar opposite of the intolerant United States. In the Soviet Union, he averred, “racism is a serious crime,” and “discrimination against colored peoples … has ended.” He again borrowed from his friend Robeson: “In Paul's own words, what he admires most about the Soviet Union is the abolition, by strict law, of racism and jim crow, the doctrine of equality regardless of color or race, and human dignity for all.”38
One would think that Davis would show some level of appreciation to President Truman for his major efforts on behalf of civil rights and desegregation, including his call for federal antilynching legislation and his 1948 executive order integrating the armed forces.39 Davis could not do that, however. Instead, writing in other columns, he dismissed Truman's “token support” on civil rights, saying the president (at best) “talked a good civil rights program.”40
He couldn't give the president credit for one overriding reason: Harry Truman sat opposed to Joe Stalin, meaning that Truman had to be the enemy.
Once more we see Frank Marshall Davis parroting a favorite Soviet line. The USSR and the international Communist movement employed race on a grand scale to denigrate America. The Kremlin had a propaganda weapon to hold over the head of Uncle Sam—race, slavery, America's historical bigotry toward blacks—and it was not about to let that one go. For the Soviet Union, with an extremely small black population and without America's shameful history of enslaving Africans, the race issue was a convenient tool with which to bludgeon Uncle Sam.
Never mind that Soviet Russia had brutally discriminated against its minorities, and even targeted entire groups for forcible annihilation. The race argument enabled the Communists to claim the moral high ground.
The Devil and Harry Truman
In his next two columns, Davis made heavy use of the Christian Left. Some of these Christians were duped liberals, whereas others were closet Communists, predators encircling unsuspecting dupes.
To judge from the language in his columns, Davis was no fan of pastors, usually expressing a Leninist view of them as hucksters looking to take money from the poor, superstitious masses, who clung to their God like a drug, an “opiate.”41 Still, he was more than happy to accept the backing of gullible pastors for any cause close to the heart of CPUSA and Moscow.
To that end, the names in Davis's column of September 22, 1949, “Cold War in Church,�
� read like a Who's Who of radical preachers. He cited the Reverend Dr. John Howard Melish, Walter Russell Bowie, Joseph F. Fletcher, and Bishop William Scarlett. These four were among the most prominent, longest entries in the investigative compilations put together by J. B. Matthews, the famed former-Communist-turned-government-investigator who served as director of research for the House Committee on Un-American Activities.42 Among the more than 1,400 radical Protestant rectors on Matthews's list, none was as far to the left, and few took up as many pages, as Melish.43
Davis neglected to share such pertinent background information with his readers. His goal, after all, was to portray the pastors as mainstream. He tapped Melish for the opening to his September 22 column: “Remember the name of the Rev. Dr. John Howard Melish, rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity, Episcopalian, in Brooklyn. If civilization survives the threat of World War III, future generations will remember Dr. Melish as one of the great martyrs of 1949 in the fight against the flood-tide of American fascism.” The good Dr. Melish, wrote Davis, was “a victim, on the religious front, of a Truman administration that talks like an angel and acts like the devil.”