movielover said:
What did Trump's father do?
According to a New York Times article from Memorial Day 1927, Fred Trump was arrested at a Ku Klux Klan March in which 1,000 white-robed Klansmen incited a brawl on the streets of the Jamaican neighborhood of Queens in New York City. In total, seven Klansmen people were arrested, including Trump's father.
Subsequent reporting confirmed that the Fred Trump arrested in 1927 had the same name, home address and was even married to the same woman as Trump's father. Moreover, while Fred Trump was eventually released without charges, news reports from 1927 state that all seven of the men arrested were wearing Klan attire and that three presumably the leaders were charged.
Moreover, Fred Trump's participation in a Klan march was not the careless act of an impressionable 21-year-old swept up in a moment in time.
As Fred Trump built his real estate empire, he engaged in overt racial profiling and championed discriminatory policies and practices that increased his personal profits at the expense of Black New Yorkers.
In 1950, folk singer Woody Guthrie was among Fred Trump's tenants when he wrote about the "color line" created by Trump in Brooklyn. "I suppose Old Man Trump knows just how much racial hate he stirred up in the bloodpot of human hearts when he drawed that color line here at his eighteen hundred family project," wrote Guthrie in the lyrics to an unpublished song.
Just a few years later, in 1954, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee opened an investigation into Fred Trump for financial misconduct, discriminatory practices and other abuses of a federal housing program.
Then, in 1973, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Fred Trump, Donald Trump and the family's real estate company, Trump Management, for discriminating against Black renters. The lawsuit alleged that Trump Management had systematically refused to rent apartments in its buildings to Blacks by lying about unit availability.
The investigation revealed that Black applicants were often told that no apartments were available, while white applicants were shown units immediately. The case was settled in 1975 with a consent decree, in which the Trumps did not admit guilt but were required to take steps to prevent future discrimination.
Link:
https://lasvegassun.com/news/2024/aug/22/legacy-of-racism-discrimination-spur-trumps-attack/
