This is Part Four of a much longer post I put up a bit ago. It was long, so I broke it up.
Part Four of the story starts out with G. J. Sutton, one of the most politically active (and radical) Suttons. It continues with some of the other siblings.
For those gluttons for punishment who want the whole eighteen pages as one lump:
https://wqth.wordpress.com/2019/02/06/2591/
Here are the previous parts if you haven’t read them yet:
Part One:
https://wqth.wordpress.com/2019/02/08/a-web-of-commies-and-lies-percy-sutton-his-family-and-even-mary-jacoby-part-one/
Part Two:
https://wqth.wordpress.com/2019/02/09/a-web-of-commies-stories-and-lies-percy-sutton-his-family-and-even-mary-jacoby-part-two/
Part Three:
https://wqth.wordpress.com/2019/02/10/a-web-of-commies-stories-and-lies-percy-sutton-his-family-and-even-mary-jacoby-part-three/
– G. J. (Garlington Jerome) H. Sutton, b. abt. 1909, d. 22 June 1976; m. 1^st Jeffrey Plummer on 18 May 1933;  m. 2^nd Lou Nelle Callahan, b. 20 Dec 1905; attended Wilberforce University
At a Free Angela Davis (black activist) meeting in 1971:
“Seated on the platform were Carlos Richardson, Texas co-ordinator of Student Nonviolent Co-ordinating Committee and chairman of the San Antonio Committee to Free Angela Davis; Raul Rodriguez, publisher of Chicano Times, and Rosie Castro, both candidates for City Council; G.J. Sutton and John Inman, black community leaders; John Stanford, Communist party spokesman; Mario Cantu, Chicano businessman; Mrs. Manuela Sager, and David Plylar.
https://keywiki.org/G.J._Sutton
John Sanford is the man who stated that the SIX SUTTONS were communists. John Inman, Manuela Sager, and Percy Sutton were the others he named in the same speech.
John Inman was a known revolutionary in San Antonio. A.C. Sutton was quoted as saying “Anything that looked like a movement, he would be a part of.” He was deeply connected to the Sutton family and Emma Tenayuca.
John Inman was a fighter for social justice for many years, John Inman, a black revolutionary during the Bellinger era, lived for a long time and fought for positive change for decades. He was socialist oriented and was able to establish strong working relations with the Mexican American community through Emma Tenayuca as they both fought for worker’s rights. John Inman was allied with Rev. Claude Black and the Sutton family, who were at various times connected to the socialist movement.”
http://www.saobserver.com/single-post/2018/04/17/CIVIL-RIGHTS-LEADER
Emma Tenayuca was married to Homer Brooks aka Homer Bartchy, born 28 Dec 1910, a Communist Party USA Gubernatorial candidate in Texas in the 1930s. They ultimately separated, and in 1946, Emma left the Communist Party. She became a teacher. Too many of these people are educators.
I found a very interesting quote about G. J. Sutton made in an oral interview by Maury Maverick. Maverick was a San Antonio politician. He represented Texas in the House of Representatives from 1935 to 1939, and was mayor of San Antonio from 1939 to 1941. This is an excerpt of the interview with Chandler Davidson:
CHANDLER DAVIDSON:
Well, tell me a little bit about the black population in San Antonio. That’s a rather small one compared to the Chicanos, isn’t it?
MAURY MAVERICK:
Yes. And they are all working for the Pentagon, too, but like blacks everywhere in the South, they are damn well organized and they know what they are doing and they’ve got a black representative from here, a better fellow than that liberal Texas Monthly magazine gives him credit for being. He is a lot better fellow.
CHANDLER DAVIDSON:
This is Sutton that you are talking about?
MAURY MAVERICK:
Yeah, G. J. Sutton, which may probably be the most interesting black family in Texas and it’s worth telling one of your students, if you’ve got one from San Antonio, to do a story on that family. One of them was a scientist in the Soviet Union and designed a hemp rope of some kind that was of great use to the Russians. He speaks Russian fluently. One of the girls was a medical doctor, one of the first black women to be a doctor in America. One of them is Percy Sutton, the president of the borough of Manhattan and may be the first black mayor of New York City. He was raised on a farm and he was up making a speech in upstate New York to a bunch of farmers and they said, “This Harlem black, what’s he going to know about agriculture?” Well, he got up and talked about crows and insects and locusts and boll weevils and they never had heard anything like that in their lives. He was raised on a farm. The reason that he is borough president of New York, Manhattan, today is that after World War II he applied to go to Texas A&M’s veterinary medicine school, he loved animals, and they wouldn’t let him in. They said that he had to go to the black school. He said, “I’m not going to go to any black school.” For that reason, he went to New York and I tell Percy that Texas lost a good horse doctor.
“They’re all working for the Pentagon”? What the heck is THAT about?
Maury Maverick was branded as a communist by his political opponents, which led to his defeat in 1941.
G.J. Sutton married second Lou Nelle Callahan. After his death, Lou Nelle ran for his place in the Texas Legislature, and won. She is another example of the mythology this family used to disguise its humble origins. On the 1930 census in San Angelo, Texas, Lou Nelle is listed as a single servant in the household of Preston Northrup. In an oral interview, Lou Nelle spoke of when she later moved to Austin.
“I lived in Austin, but I lived with a family. I didn’t…There was one family…there was a family, Reverend and Mrs. Duncan and their daughter, Thelma, and a son, Roosevelt. Thelma and I were very near the same age. We met in the church when I first went there, and we became friends. Before too long, I moved out of the dormitory and moved into the home with the Duncans. And that’s where I did…I spent the rest of my schooling.
Lou Nelle goes on to emphasize that she was treated “Just like Thelma.” I found the family on a census, probably before Lou Nelle lived with them. Thelma was actually four years younger than she. I am fairly certain that the sentence in bold above should read “And that’s where I did for them.” That is the “polite” way Southerners referred to servitude. I think it is likely Lou Nelle was a servant for this black family while she was in school. She “helped” the mother with her sewing for spending money, she states. There is more in the interview, reading between the lines, that supports this theory. But it wouldn’t suit the narrative she was living, as the woman who took her husband’s place in the Texas legislature, if she had ever been a servant.
I keep mentioning these seemingly innocent lies because they strongly remind me of the made-up and covered-up past of Barack Obama. It is clear that deceit about one’s true origins is not an exceptional thing within this group. Percy Sutton was probably easily persuaded to write a letter supporting the admission of a possibly non-deserving student to Harvard Law. He was definitely accustomed to making stuff up!
Another very telling section of this interview involves Lou Nelle’s decision to run for G.J.’s seat. Her brother-in-law Oliver approached her, telling her she would have to run for the seat on the day he died. Here is a widow, in shock, and the pressure starts on the day of his death. His nephew Charles, sister Smithie’s son, also approached her about running the very next day. These people are all about power, and this demonstrates it fully to me.
G.J. Sutton operated Sutton and Sutton Mortuary with his brother, Samuel. After G.J.’s death, it passed to Lou Nelle. She bristled at people calling it the “family business,” stating it was “her business.” She actually went off the record with the interviewed to explain how $200 was what the family contributed. Most sources talk about the owners of the business as G.J. and his brother. According to an oral interview with activist Harry Burns, a good friend of G. J. Sutton and Rev. C. W. Black, the funeral home was an “internal family feud.” Lillian opened a different funeral home in San Antonio. Maybe the family loaned her the $200 to start her business.
Harry Burns also states that he and G. J. often came into conflict, because G. J. was more “militant” in his views and how he wanted to do things.
http://digital.utsa.edu/cdm/ref/collection/p15125coll4/id/439
http://digital.utsa.edu/cdm/ref/collection/p15125coll4/id/248
Rev. C. W. Black, Jr. made a tribute to G. J. at his funeral. G. J. and Rev. Black were very good friends. Both were very radical in the politics of 1950s and 60s San Antonio.
– William N. Sutton, b. 8 Feb 1910, d. 28 Aug 1971; attended Hampton Institute
William N. Sutton seems to be one of the lesser-known of the Sutton family. In the funeral program for Rev. Alexander Carver Sutton, it is stated that William N. Sutton joined A. Philip Randolph as a union organizer for the United Brotherhood of Pullman Porters (this is actually not the correct name of the union; it is Sleeping Car Porters). Randolph was the editor of the Messenger, and was named in an investigation of communist propaganda by Congress in 1930. The newspaper “advocated communism, the overthrow of the United States,” and a variety of other “crimes.”
https://books.google.com/books?id=u9FFAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA2-PA81&lpg=RA2-PA81&dq=Howard+Kester+Communist&source=bl&ots=S3HqVZJDTD&sig=ACfU3U3VivG7PztWxcL0uGNgEK2BPcb9_w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiy-82Ju4fgAhWQEnwKHVFPDK0Q6AEwBnoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=Howard%20Kester%20Communist&f=false
Interestingly, while looking for William Sutton in relation to this union, I found that Rev. C. W. Black, Jr., who officiated at so many of the Sutton funerals, was born the son of local Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters vice president Claude Black, Sr. The Sleeping Car Porters Union was formed by A. Philip Randolph in 1925, when William Sutton would have been only fifteen years old. By 1933, the Union would only have 658 members and had stopped paying its bills. William Sutton would then have been twenty-three. Maybe being a porter was his first job. In any case, perhaps this is when the family first came into contact with Rev. Black.
William N. Sutton most certainly had some sort of relationship with men whom the Congress at the time believed were communists.
– Cora Mary Sutton, b. 9 Dec 1911, d. 22 Nov 2005; m. Granville Andrew Jackson; attended Guadalupe College
Cora Sutton Jackson became a teacher. She eventually taught in Oakland, California. According to the Sutton family, she was head of an educational department in the Oakland Public Schools.
Her husband Grandvel seems to have been fairly undistinguished. He completed college, according to census information, but at age 30 was working as a waiter in a “private club.” His father was a farmer.
In this obituary, it is stated that she and Grandvel became “surrogate parents” to their nieces and nephews who came to California to live with them. The obit didn’t specify which ones, but Jeffrey Dean (Sutton) Greene, G. J.’s daughter is quoted in the obit. His children were also referenced as being raised by Lillian Sutton Taylor, so I imagine they were some of the “nieces and nephews” mentioned here. Some of these people sure seem to have had a hard time raising their kids or staying married.
There is not much other information available about Cora. She seems to have been fairly unremarkable.
– Smithie D. Sutton, b. 4 Oct 1914, d. 5 Oct 1982, Marin Co., CA ; m. 1^st Charles C. Andrews; m. 2^nd Wendell Henry 29 Jan 1966 in San Francisco, CA
Smithie, along with Lillian, was an activist in the civil rights movement. They picketed Joske Department Store leading to the integration of its Chameleon Room in 1960.
Smithie seems to have been fairly political. She was active in the League of Women voters, the Democrat Party and the NAACP. She was also very involved in children’s organizations, including the Girl Scouts. I could not find any obvious Communist connections. Doesn’t mean they aren’t there, they are just well hidden if they are.
The ubiquitous Rev. C. W. Black, Jr. also spoke at her funeral.
Coming up, the rest of the story.

Short post here, on my part. Hopefully, it will lead to open discussion from a well-informed group of people who are smarter than I am.
I had a conversation with a “Person A” this weekend who was resentful of several specific Silicon Valley billionaires and their overnight wealth. “Person B” brought up the Carnegies and Vanderbilts of old, but there was no resentment for the older wealthy families. I wondered why there was hatred for the nouveau riche but not the blue-bloods.
I thought, maybe, the passage of time has softened the images of the Carnegies, Vanderbilt’s and others, but “Person A” was quick to disagree. Person A said (paraphrasing), “No, that’s not it at all. The new billionaires earn their money quickly, either by stealing an idea or by taking a good idea public, and overnight – poof – they’re rich. They then think they can rule our country and buy respect. The older families acquired wealth over decades, generations, and improved their communities along the way. They also saved their wealth for the next generation. They had a sense of responsibility. Perhaps, they did ‘rule’ the country or influence politics, but they understood their position in society”.
Hmmm, I thought. My mind ran through examples of poor work conditions under Carnegies, etc., but also to universities and hospitals named in their honor. Likewise, we can point to a Bill Gates, who does benevolent work overseas and domestically.
To bolster the perception of Person A, we can also point to “lucky” billionaires, or the thieves, as they are perceived. We all remember the movie about Zuckerberg stealing the idea of Facebook from the Harvard twins. Jack Dorsey floundered and failed as a human being and sort of fell into the idea of Twitter. One could make the argument the ideas were stolen, just ask a dead Steve Jobs.
OR, is it that our world has experience a tech revolution and some people were on the inside, and we are resentful because we were not in the right place at the right time. OR are we resentful at all? Or are we merely disgusted with nouveau riche behavior? Like the Kardashians?
Interesting note: Person A was a liberal. Yet, Person A was not resentful of the wealth of Donald Trump or a man like Carl Icahn. In the view of Person A, even Donald Trump EARNED his money over a lifetime, “He worked for it and he deserves it – he built buildings all over the world”. Yet, there was still resentment for billionaires like Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Dorsey… and the Kardashians. The resentment went beyond personal politics. Interesting, eh?
Soooooo, here’s the question. Is the resentment of newly rich billionaires a broad feeling in America, AND is this ‘feeling’ feeding the push towards higher taxes on the wealthy and a general call for socialism. Are the new billionaires acting responsibly with their wealth? Do we believe the new billionaires are so irresponsible, we (or some Americans) think we should take their money away? Are the new billionaires cheaters (thieves) or did they just cheat the idea of “a lifetime of hard word is our reward”. Do we, as Americans, resent the Chinese billionaires because they cheated America…. because our politicians allowed it to happen?
Is the feeling of unfairness a call for socialism, or is it a BIGGER call for a return to fairness? It’s a big question. If the masses are being sold “socialism” as a society which is more fair (and that’s definitely what Dem presidential candidates are selling = resentment of the rich and a return to normalcy)………. then, all we have to do is sell “fairness”, with a return to justice, crime does not pay (Facebook is fined for stealing data – or China is penalized – or Hillary is indicted), and ethical hard work is rewarded.
What do you think?