Frank Marshall Davis was an American journalist, poet and political and labor movement activist. In 1950 he was investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) for comments he made in columns written for the newspaper Honolulu Record, as well as other activities that the HUAC alleged were connected to the Communist Party USA. During the middle of the twentieth century, Davis set forth a radical vision that challenged the status quo. His commentary on race relations, music, literature, and American culture was precise, impassioned, and engaged .As Obama remembered, "It made me smile, thinking back on Frank and his old Black Power, dashiki self. In some ways he was as incurable as my mother, as certain in his faith, living in the same sixties time warp that Hawaii had created."
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