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J. Edgar Hoover's Other Secret
By Dr. Barbara A. Reynolds
(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Clint Eastwood, in his new movie J. Edgar, artfully surfaced a well- guarded secret that the FBI czar who reigned over the bureau for 47 years was a closeted homosexual.
Nevertheless there is yet another skeleton pounding on the closet to be let out.
Could J. Edgar Hoover, not only have been gay, but also African-American?
In some quarters, this racial rumor has been whispered about as widely as Hoover’s homosexuality. Eastwood’s avoidance of the issue only adds to the intrigue, making it as spicy as the movie storyline that while Hoover was digging up dirt on presidents, spying on and harassing civil rights leaders, he was also cross-dressing and having private slugfests with his lover, Clyde Olson, the number two man, who worked directly under him in the FBI.
But later as an educator and researcher she unearthed enough information by digging through altered court records, oral interviews with both white and black Hoovers, plus the help of licensed genealogists to substantiate the rumors she had heard as a child that Hoover was a relative. “Because of Edgar’s anti-black history, I am not proud of this lineage but history must be based on truth,” she said.
“Edgar Hoover was a black man passing for white,” says Millie McGhee, an African-American living in Southern Maryland, who has written two books Secrets Uncovered: J.Edgar Hoover-The Relative and Secrets Uncovered : J. Edgar Hoover Passing For White? “
McGhee said: “In the late 1950s, I was a young girl growing up in rural McComb, Mississippi. A story had been passed down through several generations that the land we lived on was owned by the Hoover family. My grandfather told me that this powerful man, Edgar, was his second cousin, and was passing for white. If we talked about this, he was so powerful he could have us all killed. I grew up terrified about all this.”
Author Anthony Summers, in his 1993 book Official and Confidential, said that he found that in some Black communities in the East, it was generally believed Edgar had Black roots and was even referred to as a “soul brother.” Writer Gore Vidal, who grew up in Washington, D.C. in the 1930s also said in an interview: “It was always said in my family and around the city that Hoover was mulatto. And that he came from a family that passed.”
McGhee said: “Since the movie has come out, so many people have asked me why my information about Hoover’s black roots was not included since my research is all over the Internet and I have made a documentary What’s Done In the Dark about our family.”
If only Eastwood had tackled this issue with the same vigor as the sexual theme, it could have garnered insight into Hoover’s well documented and complex obsession with destroying Black leaders. Was this self-hatred or self preservation?
Hoover’s obsession with Black groups dates back to the 1920’s when as head of the precursor to the FBI he targeted Marcus Garvey and his United Negro Improvement Association, which numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Hoover sabotaged the Black Star Line, which was to transport Blacks back to Africa, by throwing foreign matter into the fuel, according to historian Theodore Kornweibel. Garvey was later deported to Jamaica.
Hoover’s true colors showed when in the 1950s he verbally attacked interracial marriage, the NAACP, and other civil rights groups while praising the White Citizens Council. In 1956 Hoover launched the FBI's Cointelpro (Counter-Intelligence Program) where leaders of groups such as the Black Panther Party were gunned down with FBI involvement.
In the movie, a scene showed that shortly before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. received the Nobel Peace Prize, Hoover dictated a letter to King telling him to reject it because “he was not worthy.” That reprimand was based partly on tapes of a sexual liaison King had reported to have had in a hotel room that Hoover had bugged.
Hoover’s desire for Dr. King’s demise continued through illegal break-ins of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference that King headed and wiretappings. After King was assassinated in 1968, conspiracy theorists maintained that Hoover was directly involved.
It is said that one of Hoover’s favorite adages was: ‘’We must never forget our history. We must never lower our guard.” If Clint Eastwood had only lowered his guard, he would have allowed an important chunk of history to break through.
(Dr. Barbara Reynolds is an ordained minister, author of six books and lecturer in various seminaries and universities.).
'Fault Line' in History: No Mention of Corretta Scott King at Monument
By Rev. Barbara A. Reynolds
(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Even among the splendor of the day’s festivities, the absence of any words or deeds of Coretta Scott King carved in the stone of the monument honoring her husband left a fault-line in our nation’s history.
The recent dedication of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. monument l offered a splendid tribute crowned by President Barack Obama linking his presidency to the martyred human rights leader. The centerpiece of the monument on the National Mall is a towering 30 foot statue of Dr. King carved out of stone. It is a grandiose salute to a man who without an army, weapons, or a national treasury commanded a war so unlike that of Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln who are enshrined in memorials nearby.
Dr. King commanded a spiritual army that helped liberate the heart and soul of America from its deepest hatred and molded it into a liberation movement for freedom and dignity that continues resounding around the world.
The memorial is spectacularly significant; something for all the world to see for generations to come. This grandier makes the absence of any lasting tribute to Coretta Scott King, the person that did the most to carry forth Dr. King’s legacy, so compelling. I dare say if it were not for this woman by his side, his legacy would never have risen to such heroic proportions today.
Somewhere on that vast four acres there should be a statue, a bust, a plaque or something showing that she was a co-partner in this great freedom movement. (She died on Jan. 30, 2006.) Why not a mention of her on the Monument's wall of great quotes? He once said, “In every campaign, if Coretta was not with me, she was only a heartbeat away.””
“During the bus boycott I was tested by fire and I came to understand that I was not a breakable crystal figurine, “she said. “ If I had been fragile and fearful this would have been too much a distraction for Martin. Certainly his concern for my safety and that of the children would have prevented him from staying focus on the movement, but he came to understand he could trust me with trouble .In Montgomery, I was tested and found I became stronger in a crisis.”
In fact, one of Coretta’s most cherished quotes symbolizes what kind of woman she was. Horace Mann, the founder of Antioch College, her alma mater, once said, “If you have not found a cause to die for, you have not found a reason to live.”
That statement was not mere words to her. She lived at a time when she virtually had to have the faith of a prophet and nerves of steel just to live each day. During the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott carloads of Ku Klux Klan drove through Black housing sections. The Kings received constant threatening calls. Then on January 30, she was in the house with her infant daughter, Yolanda, when the King’s house was bombed. “We could have been killed, but it was just not our time to die,” she told me. Despite the terrorism and the pleas of her parents to leave Montgomery she stayed with Martin until the 369 day boycott successfully ended.
In 1968, the testing became heart-breaking. On April 4, Dr. King was gunned down in Memphis while a campaigning for the rights of striking garbage workers. During the national upheaval and riots following the assassination, much of the nation was awed not only by the poise of Coretta King but by her inner strength as she took her slain husband’s place and led the march. “What most did not understand then was that I was not only married to the man I loved but I was also married to the movement that I loved.”
In taped interviews, Mrs. King told me how after her husband’s death her faith gave her the strength to raise her four children and to build a world-class center in Atlanta to continue the non-violent work of Dr. King. This move brought her into a bitter contention with some of Dr. King’s chief aides who had their own agendas for self-promotion and tried unsuccessfully to push Mrs. King out of the way.
In Atlanta, she led a redevelopment effort of deteriorated neighborhoods that helped create the diversity that attracted the 1996 Summer Olympics. The Center, along with the King birth home, the gravesite at the center, where both Kings are entombed brings in thousands of tourists each year and has helped Atlanta become the spiritual Mecca of America, according to Steve Klein, communications director of the Center.
Following the success of raising funds for the center, Mrs. King started lobbying for the King Holiday Bill. While only a sentence or a phrase is ever used to describe this effort it took more than 15 years of hard-core organizing, the drive to collect 6 million signatures and lobbying from state to state, along with civil rights supporters in Congress and in the streets to pass the legislation to make Dr. King’s birthday a national holiday which was signed into law on Nov. 2, 1983..
At the same time, she was working to institutionalize her husband’s legacy Mrs. King also emerged as an incomparable human rights spokeswoman in her own right. “Where ever there was injustice, war, discrimination against women, gays and the disadvantaged, I did my best to show up and exert moral persuasion.”
As I started interviewing Mrs. King in the mid-1970’s, it was clear that she did not see herself as an appendage or a footnote in history. She often emphasized that she was more than a wife during Dr. King’s life and more than a widow after his death. She once told me “My story is a freedom song of struggle. It is about finding one’s purpose, how to overcome fear and to stand up for causes bigger than one’s self.”
Coretta King was the other half of the Martin Luther King persona. They were two souls with one goal of giving their lives to create a Beloved Community where all people would have dignity and justice. Telling one story without the other creates a flaw and imbalance, a scar on history. It would be shameful for this not to be corrected.
Dr. Barbara A. Reynolds, the author of six books, including “Jesse Jackson: America’s David,” is working on a biography of Coretta King. An ordained minister, she was former columnist and editorial board member of USA Today,Activists Must Turn the Spotlight from Numbers to Hurting People By Dr. Barbara Reynolds
Their plot required refusing a vote to raise the debt ceiling without forcing a deal from the Democrats to exclude increases in revenues. That position protected the rich, but if left unchallenged would have pushed the country into default, thus creating havoc when certain government checks could not be issued, and interest rates hiked. And all that misery would be blamed on the President in an effort to deny him a second term.
(TriceEdneyWire.com) - When people want a Wyatt Earp to ride into town with guns blazing to defend the townspeople and a horde of Danny Doolittles show up there is sure to be dismay in Dodge City.
Nevertheless, when the smoke clears and the townsfolk finally realize if they organize a tough take no prisoners posse of their own, they can still win the war, then all hope is not lost.
The GOP and their nasty sidekicks, the Tea Party, succeeded in manufacturing a crisis over the federal debt ceiling because they have only one game plan: to destroy President Barack Obama and his base of working class and middle class Americans by any means necessary. If that means shutting down the government, pushing the nation into default, wrecking the economy, the means justify their end.
Thankfully, the president has a grander mission than just trying to save his party. His goal was to save the nation. His stated efforts were aimed at ensuring that the fiscal situation would not be balanced on the backs of single mothers working two jobs to support their families, seniors on a fixed income or the poor in need of hospital care. Whether he can accomplish that, the verdict is not in.
The major problem is that in the first phase of the budget fight to cut $917 billion over the next decade not one red cent comes from the millionaires, the billionaires, and the corporate welfare bunch.
This shameful exercise must be axed. Not one red cent should come from those the GOP has labeled expendable or collateral damage without severe retaliation from the streets to the ballot boxes.
A move to stop this mass transfer of wealth can’t be the task of President Obama and elected officials alone. They need a posse of the civil and human rights leaders, pastors, progressives and the all important media to flip the switch. The rest of the year cannot be spent with our noses buried in spreadsheets, numbers and arithmetic. The spotlight must be on people. What does it mean to send children to failing schools in Washington DC, where politicians and civil rights leaders would not dare to send their own children, for veterans to return from Iraq to homeless shelters and for families to cope with losing their homes?
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies recently held a meeting where it was stressed that the median wealth of a white family is now 20 times that of a black family.” Between 2005 and 2009, the median net worth of black families fell to $5,677 compared to $113,149 for white households. “Equally tragic is the median wealth of single black women has dropped to $100 compared to $41,000 for single white women, according to Dr. Avis Jones-DeWeaver, executive director of the National Council of Negro Women.
According to White House backgrounders, the Democrats protected most social and education programs, including Pell grants, funding for black colleges, Social Security and Medicare.
Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett in an interview with Essence Magazine said a trigger has been inserted in the legislative package that specifically protects such programs as Medicaid, food stamps, Social Security, Medicare, the earned income tax credit. “ This part will be in the hands of a 12 person bi-partisan super-committee whose task it is to come up with $1.5 trillion more in cuts from the domestic and the defense side by November 2011. If they do not come up with the cuts then a trigger will be invoked to cut costs across the board.”.‘
“The Bush Tax cuts will also expire at the end of next year, where there will also be savings as well, according to Jarrett. “And the president can veto tax cuts of the very wealthy, those making in excess of $250,000 per year if need be. We are a country that helps the elderly, disabled, poor, disenfranchised, etc.”
Jarrett said, ‘’By specifically having social safety net triggers built into this new legislation we were able to protect the vital services that Black and brown people (as well as all people) depend upon in our nation. In short, the President kept more damage from occurring in these communities by securing the social safety net in this new bill.”
While the White House may have succeeded in doing damage control on behalf of the non-rich this time, but in the next go around the stakes are even higher. Keeping watch over this 12 person committee requires all eyes on deck. If savvy Americans stay on their couches instead of creating a counter movement to the Tea Party, our lack of effort may give us the government we deserve - a catastrophe.
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