'Kings and Pawns' explores Jackie Robinson's reluctant testimony against Paul Robeson

Geoff Bennett:

At the beginning of the Cold War in 1949, baseball great Jackie Robinson appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee to publicly disavow the comments of another prominent Black American actor, singer and activist Paul Robeson. That fateful testimony is the subject of a new book, "Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America," by journalist and author Howard Bryant.

I sat down with Bryant recently to unpack the parallel lives of these two trailblazing men and the forces that ultimately pitted them against each other.

Howard Bryant, welcome back to the "News Hour."

Howard Bryant, Author, "Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America": Yes, thanks for having me back.

Geoff Bennett:

And let's start our conversation with the key moment in your book, that testimony in front of the House un-American Activities Committee in 1949. Paul Robeson was this outspoken activist with Soviet sympathies and he had been quoted as saying -- it turned out the quote was somewhat exaggerated, but he was saying that Black Americans would never fight for a country like the U.S. against a country like the Soviet Union that believed in their equality.

And this was Robeson's response in front of the committee:

Jackie Robinson, Major League Baseball Player:

I have been asked to express my views on Paul Robeson's statement in Paris, to the effect that American Negroes would refuse to fight in any war against Russia because we love Russia so much. I haven't any comment to make, except that -- on that statement, except that, if Mr. Robeson actually made it, it sounds very silly to me.

But he has a right to his personal views. And if he wants to sound silly when he expresses them in public, that's his business and not mine.

Geoff Bennett:

So how did Jackie Robinson find himself there pitted against Paul Robeson?

Howard Bryant:

Well, the biggest reason he found himself pitted against Robeson is from his employer, Branch Rickey, the president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, the man responsible for integrating the big leagues with Robinson in 1947.

Jackie really felt a responsibility. He felt a loyalty to Rickey. Rickey really implored him to appear. Jackie didn't want to do it. He felt like it was not his area. He was not that well-versed in the politics and certainly not the politics of the Cold War.

But he also felt another responsibility, which was in his memoir he would say that he did not want the white allies who were sympathetic to civil rights to abandon that fight if they felt that Black citizens were disloyal to the United States, and he felt a sense of responsibility to ensure that.

Geoff Bennett:

Paul Robeson, we should remind folks, was a giant of his time. Is his disappearance from popular memory, is that a historical accident or a deliberate act of forgetting?

Howard Bryant:

It's a 100 percent deliberate act.

And it shows the power of the Cold War and the power of McCarthyism and so much of the language that we're hearing today about enemy of the people and the enemy within. This is what it was back then. And I think there was no greater disqualifying word, no greater weapon against an American citizen than to call them a communist at that time.

And I think one of the things that I was really trying to get at is the tension in the African American community in this book, because so much of the Black establishment felt that Robeson was toxic, and they abandoned him as well and, in doing that, really isolated him and set the stage for the federal government and the rest of the country to really turn its back on him as well.

It was certainly not an accident. Time did some of it but really it was deliberate because of the tensions of that period.

Geoff Bennett:

And how did Jackie Robinson come to think of that testimony later in his own life? Did he regret it?

Howard Bryant:

Well, exactly, Geoff.

And I think that the -- regret is a hard word for Jackie, because he's an athlete, just like Robeson was an athlete. And it's really hard to admit that he was wrong. However, he and Paul Robeson both ended up at the end of their lives quite disillusioned at the lack of progress in the country, and Jackie especially.

That's why the title is what it is. The questions of whether or not I did the right thing and whether or not I was being used or manipulated or whether Robeson was or whether we all were, Rachel Robinson gave a great interview in 1976 where she said that Jackie was a patriot. He was a citizen. And it was -- he was, my country, right or wrong.

But he did receive -- she said, we got two bad pieces of advice that we never really lived down. One was Jackie Robinson's support of Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election. And the other was this testimony and -- against Robeson in 1949.

And so he didn't exactly say I regret doing it, but he did say, if asked to do it again, I would say no. So I think that's as close as we got to it.

Geoff Bennett:

You call this story an exposed route on the beaten path of the story of baseball integration. What made you want to write about this era and these men?

Howard Bryant:

Really, embarrassment was the first.

I have been such a baseball fan for so long and I have been reading about Paul Robeson and Jackie Robinson. And how many times if you read baseball history that Jackie Robinson testified against Paul Robeson? And then I just kept reading, and I felt like the story was so relevant to today. And it's so important.

These two giants, how could it be that you had -- at one point, Paul Robeson was the most famous Black man in the world and Jackie Robinson, the most important Black athlete in the second half of the 20th century. How did this happen? How did they find themselves in opposition? What were the forces that put them in this predicament?

And, to me, it was just so representative of this question that African Americans are constantly having and we have to this day about belonging and about patriotism and about that twoness, that ability to, one, be patriotic and feel like you are part of this country while at the same time living in at that time a segregated society and all of the forces that sort of came to it.

It's a really important moment that I just felt was completely underreported.

Geoff Bennett:

Building on your point about the parallels between that time and our -- this current moment, what lessons do you think this story has for us right now?

Howard Bryant:

I think the biggest lesson to me when I think about -- especially when I think about Paul Robeson, is the power of the times that you live in.

The complacency that we have today is very, very similar to the complacency that people felt back then, that the country wouldn't go as far, that we still believed in our institutions, and the institutions would save us and that common sense would prevail.

And you think about that, it sounds very similar to how we are today, that this is just the time and we will get through it. But the effect of the Cold War, the effect of McCarthyism on Paul Robeson's life, the United States did not allow him to leave the country. They refused to issue him a passport, which was unconstitutional, and yet it happened.

There were all kinds of legal and extralegal things that took place there that really destroyed this man. And, on the other hand, when it came to Jackie Robinson, we talk about April 15, 1947 as the transformative moment that it was, but we also don't talk about what it did to Jackie Robinson as a person.

And so what I wanted to do was sort of break from a little bit of the mythology and dig into the effects of what these pioneering men have -- what they went through in real time and the -- and, really, when I think about it, how -- what is past is prologue. So much of what is happening then is happening now.

Geoff Bennett:

The book is "Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America" by journalist and author Howard Bryant.

Howard, always great to speak with you. Thank you.

Howard Bryant:

Thank you again, Geoff.