Frances Cress Welsing
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Frances Cress Welsing (born Frances Luella Cress; March 18, 1935 – January 2, 2016) was an American Afrocentrist psychiatrist. Her 1970 essay, The Cress Theory of Color-Confrontation and Racism (White Supremacy), offered her interpretation on the origins of what she described as white supremacy culture.
She was the author of The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors (1991). Welsing caused controversy after she said that homosexuality among African-Americans was a ploy by white males to decrease the black population.
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Early life
Welsing was born Frances Luella Cress in Chicago on March 18, 1935. Her father, Henry N. Cress, was a physician, and her mother, Ida Mae Griffen, was a teacher. In 1957, she earned a B.S. degree at Antioch College and in 1962 received an M.D. at Howard University. In the 1960s, Welsing moved to Washington, D.C. and worked at many hospitals, especially children's hospitals.
Views
In The Isis Papers, she described white people as the genetically defective descendants of albino mutants. She wrote that due to this "defective" mutation, they may have been forcibly expelled from Africa, among other possibilities. Racism, in the views of Welsing, is a conspiracy "to ensure white genetic survival". She attributed AIDS and addiction to crack cocaine and other substances to "chemical and biological warfare" by whites.
Death
By December 30, 2015, Welsing suffered two strokes and was placed in critical care at a Washington, D.C.-area hospital. She died on January 2, 2016, at the age of 80.
Film appearances
- Welsing appeared in the documentary 500 Years Later (2005), directed by Owen Alik Shahadah, and written by M. K. Asante.
- Welsing also appeared in Hidden Colors: The Untold History of People of Aboriginal, Moor, and African Descent, a 2011 documentary film by Tariq Nasheed.
Works
- The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors, Chicago: Third World Press, c 1992 (3rd printing); Template:ISBN, Template:ISBN.
