Fani Fallout

Witnesses in the Fani Willis proceeding included John Floyd, father of the Atlanta DA who tapped boyfriend Nathan Wade to get Donald Trump.  Floyd was profiled as a former Black Panther who once dated Angela Davis, but reports came up short on the back story. Consider, for example, “Who is John Clifford Floyd III, father of DA Fani Willis?” by Alexis Stevens, Greg Bluestein and Tamar Hallerman.

As they explain, Floyd “joined a faction of the Black Panther movement in 1967 in Los Angeles. He renounced violence and enrolled at UCLA to study law after two Panthers, Bunchy Carter and John Huggins, were shot and killed in an altercation at a Black Student Union meeting.”

Here’s what really happened. The Panthers were battling the US Organization, founded by Ron Everett, better known as Ron Karenga, for control of the UCLA black studies curriculum. The Panthers mocked Karenga’s group as “United Slaves” and on January 17, 1969, US cadres gunned down Huggins and Carter.

Stevens, Bluestein and Hallerman describe Angela Davis as “the academic and activist who ran twice for vice president on the Communist Party ticket.” That is true but there’s more to Davis’s story. In August, 1970, the “avowed Communist” was charged with murder and kidnapping for the Marin County courthouse shootout that left four dead, including a judge. Guns used in the shootout were registered to Davis, who fled the scene and landed on the FBI’s most-wanted list.

The FBI tracked down Davis but on June 4, 1972, an all-white jury found her not guilty on all charges. The avowed Communist then embarked on a tour of a tour of Cuba, East Germany and the Soviet Union. By this time, the Black Panthers were heavily engaged in the murder business.

In Oakland, New Left radical David Horowitz raised money for the Oakland Community Learning Center, the Panthers’ “show­piece and base of operations throughout the seventies,” and “a front for a criminal gang attempt­ing to control the illegal traffic of the East Oakland ghetto.” For a bookkeeper, David hired friend Betty Van Patter. On January 17, 1975, Van Patter was found in San Francisco Bay, killed by a blow to the head. As he explained in Radical Son, that marked the end of David’s career on the left.

Angela Davis, by contrast, dedicated herself to the all-white, all-male dictatorship of the Soviet Union. In 1979, the USSR awarded Davis the Lenin Peace Prize. The following year, and in 1984, Davis ran for vice president of the United States with the Communist Party USA, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Soviet Union, on a ticket with the Stalinist Gus Hall. Voters thought Stalinist lives didn’t matter, and opted for Reagan and Bush.

In June, 2020, Davis went on record that to vote for ourselves, “we will have to campaign for and vote for Joe Biden.”  Last year, on a “Finding Your Roots,” episode headlined “And Still I Rise,”  professor Henry Louis Gates revealed that Davis’ tenth great-grandfather was William Brewster, who was born in England in 1570 and came to America on the Mayflower.

In similar style, African American radio host Joe Madison learned that his great grandfather was a Confederate soldier who fought with Robert E. Lee and married a black woman. On the other hand, singer Carly Simon is some 10 percent black through a pardo Cuban ancestor, the descendant of slaves. There’s a lesson here somewhere. Consider the perspective of the late great Mose Allison:

Ever since the world ended,
There’s no more black or white.
Ever since we all got blended,
There’s no more reason to fuss and fight.
Dogmas that we once defended
No longer seem worthwhile.
Ever since the world ended,
I face the future –
With a smile.