Many exhibits in the new $500 million National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. will be worthwhile. They will highlight the struggle to overcome slavery and give black people the rights they were promised in the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution. Many black Americans have achieved great success. But black leadership in America, which is viewed by the media as almost exclusively liberal and Democratic, is not without major flaws. In addition, we think that the growing black conservative movement will not be given the attention it deserves. In the spirit of truth and transparency, we offer examples of exhibits that we have reason to believe, based on advance publicity, will not be available to those visiting the museum:
- The Democratic Party’s history of slavery. The Republican Party was born in 1854 in opposition to slavery, and the Democratic Party was the party of slavery. As documented in Dinesh D’Souza’s new movie, “Hillary’s America,” the Democratic Party is historically racist. Democratic President Woodrow Wilson attended a screening of the pro-KKK film, “The Birth of a Nation,” in the White House itself. Wilson was so racist that liberal Princeton students have demanded removal of his name from campus buildings. Hillary Clinton once called former Ku Klux Klan member Senator Robert K. Byrd (D-WV) her “mentor,” saying after his death, “Today our country has lost a true American original, my friend and mentor Robert C. Byrd.” As noted by The Daily Caller, Byrd joined the Klan because he was worried that during World War II, he might have to fight alongside “race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.” Yet, no Republican presidential candidate has gotten more than 15 percent of the black vote since 1965.
- Black Lives Matter is a racist organization that praises cop-killer Assata Shakur. A Black Lives Matter T-shirt is on display in the museum, in order to highlight “contemporary” black issues. The “Black Lives Matter Exposed” project of Accuracy in Media looks at the violent nature of the organization, including its support for Assata Shakur, a member of the Black Liberation Army (BLA), a group that worked with the communist terrorist Weather Underground. Shakur, also known as Joanne Chesimard, killed New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster “execution style” by shooting him in the head as he lay wounded by gunfire. Obama has highlighted the killings of black people in a campaign carried forward by his own Department of Justice against local police forces. Yet, Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute notes that, as of July 9 of this year, whites made up 54 percent of the 440 police shooting victims, compared to 28 percent who were black. In 2015, whites made up 50 percent of the 987 fatal police shootings, while blacks made up 26 percent.
- The Communist mentor of the first black President. Barack Obama’s election as the first black president was facilitated by liberal media bias, since his father-son relationship with black Communist pornographer and pedophile Frank Marshall Davis was deliberately ignored by the liberal press. Liberals in the media knew that his association with a prominent communist would sink his campaign. In 2008, during his first run for office, the relationship was ignored by influential reporters like David Maraniss of The Washington Post, whose own parents were Communist Party members. Even the Drudge Report would not sell advertising to tell the story of Frank Marshall Davis. In 2012, newspapers like The New York Times and USA Today and conservative media like Newsmax refused advertising for the film, “Dreams from My Real Father,” which cited evidence that Davis was actually Obama’s real father. Obama admitted that Davis, a writer for communist publications, had instructed him that black people have “reason to hate.”
- Martin Luther King Jr.’s womanizing, plagiarism, and communist advisers. While Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a fighter for civil rights and showed unique courage in opposing racism, he has his own serious flaws. The evidence shows that both President John F. Kennedy and his brother Bobby obtained and passed on information about King’s extramarital affairs and womanizing. It was information that had been obtained from FBI wiretaps on King authorized by Bobby himself. The Kennedy brothers, both anti-communist Democrats, were alarmed by King’s communist associations. One of King’s closest advisers was J.H. O’Dell, also known as Hunter Pitts O’Dell. He was a secret member of the Communist Party who would later join Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH. Another King adviser was New York attorney Stanley Levison, who had been involved in Communist Party financial affairs and was helping to arrange funding of the party by Moscow. He had recommended O’Dell to King. Despite his reputation as a moderate, Martin Luther King, Jr. paid tribute to W.E.B. Du Bois, who had joined the CPUSA himself in 1961, at an event sponsored by the Soviet-funded journal Freedomways in New York City. King’s opposition to American involvement in the war against communism in Vietnam was strongly influenced by his communist associations. The facts also show that the famed civil rights leader was a plagiarist who stole material from other people and claimed it as his own.
- Unpatriotic black sports figures. The sports exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture highlights the positive impact of black athletes such as Jackie Robinson on American society. But unpatriotic displays have been more common recently. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick said. Kaepernick also has worn socks depicting police as pigs. President Obama commented, “I think he cares about some real, legitimate issues that have to be talked about. If nothing else, he’s generated more conversation about issues that have to be talked about.” Kaepernick, the child of a black man, was raised by white parents and is making an $11.9 million base salary this year. Black athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave a Black Power raised fist salute, common among communists and socialists, during the 1968 Summer Olympics. Black Muslim boxer Cassius Clay, also known as Muhammad Ali, refused Army induction in 1967, saying, “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?” Protests against the Vietnam War, which were backed by the Soviet bloc and organized by domestic communist groups, forced a U.S. military withdrawal from Vietnam, leading to a communist takeover that produced hundreds of thousands of political prisoners and Vietnamese “boat people” trying to escape. Almost two million people were then murdered in a campaign of genocide in neighboring Cambodia, carried out by the communist Khmer Rouge. More than 58,000 Americans died trying to stop a communist takeover of Southeast Asia.
- Paul Robeson: a black dupe of reds. A Soviet campaign was launched after the Russian revolution to exploit the “Negro question” in the U.S. and manipulate blacks and members of other minority groups for Communist purposes. The goal was a “Soviet America.” Although he invoked the Fifth Amendment when asked by a congressional committee about his party membership, the CPUSA admitted, after his death, that actor and singer Paul Robeson had been a party member. Former CPUSA official Manning Johnson had testified in 1949 that that he saw Robeson “a number of times in the headquarters” of the CPUSA and that Robeson was, in fact, a party member. Johnson said Robeson wanted to be “the Black Stalin among Negroes.” Johnson testified, “Paul’s assignment was to work among the intellectuals, the professionals, and artists that the party was seeking to penetrate and influence along Communist lines.”
- Why Richard Wright broke with the Communist Party. Richard Wright, author of the classic texts Black Boy and Native Son, was a prominent black American author who joined the Communist Party but then became disillusioned by the party’s corruption and authoritarianism, and left it in 1942. He wrote an essay published in Atlantic Monthly in 1944 called “I Tried to Be a Communist,” which was later reprinted (with Wright’s permission) in the book, The God That Failed, a collection of anti-communist essays by ex-Communists.
- The NAACP once opposed communism. For many years, black groups such as the NAACP were bitter foes of the Communist Party USA, knowing that its politics were divisive and not designed to foster racial harmony. NAACP official Herbert Hill wrote a famous article, “The Communist Party—Enemy of Negro Equality.” Hill said American blacks desired “integration and assimilation into all aspects of American life on the basis of complete equality,” but that the communists promoted separatism and what he called “super-jim-crowism.” Hill referred to “Communist carpet-baggers” who used nice-sounding front groups to dupe blacks, and called the Communist Party one of the “implacable enemies” of black equality.
- The Black Conservative Movement. African-American Conservatives, Project 21, Black Conservatives Fund and Blacks for Trump are just a few of the black conservative groups in existence. Leading black conservatives include Jason Riley, author of Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder For Blacks To Succeed; Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institution; former GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson; Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; D.C. Circuit Judge Janice Rogers Brown; South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott; and businessman Herman Cain.
National Museum of African American History and Culture’s top donors (as reported by The Washington Post):
- Oprah Winfrey Charitable Foundation, $21 million
- Lilly Endowment, $20 million
- Robert Frederick Smith, $20 million
- Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, $12 million
- The Atlantic Philanthropies, $12 million
- Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, $10 million
- Rhimes Family Foundation, $10 million
- David M. Rubenstein, $10 million
- Ford Foundation, $8.6 million
- Target, $7.05 million
- Kaiser Permanente, $7 million
- Robert L. Johnson, $6 million
- General Electric, $5.5 million
- 3M, $5 million
- American Express, $5 million
- Boeing, $5 million
- Rockefeller Foundation, $5 million
- UnitedHealth Group, $5 million
- Walmart, $5 million
Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.