Frank Marshall Davis

Purported link between Davis and Barack Obama
In his autobiographical Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama writes of "Frank", a friend of his grandfather's. "Frank" told Obama that both grew up only 50 miles apart, near Wichita, although they did not meet until Hawaii, and told him about the days of Jim Crow in Kansas. 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."

Gerald Horne, a professor, writer, Communist party historian and contributing editor of Political Affairs Magazine, stated that "Frank" was poet Frank Marshall Davis, and further claimed he was a 'decisive influence' on Obama. Although not supported by any facts and contraindicated by Obama in his memoir, this claim of father-figure and mentor was then repeated by blogger Trevor Loudon and ultra-conservative writer Cliff Kincaid.