Frank Marshall Davis Bio

Frank Marshall Davis (1905-1987) was a Communist Party USA (CPUSA) propagandist in Chicago and Hawaii, as well as a writer and poet. The FBI had Davis under investigation or surveillance for 19 years, compiling a 600-page FBI file. He was on the FBI's 'Security Index A', meaning he would be arrested in the event of national emergency.

In 1930's Chicago, CPUSA recruited journalists to help spread Soviet influence in American public opinion. Frank Marshall Davis was one of them. A graduate of Kansas State Journalism School, Frank Marshall Davis joined the Communist Party and began writing for The Chicago Star. He was a colleague of journalist Vernon Jarrett, father-in-law of Obama confidant Valerie Jarrett. Davis also taught at Chicago's Abraham Lincoln School, a Communist run training school run by CPUSA. Davis authored three major volumes of poetry, and later an autobiographical sex novel under a pseudonym.

In 1948, the Kremlin ordered CPUSA to facilitate a US withdrawal from the Hawaii as US naval forces were considered an obstacle to Soviet expansion in Asia. CPUSA assigned Frank Marshall Davis to Honolulu where he began writing for the Communist Newspaper, the Honolulu Record in 1948. In his columns, Davis flawlessly mirrored official Soviet propaganda - he blamed American capitalism for starting World War II, denounced the Marshall Plan, preached wealth redistribution, nationalization of industry and government healthcare, while bashing Wall Street. Davis also helped organize the Communist controlled ILWU (union) in a failed effort to take over the Hawaiian government in 1949. The Hawaii NAACP chapter complained to its national office, "Comrade Frank Marshall Davis suddenly appeared on the scene to propagandize the membership with the purpose of converting it into a front for the Stalinist line." In 1956, Davis was subpoenaed by the Senate Subcommittee on Un-American Activities and pleaded the fifth. Dreams from My Real Father makes the case that on August 4, 1961, Frank Marshall Davis became the father of the future 44th President of the United States and indoctrinated him with a Marxist ideology during his formative years.