Paul Robeson, the Artist as Activist and Social Thinker
By John Henrik Clarke
Paul Robeson was indeed more than an artist, activist and
freedom fighter. The dimensions of his talent made him our Renaissance
man. He was the first American artist, Black or White, to realize that
the role of the artist extends far beyond the stage and the concert
hall. Early in his life he became conscious of the plight of his people,
stubbornly surviving in a racist society. This was his window on the
world. From this vantage point he saw how the plight of his people
related to the rest of humanity. He realized that the artist had the
power, and the responsibility, to change the society in which he lived.
He learned that art and culture are weapons in a people's struggle to
exist with dignity, and in peace. Life offered him many options and he
never chose the easiest one. For most of his life he was a man walking
against the wind. An understanding of his beginning and how he developed
artistically and politically, will reveal the nature of his mission and
the importance of the legacy of participation in struggle that we have
inherited from him.
He was born, April 9, 1898, at a time of great crisis for his people.
When he died, January 23, 1976, his people were still in a crisis,
partly of a different nature, and partly the same crisis that they faced
in the closing years of the nineteenth century, when Paul Robeson was
born. He was born three years after Booker T. Washington made his famous
Atlanta Exposition address, 1895, and two years after the Supreme Court
announced a decision in the Plessy versus Ferguson Case, in which the
concept of "Separate but Equal" facilities for Black Americans became
law. Of course the separateness never produced any equalness. The time
and the decision did produce some of the problems that Paul Robeson
would address himself to in later years.
His early years were strengthened by binding family ties. They were
not easy years. He recalled those years and reflected on their meaning
in the introductory issue of the newspaper
Freedom, November 1950.
"My father was of slave origin," he said. "He reached as honorable a
position as a Negro could under these circumstances, but soon after I
was born he lost his church and poverty was my beginning. Relatives from
my father's North Carolina family took me in, a motherless orphan,
while my father went to new fields to begin again in a corner grocery
store. I slept four in a bed, ate the nourishing greens and cornbread.
Many times I stood on the very soil on which my father was a slave,
where some of my cousins were sharecroppers and unemployed tobacco
workers. I reflected upon the wealth bled from my near relatives alone,
and of the very basic wealth of all this America beaten out of millions
of Negro people, enslaved, freed, newly enslaved until this very day."
He grew to early manhood during the Booker T. Washington era. He made
his professional debut at the Harlem YMCA in 1920, in a play, "Simon,
the Cyrenian," by Redgely Torrence. The play was about an Ethiopian who
steps out of a crowd to help a tired and haggard Jesus Christ carry his
cross up Calvary Hill to be crucified. His role in this play was
symbolic of his commitment to just causes and to oppressed people, the
world over, the rest of his life. This dimension of his life is the main
focus of this paper. He was not persecuted, denied a passport and
attacked at Peekskill because he was a world famous concert singer and
activist.
Many of his persecutors admired him in these capacities. He was
persecuted, denied a passport and attacked at Peekskill because he was
an artist and activist who used his art and his personality to call for
change in the society in which he lived. This was not a late development
in his life. He grew to manhood observing the need for change.
Paul Robeson attended elementary and high school in Westfield and
Somerville, New Jersey. He won a four-year scholarship to Rutgers
College and entered in the fall of 1915. Only two other Black students
had attended the school since its founding in 1776. Robeson's
achievements in both scholarship and athletics at Rutgers were
extraordinary. He won Phi Beta Kappa honors in his junior year, was
valedictorian of his graduation class, and was the debating champion in
all of his four years.
Although he was initially brutalized by his own team-mates when he
tried out for the football team, he survived to become one of the
greatest football players of all time. Walter Camp selected Robeson as
his first-team All-America end for two years—1977 and 1918, and he was
named on all important "consensus" All-America teams for both those
years. Robeson was also a great all-round athlete, winning a total of 15
varsity letters in football, basketball, baseball and track.
In May of 1918 Reverend Robeson died, Paul's relatives and his
football coach, Foster Sanford, were especially helpful to him during
the trying time immediately after his father's death. Following his
graduation in 1919, Paul went to live in Harlem and entered Columbia Law
School, from which he graduated in 1923. To pay his way through law
school, Paul played professional football on weekends, first with Fritz
Pollard on the Akron, Ohio team in 1920 and 1921, and then with
Milwaukee in 1922. In 1921, he met and married Eslanda Cardozo Goode, a
brilliant young woman who was the first Black analytical chemist at
Columbia Medical Center. Their marriage lasted forty-four years until
Eslanda's death in 1965.
In the early 1920's Paul Robeson joined the Provincetown Players in
Greenwich Village. This brought him to the attention of the American
Playwright, Eugene O'Neil who selected him for the lead in his play,
"All God's Children Got Wings." His performance in this play established
his importance in the American Theatre. In 1924, he was in another
Eugene O'Neil play, "The Emperor Jones." By 1925, he was known both in
England and in the United States as an actor and as a concert singer.
Lawrence Brown, who accompanied him during his first concert in 1925,
remained with him for twenty-five years.
In these years following the First World War, Black Americans were
discovering themselves, their culture and their history. Thousands of
Black soldiers had returned from the war in Europe to face unemployment,
bad housing and lynchings. The Universal Negro Improvement Association
led by Marcus Garvey, and the intellectual movement called The Harlem
Literary Renaissance reached their respective highs during this period.
The years of the nineteen-twenties were proving grounds for Paul
Robeson's development as an artist and a responsible person.
Many of the roles that Paul Robeson played in America were repeated
in the theatres of London. It has been reported his political ideas took
shape after George Bernard Shaw introduced him to the concept of
socialism in 1928. This may be partly true about his political ideas in a
formal sense, though his social awareness started before this time. His
first visit to the Soviet Union in 1934 had a more profound influence
on the shaping of his political ideas and understanding. Later, he
publicly expressed his belief in the principles of scientific socialism.
It was his convictions that a socialist society represents an advance
to a higher stage of life for all mankind. The rest of his life was a
commitment to this conviction.
He spoke out against oppression where ever he saw it, and not just
the oppression of his own people. He went to Spain during the Civil War
in that country and sang for the Republican troops and for the members
of the International Brigades. This was part of a gathering of
anti-Fascist forces who were in battle with the army of General Franco
who was backed by Hitler and Mussolini. When Paul Robeson returned to
the United States be expressed the belief that the war in Spain
represented dangers for the world far beyond that country's borders.
"I saw the connection between the problems of all oppressed people
and the necessity of the artist to participate fully," he said.
He opposed every form of racism in his own country; he was the first
American artist to refuse to sing before a segregated audience. He spoke
out against lynching, segregated theatres and eating places a
generation before the beginning of what is referred to as the Black
Revolution. He supported all organizations that he thought were working
genuinely to improve the lot of his people and mankind.
In his book,
Robeson: Labor's Forgotten Champion, (Balamp Publishing Co., Detroit, Mich., 1975), Dr. Charles H. Wright states that:
"Robeson saw the struggle of the working classes of Spain in the same
terms that he saw the struggles of the black man in the United States.
He made this clear after he left Spain and embarked on a series of
public appearances on behalf of the Republicans, both on the continent
and in England. It was from the continent, probably the Spanish Embassy
in Paris that he issued what became known as his Manifesto against
Fascism."
The Manifesto reads, as follows:
"Every artist, every scientist must decide, now, where he stands. He has no alternative. There are no impartial observers.
Through the destruction, in certain countries, of man's literary
heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of national and racial
superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. This
struggle invades the former cloistered halls of our universities and all
her seats of learning.
The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear. The artist elects to fight for freedom or slavery.
I have made my choice! I had no alternative!
The history of the era is characterized by the degradation of my
people. Despoiled of their lands, their culture destroyed, they are
denied equal opportunity of the law and deprived of their rightful place
in the respect of their fellows.
Not through blind faith or through coercion, but conscious of my
course, I take my place with you. I stand with you in unalterable
support of the lawful government of Spain, duly and regularly chosen by
its sons and daughters."
In January 1938 he visited Spain with his wife, Eslanda. Plans had
already been made for him to sing to the troops in the International
Abraham Lincoln Brigades.
This was not his introduction to the international aspects of the
fight against Fascism. The Spanish Civil War started in June 1936, the
Italian-Ethiopian War had started the year before. On December 20, 1937,
Robeson had participated in a meeting on the Spanish Civil War at
Albert Hall in London. This and other anti-fascist activity disenchanted
the United States Department of State. This was probably the formal
beginning of his harassment by that agency. This harassment would
continue for another twenty years. In his writings and speeches, for
most of the years of his active career, Paul Robeson was very explicit
in explaining the motive and antecedents of his fight against every form
of racism and oppression. At a Welcome Home Rally in Harlem, June19,
1949, he restated his position and the nature of his commitment.
"I have traveled many lands and I have sung and talked to many
peoples. Wherever I appeared, whether in professional concert, at peace
meetings, in the factories, at trade union gatherings, at the mining
pits, at assemblies of representative colonial students from all over
the world, always the greeting came: "Take back our affection, our love,
our strength to the Negro people and to the members of the progressive
movement of America."
I was then, through my athletics and my university record, trying to
hold up the prestige of my people; trying in the only way I knew to ease
the path for future Negro boys and girls. And I am still in there
slugging, yes, at another level, and you can bet your life that I shall
battle every step of the way until conditions around these corners
change and conditions change for the Negro people all up and down this
land.
The road has been long. The road has been hard. It began about as
tough as I ever had it in Princeton, New Jersey, a college town of
Southern aristocrats, who from Revolutionary time transferred Georgia to
New Jersey. My brothers couldn't go to high school in Princeton. They
had to go to Trenton, ten miles away. That's right—Trenton, of the
"Trenton Six." My brother or I could have been one of the "Trenton Six."
Almost every Negro in Princeton lived off the college and accepted
the social status that went with it. We lived for all intents and
purposes on a Southern plantation. And with no more dignity than that
suggests all the bowing and scraping to the drunken rich, all the vile
names, all the Uncle Tomming to earn enough to lead miserable lives."
He could not see himself accepting any form of Jim-Crow Americanism.
He said in many ways he hated what American was, but he lived what it
promised to be. He defended the stated higher ideals and potential of
the United States while calling attention to the fact that the nation's
promise to all people had not been kept.
"And I defied," he said, "and I defy any part of this insolent,
dominating America, however powerful; to challenge my Americanism;
because by word and deed I challenge this vicious system to the death."
Paul Robeson would not let his public acceptance as an actor and
singer, make him relax in comfort and forget the struggle for basic
dignity still being waged by the rest of his people. On this point he
said:
"I refuse to let my personal success, as part of a fraction of one
percent of the Negro people, to explain away the injustices to fourteen
million of my people; because with all the energy at my command, I fight
for the right of the Negro people and other oppressed labor-driven
Americans to have decent homes, decent jobs, and the dignity that
belongs to every human being!
Somewhere in my childhood these feelings were planted. Perhaps when I
resented being pushed off the sidewalk, when I saw my women being
insulted, and especially when I saw my elder brother answer each insult
with blows that sent would-be slave masters crashing to the stone
sidewalks, even though jail was his constant reward. He never said it,
but he told me day after day: "Listen to me, kid." (He loved me dearly.)
"Don't you ever take it, as long as you live."
In my opinion, the artistic and political growth of Paul Robeson has
its greatest stimulant during the nineteen-thirties. Paul was always
discovering something new in the human situation, and new dimensions in
old things he already knew. He was, concurrently, both a student and a
scholar, in pursuit of knowledge about the world's people and the
conditions of their lives. Africa, its people and cultures were of
special interest to him. In a note, dated 1936, included in his
"Selected Writings," published by the Paul Robeson Archives, 1976, he
makes this comment:
"I am a singer and an actor. I am primarily an artist. Had I been
born in Africa, I would have belonged, I hope, to that family which
sings and chants the glories and legends of the tribe. I would have
liked in my mature years to have been a wise elder, for I worship wisdom
and knowledge of the ways of men."
His artistic strength was in his love for the history, songs, and for
culture of his people. In this way he learned to respect the cultures
of all people.
I an article published in the
Royal Screen Pictorial, London, April 1935 he said:
I am a Negro. The origin of the Negro is African. It would,
therefore, seem an easy matter for me to assume African nationality… At
present the younger generation of Negroes in America looks towards
Africa and asks, "What is there to interest me? What of value has Africa
to offer that the Western world cannot give me? … Their acknowledgement
of their common origin, species, interest and attitudes binds Jew to
Jew; a similar acknowledgement will bind Negro to Negro. I realize that
this will not be accomplished by viewing from afar the dark rites of the
witch doctor. It may be accomplished, or at least furthered, by patient
inquiry. To this end I am learning Swahili, Twi, and other African
dialects which come easily to me because their rhythm is the same as
that employed by the American Negro in speaking English; and when the
time is ripe, I propose to investigate on the spot the possibilities of
such a regeneration as I have outlined. Meanwhile, in my music, my
plays, my films. I want to carry always this central idea—to be African.
Multitudes of men have died for less worthy ideals; it is more
eminently worth living for.
This interest in Africa, started during his "London years" continued
throughout the rest of his life; and very logically led to his
participation in the development and leadership of organizations like
the Council on African Affairs (1937–1955) and the National Negro
Congress. In an article in his "Selected Writings," that was first
published in
Fighting Talk, April 1955, Paul Robeson speaks of his discovery of Africa in this way:
I "discovered" Africa in London. That discovery—back in the
twenties—profoundly influenced my life. Like most of Africa's children
in America, I had known little about the land of our fathers. Both in
England, where my career as an actor and singer took me, I came to know
many Africans. Some of their names are now known to the world—Azikiwe,
and Nkruma, and Kenyatta, who has just been jailed for his leadership of
the liberation struggles in Kenya.
Many of these Africans were students, and I spent many hours talking
with them and taking part in their activities at the West African
Students Union building. Somehow they came to think of me as one of
them; they took pride in my successes; and they made Mrs. Robeson and me
honorary members of the Union.
Besides these students, who were mostly of princely origin, I also
came to know another class of African—the seamen in the ports of London,
Liverpool and Cardiff. They too had their organizations, and much to
teach me of their lives and their various peoples.
As an artist it was most natural that my first interest in Africa was
cultural. Culture? The foreign rulers of that continent insisted there
was no culture worthy of the name in Africa. But already musicians and
sculptors in Europe were astir with their discovery of African art. And
as I plunged, with excited interest, into my studies of Africa at the
London University and elsewhere, I came to see that African culture was
indeed a treasure-store for the world.
Those who scorned the African languages as so many "barbarous
dialects" could never know, of course, of the richness of those
languages, and of the great philosophy and epics of poetry that have
come down through the ages in these ancient tongues. I studied these
languages—as I do this day: Yoruba, Efik, Benin, Ashanti and the others.
I now felt as one with my African friends and became filled with a
great, glowing pride in these riches, new found for me. I learned that
along with the towering achievements of the cultures in ancient Greece
and China there stood the culture of Africa, unseen and denied by the
imperialist looters of Africa's material wealth.
I came to see the root sources of my own people's culture, especially
in our music which is still the richest and most healthy in America.
Scholars had traced the influence of African music to Europe—to Spain
with the Moors, to Persia and India and China, and westward to the
Americas. And I came to learn of the remarkable kinship between African
and Chinese culture (of which I intend to write at length some day).
My pride in Africa, that grew with the learning, impelled me to speak out against the scorners. I wrote articles for the New Statesman and Nation and elsewhere championing the real but unknown glories of African culture.
I argued and discussed the subject with men like H. G. Wells, and Laski, and Nehru; with students and savants.
He now saw the logic in this culture struggle and realized, as never
before, that culture was an instrument in a people's liberation, and the
suppression of it was an instrument that was used in their enslavement.
This point was brought forcefully home to him when the British
Intelligence cautioned him about the political meaning of his
activities. He knew now that the British claim that it would take one
thousand years to prepare Africans for self-rule was a lie. The
experience led him to conclude that:
Yes, culture and politics were actually inseparable here as always.
And it was an African who directed my interest in Africa to something he
had noted in the Soviet Union. On a visit to that country he had
traveled east and had seen the Yakuts, a people who had been classed as a
"backward Race" by the Czars. He had been struck by the resemblance
between the tribal life of the Yakuts and his own people of East Africa.
What would happen to a people like the Yakuts now that they were
freed from colonial oppression and were a part of the construction of
the new socialist society?
I saw for myself when I visited the Soviet Union how the Yakuts and
the Uzbeks and all the other formerly oppressed nations were leaping
ahead from tribalism to modern industrial economy, from illiteracy to
the heights of knowledge. Their ancient culture blossoming in new and
greater splendor. Their young men and women mastering the sciences and
arts. A thousand years? No, less than 30!
During his London years, Paul Robeson was also involved with a number
of Caribbean people and organizations. These were the years of the
Italian-Ethiopian War, the self-imposed exile of Haile Selassie and
Marcus Garvey, and the proliferation of African and Caribbean
organizations, with London headquarters, demanding the improvements in
their colonial status that eventually led to the independence explosion.
In an article in the
National Guardian, Paul Robeson spoke of
his impressions of the Caribbean people, after returning from a concert
tour in Jamaica and Trinidad. He said:
I feel now as if I had drawn my first great of fresh air in many
years. Once before I felt like that. When I first entered the Soviet
Union I said to myself, "I am a human being. I don't have to worry about
my color."
In the West Indies I felt all that and something new besides. I felt
that for the first time I could see what it will be like when Negroes
are free in their own land. I felt something like what a Jew must feel
when first he goes to Israel, what a Chinese must feel on entering areas
of his country that now are free.
Certainly my people in the islands are poor. They are desperately
poor. In Kingston, Jamaica, I saw many families living in shells of old
automobiles, hollowed out and turned upside down. Many are unemployed.
They are economically subjected to landholders, British, American and
native.
But the people are on the road to freedom. I saw Negro professionals:
artists, writers, scientists, scholars. And above all I saw Negro
workers walking erect and proud.
Once I was driving in Jamaica. My road passed a school and as we came
abreast of the building a great crowd of school children came running
out to wave at me. I stopped, got out of my car to talk with them and
sing to them. Those kids were wonderful. I have stopped at similar farms
in our own deep South and I have talked to Negro children everywhere in
our country. Here for the first time I could talk to children who did
not have to look over their shoulders to see if a white man was watching
them talk to me.
They crowded around my car. For hours they waited to see me. Some
might be embarrassed or afraid of such crowds of people pressing all
around. I am not embarrassed or afraid in the presence of people.
I was not received as an opera singer is received by his people in
Italy. I was not received as Joe Louis is received by our own people.
These people saw in me not a singer, or not just a singer. They called
to me: "Hello, Paul. We know you've been fighting for us."
In many ways his concert tours were educational tours. He had a
similar experience, in New Orleans, on October 19, 1942 when he sang
before a capacity audience of black and white men and women, seated
without segregation, in the Booker T. Washington School auditorium. On
this occasion he said:
I had never put a correct evaluation on the dignity and courage of my
people of the deep South until I began to come south myself. I had
read, of course, and folks had told me of strides made…but always I had
discounted much if it, charged much of it to what some people would have
us believe. Deep down, I think, I had imagined Negroes of the South
beaten, subservient, cowed.
But I see them now courageous and possessors of a profound and
instinctive dignity, a race that has come through its trials unbroken, a
race of such magnificence of spirit that there exists no power on earth
that could crush them. They will bend, but they will never break.
I find that I must come south again and again, again and yet again.
It is only here that I achieve absolute and utter identity with my
people. There is no question here of where I stand, no need to make a
decision. The redcap in the station, the president of your college, the
man in the street—they are all one with me, part of me. And I am proud
of it, utterly proud of my people.
He reaffirmed his commitment to the Black struggle in the South by adding:
We must come south to understand in their starkest presentation the
common problems that beset us everywhere. We must breathe the smoke of
battle. We must taste the bitterness, see the ugliness…we must expose
ourselves unremittingly to the source of strength that makes the black
South strong!
In spite of the years he and his family spent abroad, he was never estranged from his own people. In his book,
Here I Stand, he explained this in essence when he said:
"I am a Negro. The house I live in is in Harlem—this city within a
city, Negro Metropolis of America. And now as I write of things that are
urgent in my mind and heart, I feel the press of all that is around me
here where I live, at home among my people."
The 1940's the war years, was a turning point in his career. His
rendition of "Ballad For Americans," made a lot of Americans, Black and
white, rethink the nature of their commitment, or lack of it, in the
making of genuine democracy in this country. The song stated a certainty
that "Our Marching Song to a land of freedom and equality will come
again." Mr. Robeson sang: "For I have always believed it and I believe
it now." In this song, and his life he was asking that America keep its
promise to all of its people.
On October 19, 1943, he became the first Black actor to play the role
of Othello with a White supporting cast, on an American stage. He had
played this role years before in London.
In 1944, Paul Robeson was awarded the Spingarn Medal by the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Soon afterwards he
took the lead in a course of actions more direct and radical than the
NAACP. He led a delegation that demanded the end to racial bars in
professional baseball. He called on President Truman to extend the civil
rights of Blacks in the South. He became a founder and chairman of the
Progressive Party which nominated former Vice President Henry A. Wallace
in the 1948 presidential campaign.
In the years immediately following the Second World War, Paul Robeson
called attention to the unfinished fight for the basic dignity of all
people. The following excerpt was extracted from a speech he made in
Detroit, Michigan on the Tenth Anniversary of the National Negro
Congress:
"These are times of peril in the history of the Negro people and of the American nation.
Fresh from victorious battles, in which we soundly defeated the
military forces of German, Italian and Japanese fascism, driving to
oppress and enslave the peoples of the world, we are now faced with an
even more sinister threat to the peace and security and freedom of all
our peoples. This time the danger lies in the resurgent imperialist and
pro-fascist forces of our own country, powerfully organized gentlemen of
great wealth, who are determined now, to attempt what Hitler, Mussolini
and Tojo tried to do and failed. AND The ELECTED
POLITICAL LEADERSHIP OF THE UNITED STATES IS SERVING AS THE SPEARHEAD OF
THIS NEW DRIVE TOWARD IMPERIALIST WAR IN THE WORLD AND THE RUTHLESS
DESTRUCTION OF OUR FREEDOM AND SECURITY HERE AT HOME.
I understand full well the meaning of these times for my
country and my people. The triumph of imperialist reaction in America
now, would bring death and mass destruction to our own and all other
countries of the world. It would engulf our hard won democratic
liberties in the onrush of native fascism. And it would push the Negro
people backward into a modern and highly scientific form of oppression,
far worse than our slave forefathers ever knew.
I also understand full well the important role which my people can
and must play in helping to save America and the peoples of all the
world, from annihilation and enslavement. Precisely as Negro patriots
helped turn back the red-coats at Bunker Hill, just as the struggles of
over 200,000 Negro soldiers and four million slaves turned the tide of
victory for the Union forces in the Civil War, just as the Negro people
have thrown their power on the side of progress in every other great
crisis in the history of our country—so now, we must mobilize our full
strength, in firm unity with all the other progressive forces of our
country and the world, to set American imperialist reaction back on its
heels.
On this occasion he further stated:
"I have been a member of the National Negro Congress since its
inception. I have taken great pride in its struggles to unite the
progressive forces of the Negro people and of organized labor in common
struggle. And I know that I now talk to an assemble of approximately one
thousand delegates, the overwhelming majority of whom are the elected
representatives of millions of trade unionists throughout our country.
Here is the concrete expression of one of the most salutary
developments in the political history of America—the unity of the Negro
people and the progressive forces of labor of which they are an
increasingly active part."
The trouble of the post war years, mainly the lack of civil rights
for his people, made him step up his political activity. At the World
Peace Congress in Paris in 1940, he stated that:
"It is unthinkable that American Negroes will go to war on behalf of
those who have oppressed us for generations against a country (the
Soviet Union) which in one generation has raised our people to the full
dignity of mankind."
His words, often exaggerated out of context, turned every right wing
extremist organization in America against him. Their anger reached a sad
and destructive climax during two of his concerts in Peekskill, New
York in the summer of 1949.
His interest in Africa, that had started early in his life continued
through his affiliations with "The Council on African Affairs" and the
column that he wrote regularly for the newspaper
Freedom.
His association with organized labor was almost as long and
consistent as his association with the concert stage. In a speech,
"Forge Negro-Labor Unity for Peace and Jobs," delivered in Chicago,
before nine hundred delegates to the National Labor Conference for Negro
Rights, June 1950, his association and commitment to the laboring class
was restated in the following manner:
"No meeting held in America at the mid-century turning point in world
history holds more significant promise for the bright future toward
which humanity strives than this National Labor Conference for Negro
Rights. For here are gathered together the basic forces—the Negro sons
and daughters of labor and their white brothers and sisters—whose
increasingly active intervention in national and world affairs is an
essential requirement if we are to have a peaceful and democratic
solution of the burning issues of our times.
Again we must recall the state of the world in which we live, and
especially the America in which we live. Our history as Americans, Black
and white, has been a long battle, so often unsuccessful. For the most
basic rights of citizenship, for the most basic rights of citizenship,
for the most simple standards of living, the avoidance of starvation—for
survival.
I have been up and down the land time and again, thanks in the main
to you trade unionists gathered here tonight. You helped to arouse
American communities to give answer to Peekskill, to protect the right
of freedom of speech and assembly. And I have seen and daily see the
unemployment, the poverty, the plight of our children, our youth, the
backbreaking labor of our women—and too long, too long have my people
wept and mourned. We're tired of this denial of a decent existence. We
demand some approximation of the American democracy we have helped to
build."
He ended his speech with this reminder:
"As the Black worker takes his place upon the stage of history—not
for a bit part, but to play his full role with dignity in the very
center of the action—a new day dawns in human affairs. The determination
of the Negro workers, supported by the whole Negro people, and joined
with the mass of progressive white working men and women, can save the
labor movement. … This alliance can beat back the attacks against the
living standards and the very lives of the Negro people. It can stop the
drive toward fascism. It can halt the chariot of war in its tracks.
And it can help to bring to pass in America and in the world the
dream our father dreamed—of a land that's free, of a people growing in
friendship, in love, in cooperation and peace.
This is history's challenge to you. I know you will not fail."
In 1950 Paul Robeson's passport was revoked by the State Department,
though he was not charged with any crime. President Truman had signed an
executive order forbidding Paul Robeson to set foot outside the
continental limits of the United States. "Committees To Restore Paul
Robeson's Passport" were organized in the United States and in other
countries around the world. The fight to restore his passport lasted
eight years.
For Paul Robeson these were not lost or inactive years; and they were
not years when he was forgotten or without appreciation, though, in
some circles, his supporters "dwindled down to a precious few." He was
fully involved, during these years, with the Council on African Affairs,
Freedom Magazine, The American Labor Movement, The Peace Movement, and The National Council of American-Soviet Friendship.
From its inception in November 1950 to the last issue, July-August 1955, Paul Robeson wrote a regular column for the newspaper
Freedom.
After his passport was restored in 1958, he went to Europe for an
extended concert tour. In 1963 he returned to the United States, with
his wife Eslanda, who died two years later. After her death he gave up
his home in Harlem and moved to Philadelphia to spend his last years
with his sister Mrs. Marion Forsythe.
Next to W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson was the best example of an
intellect who was active in his peoples freedom struggle. Through this
struggle both men committed themselves to the struggle to improve the
lot of all mankind. Paul Robeson's thoughts in this matter is summed up
in the following quote from his book,
Here I Stand.
"I learned that the essential character of a nation is determined not
by the upper classes, but by the common people, and that the common
people of all nations are truly brothers in the great family of mankind …
And even as I grew to feel more Negro in spirit, or African as I put it
then, I also came to feel a sense of oneness with the white working
people whom I came to know and love.
This belief in the oneness of humankind, about which I have
often spoken in concerts and elsewhere, has existed within me side by
side with my deep attachment to the cause of my own race. Some people
have seen a contradiction in this duality…I do not think however, that
my sentiments are contradictory … I learned that there truly is a
kinship among us all, a basis for mutual respect and brotherly love."
At the time of his death, January 23, 1976, a new generation was
discovering Paul Robeson for the first time. An older generation was
regretting that it had not made the best use of the strengths and hope
that he had given to them. The writer, L. Clayton Jones, made this
comment in the
Amsterdam News, after his death.
"One watches with restrained anger as a nation of hypocrites
grudgingly acknowledges the passing of a twentieth century phenomenon,
Paul Robeson, All American Athlete, Shakespearean Actor, Basso Profundo,
Linguist, Scholar, Lawyer, Activist. He was all these things and more."
In December 1977, an Ad Hoc Committee to End the Crimes Against Paul
Robeson was formed to protest the inaccurate portrayal of Paul Robeson
in a new play by Philip Hayes Dean. Their statement read, in part:
"The essence of Paul Robeson is inseparable from his ideas—those most
profoundly held artistic, philosophical and political principles which
evolved from his early youth into the lifelong commitments for which he
paid so dear and from which he never wavered down to his final public
statement in 1975.
In life, Paul Robeson sustained the greatest effort in the history of
this nation to silence a single artist. He defied physical and
psychological harassment and abuse without once retreating from his
principles and the positions to which he dedicated his life. We believe
that it is no less a continuation of the same crime to restore him, that
he is safely dead, to the pantheon of respectability on the terms of
those who sought to destroy him.
Robeson is the archetype of the Black American who uncompromisingly
insists on total liberation. His example and his fate strike to the very
heart of American racism.
For the nation to confront him honestly would mean that it confronts
itself—to begin at last the process of reclamation of the national
soul."
