Topic category: Other/General
Bobby Kennedy and the Civil Rights Movement
Boy, am I ever glad to have David in TN as my friend and partner-in-crime!
We recently had a long conversation over the phone about the topic above. David told me about a meeting between then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and civil right activists that Kennedy organized on May 24, 1963, in his father’s luxurious, Manhattan apartment.
But before I talk about what I learned from David, let me tell you the official story that I got from a blog link he sent me, as well as a couple of other places, which all sounded like they were regurgitating the same source.
Kennedy had called for the meeting on 24 hours notice, and asked Nation of Islam-sympathizing propagandist James Baldwin to invite not civil rights top dogs like Martin Luther King Jr., but activists. Baldwin came with Communist singer-actor Harry Belafonte; pseudo-scientist and Supreme Court perjurer, Kenneth Clark; and mulattoes singer Lena Horne; playwright Lorraine Hansberry (A Raisin in the Sun), et al., 16 in all (11 blacks and five whites).
After serving food, Kennedy opened the session by listing the civil rights accomplishments and projects of his brother’s administration. He had hoped for signs of gratitude, but the assembled activists instead read him the riot act, and left in a huff.
Bobby meditated upon what he had heard that day, had an epiphany, and become America’s greatest white civil rights activist.
Well, that’s the official story.
Before I get into the real story, consider this: We’re talking about Bobby Kennedy, the most openly vicious and vindictive of the brothers—Joe Sr’s. sons—at the time, who was the Attorney General of the United States of America. The most powerful whites, Kennedys or no, were not used to being insulted by blacks of any rank, and the civil rights movement was led by the scum of the earth.
Few whites know this today, because the media have covered for the movement for over 50 years. However, it was obvious to whites at the time, cover-up or no, because they had not undergone over 50 years of indoctrination, intimidation, violence and terror. They knew that blacks and their socialist and communist white allies sought to take over the country, and install a totalitarian dictatorship.
Nowadays, when pro-white commenters at sites like American Renaissance say they see signs of an awakening of white consciousness, they are writing from a myopic, contemporary perspective. Very few whites are today as “woke” as the typical 1963 white.
Imdb.com proved a most unlikely source for some straight talk, though it is mixed with a great deal of nonsense. On the “Personal Quotes” section of Lena Horne’s thumbnail biography, it has her telling the attorney general of the United States,
“[to Robert F. Kennedy, on his administration's civil rights record] ‘Mr. Attorney General, you can take all those pious statements and stuff them up your ass.’”
Why don’t the official story blogs say that?
The “Trivia” section of the same IMDB.com page asserts,
“She was branded a ‘Communist sympathizer’ by many right-wing conservatives because of her association with Paul Robeson and her progressive political beliefs (which led her to be blacklisted in the 1950s).”
Horne was identified as a Communist sympathizer because she was a Communist sympathizer, i.e., she was a Communist in all but name. Of course, the anonymous writer fails to mention that Paul Robeson was a card-carrying Communist. Robeson used to travel to the USSR, where as a walking Communist propaganda machine, he’d praise the Reds for their supposedly enlightened treatment of blacks. (What blacks?)
The IMDB.com phrasing smears Horne’s critics, by calling them “right-wing conservatives,” which is a leftwing dog whistle for “fascists,” which was institutionalized by Communists as a synonym for Nazis, which they applied to any and all anti-Communists. (Today, they say, “white supremacists.”)
The IMDB.com page also engages in political myth-making, asserting in the “Mini Bio” section that Horne failed to become a movie star due to “racism,” while in the “Trivia” section, inventing or perpetuating a blacklisting myth (of which there are many), while spreading yet more nonsense in the “Personal Quotes” section.
From the Mini Bio:
“Lena's musical career flourished, but her movie career stagnated. Minor roles in films such as Boogie-Woogie Dream (1944), Words and Music (1948) and Mantan Messes Up (1946) did little to advance her film career, due mainly to the ingrained racist attitudes of the time (even at the height of Lena's musical career, she was often denied rooms at the very hotels in which she performed, because they would not let blacks stay there). After Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956), Lena left films to concentrate on music and the stage.”
Racially segregated hotels were irrelevant to Horne’s movie career, or lack thereof. And the last sentence has the chronology backwards: Prior to Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956), Lena had left films to concentrate on music and the stage. And which was it that thwarted her career as a movie star, “racism” or the “blacklist”?
If “racism” were really to blame for Horne’s lack of success in pictures, then there would have been no black movie stars at the time. But that’s nonsense. Back in the 1930s, Stepin Fetchit was one of the biggest stars in the business. As Woody Strode (1914-1994) constantly pointed out to his militant colleagues, it was Stepin Fetchit who had made a way for them.
After the war, during the same period that Horne supposedly suffered from “racism,” many black performers had success as movie stars and featured performers: James Edwards, Ethel Waters, Dorothy Dandridge, Harry Belafonte, Strode, Brock Peters, Juano Hernandez, Pearl Bailey, and the biggest of them all, Sidney Poitier.
As if her Bio page weren’t ridiculous enough, whoever put together her “Personal Quotes” insinuates that she was indeed, a movie star:
“I never considered myself a movie star. Mostly, I just sang songs in other people's movies.”
Why is that even there? Horne was never anywhere near being a movie star. She must have been replying to an exceedingly stupid question from a media operative, likely from a black outlet.
Nicholas Stix
Nicholas Stix, Uncensored
Biography - Nicholas Stix
Award-winning, New York-based freelancer Nicholas Stix founded A Different Drummer magazine (1989-93). Stix has written for Die Suedwest Presse, New York Daily News, New York Post, Newsday, Middle American News, Toogood Reports, Insight, Chronicles, the American Enterprise, Campus Reports, VDARE, the Weekly Standard, Front Page Magazine, Ideas on Liberty, National Review Online and the Illinois Leader. His column also appears at Men's News Daily, MichNews, Intellectual Conservative, Enter Stage Right and OpinioNet. Stix has studied at colleges and universities on two continents, and earned a couple of sheepskins, but he asks that the reader not hold that against him. His day jobs have included washing pots, building Daimler-Benzes on the assembly-line, tackling shoplifters and teaching college, but his favorite job was changing his son's diapers.