76 Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biographyhad been replaced in 1966 by the younger and angrier Floyd McKissick, who along with
Carmichael was among the first proponents of Black Power. Outflanked on the left by SNCC
[Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee] and even tougher ghetto leaders advocating
violence and a separate black nation, McKissick felt under strong pressure to prove his
militancy. He began to talk of “revolution” and to forge links with black Muslims; he explicitly
repudiated the phrase “civil rights,” replacing its appeal to morality with bristling talk of race-
based “power.” Before long, his escalating racial rhetoric had driven most white members out
of CORE. By 1967, SNCC had actually expelled whites, and in July CORE deleted the word
“multiracial” from its constitution. With this, it dropped all pretense that it was pursuing
integration or the hope of progress based on racial harmony.
None of this apparently bothered the Ford Foundation, which announced two weeks later - even
as the Newark ghetto erupted in riots - that it was giving $175,000 to CORE’s Cleveland
chapter. Bundy explained at a press conference that his board had considered the grant “with
particular care.” (In fact among some 16 trustees, only Henry Ford himself had expressed any
doubts.) What’s more, said Bundy, “neither Mr. McKissick nor I suppose that this grant
requires the two of us - or our organizations - to agree on all public questions.” The foundation
had chosen Cleveland because it had been particularly hard hit by riots the past summer; Ford’s
theory was that CORE might channel the ghetto’s grievances in a more constructive way,
averting further violence in the streets. The money was earmarked for voter registration and the
training of community workers who were then to help other blacks articulate their needs.’
(Tamar Jacoby, “McGeorge Bundy: How the Establishment’s Man Tackled America’s Problem
with Race,” http://www.aliciapatterson.org/APF1303/ Jacoby/Jacoby.html)
Bundy the patrician had made McKissick the minority plebeian into his mercenary as part of an
incipient war on the part of the financiers against the majority of the American people in the form of
the white middle class and lower middle class.
Rational spokesmen for the black community were horrified by the kinds of reckless and
irresponsible agitation which the Ford Foundation was creating: ‘In Cleveland, ‘A black city
councilman who opposed the program said the youths were being taught “race hatred” and that they
had been heard telling younger children that “we are going to get guns and take over.” Yet Ford
continued to defend the grant: “I see it,” said a foundation consultant, “as a flowering of what Black
Power could be.” In August 1968, the program was renewed, with explicit instructions to include
local gang leaders.’ (Tamar Jacoby) The Ford Foundation was not making mistakes; it was rather
acting with diabolical effectiveness to pursue its oligarchical class agenda.
BUNDY AND MAYOR LINDSAY ATTACK THE NEW YORK SCHOOLS, 1968
At this time, the mayor of New York City was a liberal Republican bankers’ boy named John V.
Lindsay. Lindsay was expected by Wall Street to maintain full payment on the municipal bonds of
the city, no matter what the consequences might be for schools, hospitals, transportation
infrastructure and so forth. The bankruptcy of New York City which would explode in 1974-75
was now on the horizon, so it was time for the finance oligarchs to take preemptive action to divide,
disrupt, and abort any potential for a united front of New Yorkers against their outrageous and
exorbitant demands, which would later be carried out by the infamous Municipal Assistance
Corporation or Big Mac, directed by the austerity fanatic and future Obama backer Felix Rohatyn.
Bundy was able to convince Lindsay that a counterinsurgency project based on black community