he was a successful businessman but he was also the clandestine fund-raiser for the CPUSA. He was entrusted with raising and handling secret funds for the Party and used some of these funds to finance his own activities.
Through Levison's influence, other subversives were attracted to SCLC. Hunter Pitts O'Dell, former National Committee member of the CPUSA, was employed by SCLC. In 1962, when King mentioned to Levison that he was thinking of adding an administrative assistant to his staff, Levison recommended O'Dell, who was then head of SCLC's New York Office. King said he liked the idea. At the time, King was well aware of Levison's and O'Dell's communist affiliations.
The reason King enjoyed this close relationship with communists is best explained by the fact that Levison, in February 1962, passed the word to Gus Hall, General Secretary of CPUSA, "King is a whole-hearted Marxist who has studied it (Marxism), believes in it, and agrees with it, but because of his being a minister of religion, does not dare to espouse it publicly." Further, in March 1962, Levison told a CPUSA functionary that King was concerned about a "communist label" being "pinned on us," but that, at the same time, he wanted to do everything possible to evidence friendship toward the Soviet Union. In addition, King has been described within the CPUSA as a true, genuine Marxist-Leninist "from the top of his head to the tips of his toes." The feeling within the CPUSA at that time was, and still is, that King definitely follows a Marxist-Leninist line.
Communist Exposed
King was forced to get rid of Hunter Pitts O'Dell in October 1962, when several newspaper articles exposed O'Dell's connection with SCLC and his communist affiliations. King still tried to hide O'Dell in his organization until July 1963, when he accepted O'Dell's "resignation." As King put it, O'Dell's release was not because of connections between O'Dell and the CPUSA but because of the emotional public response.
