Content area
Full Text
The Communist Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor Paul Kengor Mercury Ink (Simon and Schuster), 2012
Two years after the publication of Dupes: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century, Paul Kengor's revealing account of how prominent American Leftists, from Hollywood to Capitol Hill, shamelessly provided cover for the Soviet Union throughout much of the twentieth century (from the Bolshevik revolution through the Cold War era), the bestselling author and professor of political science at Grove City College has written another informative book on arguably America's most influential unknown Communist: Frank Marshall Davis.
Davis, the Kansas-born African-American journalist, poet, and labor activist, dropped out of college and eventually joined the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA) in the mid-1940s after a series of newspaper stints. As a journalist, Davis moved to Chicago in his early 20s and worked for African-American newspapers such as the Chicago Evening Bulletin and Chicago Whip. In 1931, Davis moved to Atlanta. He served as managing editor of the Atlanta World and helped turn the semi-weekly newspaper into a daily - the Atlanta Daily World.
According to Kengor, Davis's political views emerged in various editorials during his tenure as an editor and editorial writer. They covered a range of...