Harlem pastor questions Obama's citizenship

When we first introduced you to Rev. James David Manning 15 months ago, the controversial Harlem pastor was making headlines in the New York Times for his provocative sermons attacking Barack Obama.

Now, as President Obama marks his first six months in office on Monday, Pastor Manning is back at it again, this time accusing Obama of faking his citizenship.

A sign posted on the marquee in front of Manning's church on Sunday explicitly challenged the president to prove that he was born in the United States, as required under the constitution to become president.

The sign read: "The Blood Of Jesus Against Obama. Mr. Obama Show Us Your Birth Certificate. No Dew Nor Rain."

In a recent YouTube video (posted below), Manning repeatedly accuses Obama of being a "criminal" who has raised enough suspicion to be arrested and indicted. "There's a problem that there's a snake in the White House. He needs to be snaked out," Manning claims in his video.

Last November, the effort to challenge Barack Obama's U.S. citizenship got unexpected support when Justice Clarence Thomas pushed the issue onto the Supreme Court's docket after it had been initially rejected. The full Court later rejected the citizenship challenge. Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961 and his birth certificate was validated by officials in that state.

Rev. Manning joins Justice Thomas and former Republican presidential candidate Alan Keyes as the third African American public figure to question Obama's citizenship. A fringe group of Obama conspiracy theorists has also been pressing the issue, even though every major news organization that has investigated has confirmed Obama's natual born U.S. citizenship.

Unlike Keyes and Thomas, though, Manning's base is located in the black community. He is the pastor of the Atlah World Missionary Church in New York, located at 38 West 123rd Street in Harlem. It's a very visible location near the intersection of two of the biggest streets in central Harlem, 125th Street and Lenox Avenue.

With only 150 members last year, Manning's church was not very big or particularly well known by Harlem standards. But his online videos posted on YouTube gave him a presence beyond the small circle of his congregation.

One of his videos about Obama had 1.6 million hits on YouTube last year. Another had 188,000. That may be due to the controversial nature of some of the the pastor's sermons on YouTube. One, called "Obama Is A Good House Negro," says white people "have found themselves a good Negro" in Obama. "Barack is a good Negro. He doesn't say anything mean to us," Rev. Manning says, imagining what white people say about the Illinois senator.

Manning went further. "Don't trust any Negro to be your leader who's never been to jail," he said, explaining that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X also went to jail. "If your pastor hasn't been to jail, don't trust him," the minister says. Manning knows about jail because he's been in prison too, convicted and sentenced for burglarizing 100 homes in the 1960s and 1970s, according to the New York Times.

The 62-year-old pastor argued in one sermon, posted online, that "Obama is a mack daddy" and an "emissary of the devil." According to Manning, "Obama pimps white women and black women....You didn't notice him until he brought out those big-chested white women with their tight t-shirts and their short pants," Rev. Manning said in one video, in an apparent reference to the "Obama girl" YouTube videos that spread without the Obama campaign's involvement or consent.

"That's what a pimp does," says Manning. "She must be a 54-D. Double D. That's what started his campaign. He put his name on two big 54-Ds...That's the first place you saw his name. That's the first place I saw it, on two great big old tits."

Accused of trashing Obama, whom he calls a "long-legged freak," Rev. Manning saw it differently last year. "I haven't trashed Obama. His African-in-heat father went a whoring after a trashy white woman. He was born trash."

But for all the fiery rhetoric and inflammatory sermons, no one seems to be paying much attention to Rev. Manning these days. Obama is already president. And the fear that Barack Hussein Obama might be a closet socialist radical Christian Muslim terrorist-loving Manchurian candidate seems to have faded away faster than Sarah Palin's presidential prospects.

Most damning for Rev. Manning is that no one in the area seemed to notice the controversial sign outside the church when our cameras took the picture. Maybe they were all just used to it.