II: Columbia University and Recruitment by Zbigniew Brzezinski 75must come to the sad conclusion that, rather than fostering brotherhood, the foundation has
supported the spewings of hate, and rather than creating a new political unit, it has destroyed
what little there was ...’ (Salandria)
We will see later on that the methods of the Ford Foundation in regard to the subversion and
manipulation of the American Indian movement for financier and provocation purposes are virtually
identical to the approach employed towards black and Hispanic target populations.
THE FORD FOUNDATION VS. MARTIN LUTHER KING
Martin Luther King was perceived by the Ford Foundation as a very serious threat, because of
the inclusive united-front methods by which he proposed to merge the struggles of the black
community with those of labor and the antiwar movement. The oligarchical class instinct of the
Ford Foundation therefore dictated that ultra-radical racist provocateurs be thrown into the fray who
would condemn Dr. King as a collaborationist Uncle Tom who was out of touch with younger
firebrand radicals. The general heading for these Ford Foundation provocateurs was the Black
Power movement or the pork chop cultural nationalists, who were always notoriously eager for their
foundation checks.
In a sense, in this, Ford was only following up on its own early initiative: the foundation’s Gray
Areas program, working in six inner cities in the early 1960s, had pioneered the idea of helping
the ghetto help itself. But in 1964 the War on Poverty had taken the notion one step further,
urging “maximum feasible participation” by the poor as a virtue in itself - calling on ghetto
people not just to help run local services but teaching them to organize politically so that they
could bargain with the government. As the idea gained credence, the emphasis of many anti-
poverty programs shifted away from health care and education and job-training to teaching
“leadership” and in effect telling “Whitey” off. Some people at the foundation were troubled by
this new development. But they were largely unable to resist the growing pressure for any and
all kinds of participatory programs. And it wasn’t long before Ford found itself paying for street
gangs and avowed Black Power leaders. (Tamar Jacoby)
And again, the decision to fund the most incendiary lunatic agitators was a very conscious one,
since their outrageous statements could be used to fuel the backlash of the white middle class
against the militants and their demands.
FORD’S MCKISSICK, ANTI-MARTIN LUTHER KING
Thanks to the sheer power of its multi-billion-dollar endowment, the Ford Foundation was able
to create a new fad for shameless, race-baiting provocateurs on the national scene. H. Rap Brown
became infamous for his favorite slogan that “violence is as American as cherry pie.” Rap also
issued ominous threats, including his classic “If America don’t come around, we’re gonna’ burn it
down.” This was the age of “burn, baby, burn,” while reactionary Republican strategists around
Nixon and others thanked heaven for their extraordinary good fortune.
A good example of the Ford Foundation sponsorship for the most extreme black power militants
as a countergang to Martin Luther King was the grant allocation in Cleveland, Ohio:
Among the most controversial of these grants went to the Cleveland chapter of CORE
[Congress of Racial Equality]. Like even the most moderate civil-rights organizations, CORE
had been drifting leftward through the 1960s. Its integrationist national director James Farmer