HungryBlues

Seeing Red

[In 1919,] Blacks were damned as Wobblies, socialists, Bolsheviks, or anarchists simply for agreeing with ideas that went beyond political orthodoxy. Even black nationalist (and anticommunist) Marcus Garvey received the communist label because he rejected the subordinate "place" of African Americans. Some blacks, like Chandler Owen and A. Philip Randolph, editors of the socialist Messenger, who coined the term "New Crowd Negroes" to describe the generation of militants, were genuine supporters of social and economic revolution but rejected communist affiliation. Others, like members of the African Blood Brotherhood, embraced the Communist Party. But the federal government and wider public were disinclined to distinguish degrees of adherence or advocacy. Any African American who dissented from Democratic or Republican politics and the socio-economic system of American capitalism was likely to be excommunicated as a "Bolshevist.

(Theodore Kornweibel, Jr., Seeing red: federal campaigns against Black militancy, 1919-1925, p. 20.)

The parallels between the red scares of old and the war on terror of today have long been obvious. Worth noting now is that the link between communism and terrorism in the right wing lexicon has become quite explicit. Over the summer, I linked to this description of a talk at the Heritage Foundation, by John J. Tierney, Jr., entitled, "The Politics of Peace: What's Behind the Anti-War Movement?":

To describe current anti-war protest as a reaction to the invasion of Iraq or an anti-Bush phenomenon is to miss the point. A closer look at the protestors and their associations reveals a pedigree going back at least to the Vietnam era and beyond to the "progressive" and protest politics of earlier decades. The leaders of the "anti-war" movement today are leftists in ideology. Almost all oppose capitalism and believe in socialism; many are Communists. At root, they are anti-American rather than anti-war. Anti-war groups comprise an authentic political movement. They have distinctive forms of organization, outlets for propaganda, favored strategies and tactics, and access to information technology that increasingly allows their communications to be instantaneous and global. In short, they are a political force.

The phrase "seeing red" is from none other than former Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer of the the infamous Palmer Raids.

When Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, in late 1919, submitted to the Senate a lengthy report on the Investigation Activities of the Department of Justice, he warned that America stood at Armageddon: Bolshevists, anarchists, and seditionists were besieging the nation. As part of their diabolical plans, "practically all of the radical radical organizations in this country have looked upon the Negroes as particularly fertile ground for the spreading of their doctrines. These radical organizations have endeavored to enlist the Negroes on their side, and in many respects have been successful." As a consequence, "the Negro is seeing red." (Kornweibel, xiv)

I'm not sure everyone knows that it was Palmer who recruited J. Edgar Hoover to the Bureau of Investigation (what the FBI was first called) in 1919. Hoover was appointed to the anti-radical General Intelligence Division, where he began his legacy by orchestrating the 1919 Palmer Raids, in which 10,000 suspected communists and anarchists were arrested.

Why did the FBI and its domestic intelligence partners remain so consistently hostile to African American aspirations and advocates up through the 1960s? Those who have looked no earlier than the civil rights era have missed an essential point. It was during World War I and the postwar Red Scare that their response to Black Militancy for the next fifty years took shape. In 1917 and 1918 the federal government conducted wholesale investigations of "subversives" and domestic "enemies," including many black suspects.

It was in this earlier period that coordinated domestic spying first came into play, with special emphasis on Black dissent.

The Justice, State, Navy, War, and Post Office departments coordinated these efforts to ensure a thorough crackdown on dissent and suspected treason, subversion, and sedition. Blacks were stereotyped as easily duped by enemy agents. Black disloyalty was assumed to be widespread. No sooner did the war end than fears of German intrigue were transformed into an even greater specter: Bolshevism would sweep across the world and engulf even America. Once again blacks were believed to be especially receptive to the diabolical manipulation of communists, socialists, or other radicals.

J. Edgar Hoover's first major assignment within the Bureau of Investigation was to establish and systematize its anti-radical efforts. Immersing himself in the radicals' own literature, he embraced its apocalyptic visions and became convinced that America was imperiled not only by white Bolsheviks and anarchists, but by black militancy as well. In his mind there was little difference between civil rights activism, Pan-Africanism, and promotion of communism or socialism; all threatened to unhinge the racial status quo and unleash internal dissension that would leave the nation vulnerable to attack from within or without.... By 1920 these assumptions had become fixed in the minds of those responsible for national security. (Kornweibel, 178-79)

For more on the parallels between the War on Terror and Cold War anti-communism, with specific connection to the Civil Rights Movement, see "MLK, Communist Training Schools, Cindy Sheehan, and Rosa Parks," parts I and II.

Torture Begins At Home (II)

This article should clarify further why to worry about the Patriot Act and other post-9/11 policies and practices. As I will elaborate soon, with another source, the FBI has always had as one of its root purposes the surveillance and suppression of Black radicalism.

Former Black Panthers considered terrorists under Patriot Act
Afro America News
Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Group wants torture used against American citizens to cease

Undaunted by what they call "unconstitutional" methods used under the guise of the Patriot Act, three former Black Panthers are touring the country to bring awareness to their recent interrogation by anti-terrorist law enforcement.

Former Black Panthers members John Bowman, Hank Jones and Ray Boudreaux held a forum, Dec. 8, at the Washington, D.C. office of Trans-Africa. They have in common the suffering they endured in 1971 under interrogation concerning a police shooting in San Francisco.

They were indicted by a grand jury, but the court rendered a decision stating the methods used to obtain information were unlawful and the Panthers members were freed from jail.

Thirty-four years later Bowman, Jones and Boudreaux along with many Black Panthers members once again faced their interrogators from the '70s who are now serving as agents with the Anti-Terrorist Task Force, a special division formed under the Homeland Security agency to apprehend suspected terrorists.

"I was quite surprised when I opened the door to see the same two detectives involved in beating me [34 years earlier] standing there. It brought back memories that I will never forget," said Bowman, the former Panther organizer. "This is very difficult for me to discuss in public."

According to Bowman, in 1973 he was stripped naked and beaten with blunt objects, wrapped with blankets soaked in boiling hot water, shocked with electric probes in his "anus and other private parts," punched, kicked and slammed into walls by investigators. The process lasted until investigators got the murder confessions they wanted....

The detectives, Frank McCoy and Edward Erdelatz, retired members of the San Francisco Police Department, now special agents with the Federal Prosecutor's Office, Anti-Terrorist Task Force have repeatedly interrupted the lives of many former Panthers to gain notoriety with the Bush administration by targeting individuals labeled as "terrorists" who were never convicted of wrongdoing.

"Once upon a time, they called me a terrorist, too," explained Boudreaux. "To expedite something in the system, they put a 'terror' tag on it and it gets done. Terror means money. These people [government] have a budget and they are working it."...

Trans Africa President Bill Fletcher expressed the forum's concerned about the erosion of civil rights. "It is ironic that instead of having a press conference in which apologies are being offered to the individuals who were tortured and the many other victims of COINTELPRO, instead we are to call attention to the prosecution of people who were freedom fighters and continue to be."...

"We condemn the persecution transpiring against these individuals. We wish to bring it to light when the word "terrorism" is in the air," said Ron Daniels, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. ... Daniels adds that "Before former Attorney General Ashcroft left, he issued a broad ranging edict that all the cases that involved any incident where a police officer had been killed and the case had been closed be re-opened...And if these men and women can be indicted or harassed, it sends a chilling effect," said, Daniels.

Read the rest for more background and to learn more about the event, which was held to promote awareness of these dimensions of COINTELPRO the Patriot Act.

(Part I is here.)

UPDATE: The SF Bay View has an article about the grand jury investigation of Ray Boudreaux, Richard Brown, Hank Jones, and Harold Taylor and an article by John Bowman, "How the US destroyed the Black Panther Party and continues to persecute its veterans."

Watch Night Services

By Marsha Joyner

December 2005

Those of us who grew up in America’s traditional Black communities know of Watch Night Services, the gathering of the faithful in church on New Year's Eve. So as I ventured into the world it came as a surprise to me that other than the Catholic Church, which celebrates the eve of the feast of the Circumcision late on the evening of December 31, primarily white protestant churches generally do not have a church service for a secular holiday.

The service is an opportunity to tell the story of one of the most important milestones in the Blacks’ American history. The Watch Night Services that we celebrate in Black communities today can be traced back to gatherings on December 31, 1862, also known as Freedom's Eve. On that night, Blacks came together in churches and private homes, anxiously awaiting news that the Emancipation Proclamation actually had become law. Then, at the stroke of midnight, it was January 1, 1863, and all slaves in the Confederate States were declared legally free. Blacks have gathered in churches annually on New Year's Eve ever since, praising God for bringing us through another year.


Long before President Abraham Lincoln had ever dreamed of issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, an edict of freedom, Blacks had been hoping and praying for such a measure.

Lincoln had originally conceived of the proclamation as a measure for the self-preservation, rather than for the regeneration, of America. But the proclamation, almost in spite of its creator, changed the whole tone and character of the Civil War. Blacks sensed this more quickly than did Lincoln.

Despite the proclamation’s limitation African-Americans hailed it with much joy. The war, wrote Frederick Douglass, was now “invested with sanctity.” The Emancipation Proclamation did more than lift the war to the level of a crusade for human freedom. It brought some very substantial practical results, for it gave the go-ahead signal to the recruiting of Black soldiers. By midsummer of 1863 Lincoln could report, “The emancipation policy, and the use of colored troops, constitute the heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebellion.”

The esteem that African-Americans had for the Emancipation Proclamation helped to make it one of the most far-reaching pronouncements ever issued in the United States. African-Americans were instrumental in creating the image of the proclamation that was to become the historic milestone. The proclamation soon assumed the role that African-Americans had given it at the outset, and became to millions a fresh expression of one of humankind’s loftiest aspirations—the quest for freedom. The Emancipation Proclamation did not have to await the verdict of posterity: within six months after it was issued on that fateful date of January 1, 1863, the mass of Americans had come to regard it as a milestone in the long struggle for human rights.

“As affairs have turned, it is the central act of my administration, and the greatest event of the nineteenth century,” lamented Lincoln, as he sat in a pensive mood for is his portrait painter Francis B. Carpenter in February 1865. Later that spring, in the waning days of his life, in what was to be a rare moment of self-revelation, Lincoln confided to lifetime friend, Joshua F. Speed that he had come to believe that his chief claim to fame would rest upon the Proclamation. It was the one thing that would make people remember that he had lived.

Those of us who come from an oral tradition must tell this story in every generation; thus we celebrate the Watch Night Services.

~

Image: Heard and Moseley. Waiting for the hour [Emancipation], December 31, 1862. Carte de visite. Washington, 1863. Prints and Photographs Division. Reproduction Number: LC-USZC4-6160 (4-21a) (click on image to enlarge).

The Long Cold Run

That's my friend Jesse's blog. Jesse is a friend from my neighborhood and my Jewish community who is training for his second Boston Marathon this year. As last year, Jesse is running—and fundraising!—for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute's Marathon Challenge Team. This year, Jesse is keeping a blog where you can follow his training through the cold weather, which includes the added challenge of his being a new dad (Baby Yonatan is about five weeks old!) and, come spring, finding kosher for Passover alternatives to powerade and gu.

Jesse is running his second marathon after overcoming years of knee problems and surgeries that left him unsure he'd ever be able to run again. For his friends who saw Jesse struggle with his injuries, periodically needing to walk with a cane, it was a miracle that he trained and ran last year and a great excitement that he is running the marathon this year, once again.

On April 6, 2005 Carolyn and I received a phone call with the news that we had lost our Uncle Chris to pancreatic cancer at age 44. Twelve days later, I ran the Boston Marathon in Chris’ memory with the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge team. About 6-8 miles into the race, the cheering started to change from “Yay!” to a more focused cheer – “Go Jesse” (my name was on my arms) and "Do it for Chris!" (“For Chris” was on my shirt). I lost count somewhere between miles 8 and 10 of how many times Chris' name was yelled along the course. It was in the hundreds by that point -- with 16 miles to go! There were people thanking Dana-Farber runners for raising money that helped get them treatment, small kids running after us with cups of water or oranges, and my personal favorite -- juice pops at the turn onto Commonwealth Ave! Thanks to your help, I raised $5500 for cancer research.

This year, I am running the Boston Marathon again to raise money for the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge team. The DFMC team’s goal is to raise $3.6 million to support cancer research for the Claudia Adams Barr Program in Innovative Basic Cancer Research. Since 1987, this program has helped to provide hundreds of researchers with the money to begin researching new cancer treatments. Experimental treatments such as the ones developed through the Barr Program gave Chris valuable extra time with his friends and family.

Today, you have the opportunity to help cancer patients from around the world benefit from the treatments developed at Dana-Farber. My personal fundraising goal this year is $10,000. This is almost twice the amount that I raised last year. Please take a moment to click on the DFMC link under “Sponsor Me.” By giving to DFMC, not only are you supporting my dream of running the Boston Marathon, you are supporting the opportunity for cancer patients to receive critical treatment options.

Training for the Boston Marathon in New England is always an interesting challenge. Last year there were frozen water bottles, frozen goo, and a 12 mile run with 30” of fresh snow. This year, in addition to the weather, I’ll be training with a new baby and running the Marathon during Passover! To track this year’s challenges, check back in on the Long Cold Run.

Read Jesse's blog here. Sponsor Jesse here.

Holidays Shmolidays (Merry Christmas)

This is good stuff for non-Jews (as well as Jews) to read. Aron states precisely why I, too, would much rather people just come out and say "Merry Christmas," instead of the supposedly ecumenical "Happy Holidays." The so-called war on Christmas is an utterly stupid concept, except for what it reveals about the right wingers' imagination of Jews. Feh to O'Reilly and a Merry Christmas to all my Christian friends.

Personally, I too am annoyed by the PCness of the "happy holidays" greeting. Growing up as an Orthodox Jewish kid with Eastern European parents and grandparents, Christmas had a rather ominous feel to it. That was a result of the memories passed down to me of Christmas as one of the Polish pogrom seasons, where my grandparents had to live in fear of rape and murder. Despite New York's reputation, rape and murder by rampaging goyim is not a real concern for the Jews of this great city. But the site of Christmas trees nonetheless evoked a quesy feeling in me when I was a child.

That feeling along with a sense of inferiority as a minority, induced American Jews to pump up the rather minor holiday of Hanukka into something far more important than it is. A Holy Day in the Jewish calendar - a hag - is a pilgrimage specifically to the site of the Temple in Jerusalem (in an ecumenical spirit, I remind my readers that the Muslim haj is really the same word, except the pilgramage is to Mecca). Hanukka is not a pilgrimage holiday ordained in the Bible but a holiday instituted by the Hasmonean kings, whom the Rabbis despised.

Hannuka barely gets mentioned at all in the Talmud. The source of our knowledge about the holiday is the Book of the Maccabees. Unlike the Book of Esther and its associated holiday of Purim, Maccabees was left out of the official Biblical canon - the Rabbis of the Talmud no doubt would have preferred it never got written in the first place. The Rabbis' antagonism was rooted in the fact that the descendants of Judah the Maccabee, the Hasmonean dynasty that ruled Israel until the Romans crushed the Jewish rebellion in 70 CE, were in fact blood thirsty tyrants of the worst sort, who, ironically, advocated close ties to Rome and were intimately associated with the wealthy elite Sadducee establishment.

Side note: Rabbinical Judaism in its roots was an anti-establishment working class movement. Jesus probably was a leader of one of the more radical fringe groups within the overall revolutionary rabbinical movement. It was the wealthy Sadducee toadies who betrayed Jesus to their Roman masters.

Fast forward to modern day US of A, where assimilationist toadies emulating their Sadducee forbears in wanting to please their capitalist masters, had to find an equivalent Jewish shopping holiday to Christmas. Hannuka is the perfect fit in more ways than one. And they even one-upped the goyish capitalists by instituting eight days of gifts.

Considering the abysmal record of the Hasmoneans and the Sadducees, it is even more ironic that Hannuka and the Maccabees were seen as models by Zionists as a fore-runner to modern day Jewish nationalism. Hannuka is hardly as important in Israel as it is in the US, but it still is accorded far more importance than it should be....

So if you wish me a happy holiday it would take me a few minutes to even know what you are talking. The main Jewish holiday season is not December but September and October. We Jews have plenty (probably too many) holidays of our own and I for one am quite happy to concede this time of year exclusively to my Christian friends. So to all of you, Merry Christmas.

P.S. ... right-wing politics in America has long been associated with xenophobia and hatred of Jews. Intellectuals, liberals, gays, New Yorkers, Hollywood and the like, all of whom the right-wing hate so much, are used by them as code words for Jews. The neo-cons, Likudnicks and other Jews, who ally themselves with these right-wing creeps, are like their Sadducee counter-parts, stupidly aligning themselves with their true enemy. As for Bill O'Reilly, no happy holiday greetings from me to him. My fervent holiday wish for Mr. O'Reilly is that he get trapped in a store playing Christmas jingles non-stop for a full year. The horror, the horror!

I was reading Aron's blog before I even got into blogs and blogging. I rarely write about Israel/Palestine stuff here, but if you want to know where I'm at with those issues, I usually agree with Aron.

The People’s Declaration: Survivors Assembly Demands

The People’s Declaration: Survivors Assembly Demands
Identified by survivors on December 9, 2005

We demand that the local, state and federal government make conditions possible for our immediate return. This includes the following:

The Nagin Administration must make temporary housing such as apartments, hotel rooms, trailers and public housing developments available for us while we rebuild our homes.

The government must put an end to price gouging, stop all evictions and make rents affordable.

Local residents must take the lead in rebuilding our communities and must be hired to do the rebuilding work.

There must be immediate debt relief for debt associated with this disaster.

Quality public education and childcare must be provided for our children.

Quality affordable health care and access to free prescriptions must be provided.

The government must immediately clean up air, water and soil to make it safe and healthy for people to return home.

We demand that the government provide funds for all families to be reunited and that the databases of FEMA, Red Cross and any organizations tracking our people be made public.

We demand accountability for and oversight of the over $50 billion of FEMA funds and the money raised by other organizations, foundations and funds in our name.

We demand representation on all boards that are making decisions about relief and reconstruction. We also demand that those most affected by Hurricane Katrina be part of every stage of the planning process.

We demand that no commercial Mardi Gras takes place until the suffering of the people is lifted.

We are calling for survivors and supporters to participate in a Martin Luther King Jr. Weekend 2006 conference and demonstration to make these demands heard!

Update: The People’s Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Coalition (PHRF), From Outrage to Action: The People Must Decide

The People’s Assembly and The March for Human Rights brought over one thousand Hurricane Survivors and supporters of a survivor lead movement together for 3 days of planning and action.

Youth Speak Out

Held at Jackson State University, the Youth Speak Out evening in Thursday, December 8th was coordinated by area youth who put together a program that called for survivor’s to share their stories and included performances and testimony that spanned from; gospel music, urban and classic West African dance and drumming, poetry, to statements of solidarity. One survivor story came from Brandy who talked about the attempts of those displaced to New York City to fight off hotel eviction and homelessness.

Survivor Assembly

The Survivor’s General Assembly and Conference was held Friday, December 9th and took place at Anderson United Methodist Church. Survivors and support organizations from Houston, Chicago, Detroit, New York, South Carolina, California and Atlanta came together to share their stories and organizing efforts taking place in the areas where they currently reside. The day was full of workshops and information sharing, included a film that illuminated an example of the injustices that took place at Orleans Parish Prison. Approximately 450 delegates participated, including more than 150 hurricane survivors. By the end of the day the survivors put forth the People’s Declaration: Survivors Assembly Demands. These demands were read at the March for Human Rights (12/10/05) and at a rally held in Washington, DC (12/14/05) calling for FEMA to be held accountable for their lack of transparency in relief efforts. The demands are also being submitted to New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin to request and audience and significant representation by those most impacted by Hurricane Katrina on those commissions set up in New Orleans to address reconstruction and community redevelopment.

The demands will also be pursued with the mandate of the people by the work groups of the PHRF.

The established workgroups are as follows:

Arts, Culture and Story Collection, Economic Justice, Education, Environmental Health and Justice,

Finance and Fund Raising, Health Care, Legal, Media, Reconstruction, Safety Justice and Accountability

These work groups will be supported and monitored by The National Solidarity Caucus and Women’s Caucus.

The March for Justice

The March for Justice brought together approximately 1,500 participants who represented a diverse cross-section of New Orleans culture. Old school second-liners, musicians, students, blue collar workers, home owners, renters, grassroots relief workers and elders of the New Orleans community joined in chants and prayers to welcome their return to the city, demand support and justice in the rebuilding process and to share their stories of hardship and organizing since the storm.

The March ended at city hall where The People’s Declaration was announced.

The People’s Hurricane Fund will continue to do outreach among those displaced to highlight their voices and support organizing efforts that address the diverse needs that must be met to accomplish comprehensive reconstruction of communities and lives. Survivors Councils are being planned around the country for this purpose.

Honoring the work, commitment and spirit of Meg Perry

Saturday, November 10th, Common Ground volunteer, Meg Perry, 26, died in a bus accident in New Orleans. In Portland, Maine, Meg was a coordinator with the People's Free Space, a community group fighting social, ecological and political injustices. After Hurricane Katrina, Meg volunteered at Common Ground Collective (CGC), working on roof repairs, mentoring youth and coordinating a community garden.

The People’s Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Coalition (PHRF) extends its deepest condolences to Meg’s family, friends and the Common Ground Collective. In memory of a woman that dedicated so much of herself to this cause PHRF would like to donate and participate In planting a sapling tree in Ms. Perry's honor, for the hope of a just and environmentally sound reconstruction of New Orleans.

To see Common Ground Collective’s tribute to Meg, please go to http://www.commongroundrelief.org/2005/12/meg_perry_1979_2005.html

2006

We look forward to strengthening the organizing efforts of survivors/evacuees throughout the country and connecting the work with supported actions in the areas where we are displaced and in those areas where these grassroots efforts are most needed, for a just and comprehensive redevelopment of New Orleans and the Gulf South.

Regular updates should be posted on the website. For more information contact

People’s Hurricane Relief Fund & Oversight Coalition

1.888.310.PHRF (7473)

info at communitylaborunited dot net

www.communitylaboruntied.net

Rokhl Is Live Blogging Klezkamp

If Rokhl (or even I) piqued your interest about secular Jewish American culture, you may want to check out her blogging from Klezkamp, which is this week from Dec. 25-30. Her freylikhe Klezkamp blog is called Mit der kapelye- I'm with the Band; usually you can find her here. If Klezkamp sounds like klezmer to you, that's because klezmer classes and performances and jam sessions are a big part of what will be going on there. Interested yet? Go check it out...

(Readers who have been around for a while may remember this post, where I mention the influence of Klezcamp on my family, via my mother.)

Keeping Up With The Neo-Confederates

Edward Sebesta has a new blog, Anti-Neo-Confederate. Who are the Neo-Confederates and why should you care? Back in August, Max Blumenthal had an article in the Nation about powerful lobbyists in Washington, who are also part of an extremist takeover of Neo-Confederate groups like the Sons of Confederate Veterans. The article closed with this telling scenario:

On Memorial Day, 2001, George W. Bush resurrected a tradition his father discontinued during his presidency: laying a wreath at the base of the Confederate monument at the Arlington National Cemetery. The White House has claimed that the practice continued from the Bush Sr. Administration through the Clinton years, yet according to Hurley, "not a single person in the Confederate community ever saw the wreath back at the Confederate memorial until Geoge W. Bush came into office." Hurley says Bush merely changed the day of the wreath's delivery, from Confederate Memorial Day--Jefferson Davis's birthday--to the US Memorial Day. Last Confederate Memorial Day, Hurley witnessed [Richard T.] Hines at the memorial leading a gathering of Washington-based conservatives, including members of the Jefferson Davis Camp 305 that met at the Mary Surratt site. Now Bush Administration officials joined the commemoration, most prominently Robert Wilkie, the former foreign policy adviser to Senator Lott who was appointed last October by Condoleezza Rice as the National Security Council's senior legislative director. Attired in all-white plantation garb and white top hat, Hines fired an artillery cannon he had carted along for the occasion. Then he and the ceremony's attendees solemnly saluted the Confederate flag.

Here is some background from Blumenthal, on Richard T. Hines:

In 1996, standing beside members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans Jefferson Davis Camp 305, Hines unfurled a Confederate battle flag in downtown Richmond, Virginia, to protest the dedication of a monument to black tennis great Arthur Ashe. He called the Ashe statue "a sharp stick in the eye of those who honor the Confederate heritage."

Hines's protest reflected the brand of resentment found on the pages of America's major neo-secessionist publication, Southern Partisan, of which Hines was managing editor for nearly two decades. Southern Partisan served partly as a forum for historical revisionism that cast Lincoln as a villain; in 1984 Hines himself penned a paean to Preston Brooks, the secessionist South Carolina congressman who caned Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on the Senate floor in 1854 for his speeches against slavery. The magazine also acted as Hines's instrument for connecting sympathetic political movers and shakers to the neo-Confederate base. Hines arranged a 1993 Partisan interview with Washington Times senior editor Wes Pruden, whose father, Wes Pruden Sr., as the chaplain of the Little Rock White Citizens Council, led resistance to the integration of Central High School in 1957 with the cry: "That's what we've gotta fight, niggers, Communists and cops." In 1997 Hines interviewed Senator Trent Lott, who as a young congressman convinced Reagan to initiate his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where Klansmen had murdered three young civil rights workers in 1964. In 1998 Hines chatted with Senator John Ashcroft of Missouri, who praised Hines and the Partisan for "setting the record straight," a comment that nearly doomed his nomination as Attorney General when it was dredged up during his confirmation hearings in 2001. In the year before Bush's election, Southern Partisan advertised the sale of T-shirts emblazoned with a Confederate flag shaped like a Republican Party elephant beside the phrase "Lincoln's Worst Nightmare!"

By 2000 Hines was positioned to help rescue George W. Bush's flagging presidential candidacy from the jaws of defeat with an inspired dirty-tricks campaign. When Bush arrived in South Carolina in May, he was licking his wounds from a stunning defeat in New Hampshire to John McCain. For Bush, who needed to win the South to gain the nomination, the South Carolina primary was do or die.

Hines's link to the Bush campaign was Bush's South Carolina spokesman Tucker Eskew, a local protégé of the legendary dirty-tricks master from the Palmetto State, Lee Atwater. Eskew was in constant contact with another former Atwater protégé, Karl Rove. Hines turned an unregistered political action committee called "Keep It Flying," which he created to fight the NAACP's attempts to remove the Confederate flag from the South Carolina Statehouse, into a vehicle for the Bush cause. He sent out 250,000 fliers that he signed with his own name accusing McCain of "changing his tune" on the Confederate flag and describing Bush as "the [only] major candidate who refused to call the Confederate flag a racist symbol." In fact, in a January appearance on Meet the Press, McCain had called the flag "a symbol of heritage" and an issue "to be settled without interference from presidential candidates." Regardless, the tactic succeeded brilliantly. In the wake of the mailing Bush surged ahead of McCain and defeated him in the primary. Bush finally returned his debt of gratitude late last year, when he appointed Hines's wife, Patricia, to the National Committee on Libraries and Information Science.

Hines's direct-mail campaign might not have been so timely were it not for the political atmospherics that his close allies in South Carolina had generated. In January 2000, immediately after the NAACP announced a tourist boycott of South Carolina, Hines's college buddy Roger McCredie marshaled groups including the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the white-supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens at the state Capitol in Columbia to rally around the flag. Six thousand people showed up, many waving Confederate battle flags and dressed in Civil War-era battle uniforms. Compared with the 50,000 who marched through Columbia earlier that month for the flag's removal, it was a paltry turnout. Yet the rally demonstrated a residual level of vitriol toward Confederate flag opponents. State Senator Arthur Ravenel drew gales of applause when he blasted the NAACP as "the National Association of Retarded People."

Lurking in the shadow of the grandstand throughout the rally was a scraggly man oddly wearing a top hat--one of Hines's most important political allies. Kirk Lyons earned far-right celebrity status in 1988 for successfully defending white supremacist Louis Beam against a sedition charge of plotting to overthrow the government by force in order to set up an all-white nation in the Pacific Northwest. Lyons's ubiquity as a legal counsel to white supremacists and a speaker at neo-Nazi events prompted the Southern Poverty Law Center to identify him in 1991 as one of the top ten "Leaders in Today's White Supremacy Movement." Lyons dreamed of resurrecting the white supremacist movement as a more sophisticated incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan. "I have great respect for the Klan historically, but, sadly the Klan today is ineffective and sometimes even destructive," Lyons told a German neo-Nazi magazine in 1992. "It would be good if the Klan followed the advice of former Klansman Robert Miles: 'Become invisible. Hang the robes and hoods in the cupboard and become an underground organization.'" When Lyons discovered the Sons of Confederate Veterans, he realized he didn't have to go underground after all.

If you want to know more about this part of the right, Anti-Neo-Confederate is a good resource. The blog savvy will be frustrated that there are no permalinks or rss feeds; but it's valuable content from an authority on the subject. One of Edward's recent posts offers a who's who among the Neo-Confederate groups. Another one describes the rise of anti-Semitism in the Neo-Confederate movement—a trend in far right groups across the board, it seems. There's much, much more there, as well as links to Edward's other web pages. Of particular interest is Edward's page for tracking how political candidates do and don't align themselves with the Neo-Confederates.

UPDATE: added link to Max Blumenthal's article.

UPDATE 12/19: Edward Sebesta has moved his blog over to blogger in order to improve our access to his contnet. The new url is: http://newtknight.blogspot.com. Links have been modified, above. Some of the Anti-Neo-Confederate content mentioned, above, is still only available at Edward's old blog, which is therefore still worth visiting.

The “Shakedown Gang”: Roy Innis and the New Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

Guest post by Patrick Jones

Founded in 1942 by an inter-racial group of pacifist students in Chicago, including George Houser, James Farmer, Anna Murray and Bayard Rustin, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) became one of the most important and influential civil rights organizations in the United States until the end of the 1960s. Profoundly influenced by the writing of Henry David Thoreau and the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, CORE organized the Journey of Reconciliation in 1947 and the 1961 Freedom Rides, and also played a crucial role during the student sit-in movement of the early-1960s, the 1963 March On Washington and the 1964 Mississippi “Freedom Summer” Project. CORE chapters were also involved in struggles for racial justice throughout the urban North, organizing rent strikes and a variety of campaigns to end employment and housing discrimination, segregated public schooling and police brutality.

Since 1968 when Roy Innis, one of today’s most prominent black conservatives, wrested control of the organization away from Farmer and others, CORE has become an affront to the group's founding principles and to its important contributions to the struggle for racial justice in the forties, fifties and sixties. Under Innis’s leadership, CORE has moved sharply right, aligning itself with the Republican Party, conservative think-tanks, anti-environmental organizations and large multi-national corporations, including drug companies like Monsanto, who give it large donations. The organization rarely engages in direct action and does not appear to have a significant grassroots membership, relying instead on its sizable contributions from Right-wing think-tanks and corporate donors to lobby in favor of their favorite conservative issues.

Roy Innis came to power within CORE during the Black Power era after a tumultuous and divisive internal struggle. He led the drive away from inter-racialism and toward an increasingly conservative black nationalism/capitalism. According to one former member of the group, Innis opposed the leadership of Gladys Harrington, the long-time head of the New York chapter of CORE, saying that women should not head black organizations. During the 1970s, Innis and CORE supported the murderous Ugandan dictator and Nazi sympathizer, Idi Amin, stating, "Ugandans are happy under General Amin's rule of Africa for black Africans” and terming the despot’s decision to expel 50,000 Asians from the country "a bold step." The following decade, Innis reportedly said “the so-called anti-Apartheid struggle” was "a vicarious, romantic adventure" with "no honest base." Also in the 1980s, Innis teamed with Bob Grant, the right-wing radio host who at one point called Dr. King a "scumbag," to form the Howard Beach Legal Defense Fund, which assisted a group of white youths who had chased a black man into the street to his death in a racial attack. Innis supported the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court and publicly defended “subway vigilante” Bernhard Goetz who shot and killed four African American youth on a subway in New York City in 1984.

More recently, the group organized an anti-Greenpeace campaign to uncover what it calls "eco-imperialism" on the left. Under Innis’s leadership, CORE has instigated or participated in a variety of campaigns to support and protect multinational corporations in their relentless pursuit of profit over worker/human rights and respect for the natural environment. CORE also defended Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott after his sympathetic comments about Senator Strom Thurmond's "Dixiecrat" run for President in 1948. In 2000, Innis supported extreme right-wing candidate Alan Keyes’s unsuccessful bid for the presidency. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he told Justice Department officials that young African American Muslims in prison and at colleges were ripe for terrorist recruitment ("a clear and present danger," in his estimation). During a February 2005 speech, Innis lamented "liberals coming into Black churches" and "the 1500 black children aborted every day." He also said it is a myth that "slavery has done some irreparable harm [to African Americans].” Addressing the supposed dearth of black leadership in the U.S. today, Innis reportedly said, "We have a black leadership; George Bush is our leader." In April 2005, CORE sent a letter to the Senate encouraging an end to the filibuster in order to get President Bush's upcoming Supreme Court nominees through the process. CORE has also advocated an abstinence-first policy to combat AIDS in Africa and has criticized the UN ban on DDT in Africa calling it a means to hold back those nations from "modernizing." Roy Innis has served on the boards of the Hudson Institute, a Right-Wing think-tank, the Landmark legal Foundation, which led the charge against Bill Clinton in the 90s, the National Traditionalist Caucus, a group that works against women’s rights and equality for gays and lesbians, and the National Rifle Association. Innis has also been a featured speaker at a Christian Coalition gathering.

Niger Innis, Roy’s son, acts as CORE’s public spokesperson and has taken an increasing leadership role in the organization over the past few years. In early 2005, Niger called WV Senator Robert Byrd a "racist" for delaying confirmation of Condaleeza Rise as Secretary of State. Niger occasionally writes for the National Review and has spoken at the American Conservative Union's annual Conservative Political Action Conference [CPAC] on several occasions, which is billed as the “largest gathering of conservative political activists in the country." He is a board member of the Alliance for Marriage, which seeks a constitutional amendment to define marriage solely as a union of a man and a woman, and “Project 21,” which bills itself as a "National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives.” During a recent interview supporting John Roberts’s nomination for the Supreme Court, Niger Innis called African Americans who vote for Democrats "useful fools."

Over the past few years, CORE has honored a series of individuals at their annual Martin Luther King, Jr., celebration who are hostile to racial justice and human rights, including Jorg Haider, Australian politician and Nazi-sympathizer, Bob Grant and President George W. Bush’s political architect, Karl Rove, claiming Rove's “mission is to fully integrate our people in every aspect.” In 2006, the group is scheduled to honor Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, UN Secretary John Bolton, and Pfizer Vice-President Rich Bagger.

James Farmer called CORE under Roy Innis's leadership a "shakedown gang." Glen Ford and Peter Gamble, prominent black journalists, have written that CORE now has "a tin cup outstretched to every Hard Right political campaign or cause that finds it convenient - or a sick joke - to hire black cheerleaders" and describe Innis as a "gangster 'civil rights' caricature." Shiela Michaels, a long-time civil rights activist, has written that Innis has “shamed the name of CORE.” Dr. Herschelle S. Challenor, Professor at Clark Atlanta University, in a 2000 speech at the U.S. embassy in Kinshasa, drew this comparison between James Farmer's leadership of CORE and Innis's: "James Farmer, the leader of CORE during the highpoint of the civil rights movement, was a bright, dedicated activist of unimpeachable integrity. His immediate successor, Roy Innis was seen as a chameleon prepared to change his political ideology as necessary. There were rumors that he worked in later years as an FBI informant."

This summary was culled from a variety of print and online sources. It is intended as a public service, rather than a piece of formal or original academic work.