Speaker What got you into studying those? Well, I mean, had you met him?
Speaker Well, I had met him. I had met him as a teenager, though I didn’t begin to study him in a formal sense until a bit later. But I was intensely interested in his life and times of at the very point of having met him. As a matter of fact, even before having met Paul Robeson, for some reason, he stood out among the group of people in the group that with which I was associated, a group of young college students. We we were somehow in all of Robeson before having met him, and we were quite young. On one occasion we heard that Robeson was coming through Chicago and would be available to come before the group and to discuss his thoughts and his activities. And this undoubtedly was arranged by a young person in the group who was a member of the Communist Party who arranged for Robeson to come to the home of one of us. We went the rounds of the homes of the members of the group, and everyone came in with excuses as to why Paul Robeson could not come to their home with you, as this was 1951 in the summer of August of 1951. So I went to my parents. My mother worked for the state of Illinois, the Department of Labor. My father worked as a as a maker of of luggage for the for the luggage industry in Chicago and asked them if Paul Robeson could come to our home. They said Paul Robeson, of course. So Paul Robeson came. And when I was told that we lived at 47, 55 South Indiana Avenue in the very heart of the ghetto, and Robeson’s car pulled up out front. We lived on the third floor. One of the students at Robeson has just arrived and I raced down three flights of stairs to the passenger side of the car at which he was seated. The window was down.
Speaker It was in the height of summer, the heat of summer, and said to him, Paul and I was conscious of the fact that I had not addressed him as Mr Robinson. And I was conscious of the fact that I might be taking a sort of liberty there, but I couldn’t have addressed him any other way.
Speaker He was Paul from the very beginning. I said, the meeting is upstairs and in. Paul Robeson came upstairs, but on the second floor, Landing knocked on the door, thinking that that’s where the meeting was, where the Harris lived beneath us. Mr. Harris opened the door. And when Paul said, I’m Paul Robeson, he closed the door and ropes and came upstairs and I introduced ropes into the students. There must have been ten or twelve of us. They are very extraordinary group of young people, as a matter of fact, assemble there. And then there was a long moment of silence and ropes and said, don’t be afraid to attack me. I was at a certain college recently and he said the Negro students jumped all over me. And. We had no no desire to attack Paul Robeson, we welcomed him to the hall, to our home, and there were sharp questions put to him, however, by various students who were assembled at this particular meeting. And one of the questions, a very important question was Mr. Robeson, since the Paris peace conference speech that you made, we’ve noticed that your concerts, all of the concerts, concerts have been canceled. The attacks on you are mounting. You cannot do this or that in order to earn money. How are you going to make it is responsible? And I remember this as if it is if the response had been at a moment ago was as long as I can go over to the home of of the Negro, my brother, and eat some good nourishing black eyed peas and cornbread, I’ll be all right. That was a very interesting statement coming from this particular individual who was such a scholar, such an artist, such an intellectual, and yet so down to earth. That was 1951. Within a month or so, my uncle Cliff Johnson, the fur and leather who was who had been a member of the Communist Party and who knew ropes and took me to a home in Hyde Park near the University of Chicago, at which Robeson and some other people were present.
Speaker And Robeson was walking around holding a manuscript in his hands, which turned out to be the speech that Walter White had given at a recent NAACP convention.
Speaker After a while, he came over and sat beside me. He left the adults, came home and sat beside me and we talked and listened. At least he talked. I don’t remember a word of what was said on that occasion, but after we left, I’m gone. And I left with Paul Robeson and I was carrying a tuxedo over my left, keeping it from dragging the street. As far as we went to the car, got in the car, we drove to the west side of Chicago to the home of Allen Booth, who was his accompanist. Allen Booth opened the door wearing something that one seldom sees these days, if ever, any more, a stocking up to keep his hair straight. OK, Booth opened the door. We walked in and Sam Parks, who was a member of the Communist Party, was there and sent Sam Parker speaking very militantly. As a matter of fact, Sam Parks did almost all the talking prior to the concert to which we were going. Robeson would put on the stocks and we’d go to the concert and were seated beside Alan Booth, grand piano, baby grand piano reading a Tom. Very silent, they didn’t say a word until finally he looked up in a moment of silence and said, we’ve got to support Dr. DeBois for he’s the wisest one among us. He was reading Dubois’s Black Reconstruction, which is published in 1935, possibly the most important work of American history ever written. So, so. So that’s 1951 to meetings with him in 1957. It was at the University of Chicago after Robeson had given a concert at Mandel. Hall is finally permitted to sing in American universities in 57 Oberlin, I believe it was first. And at the University of Chicago after his concert at the University of Chicago, there was a reception for him at the Quincy Club on Michigan Avenue in Chicago that was attended by a number of graduate students from the University of Chicago and a handful of a handful of young people from the community. This was in the black community as I walked through the door of the Quincy Club that was ropes and standing at a at the lunch table surrounded by these young people who seemed a lot older to me because they were a few years old. And at that time it seemed they seemed a lot older to me than I then I was I managed to thread my way through the group to stand right beside Paul Robeson.
Speaker This is 1957. Had last seen him in 1951. And after a while, he turned toward me, looked down and very quietly and very discreetly ask, How are you, Stucchi?
Speaker That’s when I really knew that I wanted to study him formally at some point, and I have been doing so ever since more.
Speaker But may I ask something else about that, just.
Speaker I don’t know if you’re going to want to use it, but I’ll tell you anyway, let’s get everything we know, OK? OK.
Speaker We took our punch bowls back into the main area where some discussion apparently was going to take place. Robeson was seated on a stool.
Speaker Surrounded by white graduate students, and I noticed that he spoke to them in a manner that I had never heard a black person speak to white people before. He spoke to them with a great deal of authority. And he seemed. He seemed.
Speaker A bit unhappy with whatever it was they were doing, and finally it was explained, he explained, he just said, you invited me to come to Mandel Hall to sing provided I did not speak. Now you want me to speak.
Speaker And then I remember these lines, John Foster Dulles, who was secretary of state at the time, talking about sending Mississippi black boys to Indochina to yellow Chinese, somebody needs to take a gun and blow his brains out.
Speaker There was absolute silence. In the room.
Speaker John Foster Dulles, the logic is, is the logic is impeccable, John Foster Dulles talking about sending Mississippi black boys to Indo-China to shoot yellow Chinese.
Speaker So so now. I want to go back to the Rucker’s period, but let’s stay with this for a minute.
Speaker Do you think that the level of intensity that he spoke, let’s say with that one sentence, this is after he had gotten his passport, after he had gotten this is he hadn’t gotten his passport while he was in prison, he was able to sing finally, after long years of being blacklisted in universities, not only prevent it from singing, but preventing prevent it from even even from from speaking on the universities.
Speaker Do you think that his political line and energy level was consistent from the beginning of the Cold War to when he got his passport back?
Speaker I mean, that certainly seems to indicate that he didn’t back off at all.
Speaker But did you think that one thing about Rabson that.
Speaker I think it was. Clearest of all.
Speaker From my point of view was that he fulfilled his vow not to back up one one thousands of an inch, escorting William Lloyd Garrison Garrison’s contention that he would not give an inch with respect to his antislavery commitments and ropes and said that he would not back up one one thousandth of. I did not get the impression in those years that Robeson had had backed up at all.
Speaker As a matter of fact, a few years after that, when I read a piece in The New York Times, the early 60s of small item in the town, because The Times wasn’t printing anything on Rabson form for many years and what the Times printed was tended to be negative. I read a small item in The New York Times which concerned Robson’s having gone for a walk, lost his balance. And fallen in a in a vacant lot somewhere in Harlem, and someone came and assisted him, when I read that, I thought Paul Robeson, he seemed like such a lion in Strath. When I saw him, he was almost 60 when I saw him. This is 57, he would be 59 years of age.
Speaker He was like a lion in strength. And to read that Paul Robeson had lost his balance and someone had to come in and gather him up.
Speaker Well, that’s my response to the question. I mean, it did not seem to have not that he had backed up even then when he was ill, I mean, there’s no there’s been no indication that he abandoned his his principles.
Speaker Do you think that is his day, that Rutgers sort of prepared him for all the stuff that was coming?
Speaker Very much so.
Speaker And prior to that, when I asked the question, if you just said if you say yes or no, people see my my question is not going to be on to repeat the question. Yeah, OK. Cooperated in the answer in some way.
Speaker I think that that Robson’s days at Rutgers did indeed prepare him in a number of ways for what he was later to experience. But I think the one must go back before back beyond his Rutgers years prior to one was moved prior to it, to his legacy, years to. To fully appreciate his preparation, and that is that preparation was very definitely related to his father and to the.
Speaker Severe discipline that his father imposed on Paul with respect to what his commitments were to his own people and to humanity more generally, that he was not representing himself while on the football field or while in the classroom, whether it was in high school or at Rutgers University, but representing his people that he had that that sort of an obligation and that left such an imprint on on young Paul’s consciousness, that I think one could argue that that that became the source of the energy that he was to expend the great amounts of energy that he was to expend over long periods of time in order to fulfill his father’s expectations of him. Rutgers prepared him, I think. In the sense that he. Was not at all, I think, this disillusioned about the cost. That the feel that the fulfillment of those expectations might exact, I think that ruckus prepared him for that because there was such animosity toward Paul when he went out for the football field. Of course, he had friends there, teachers who were friendly toward him and students were friendly toward him. And he went over the the great majority of students at Rutgers who lionized him before he left, but at a terrible cost. You know, the story about his going out for the football team, they said, send him out, we’ll kill him because he’d never been a black on the Rutgers football team and how they broke his nose, his teammates, his own teammates broke his nose by kneeing him in the nose and and dislocated shoulder by falling on his shoulder and in removing all five fingernails from one of his hands by cleaning him while he was down, that it was only after ropes and was to make an example of one of his teammates by punishing his teammate that his coach said, if you’ve made the varsity and he let him down. But still, he had this broken nose, which he said bothered him as far as his concertizing was concerned, for the rest of his life, and he had these scars that that he had sustained while all the vectors. So that one of the thing about Rutka is it seems to me that that was emblematic of of a Robson’s fate as much as anything that I of which I’m aware. And that was that while at Rutgers on the football field. They ganged up on him. Which was precisely what was to happen years later, particularly in the 1950s, from 49 on, was that. In America, Robeson was ganged up on he was. In a sense, almost as alone and the period from 49 to 57 to 58 as he had been on the football field, considering the forces that were arrayed against him. So. They don’t they ganged up on him at Rutgers on the football field, we know what his response was. His response was to keep coming back. And they later to gang up on him. For politicians, people and theatre people in the media. FBI.
Speaker Some black leaders. Practically, in a sense, practically the whole of the black civil rights leadership sort of chickened out.
Speaker And his response at that time was to continue to press forward almost on his own, as he had while in college, so that that seems to me that perhaps the chief emblem of that Rutgers experience, at least from my point of view, was the fact that they were ganged up on ropes and continue to press forward in order to fulfill the dreams of his father. And in a sense, it was predictable that harsh challenges would come, would continue to come his way and that he would attempt to meet those challenges without backing down.
Speaker OK, now on two things. One is. The black leadership. Why did the.
Speaker Basically join in on the attack, I mean, to what extent did they I mean, this black, the black traditionally in the black and then the media black press. Was there any difference in the reaction to him? And secondly, what was his response to them? What did he say? OK, here’s what you can do. What about you? You know, what did he say?
Speaker Why did black leadership fail to support troops? And in what ways did black leadership appear to have been collaborating with people who were out to get ropes? And I think that. Black leadership felt that that that it was that that that leadership itself was somehow in jeopardy because Robeson was accused of having said that black people would not fight against the Soviet Union and that this that this I believe that this caused a great deal of fear. The need to disavow Robeson was felt by black leadership. But at the same time, black leadership probably felt in a certain sense that that it could benefit from from.
Speaker Not supporting Robeson and thereby perhaps gain more than it was attempting to gain, for example, during the during the period of the late 40s. Robson’s challenges to racism in America at a time when there was a lot of talk about the free world, his challenges were such that. In order to.
Speaker Attempt to win over. The so-called unconvicted, uncommitted peoples of the world, when the government made appointments of blacks to relatively high positions, almost invariably they would remark this is an answer to Paul Robeson, but either sent you to Sampson was appointed to the United Nations. Governmental officials said this is an answer to Paul Robeson when Ralph Bunche received a high appointment to the U.N.. This is an answer to Paul Robeson so that. Robson’s challenges to the status quo had forced from the government at had extracted from the government and certain concessions when Robson was silenced by the government with the collaboration of. Leadership in the civil rights movement. It’s very likely that people in the civil rights movement felt that they could. When greater concessions, because that militant voice was no longer out there insisting that more radical concessions be extended to black people so much, much, much the way that that a bit later, civil rights leaders were, in a sense to benefit from the presence of a Malcolm X standing on the side harshly critiquing racism in America.
Speaker Interesting. And so and the other thing I want to know is what the ropes and say to them as the black leadership.
Speaker Yeah. What did he ask them to do or what did. He called for their support or did he call them a bunch of chickens or.
Speaker After he returned from the Paris peace conference and there had been certain attacks on him from the NAACP and from other quarters at a rally in Harlem in 1950, I believe it was Robeson very harshly attacked. Those who had been in the civil rights movement, principally the NAACP, had been had been attacking him, but his clear statement, perhaps, of his desires with regard to black leadership was to come some years later, around 1956, when Carl Rowan published an article in Ebony magazine after having interviewed Robertson, an article in which Robeson called for black leadership. To remain neutral. In his struggles against those who were attempting to. To defeat his purposes, call for black leadership to remain neutral if you remain neutral, he said, in fact, I will be able to wage this this battle pretty much on my own. So the fact that he called on them to simply to be neutral indicates that he was quite aware of the fact that they had not been supportive of him. But there was no neutral ground in that particular decade, neutrality was tantamount to to being sympathetic to Rosen in the eyes of many people in this country.
Speaker Yes, and you know, the other thing I wanted to give me back a little bit, because this this is a very complicated matter with respect to Robeson and black leadership. I mean, one could go back to Jackie Robinson’s appearance before the House un-American Activities Committee, after Robeson’s statement in Paris regarding whether. Colonial youth to go to war, just to go to war against anyone. Jackie was was brought before the House un-American Activities Committee, some say, as a consequence of the intercession of the. National Urban League for for Jackie to choose to to make a statement, and we know that Jackie stated that he thought that that that Rosen’s remarks about about blacks going to war against the Soviet Union were silly. As Jackie said, the Urban League arranged for Jackie to appear before the House un-American Activities Committee. It’s one clear instance of a civil rights leadership, in a sense, collaborating. Jackie, years later, when he published his book, I Never Had It Made, said that if he had to do it again, he wouldn’t have done it. That he realized the ropes and was committed and so on to was a man of integrity and a man of principle, a lot of people could have told him that much sooner. So Walter White’s involvement figures in as Walter White and Robeson had been friends for at least as far back as the Harlem Renaissance years. And Walter White was sharply critical of Paul Robeson. After the Paris peace conference, David White and Dubois debated the ropes and controversy in the pages of Negro Digest. White expressing concern that on one occasion, for example, when an interracial gathering was somewhere on the East Coast took place, that Robeson had said something about how white people mistreating blacks, he felt that ropes in it and underscored color in this whole matter. But he refused to support to do very much at all to support Paul. After the Paris peace conference statement that they had been friends for four decades. Philip Randolph.
Speaker A friend of Robson’s certainly did not come to Robeson’s defense. Mary McLeod Bethune was sharp, sharply critical of and shortly after Paris after the Paris peace conference. And we know that she at one time, it’s spoken of Paul as the tallest tree in our forest. The irony of this was that what Rosen was charged with, having said in Paris, is a matter that’s greatly controversial and it doesn’t appear that he said what the Associated Press reporter claims, that he said that that American Negroes would not go to war against the Soviet Union. So there was distortion there and distortion of his speech as reported. And it seems that no great effort was made on the part of civil rights leadership to find out what the man said, do you think, during the Cold War period?
Speaker What was his, quote, popular base since it wasn’t? Black leadership, was it the masses?
Speaker Was it the church or was it largely the white left during the Cold War period? Forty five, let’s say, down to 49, 49 and 50. So you had a very considerable base. In both well, certainly in the black community and its friends, that he had a great many friends, people of influence in the white community as well during this period from from 45 down to 49 or so, Robeson’s influence was such that he was the chief spokesman for the American crusade against lynching when he and others went to talk to Harry Truman in the White House about lynching in America. And Albert Einstein was a member of this particular group during the period from 45 in the Cold War began.
Speaker Yes. You know, let’s talk about the brothers base, I mean, in the beginning, I’m assuming because it was a pretty much a black base, right?
Speaker Oh, no, no. And very, very few people lived in and those New Jersey communities in which he lived, but quite a number of enclaves from the South lived and certainly in the Princeton community, many of whom were his relatives. I mean, his he had when he related to the black community, was basically relating to a slave community as late as 1898. The the relatives of his father, who had been ill as a result of the civil war, emancipated and moved north. That’s seldom remarked, almost never remarked that Robeson’s initial we talk about the black community.
Speaker He is relating to slaves, to former slaves, not only his father, but to all sorts of cousins in that community. This is this is extraordinary. So he has so he’s communing with them. When he when he sang with the black community there in Princeton, New Jersey, he had a very good conception of how many of the slaves sang because they were slowmo slaves singing with him.
Speaker So so I guess he took that to the concerts. He took that to the concert stage. He took that to the concert stage. So, so much for all.
Speaker So, so, so. Oh, I mean, so, so even to the point, even to the point of not cleaning up the language, that was extremely important because a lot of literary critics today, almost all black literary critics, almost all seem to decry the fact that dialect is used in some poetry. Robeson took dialect to to the concert stage. He didn’t clean it up because he understood that the blues are in dialect. What would the blues be like if they weren’t in dialect? The Negro spirituals in dialect. Negro folklore is a dialect. So he’s dealing from from an irreducible bedrock of authenticity. When he when he with his great singing voice, with his phenomenal ability to sculpt sound, when he took a dialect of his people to the concert stage. So so initially that base, the base was a very narrow black base in Princeton, New Jersey. If you go to Princeton and you see why Robeson left, we’re talking about two or three blocks, basically. A very small community of blacks surrounded by an elitist and powerful white university community, basically, that’s that’s the setting in which Paul lived initially. And when Paul talked about knowing everyone in the community, everyone knowing him, he’s been quite literal. There were relatively few blacks in that community. But the fact that he would take such inspiration from such a tiny fraction of that population that happened to be black. To the extent that it would inspire him for the rest of his life, there’s a whole lot about his links to the community could change.
Speaker OK, so the base, Paul Reubens base during the nineteen fifties during the Cold War period.
Speaker Well, I like what you started. You got Princeton. OK, where was this base?
Speaker When he goes to like Harlem, his base is Harlem, very large. It’s Harlem. He lives in Harlem while he is a student at Columbia University. He’s he he likes Harlem. He likes the music that’s heard in Harlem, though. He’s Phi Beta Kappa and linguist and all-American football player Robson does not recoil from Negro spirituals, as middle class blacks were doing at that time because many middle class blacks recoil from Negro spirituals, because when they hurt them, a whole lot of memories enter their consciousness. That caused a certain embarrassment on their part. Paul was not embarrassed by by the spirituals for reasons that we talked about earlier. So he was at home in Harlem, used to spend a lot of time walking the streets of Harlem, always with a book in his hands or books under his and his and his arm. There was a lot going on in Harlem in those years. The music. He was a great lover of of jazz and the blues from the very beginning. As a matter of fact, meaning during his Princeton days, he says, we sang a lot of blues in his father’s home. Even his father was a preacher. We sang he didn’t make this sharp division between sacred and secular music. The blues could be sacred, sacred, apparently, as well. We know that that can be the case. As Joe Williams said, we all came out of the church. Joe Williams, a blues singer, so that his his his he had a base in Harlem. He was well, he was loved by blacks in Harlem because he had achieved so much and yet was so down to earth and could relate to his people. So there’s no question. But they did. But then his base was broader. His base was broader even at the time he graduated from Rutgers, and that he had captivated lots of his classmates who predicted that he would be the governor of the state at some point, that Robeson would be the governor of the state at some point, as we move into into the 20s, to the students, to me, I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, OK?
Speaker But once he gets into, like, the avant garde theatre scene, you know, the downtown scene, and then he becomes a success and then he gets a whole bunch of and vaccinates types sort of, you know, applauding him.
Speaker Now, his base then seems to be don’t move too swiftly because he makes a critical decision in 1925 to do something that had never been done before. And that is to to do whole programs of concert music consisting entirely of slave music hall programs. And he does this. For five years, Marian Anderson had sung some Negro spirituals. Roland Hayes and other great artist had sung some Negro spirituals. Is Robeson singing into programs of Negro spirituals? What could be more in one? Hesitates to use the term today because it’s so distorted, so perverted, nationalistic, and one has to be careful to use it in relation to Robeson. Because while while Robeson in many respects was a nationalist, no one’s reach was more Catholic than Robson’s wasn’t what was more.
Speaker Universal, then Robson’s. So, I mean, you take the particular and derive universals from the particular, he demonstrated that in the singing of Negro spirituals beginning in 1925 by universalising the Negro spirituals, Dubois said he’s taken the Negroes, he’s taken the Negro folk song throughout the civilized world. So that’s what he’s doing. He’s reaching beyond a base in Harlem and the world is this is a stage in a sense is his musical stage, his spiritual stage by by doing what? By universalising the subjectivity of his own people. Through art, through music. So he’s able to achieve for the Negro spiritual what had not been achieved before.
Speaker OK, now imagine this. If, in fact, there was a resistance to this material by middle class bloods. Yes. And at the same time, he was a hero.
Speaker And then at the same time, you get he expands his base because of his great presentation.
Speaker Again, correct me if I’m wrong, isn’t this the beginning of, I won’t say conflicting, but contradicting basis and shifting alliances, just as Paul Robeson when we talk about his base and his relationship to the middle class?
Speaker To my knowledge, never use the standards of middle class Negroes as the bar that he wanted to somehow reach. Paul Robeson only in the sense that if the middle class Negro man or woman happened to be an advocate or proponent of Dubois’s talented tenth, Knowshon Dubois’s talented tenth notion and Robeson was strongly influenced by Dubah at Rutgers, was that it was the obligation of educated blacks to go forth to help the masses of black people. And it meant that that one should be prepared to make all manner of financial sacrifices. In order to do that, one of the few times that Dubai ever ask for a raise while working from the NAACP was when he asked for equal pay with a white secretary, was getting more money than he was receiving. So Paul’s relationship to the black middle class was was such that if members of the black middle class were committed to the liberation of black people, then he paid attention to them if they were what he called cardboard Europeans, that they were imitating white people. But he’s he’s written brilliantly about that mentality so that he wouldn’t be concerned about what may I say it without sounding sounding at all anti intellectual. What college educated Negroes thought about his singing Negro spirituals could be far more concerned about how he was getting in sync with the great mass of black people. And he surely would have been in that instance by singing the very music that they created and by taking it and not elevating it in the sense that he’s improving on it, but but taking it and elevating it in the eyes of the listener.
Speaker Or rather, in the ear of the listener. So, I mean, he yeah, I mean. May I point out that Rosen had ongoing. And very affectionate relations with very serious relations with members of the black middle class. This tended to be very helpful to him during the period of the Cold War. When he was being hounded and was looking for a place to go to avoid being detected by people who were spying on him all the time and possibly to avoid being assaulted by the police, even so, he’d go to Revel’s Caden’s apartment.
Speaker In Harlem, a middle class apartment building seeking some quiet and some security. He had these relationships with with middle class blacks. These are these are not just ordinary middle class blacks. These are middle class blacks who shared certain sympathies, certain political sympathies and sentiments that the groups and believed in.
Speaker You now know that. What I’m interested in now is, is his contact with African and Caribbean politicians and radicals in London and their influence in the development of his political consciousness, and then we’ve skipped over the whole.
Speaker That’s all we can come back to, right, Robson? First, with regard to Robson’s contact with Caribbean and African politicians in his London years, some will say students as well as London years. What we should bear in mind is that. Rabson made most of his contact contacts in the 19. 30S, which was a time of great intellectual and political excitement in England, particularly in London. I mean, you had all sorts of people coming through Nehru of India, VK Krishna, men, men of India, hockey men of Indo-China, Kwame Nkrumah and all sorts of political class. James from Trinidad, all sorts of of important political figures were in London at that time, most of whom were to become far more important after the 30s. I mean, they weren’t that well known at the time. So that that that that there was an extremely provocative and uncreative sort of intellectual interaction taking place very often in those particular years in England, over England was a wonderful place in which to pursue the study of Africa. You couldn’t pursue it anywhere in America at that time. You had the London School of Foreign Languages where you could go and study African languages, Asian languages and so on. It was it was essential really to that to the British that they have such a place because they could more effectively administer their colonies if they knew a lot about the people. So Robeson was taking advantage of that. So he was studying African languages at the at the London School of Foreign Languages and and studying them quite brilliantly. We can return to that, if you like. It was in counting people like Sierra James. I said he was very much it was because he was close to the League of Colored People, which was the principal West Indian organisation in London in this period of time. And he met a lot of West Indians through the League of Colored People, used to meet some of them later when he traveled to to Jamaica and Trinidad in 1948. And as I said, he met in Croma and narrow victory and didn’t meet. Okay, man. But so so this was this was it was an extremely active period for him. And he learned a great deal about West Africa through West African students. He sang songs with West African students. He went to Dock’s and in England and and talked to Doc and to Africa. And he was initiated into the West African, the league, the West African Student Union, one of the very few. People of African ancestry outside the continent who was a member of this particular union met lots of West African students and the Union met Jomo Kenyatta in his London years, Kenyatta was studying anthropology under Malinovsky at London University and Paul’s wife as he was studying on the Malinovsky as well. So it was it was a great moment in time to learn a lot about about what was happening among colonized people throughout the world.
Speaker What do you think his motivation was to do all of this? Was it just sort of his natural curiosity or was he beginning to get it, trying to put stuff together?
Speaker I think both, I think both I think I think Robeson’s core motivation for these sort of wide ranging contacts. And for his, uh, quite brilliant career as a linguist, which was initiated and full in those London years, it was his desire to. To come up with a with a political and cultural philosophy excuse me, that would somehow make a difference in the world with respect to improving conditions for all people began basically with blacks. Who was Stalley oppressed at the time, who, in Robson’s opinion, suffered from, above all flaws, the terrible flaw of believing in their own inferiority that they had bought the idea that the white man had propounded that they were somehow inferior and that that bogus notion affirmed by them led them to imitate whites. He said the Negro from French possessions tries to act like a Frenchman. The Negro from British possession tries to act like someone from from England. He referred to them as cardboard Europeans, and he said they would never find themselves. They would never be true to themselves, rather, until they. Searched for and began to be nurtured by their own roots, and he felt that the roots of Africans in the new world could be quite nurturing because in his view, people of African ancestry, not all, but certainly the artists, certainly in the artistic communities, tended to bring a great deal of emotive and intuitive and aesthetic energy to their spiritual lives and to their artistic lives that he felt the larger world could benefit from the Western world could benefit from. But at the same time, Robeson felt that it would be only a fool he says would turn his back on Western science and technology. You needed you needed the two. You need both somehow to try to bring together the aesthetic and intuitive and emotive values of African peoples with the values of Western science and technology.
Speaker OK, take a drink of water. I think you need.
Speaker My next question will be there for. OK, how then did it become as my friend, my friend, that would make the question the man of the left while doing this thing, and how did that come and how did Robeson become a man of the left while living?
Speaker In London in the nineties, late 20s and throughout much of the 1930s, that’s a very good question. Very interesting question, but I don’t know that that that it was that late coming. I think the seeds of his of his of his radicalism were planted much earlier than that. And very often, if they’re not planted before, one is, what, 36 or 37, there’s never going to be any flowering.
Speaker I think that in his case, the seeds of his radicalism were planted very early in his life by his father.
Speaker I mean, just consider the a number of ropes. And authorities seem to feel that his activities at Rutgers were basically non-political, in my judgment, that that’s that’s an error.
Speaker As a matter of fact, Robeson himself has said that his radicalism began while a student at Rutgers on the football field in particular, I mean, for a black person who is being who’s being assaulted because he is black, to continue to move forth and and to be undeterred in the nineteen, 1917, 1918, so on, during when waves of lynchings are occurring, when blacks are disenfranchised throughout the South, when there is legalized segregation all over the South, when the media is projecting stereotype after stereotype of blacks, when the academic community itself asserts that blacks are inherently inferior. In that context, Rabson, being brutalized on the football field to become an all-American football player is a radical act.
Speaker OK, but you know, Marxism will not get you a touchdown, you know what I mean? OK, so how does I mean, I’m talking about a man of the left in terms of appreciation of Marxism class.
Speaker Let me let me let me again return to his father’s influence. Let me let me return to that Princeton community. But let me say that then I will be willing to talk at some length about the 1930s.
Speaker Of course, it seems to me that his union with the community, his union, with his people, his commitment to his people that led him when he received his his bachelor’s degree from Rutgers to say that he regarded it as his sacred duty to go forth to aid his untutored brethren within the context of race relations in America. His sacred duty to go forth and commit himself to helping his untutored brother and to back that up in so many ways was preparation for this, this, this, this for this for the designation of his being a leftist, so to say, during the 1930s. Now, of course, the standard argument is one that I’m going to provide and I take it seriously.
Speaker I take it seriously. His his exposure to the British Labour Party was important in its political development, in his radicalization and his further radicalization, in his radicalization in conventional terms, because there he had had contact with people who were socialist and that appealed to him very greatly. England was a place in which socialism was thriving. In the 1930s, you had Harold Laski at the London School of Economics. You had Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Fabian Socialists. You had all manner of Socialist and Left-Wing figures in London. We referred earlier to scholar James, a Trotskyite. Jomo Kenyatta, certainly not a socialist, but but left radical at that time, at least, so that the London years were years in which Robson’s.
Speaker Radicalism became more pronounced as streams of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany flowed into London ropes and almost immediately began to give concerts to support them, he began to see the connection between the sort of fascism, the sort of connection between Nazism for Jews and Nazism for blacks. And he recognized the fact that if Hitler triumphed, blacks would be worse than enslaved.
Speaker So you actually if I hear you, you’re saying it is European experience was more graduate school than college, really, if you know what I mean.
Speaker Yeah, that’s a nice way of putting it. That’s a nice way of putting it. You said it. It would be nice if I could get it on it.
Speaker No one has ever asked me, but I’ve been trying to figure this thing out. Yeah. And everybody says, well, he was cool, he was OK. But when he hit London, I explained it. I explained it.
Speaker And the last chapter of slave culture, I lay that out very calmly, very carefully and at some length in the last chapter of slave culture. But most people want and I’m not talking about black nationalist now because black nationalists in the main don’t bother even to read it, to be blunt. But I’m a black nationalist, but I’m a very different sort of black nationalist from the people who, you know, I’m almost dead. Oh, that’s right. I mean, it’s not even you know, I don’t even feel comfortable saying that I’m a black nationalist in this context. Robeson was a black nationalist, but but a very of a very different order. Black nationalism does not necessarily mean opposition to whiteness. It’s largely a 20th century phenomenon with Garvie and so on. Not in the 19th century, 19th century nationalists studied Latin. Garnette studied Greek. Bladen, Latin and Greek rocks and Latin and Greek, DeBois, Latin and Greek, Barbossa, a nationalist.
Speaker OK, say the testing was good, I was trying to figure how to get that in, but you got this one, this one in this London period. Talk about his cultural philosophy in the foreign language study. I mean, basically, Rosen, as a linguist, why do this?
Speaker I mean, you sort of hinted at it. It was a way to kind of unite people, to really get an understanding and unite people. Did he really know all those languages? We have. We interviewed.
Speaker She said I really couldn’t he have like a couple of stock phrases and a whole bunch of languages, but he really wasn’t deep in it. I mean, you bite out of, you know, talk about this.
Speaker You have to refute it with reference to it, with reference to ropes and languages. Did he really know a lot of languages or did he simply know a few stock phrases? Robson began studying languages at at Rutgers. I know from having played ropes and singing singing Chinese songs for Chinese scholars in this country, one on a Fulbright scholarship while I was at Northwestern. That the response was that his grandma was perfect, was very good. The Chinese scholars took that position, I know for a fact that with respect to any other people know this, if they’ve done the reading that Robeson’s Russian, if anything, was perhaps too exact, he was perhaps a bit too conscious of pronouncing everything correctly. But there’s no question but that he was fluent in Russian and in many different languages. Melville Herskovits, perhaps the most eminent authority on Africa in this country during the 1930s, at least among university based people, among university based scholars, had heard that Rosen was contending that the reason he was so successful was so successful in learning African languages while studying at the London School of School of Foreign Languages was because he had grown up among Negro Americans. And there was a lot about the accents and the tones of Negro American speech that sort of paved the way for his being so accomplished when it came to studying African languages. So Herskovits wrote to Robson’s professors, two of his professors, one or two of his professors at the London School of Foreign Languages, asking is the reason that Rabson is so successful as a linguist with respect to African languages, languages that he, as he contends, was exposed to Negro American speech as a youth and that this helps him when he’s studying African languages? The professor wrote back saying that’s not the reason that ropes into such a successful reason Robeson is so successful that African languages is that he’s simply very good at languages. So this is this is in the heart. This letter. These letters are in the Melville Herskovits collection. They may be at the Schomburg collection now, but I read them when they were at Northwestern University and the and the Herskovits Library. There’s no question but that he was an accomplished linguist. As a matter of fact, Herskovits later heard Robeson singing African languages and comparing African languages to American Negro songs, particularly railroad worker songs, and said that it was the most astonishing demonstration of the continuity of tradition that I’ve ever heard.
Speaker So he’s talking. He’s hearing ropes and singing in African languages and singing and Afro-American language and the Afro-American and Afro-American and seeing Afro-American work songs, railroad songs, and concludes that it was the most astonishing demonstration of the continuity, continuity of tradition that he had that he had never heard.
Speaker So there’s no no question, but that is his performances and languages were his performance was outstanding and how many he knew as a matter of controversy. Some say 12, some say 20.
Speaker I don’t know how many he knew, but he knew quite a number. He sang and a great many and apparently was very successful. I understand that that that Robeson new check quite well was not an easy language. So the answer to that question is that. Is that he knew quite a number of languages that his professors at the London school were in a language is considered him one of their most outstanding student of languages, and that he went on to use these languages and through his study of languages, he he he he realized the the oneness of humanity, very largely that, especially as he sang the music of different peoples in their various tongues, he realized that that that that the music is the universal language of mankind. And he felt that that that that that there was that there were lots of similarities in the musics of the world. And this indicated to him, among other things, that all men are brothers or men and women are brothers and sisters.
Speaker All right, and get the language thing down. One other thing I know one other thing.
Speaker But another thing that I want to deal with is he seems to have he seems to be sort of fluid in his political beliefs, not not in the sense of opportunistic.
Speaker But he I mean, like you say, he was a nationalist, but he was also I mean, he could make a speech that would sound like a stock down 60s nationalism, but he could also, without any contradiction, talk about the universality of mankind.
Speaker He could you know. He could. He could. He would he could say, I’m an African living in America, they can relate to the Welsh.
Speaker So there seems to be a kind of fluidity. I mean, sort of what my friend here says is like a non dogmatism kind of was a non dogmatic aspect of his thought that enabled them to relate to people.
Speaker And now now that might not I mean, the Dachsie that doesn’t seem to have come from his father or his particular.
Speaker That’s that seems to be something he kind of picked up with the exposure.
Speaker I think yeah. I think I think the Robson’s universality. Together with his belief in his own people, did indeed come from his father and through his exposure to Christian values while growing up as a young person. Is knowledge of the Bible is having taken seriously the Christian ethic? I think that that there was a universal reach among this young person almost from the start, I think it exists among a lot of young people, not just among young people who are highly intelligent and sophisticated. I think there’s a tendency toward a kind of a kind of openness to humanity among a great many young people. And Robeson’s case, I think it was accentuated it was a discipline commitment and that this was largely due to his influence of his father and through to his wide exposure to various cultures. I mean, there was nothing narrow about his upbringing.
Speaker Very early, he found himself a minority among whites and found himself able to more than compete in their presence so that he was at home with and relaxed even in the company of a white people who may have had some reservations about him. He didn’t feel at all inferior to them. And I think this is what’s important. Most nationalist, I dare say, have lived fairly. Most American Negroes, whether the nationalists or not, live very isolated lives because they’ve been cut off from so much in Robeson’s case. And that would apply very largely to intellectuals as well. In Robeson’s case, from the very beginning when he was in elementary school and so on, he had contact with white youngsters and with white teachers and so on. Growing up in Memphis, Tennessee, I had my first conversation really with a white youngster when I was 18 years old in high school in Chicago.
Speaker I never even talk to White until I was 18. The insurance man came to the House. Well, this is not about me, but that you see what I’m getting at. It was that that was his father’s insistence that he. Work on behalf of his people to make a better world that they had right into this universality could change.
Speaker So some of the. OK, so you want to just talk about that? First is a Christian statement.
Speaker Yeah, I want to you know, no one tries to get at. And what about the essential Paul, so to speak? It seems to me that I’ve never heard anyone do it better than. The mother of Clement Price, who teaches history at Rutgers in Newark. About two or three years ago, after dinner one evening in New York, I asked her, had she ever met Paul Robeson? She said, yes, she had met Robeson on one occasion in Columbia, South Carolina, parent of his during the 30s. I may have been during the early 40s, he had come to that church unannounced. Basically, at least the members of the congregation didn’t know that Paul Robeson was in the church, didn’t know, as a matter of fact, until church was letting out.
Speaker The Robertson was among them because Robeson didn’t want to come to church with any fanfare. So I said, what did you think of Rabson? She said he was a Christian gentleman whose values were so high. That they tried to destroy him. That took me back to. To his early years. In Princeton, and it seemed to me that that. Robeson felt that. When it comes to matters of culture. That there must be a spiritual or religious foundation.
Speaker Something he never abandoned. He was reading he’s reading Marx in German and. Lenin in Russian. But he felt that that the base of culture and this is undoubtedly due to the African influence, must be a religious or spiritual base.
Speaker One can find that in his and his writings, and there’s every reason to believe that he continued to believe that for the rest of his life, because he continued to to to assert the value of the Negro spiritual and of black culture.
Speaker What did, uh, what about the boys, what effect did he have on him?
Speaker He says, Robson says with regard to to to Dubois’s effect on him. That when he was a student, that is when Robeson was a student at Rutgers. He and his black. Classmates referred to and they weren’t many. I can assure you, referred to the boys, the doctor. The doctor, this is very close to to to to the time of the appearance of divorces, the souls of black folk, which appeared in 93 Rabson at Rutgers, where in 1967 the just a decade or so. And so he was reading like lots of other people. Dubois and Dubois undoubtedly had an impact on him. And I think the impact comes out in his valedictory address at Rutgers, which he called the new idealism. It comes out in that line that he that it was his sacred obligation is sacred trust to go forth to help his untutored brother. But he brings another influence in there, too, that needs to be recognized that up until now, it seems to me, has not been recognized. And that’s influenced of Frederick Douglass, because though he talks about is this in a sense, the apex of the structure that he’s outlining for us, as is that of the talented tenth. He talks about the strength of the people coming from their foundations. This is taken directly out of Douglass as life and times, almost word for word, the strength of the people coming from their foundations. So there is that that that that base of of the self assertive, that base of self-reliance that Robeson allows for among the masses of the people, the masses of his people. Dubois later was to abandon the talented tenth notion.
Speaker By the time Dusk and Don appeared in the early 40s by saying that the educated black had not behaved at all the way he thought that they were going to behave. They out to many of them are to to make it for themselves. He hadn’t. He hadn’t he hadn’t realized that that was a miscalculation on his part. And it was a miscalculation on Robinson’s part as well, to believe that that the educated black would regard it as a sacred trust to go out the educated black act like the educated and in the other group.
Speaker In the Dubois’. Coming cleavages, he did not see those coming class cleavages, as he put it, among black people. And I don’t think that the ropes and did either, at least not. I certainly haven’t seen that at the time of of his of his valedictory address.
Speaker But but even then, though, you see, he’s got this self-assertive base there, the self-reliant base there that he appropriated from Frederick Douglass as life and times. It’s a very sophisticated conception of leadership, and it seems to me it is now.
Speaker So let’s jump to London in late 20s, early 30s, especially during the Wells period. So I’m trying to figure out now if that was a mistake. I mean, certainly he would repeat it during the wealth thing where you have the workers and the bosses and the whole class analysis coming in. You know, that’s what I’m trying to get. Maybe there is some credence that maybe he knew about class a little bit.
Speaker I think that by the time of the by the time he enters law school and by the time he begins to consider ties in the village in Boston prior to that, this first concert, and to associate with blacks from all over the world.
Speaker And to see people making money and so forth, that he is quite conscious of these class distinctions by this time, if he must have known of almost from the start that that everyone would behave the same way on the question.
Speaker But he simply felt at the time that conditions were so harsh. That the wise thing for any educated blacks to do would be to see what he or she could do to help that people. As opposed to as opposed to going for self. And one of the things that was instructive, particularly instructive to Paul, was the the life of of the less successful of his of his brothers, Rete. It was a stellar it was a stellar family, I mean, you had stellar siblings there, you had very talented. Boys, young men, Paul felt that one of his brothers was perhaps the brightest of the group who was studying medicine, but he was read rebellious.
Speaker Causing problems for his father’s father, having to put on his own is put on his preaching attire and go to get him out of prison and out of jail. We drove a kind of coach or cab for Princeton students and Princeton students coming principally out of the south. Robeson said the spirit of Princeton was like Dixie were given to making insulting remarks to read and even read was given to to getting from his coaching seat, pulling them out of of his camp and beating them with rocks with the back of Chip Chip rocks. Until finally, his father said you were a bad example for your brother Paul and you have to leave. He had to leave the house. He put him out. Paul said that one, ONA’s. No oratorical honors, one honors in the classroom with honors from the pulpit, but he had.
Speaker Great respect and love, Fareed, because we taught him never to take low. Never to take low. So I think that relates to this matter of class, because Reid was certainly not middle class and values them and wanted to find out.
Speaker How regular account was, for other words, did he party his favorite drink was bourbon, he was a wonderful dancer. I’m told he said he loved the place.
Speaker Well, let’s hold off on this, although you know the answer to that. I don’t want to get into that. I want to write about that. But I will not get into it. Not much. I won’t get into Rabson love, Daisy.
Speaker Oh, yeah, of course. Plain. Ashley. OK, because we all sound, we are rolling. And roll camera speed. OK. Now, uh.
Speaker Right before his, quote, fall from grace, let’s say, between the time that he came back from Europe and before us on, what kind of stuff did he do? How popular was he was at the top of his probably.
Speaker Yeah. He said that he was at the height of his career as a country singer. And we know that it was in that period of forty three, 44 that he was doing Othello on Broadway, breaking an all time one of.
Speaker That’s not a polite. We talked about that. Give me a context for what was going on in black America.
Speaker In the during that period in the 40s. Yeah, well, I think one would have to. Are we rolling? Yeah, with regard to what was going on in the black community? Which I think is good to establish a backdrop for the discussion of what happened during the 40s, one would have to direct some attention to April of Randle’s March on Washington movement in 1941, when he threatened an all black March of 10000 in Washington to protest discrimination against blacks in the war industries and to secure fair employment practices legislation. And that was a hate crime.
Speaker Assuming I didn’t hear you quiet, you know, that was a serious challenge to the racial status quo for Washington during the war against the Nazis and fascists to. Project, an all black march on Washington, D.C., not all black, because it is in any way, in any sense antiwhite, but all black, in that he felt blacks needed to develop the self-confidence to be able to do something like that. So so that struck a militant note at the opening of the decade, so to speak, of the nineteen forties two years later. Paul Robeson is going before the heads of all the Major League Baseball teams in this country at the invitation of Kenesaw Mountain Landis to call upon them to immediately desegregate and to accept black baseball players. Meanwhile, his his career continued to soar and there were huge turnouts at Robeson concerts. I was a concert in Chicago in the early 1940s and 20 you cent some 100000 people gathered in Washington Park. That means that the great bulk of those people were black. We know that by 1943 he was doing during Otello on Broadway and winning a great deal of acclaim for his work in that production. Meanwhile, however, with the when the war came to a conclusion, lynchings which which which had not ceased during the war, continued after the war. And it was a war to make the world safe for democracy, we were told a war for for for for freedom in this country. But lynchings continued. Some 41 lynchings occurred in nineteen forty one, 1946 alone, right after the war, which led Robeson and other people of of influence to form an organization called the American Crusade and Lynchings or the American Crusade against lynchings. Robson took the took the platform, so to speak, of this organization to the White House itself, to Harry Truman, and proposed that Truman launch a legislative and educational campaign to bring lynching to an end. Truman said that the moment was not opportune for that. Moreover, he pointed pointed out that references to America leading the Nuremberg trials against war criminals being somehow hypocritical when Americans were still practicing lynching at home. Truman took that to be a mixing of domestic with foreign policy and felt that that was an advisable. Ropes responded to Truman’s contention that it was not time. The moment was not ripe for doing something about lynching by pointing out that if the government if the federal government did not do something about lynching, was very likely that black people themselves would do something about lynching, to which Truman took exception once more, saying, is that a threat? And saying, no, it’s not a threat. It’s basically just a statement of reality. So that when when ropes and left in his colleagues left the White House after having tried to prevail upon Truman to do something about lynchings, they knew that Truman really didn’t intend to do anything about lynching. They kept up a campaign against lynching in this country because lynchings continued and mounted a campaign to get Truman to do something about fair, about the enforcement of effec of civil rights legislation that Truman had had had managed to get passed in 1948. Robeson was picketing the White House speaker at the White House for two days, and 1948, I guess it was. But prior to that time in 1946 in St. Louis, he announced that he was going to give up his concert career in the formal sense and spend much of his time marching, as he put it, up and down the nation, protesting against discrimination, discrimination against black people.
Speaker Why did he do that? I mean, you know, why did he do that?
Speaker Black people were sorely oppressed in this country, lynchings were going on, segregation was basically unchallenged. Blacks did not have the ballot. Blacks were not even respected. I mean, there was all this talk about the free world with blacks oppressed that way over.
Speaker People in Africa were recolonized, remain colonized, and that was not even the semblance of freedom for black people around the world at that time, and I think he felt the need to do something because he hadn’t forgotten. He had forgotten that his father had been a slave and most of his relatives were still sharecroppers in North Carolina. And most of the black people he knew the most distinguished were subjected to racial segregation and and abuse.
Speaker So, yes, do you think that when he came back from Europe with, say, that 30 years after the Spanish Civil War, was he?
Speaker Like, energized by that experience, particularly, he was greatly energized by.
Speaker Not only by the Spanish Civil War, but by. The need to move against fascism.
Speaker And at that moment in time, in the late 30s, and felt that he, as he put it, he wanted to spend all of his time around the piano because he had he made this link between his music and the struggle for human liberation. If one looked at his song selections, you could see how how consistent that was. So that when he when he well, he he he continued to sing about oppressed people and the need for the liberation of oppressed people. He continued to sing about the basic unity of humanity and found songs that reflected such sentiments. OK. At times his songs would be directly would directly address specific forms of oppression, as during the Spanish Civil War, when when you sang the song about the four insurgent generals and so on, so that when Rabson by 1939, realizing that that the Nazis were which were showing no disinclination to cease their behavior, I felt that he should return to the United States and become involved in even more directly involved in the struggle against the Nazis and the fascist. By that time in 1939, he had concluded that all of his efforts, intellectual and otherwise in England, perhaps had had not borne the sort of fruit that he had hoped for. He was talking about people in Jamaica and Trinidad being shot down as as as we witnessed the other day, one of his last interviews in London, he kept the world in focus and felt that that that human civilization itself was besieged by Nazism and fascism and returned home in order to heighten the struggle in this country against against the enemies of the country at that time.
Speaker Now, um.
Speaker His foot here he goes to the Caribbean, right? Yes. This is his first trip there.
Speaker So I thought I have a two prong question one. What was the effect?
Speaker How is he greeted there? We know, but I’m telling you to talk about it. What was the effect on him?
Speaker I mean, he said that he had never experienced. A sense of freedom, as great as what he experienced, as he put it on my own people here in the Caribbean. He had experienced as many people know before, he tells us, a great sense of freedom in the Soviet Union, a greater sense of freedom in the Soviet Union that he had never known in America, because that seemed to be no no press of color, as Robeson remarked. No, no racial discrimination was practiced against him. He felt that kind of freedom there. But he felt in Jamaica and Trinidad a greater sense of freedom than he had ever felt in his life. And that was largely due, I suspect, to well, he tells us in part because it was very clear that that people in Jamaica, in Trinidad were on their way to independence. And and that, I think, was a major factor over there was a kind of union of spirit between him and people in the islands, they’ve been sort of waiting on him to come.
Speaker Many have been waiting on him to come. They knew Showboat. That seems to have been the the aspect of Robeson’s career that with which they identify more strongly Robson’s appearances, appearances and showboat. When I was there in the late 70s interviewing people, people were talking about how they walked from the countryside into the theaters to see Showboat more than one occasion. They knew, of course, of his singing and many of the people he met there on his visit in 1948. He had met some, at least he had met in his London years through the through the the League of Colored People, to which reference was made earlier. So they knew of him before he arrived and he knew a number of people there after his arrival. He felt such a sense of union with this was typical of Robeson in a way that by this time that he began giving free concerts, sang in prisons in a prison in Jamaica, sang before schoolchildren gave free concerts. Some 95000 people thronged the stadium at the Jamaica racetrack in 1948.
Speaker These are mainly black, but not exclusively black because Orientals and other people there as well. But this addresses the question of his base. His base at that time existed not only in Harlem and other black urban centers, but in places like Jamaica and Trinidad. He sang before some 45 to 50000 people in Trinidad at a concert, a free concert in both places so that his his involvement with his people there was such that. That he was greatly inspired and they were greatly inspired by him, Buro McBirney.
Speaker Who was the choreographer and the director of the little Korean theater in Trinidad said, yes, ropes and did come to the theater and she said when he stood and and spoke, I had never seen such such power before, such powerful power before in the theater. She said he rose and recited Langston Hughes his poem, Freedom Train, and he promised that he would return one day and that he would bring a Shakespearean troupe with him to perform Othello there on the stage of the little grip. And he praised his signal. He singled out the value of of exploiting in the best sense folk culture as the people there a little career were doing. She left the room and then returned. I thought the interview was over for return, but she said.
Speaker He said he was coming back.
Speaker But he never did, she said that she had met him originally in New York during Otello and after the performance had gone backstage and first it encountered Jose. And he said, I know to whom you come, you want to speak to Mr. Rosen. And she went backstage and did indeed speak to Paul Rose. And she said they held hands and she squeezed his hand and he squeezed her hand and she said, will you come to the little career? He said he would and he did. So there was that kind of contact that he had in Trinidad and Jamaica. And I should mention that when Robeson just to address the question of his naturalness as a human being, because people talk about the naturalness of his voice, especially in generally, generally the very best descriptions of his voice, draw on some aspect of nature in order to. Give a sense of what his voice is like.
Speaker Shortly after he arrived in Jamaica, there was a party for him at the home of Louise Bennett’s sister in law, some 45 to 50 people were at this party for ropes. And she said that before ropes and left, he said this is one of the finest parties I’ve attended in years. And so Louise Bennett said, why is that, Paul? He said, because no one asked me to sing, a carpenter likes to put down his tools from time to time. She said he wasn’t being the great man, the great singer, the great actor. He was being merely Paul. She said he was basic. He was sound. So there was this naturalness about him that was very attractive to people wherever he went.
Speaker Also, I heard at one of those seminars when you said it, but that was right after his Caribbean tour that he went right back into the hearing. Is that right?
Speaker I did not I did not make the remark, but there was a hearing, I believe, in 48. One of the one of one of the things that was most impressive about ropes and before we leave the Caribbean was that it was remarked by black people there, by black artists and intellectuals that before his coming, there was a great deal of shame in both Jamaica and Trinidad about being black, which which is understandable because at the time there was a great deal of shame about being black in America. You perhaps remember you’re old enough perhaps to remember that bleach cream was being advertised as the possible solution to the race problem. And I believe that Walter White endorsed that at one point or some sort of straightening of the hair. It was remarked by more than one person in Jamaica. And certainly in Jamaica that that Robeson had brought to them a sense of negritude, a sense of pride in that being Negro. That was missing. It doesn’t mean that he was able to transform them, but he got them, at least for that important moment, to reflect on something positive about their heritage and. And a lot that was positive, as a matter of fact.
Speaker The.
Speaker During that time, I think it was during the time that I was actually later the Council on African Affairs, did you talk about what that was?
Speaker Yeah, actually, the council, you know, how did the Council on African Affairs come into being came into being in London in 1937 as a result of the mutual interest in Africa? On the part of Max Yergin, who had been secretary for the YMCA in South Africa for a number of years, and Paul Robeson, they decided to establish the Council on African Affairs to serve as an information bureau and to rally support for colonized Africans. It quickly became the most significant anticolonial organization. Outside the continent of Africa. That was concerned with the liberation of. Colonized black Africans and remained so into the 1950s, there were other organizations, but no organization was as consistent and as determined to bring the plight of black Africans to the attention of Americans as a whole. Then the Council on African Affairs, it was interracial, it, due to Robson’s enormous stature at the time, attracted people who normally didn’t become involved in politics, such as Marian Anderson. And lots of other people of distinction because of Robeson’s involvement with it and for a good while, they were able to to put the focus of attention on Africa. As a matter of fact, as I recall, I believe it was the publication that they offered was called Spotlight on Africa and South Africans, and years later said how much the council council’s activities had meant to them during coal miner strikes when money was sent to South Africa to support beleaguered coal miners, Africans, their ropes and became very well known, particularly in South Africa, as a consequence of the council’s activities. It was not merely South Africa that the council focused on, but the whole of much of black Africa. But as with blacks in North America with ropes and focusing on the most oppressed, that is Mississippi blacks, so too, with respect to the continent of black Africa, where Robeson tended to focus primarily on but not exclusively on South Africans, but that because that’s where the burden was heaviest for his people.
Speaker That’s where the oppression was harshest that the Rowson contribute mostly because using his name or did he do concerts?
Speaker Oh, he’s been the conservative is doing concerts for African causes while in London in the 1930s with his organization. With this organization. Yes. Concerts were were performed so the money could be raised so that the so that the council could continue its activities. OK.
Speaker So with regard to Robeson’s impact. With respect to. Africa, its impact on Africa, the impact on the consciousness of people regarding Africa, one should certainly take into account the reaction of the United States State Department. To his involvement and the Council on African Affairs, to his leadership of the Council of African Affairs, because I think that explains something that is has been muddled for a long, long time, certainly in the minds of most people who. Attempt to understand the significance of Paul Robeson, that is the State Department made it very clear when his passport was was denied him. That would have allowed him to travel abroad, that the reason for this and it’s brief the State Department stayed in its brief, was that he had been extremely active on behalf of the colonial peoples of Africa. Not because he was a communist, not because of his close association with the Soviet Union, but because he had been extremely active on behalf of the colonial peoples of Africa.
Speaker This was a matter of concern to the State Department, apparently, to such an extent. That it was arranged for an article to appear in the Crisis magazine, the official organ of the ACP, claiming that Paul Robeson was naive. It seems that the roots of this notion of Robeson being naive stemmed from concern regarding Robson’s intense activity on behalf of the liberation of black people and colonized Africa, which was most black people in Africa.
Speaker So so that’s that’s very important to understand that there was concern such was his such was the regard in which he was held.
Speaker In various parts of Africa that the State Department apparently was concerned and felt that it somehow had to counter that.
Speaker What was the effect of that article?
Speaker I mean, I won’t one of the people I think that I think the the the effect of that article cannot be underestimated. There’s a whole literature about Paul Robeson being naive, this man of of considerable learning, of great worldliness. A man of of of.
Speaker Of highly educated experiences throughout much of his life up not this time in contact with various people around the world, is suddenly being referred to as naive. For pressing the issue of Africa, African liberation became divorced from that issue, and people simply began to say that he was naive for being close to the communists, is being naive for this is being naive for that. And so one finds it enshrined, for example, in how Kruse’s book, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, and I think in the minds of all of newscaster’s.
Speaker Accusing Robertson of of having been I believe that that is more difficult to pull that off today than it was nearly 50 years ago.
Speaker But again, you have this again, you have to say I mean, I would suggest I would think that. The notion that he was naive, how far did that trickle down to his black base just to that?
Speaker I don’t think it I don’t think it trickled down that much to to his black base. I think it’s it was it was the notion that perhaps was.
Speaker Rather widely shared in middle class black circles, after all, here’s a man making huge sums of money, the highest paid concert artist in the world up until the time of his blacklisting suddenly cut off 86 concerts, 85, 86 concerts canceled within a year of probably within six months of the Paris Peace Conference statement, a man whose salary drops from over 100000 dollars a year to less than 6000 a year and remains out almost a decade.
Speaker There are people reacting, but why would he sacrifice all this? That would be naive to them to throw away millions. For the sake of his principles. So a lot of people why doesn’t why doesn’t he, as we heard recently from a black intellectual, why didn’t he recant?
Speaker It’s that kind of mentality that that his father had inveighed against from the start, as his father was was certainly opposed to that kind of mentality.
Speaker Now, I guess it seems that the point at which you mentioned this earlier, the point at which everybody came after him for vengeance, was the Paris peace speech.
Speaker Paris peace talks speech.
Speaker Uh, would that be like a I would say that that was a critical moment, but even before that, as early as 1946, interestingly, when you left the White House, after having talked to Truman, they asking him, are you a communist? That was that was a frequent question. Are you a communist you and says I’m against lynching. Does that make me a communist? Ask him so. So the red baiting that had already begun. And it’s I believe it’s held, at least in certain circles, that he was under surveillance as early as the early 1940s, Adlai Stevenson, the governor of the state of Illinois, was instrumental in getting a concert of his council that was supposed to have been given at an American Legion hall somewhere in the state of Illinois. This is prior to nineteen forty nine.
Speaker So let me ask a question. Yeah. What was the effect of the parish?
Speaker I think it was I think the effect of the Paris Peace Conference speech and the way in which it was started was that it provided a means by which. The process of silencing Rabson could be set in motion. No more concerts after that, 85, 86 concerts cancel in a matter of five or six months, no more appearance on university campuses, even to sing, to say nothing of to give speeches, no more television appearances, basically. Well, no more. Eleanor Roosevelt had had tried to line him up for a television appearance, and that was canceled. No, no more movie contracts had he had interest in movie contracts. So that the Paris peace conference speech, the reaction to it was also seized on, that is the speech was seized on by civil rights leadership to isolate Rabson.
Speaker In their own ways, I mean, they were able to they use that in order to to blunt the effectiveness of Robson’s message.
Speaker Now, the other thing is a good question, I think.
Speaker Who supported during this time, who supported ropes and more, the white left for the black church?
Speaker Those who supported Rosen more, the black church of the white left, I cannot say, but I can respond to that. I know that the black church, certainly not the black church as a whole. You’re a minister of a black church and hadn’t paid off your mortgage and Paul Robeson appeared. You could lose the mortgage on your church. So the most black ministers did not support Paul Robeson.
Speaker Whether they have paid off the mortgages or not. Paul Robeson’s name was being whispered in black circles, whispered, if if mentioned at all, but people whispered Robeson’s name as early as the nineteen fifties.
Speaker But he did find in the black church a number of black churches, a place at which concerts might be given. He gave concerts, but those would be concerts that were attended by a relative handful of people. I was saddened a few churches in Chicago where there might be 50 or 60 people in the audience listening to listening to Robeson saying the white left made his efforts. Some of. Factions of the white left certainly made an effort, labor unions and the like to support ropes and my goodness, the forces arrayed against him were such that at their best efforts were minuscule and there was no massive support of Paul Robeson had had the civil rights movement occurred. If the civil rights civil rights movement had begun, let’s say, in the late 40s or so, it might have been a different story, but there was relatively little support for Paul Robeson because so many people were besieged. Labor unions themselves were besieged. By the government being declared communist and so on, and efforts were made to to destroy them.
Speaker So in my mind, as somebody says, the government tried to wipe them out and they succeeded. Is that a true statement?
Speaker Well, I would not say that it is a true statement that the government tried to wipe Robson out and it succeeded.
Speaker I would not say that for a number of reasons.
Speaker I have a whole row of his songs on the CDs and LPs in my study called The Greatest of Singers. I have books in which his essays appear. I have the memory of having met the man, the the civil rights movement. By 1964, leaders such as John Lewis Black, intellectuals such as John Kaelyn, certainly before that, and Jimmy Baldwin base64 Harry Belafonte for some time before that as well. Dizzy Gillespie in the arts. Thelonious Monk greatly admired Robeson. Or you can capture the attention of Monk and hold it that way. That’s a considerable achievement. Sarah Vaughan greatly admired Paul Robeson. Billy Eckstine, a great singer, admired Paul Robeson. Many, many people greatly admired Paul Robeson during the Count Basie. So that when one speaks of having wiped out and what does wipe out mean, I mean, it is true it is certainly true that the government did something quite phenomenally successful with respect to Paul Robeson. The government was able to exercise, to exercise ropes and from the consciousness of very large numbers of Americans, black and white alike, to such an extent that today, despite the centennial celebration of the year of his birth, the average American wouldn’t know who Paul Robeson was if you were to mention his name. So that was that was the government was able to do what? George Orwell. Thought was possible with modern technology and and conservative politics, authoritarian politics, if you like, the government was able to silence Rabson that for nearly a decade his voice was not heard.
Speaker That was what I.
Speaker Any time you start to say something like that, I want OK, you can tell me when to start.
Speaker OK, there’s one aspect of the Robson phenomenon that is little explored, if at all, and that is the.
Speaker Is that is how. The silencing of Rabson for eight years, roughly. Affected him. We don’t know and perhaps never will know the answer to that question, but imagine being having. Perhaps the greatest bass baritone voice. Certainly of the century. Imagine having that kind of voice and then being silenced, you imagine having had a relationship with with, uh.
Speaker Yes, it was close.
Speaker OK, imagine imagine having that quality of voice, imagine having had the sort of relationship that Robeson had with audiences all over the world, whether the audience was Czech, a Hungarian or German or Spanish, Polish or a black American or African or Caribbean from Jamaica.
Speaker Trinidad. That sort of.
Speaker One man said Paul Paul said he always felt at home among thousands of people, he never felt the press of people in any negative sense. He felt that kind of union with his audiences imagined that being removed and with Paul singing in a in a black church, an occasional Jewish synagogue with 25 or 30 people.
Speaker Imagine the psychological impact on him, a man.
Speaker A very fine Shakespeare tragedian who might have done King Lear being prevented from any kind of acting for nearly a decade. Imagine further. If you ever heard Robson speak. Robson’s speech, which so often began as a kind of tone poem, becoming a fighting speech in one thinking, as I thought while watching One Day in Washington Park, standing in Washington Park one day in the 1950s, there was a larger crowd that day. I wondered, you know, what effect is that having on his voice, on his singing voice, because, you know, ropes and with his fists balled. Straining his voice and talking head live, so the question of the impact of. Of the campaign to silence him upon ropes and psychologically and spiritually. Is a big question that can be answered in part because we know a lot about his qualities of its qualities as an artist in his relationship to his his audiences. We know that. And then further, imagine how Rabson must have felt. Being confronted with so much cowardice, let’s say it in his own people.
Speaker In his own people with men, grown men crouching in fear.
Speaker They crossed in fear after that terrorist revolt, didn’t they? They crossed in fear after Gabriel Prosser was hanged in eighteen hundred.
Speaker They crossed and they crossed in fear whenever there was a slave revolt or rumors of a slave revolt. Large numbers of people would be afraid.
Speaker They were truly afraid. When Robertson was on the scene in the 1950s and so that. That leads him to this is very sad, it seems to me to say to black leadership, just remain neutral.
Speaker You know, talking to men. You can’t be talking to man. Just remain neutral.
Speaker They weren’t prepared to remain neutral. So do you think you really do you think that. This had a lot to do with those series of depressions and all, I mean, how does that play out?
Speaker I mean, because I mean, that’s the real question nobody has really said. But I mean, I don’t know.
Speaker I’m going to respond to that. I don’t know enough about.
Speaker The illnesses of Paul Robeson, I have not yet read the accounts that were kept of his illnesses by the government, but I understand. The accounts of luminous. But I would imagine that that would be enough to depress anyone, nothing more, perhaps. In cowardice.
Speaker Because, you know, from my point of view, had blacks rallied around him.
Speaker You’ve been a different ballgame.
Speaker So someone later would say, we have heard nothing from Paul Robeson. Why doesn’t Paul Robeson make a statement? And I think to myself, do you know the history of Paul Paul Robeson’s relationship with us, with white people, with the government? If you knew the history, how could you possibly ask such a question? Unless he had. A whole lot of support. Out there to protect him. Well, I think I think that Peekskill was. A Horwitt event. A terrible event, I’m not certain that exposing ropes and once more to such fascist. Fascists midget’s. Well, I don’t want to qualify it that way, you know, just just fascists is insufficient. I mean, people screaming and wanting to kill him, you know, the dregs of America, the very dregs to expose him to something like that. He said they they they they they they howled for my life.
Speaker So, so so let’s take that as an example of, you know, but he’s not going to back down. You see, this is Robertson, right? But OK, but what was then?
Speaker How do you how do you think about the reaction to that?
Speaker It was, you know, a series of meetings marred in the long run overview. What do you think the reaction?
Speaker I think the reaction was inadequate. The police had collaborated with with the hoodlums. The police became a part of the riot. The police allowed them to stockpile rocks, stockpile rocks to throw at people as they were leaving the grounds, the police stood by while blacks and whites were being beaten.
Speaker It was it was it was as much a police riot as it was a riot on the part of. Ordinary citizens, ordinary American patriotism would have us believe so.
Speaker So.
Speaker So, I mean, basically what happened was there was a meeting and it was supposed to be a march in Harlem basically, and a couple of press conferences, not very much happened because it was still the.
Speaker People still had to deal with the. With the issue of being identified. With ropes and identify with the left. And while some were willing to some were proud of that ID, certainly most were not willing to risk that there was certainly no outcry from civil rights leaders of what Robeson had experienced.
Speaker Well, it was, but there wasn’t they didn’t seem to that I mean, it seems to me that there was a lot of what I call mass black outrage, but they didn’t seem to be an institutional way for it to be expressed.
Speaker Do you know?
Speaker I would perhaps have to pass on that one, I’m thinking about how old I was at the time and what I what I follow closely, what I didn’t. And I’ve never really looked at the Peekskill riots as closely as I might. I would not feel confident trying to respond any further to that.
Speaker It’s an impression that I have and I don’t want to go on that impression.
Speaker Yeah, when you when you put the context argues that it wouldn’t have been that much of an overreaction given the rebels reaction when polls, concerts were cancelled. Where was the reaction when he could no longer earn a living? And where was it, where were the mass demonstrations?
Speaker So what lessons do you think? Would you as a historian, as somebody who’s looked at this at the end?
Speaker Oh, one one lesson that that that that I have to draw from this is that. If you are a radical. No matter how great your gifts. No matter how much people say they love you. And are inspired by you.
Speaker As you take increasingly radical stances.
Speaker Those so-called supporters are going to.
Speaker Move away from you, unless unless they are unless they are somehow organized, unless they are somehow organized.
Speaker And Robeson never claimed to be a political leader, he never claimed to be a leader in the conventional sense, he was never out there organizing people to follow him. That wasn’t his style. That wasn’t Dubois’s style, but it certainly was certainly wasn’t Dubois’s style, nor was it Rabson style. These were people who in general, in terms of large numbers of people who rallied around him because they genuinely admired him. But it’s one thing to genuinely admire someone and even to love them and to be willing to to endure all manner of sacrifices for truly committing yourself to defend those people in the under attack. And what I suggest is that when you are radical, whether it’s in this country or any other country and you don’t have a radical base, you’re vulnerable.
Speaker And Paul did not have a radical base. There were radicals who were prepared to support him and did attempt to, but there were relatively few. Considering the forces arrayed against them.
Speaker We’re have been waiting for it. I’ve been waiting for that statement for about six months.
Speaker But you see, this would be typical of Paul, despite the fact that he didn’t have that kind of support.
Speaker You know, he’s not going to back down. You’re not going to back down.
Speaker Some perhaps wish he had stayed in London. The price was heavy.
Speaker My aunt said to him in late August of 1951. Over dinner at her house on Princeton Street in Chicago, Paul.
Speaker I’m telling you this, you may not like it, but these Negroes do not appreciate what you’re doing for them, and Ella and Johnson told him that.
Speaker And Paul just smiled because, you know, Paul is going to go in and do it anyway. Because if they didn’t appreciate it, because they didn’t know any better, he would reason, I’m sure. And they didn’t appear to appreciate it, Sam did, many did. Many did. My goodness, if you really want to find the ropes and tradition, that is still alive. At least it was. Almost 20 years ago go to the Caribbean. Go to the Caribbean, unbelievable, go to the Caribbean.
Speaker What makes it significant there when you think.
Speaker Well, there’s been no scholarship on on ropes in the Caribbean. I’ve done the research, but I haven’t written it up yet.
Speaker I think that he provided a kind of spark, he was a kind of catalyst at a moment in time when they were about to launch. A freedom movement, an independence movement. And they saw him as perhaps the kind of ideal projection of what their people could one day become.
Speaker I mean, with ropes and they saw they saw a degree of of humanity and of. Of ability and self-confidence that they felt would ultimately be necessary for any country to be independent, to be self-reliant and to. Dignified nation, dignified for any people to be a dignified people, they saw that in Robeson.
Speaker And they saw it, and I think they perhaps. Placed his visit within the framework of a movement that was headed toward independence and when Robeson could stand before Jamaican children, little kids and who so greatly admired him can remark, you don’t want one leader, you don’t want a thousand leaders, you want thousands upon thousands of leaders. So you have to depend on any one person. Is it about Reid, his brother said Reid’s problem, which was Paul’s problem, was that he tried to do it alone. Paul was left to try to do it alone after having made great efforts at coalitions because he realized that blacks couldn’t liberate themselves in America by themselves. And in the 1940s, you’ve got look at look at the context. You’ve got Nazism and fascism on the world scene raging on the world scene. He couldn’t be any. This is absurd.
Speaker It’s absurd.
Speaker With Reid, he says Reid tried to do it by himself out of his out of a sense of dignity when he would take the shoulders of the many to do it. And yet Paul himself was caught in that emblematic situation that he referred to some time ago of being almost in the predicament of Reid, whereas the support.
Speaker Their supporters, their. Rollerskating said that it was a strange man. If you could just come to revocations place and stay sometimes for several weeks, it was a stranger and he says he says you couldn’t drop a pen without it being recorded in my apartment, said Robson will go into the door, going to his room, closed this close the door and study Chinese for hours, he said. And then he added, I can hear him now. This was 1975. He’s talking about something that occurred in the 1950s. I can hear him now that the discipline of the man that launched Brown talked about. He said you could get 15 curtain calls.
Speaker This is in London, and I’m going to return to the hotel and knock on his door. He’s at the desk studying Russian or Chinese. Two or three o’clock in the morning.
Speaker One has to bear in mind that it seems to me that perhaps his greatest reason. For supporting the Soviet Union during the time that he did, which was a good length of time. Was that the Soviet Union was the one nation beyond the continent of Africa. That end of Asia to end of Latin America, for that matter, that consistently championed. Colonized people. That was a powerful thing that the Soviet Union was not only not only championing them in a moral sense, but providing them with weapons even.
Speaker Providing, you know, black people and brown people who weapons perhaps that might be turned on white people, even though he was doing that.
Speaker So in the absence of support for colonial liberation movements here. Harry Truman argued when Robeson was in the White House at the White House in 46, that Britain and America were the last refuges of freedom. And Robson’s response to that was he considered the British Empire one of the greatest, the British among the greatest enslavers of humanity. This was during the time that lynchings were occurring in America, so that I think the ropes and probably had to weigh things. Clearly were things that he undoubtedly did not like about the Communist Party USA. He never joined the Communist Party in London. He never joined the Communist Party in this country. There must have been things about the Soviet Union that he didn’t like either. We can be certain of that. But I’m told that on rather good authority that when he differed with the American Communist Party.
Speaker He differed with them privately. As opposed to publicly, because he felt that public differences would simply give ammunition to the to the to the collective enemy, so to speak.
Speaker With regard to his differences with the Soviet Union, I cannot speak to those because after Khrushchev, after the Khrushchev revelations and yet I’m speaking to them right now after the Khrushchev revelations regarding Stalin.
Speaker One source says that that that ropes and read about them in The New York Times, laid down the paper and didn’t say a word. So we don’t know what was going on inside, the man couldn’t have been happy about that. Couldn’t have been happy about it, but.
Speaker We’re back to context again, it might be asking a bit much of someone whose father was enslaved and those people are being lynched and who is himself the victim of the most massive conspiracy to silence a lone individual, perhaps in the history of the country.
Speaker To expect him to stand up and to denounce one’s enemy. Might be asking a bit much. The very people.
Speaker Who were standing silently by when his own people were being lynched, now want him to stand up and to denounce another nation because of its atrocities against various peoples.
Speaker Maybe he figure figured I’m dealing with two evils here.
Speaker And he was not prepared when people were trying to destroy him.
Speaker To accommodate them by making remarks like that, even though he knew that that would mean the unfurling of quite a carpet for him.
Speaker But he couldn’t be bought. It couldn’t be Bob.
Speaker So whether one whether one agrees with his stance and there’s a lot of controversy about that stance and a lot of criticism, more criticism, it seems to me, has been generated as a consequence of his apparent silence.
Speaker Maybe more criticism about that than understanding and honesty about the predicament of blacks in America.
Speaker And the stature of the man you’re dealing with. Says not any other Negro that you’re dealing with.
Speaker What was the.
Speaker You sort of mentioned this before, but what’s your take on the way other people saw his voice as a force of nature? Well, you know oh yeah.
Speaker I think I think I think, you know, I think of narrative’s reference to Tower of the Sea compares his voice to the germinating Earth song. Make me I will I be forgiven if I if I describe my own treatment, I say that there perhaps Robeson’s most remarkable achievement was the natural naturalness of his voice. A naturalness is elemental, it seems, as the movement of wind on an open plain. OK, it seems to me that that narrative back to Naruto, not that I’m putting myself in the same category, is talks about the indistinguishably indistinguishable inextinguishable lightning. I’m sorry I read it. It’s just a stanza. It’s just a stanza that is certainly worth worth hearing.
Speaker He writes in his ode to Rabson. Of ropes, and you were a subterranean river, something that bore the merest glimmer of light in the darkness, the last sort of dying order, the last wounded fork of lightening, the inextinguishable thunder.
Speaker I think he’s I think those an apt. I think those are apt remarks there so that Alexander Walker reference to the Robson’s character reminding him of the redwood trees of California.
Speaker Or very McCleod Bethune’s reference to him as the tallest tree in our forest seems to me that those. Such references best capture something of the spirit of the man. The character of the man, the quality even of his voice, the naturalness of his voice.
Speaker So in the long run, I mean.
Speaker Obviously, you don’t consider him a tragic figure. But there is tragedy and there is tragedy in the total situation.
Speaker I mean, oh, yeah, this is a nice way of putting it. I do not consider him a tragic, tragic figure, but there’s great tragedy in the total situation. Him personally tragic figure ropes and lived an extraordinary life. And you know it. Prior to the clamping down on him in the late 1940s, an unbelievable life, as one critic said that he had been praised as few men who have ever lived have been praised. And this is this black man. Others saying that he was gifted by the gods with his acting and singing ability when some were 10 to 15 thousand people show up for your birthday party, as occurred in the mid 1940s in this country. When you’ve had the kinds of experiences, the kinds of triumphs that Robeson had on the football field, one of the greatest football players the nation has seen, certainly one of the greatest actors the Nation has seen, certainly one of the most remarkable linguists that Africanism student of American slavery should know about. Lawyers as well.
Speaker In so many different ways, a friend of the common man.
Speaker It’s like his eulogy at the death of Vito Marcantonio, the great Italian political figure in New York City, the opening lines were, as I recall, Italian American carpenter’s son. He never deserted the working class from whom he sprang.
Speaker This is this is a man of of the distinction of ropes and again, harking back to one’s roots so that for someone like Paul Robeson to to have been cut down, so to speak, by the government probably didn’t shock him at all. I’m sure it hurt. It was very painful, but that clash was perhaps inevitable.
Speaker Given the person that he was, unless the country changed its ways and the country was not prepared to change its ways, the great tragedy, it seems to me, is that for nearly a decade, we, the American people, the people of the world, were denied the sound of that voice. Theatregoers were denied his presence on the legitimate theaters of the world.
Speaker The oppressed people who needed his support were denied his support by a nation that claimed to be a democracy. The American media, which prided itself, particularly The New York Times, on printing all the news that’s fit to print, fell silent. For a long, long time, didn’t even do a review of his here I stand I know this because I reviewed it for The New York Times two years after more than a decade after the book appeared, only under pressure.
Speaker Robson, it seems to me, Robson’s life, if it demonstrates anything. With respect to tragedy primarily demonstrates the the tragedy of American.
Speaker Political and cultural practices over a significant period of time that were that there were such that there were authoritarian. Not expressions of human of any particular regard for freedom that could not countenance a voice that he did not like, a political voice that somehow dissented from the status quo. So they decided simply to silence.
Speaker This is not free expression.
Speaker This is not free expression, and they cannot claim that as free expression, they silenced him just as they refused to print Dubois’s, not as The New York Times did during the during the Cold War period. Refused even to run advertisements of his book in The New York Times during this period. I guess I’ve said it enough about The New York Times, but.
Speaker Thank you.
Speaker It’s you know, it’s all the other stuff, do you think it’s over the edge? That was just one could say.
Speaker One could say that. One could say that as some would have us believe it. Robeson was a failure then certainly Gabriel Prosser was a failure. He ended up being hanged. And in Henrico County, Virginia, 1800, certainly not Denmark. Veazey was a failure. He ended up being hanged. And in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1822, certainly not Tourneau was a failure. Certainly Che Guevara was a failure. Certainly Mao Zedong has been a failure. Certainly all the champions of human freedom, in the absence of the freedom for which they were questing were failures for having died before humanity came into its own as free, it would seem to me.
Speaker I mean, I would I would offer that said, the people who fail in the battle for freedom will fail. I don’t see that to be the case at all because they they enhance the movement toward freedom even when we do not even when we’re not in a position necessarily to detect the progress of the progress of that movement.
Speaker Because the very nature of the historical process itself, I mean, we’re sitting here now talking about Paul Robeson when we couldn’t have done this. In the 50s, there’ve been groups formed all over the world to celebrate its centennial centennial year, so the question has not been settled. It is not it has not been settled for all manner of people who fought for freedom in different nations at different times in human history.
Speaker I don’t know if you want to know, because I just have a few one of if you could. This is like a pickup comparing the Christian gentleman. Yeah. You know, it reminds me.
Speaker This very interesting statement that Mrs. Price made. About ropes and being a Christian gentleman who’s. Values were so high that they attempted to destroy him. Reminds me of. Apollos father.
Speaker His experiences first in Princeton, New Jersey, when he was a man of high values and because he had this commitment to to the community of the disadvantaged. An effort was made to get rid of him and he suffered abuse as a consequence of that and had to go had to the ashes for a while. He was certainly a man of high values. And.
Speaker His son was like that, and I think that that Mrs. Price’s remark certainly resonates with with both with both Paul and his father.
Speaker What was the max you’re going to betray? How did it affect Paul?
Speaker What was the Max Juergen betrayal and how did it affect Paul?
Speaker I can’t in a nutshell say precisely what it was, what the failure was, but I suspect it was Max Juergens beginning to mouth the anti communist propaganda and to attack the Council on African Affairs of being communist inspired, etc. After a while, that caused Paul and Dubow and others to be deeply disenchanted with him. I think it angered Paul. I think it angered Dubai and others who were involved with the with the council. But Max Juergens, increasingly right wing stances in reference, particularly to the Council on African Affairs, was a source of concern and. Undoubtedly aided those who were out to bring the council to an end they were able to do by the mid 50s or so, yeah, it was going to say what happened to the, you know, the incident that they brought it down. I don’t I do not know of a specific incident, but it became so unpopular to be involved with Rozin. Became so unpopular. I mean, how was Marian Anderson going to continue her support? How is Mary MacKillop? But then I’m going to continue her support. How are others going to continue their support? I mean, those who are not themselves radicals in light of what was happening to Paul and. I don’t think the final word has by any means been written on it, perhaps they’ll never be a final word.
Speaker But but it seems that the principal reason for that was the unpopularity of Paul. And the danger of of of. Identifying with him.
Speaker Talking to you today and hearing about what and how much time you’ve given to a study of. It’s just something made me realize, what about the academic community during all these years of the blacklisting? What was the effect of universities and academicians? Did they were they afraid to do?
Speaker This is an insider’s point of view. This is a very good question. What yeah. What was the effect of of academics? What was their response to the persecution of appal to the controversy around Paul’s ideas? One reaction immediately occurs to me, and that is a professor of law at Yale. Offered to debate Paul on some aspect of what Paul had been arguing have been advancing. Professor of law at Yale, I don’t know what Robeson’s response to him was, but that stands out. That leaps forth in response to the question as to how the academic community responded further. We know that he was denied.
Speaker The right of speaking at these centers as they like to think of themselves, of independent inquiry, we know that he was denied the right to to sing at universities, as was Dubah was not Rockwell Kent.
Speaker Lots of left wingers were denied the right to appear on Univers camp, but especially Robeson, because he was so well, well known there. There has never been, to my knowledge. Any serious treatment of Rabson academically by mainstream academics in this country? I think that serious work on ropes and has indeed appeared. I say my essays are certainly Lord Browne’s wonderful volume, the young Paul Robeson. That will certainly be more. But academics and high level journalists have largely been attempting to ignore him, though there have been changes and I’ve read the the sports section of the New York Times on several occasions and some very fine pieces have appeared in the John Paul Robeson. We know that more recently, a wonderful article appeared in The New York Times by I can’t think of the author’s name is on sits on the on the culture desk on ropes. And that appeared not so long ago. So so there have been some changes, but.
Speaker While there have been some changes, we get a book like David Halberstam in the 50s with no no mention of Robeson. How can you write about the decade of the 50s without discussing Paul Robeson? Well, maybe he was maybe is a much younger man than I thought, maybe didn’t know very much about Paul Robeson and perhaps that. But how can you study the 50s seriously, even if you’re a journalist without knowing about Paul Robeson and Devoy and given and devoting considerable attention to them in a large volume?
Speaker And some attention in any volume, so I do think that that that more recently, that scene, this is changing, as I’m suggesting. There’s, of course, on the boy at UCLA as a twist, of course, that KLEMET prize is teaching on I’m sorry, Robeson at UCLA. There’s a course at Klemet. Price is currently teaching on ropes. And at Rutgers, there’s, of course, that would be offered at University of California, at Riverside on Rabson. And I suspect that courses being offered in many universities these days, well, in quite a number in contrast to to the past. So the I think things are on the upswing upsweep. Things are much more positive in that regard. But the academic community has long ignored ropes.
Speaker And boy, let’s not Dubai then and Robeson, what do you know about the last last year in Philadelphia?
Speaker I don’t know very much about his last years in Philadelphia. I do know that that during those last years. I at the time I was living in Chicago and I went into the office of Muhammad Speaks, which was then the official organ of the Nation of Islam movement, and talked to Richard Durham, who was then editor of Muhammad Speaks on one occasion. And Durham said that he had recently received a phone call or letter. Perhaps it was a phone call from Malcolm X asking if he could arrange for him.
Speaker Malcolm. To see Robson in Philadelphia. And from Dick Durham’s response. To Malcolm, It’s clear to me that Dick Durham did not intend to put together such a meeting. To attempt to put together such a meeting, I don’t know that he could have done it anyway. I know that in those last years, groups and so people who were first cleared by the family, I know that he saw. Very close friends from time to time, the Lord Browne went down, another Harry Belafonte went to Philadelphia on one occasion at least, to speak to him, but in the main. Relatively few people saw him, as I understand it.
Speaker I just have one last question as a professor of history, how do you rank groups?
Speaker In American history, how do I rank Rabson in American history as a professor of history? Well.
Speaker I guess the biggest question would be how many categories are you going to enter him into when you’ve got ropes and the the singer, you’ve got ropes and the athlete and I mentioned athletics in relation to American history because athletics have been a kind of bellwether of the state of race relations in this country, in Robeson’s activities as an athlete, in a sense were emblematic of of the promise of of of race relations at the time he was involved in in athletics, certainly as as a singer. And I am an historian who whose work almost invariably involves discussion of music and dance of the arts.
Speaker Certainly as a singer, he has to be at or near the top. As an actor. He he deserves a place of respect as a student of slave culture, which we haven’t gotten into. He was remarkable. I mean, he was writing in the mid 1930s and arguing that the religion of the slave was primarily African. And I remember having read that for the first time and wondered to myself, what on earth is he talking about? It was not until I had spent close to 20 years working on my book Slave Culture that I finally understood how apt that that observation was. In just a handful of pages, Robeson had been able to cut through things and understand things that generations of scholars had not understood. And today. When an academic talks about. The religion of the slave being largely African, no expert in the field is going to raise an eyebrow. Robson was making that argument back in the 1930s, which was a time. Which which was the time when people didn’t even in this country, probably some academics as well, did not even recognize that Africans spoke languages that were meaningful, meaningful languages that had this Tarzan image.
Speaker That one might have garnered from watching Johnny Weissmuller movies here he was and studying African linguistics at the London School of Foreign Language so that as singer, as actor, as scholar, certainly as champion of human rights.
Speaker And would have to be ranked.
Speaker But could be placed in a very high position as a champion of the rights of all humanity, despite his deep commitment to African peoples and so on, there’s no one.
Speaker Quite like him, it seems to me. So that I think in due course he will. Get something of the credit that he deserves, a distinguished poet once remarked to me. When we were discussing what an appropriate tribute to Robeson would be and talked about what had been suggested by various people suggested that no, none of this would be adequate. He felt that that person will have received his due when there’s a statue of him erected on the lawn of the White House.
Speaker That that was very interesting.
Speaker But if you go to Lincoln Center today. And perhaps you haven’t been there the last time I was there on the main floor of the New York Philharmonic, there were three buses, one of Rodanthe, one of Beethoven and one of Paul Robeson. So there is a very significant one. Not one of one of Möller borrow that one, a Beethoven and one of ropes, and by Jacob Epstein on the main floor of the New York Philharmonic, which suggests that that the jury’s still out on this extremely interesting man and that significant forces within the culture. Appear to be. Appear to be information that provide a different kind of support for him than what we’ve known in the past. Lots of young people are being exposed to corruption, and almost invariably they are astonished that they haven’t heard of this man. So this is what I meant earlier about the historical process playing itself out in ways that are often quite ironic. And thus developments occur that frequently catch one by surprise. Just as that, I’m sure it wasn’t a spontaneous development by walking into the New York Philharmonic and seeing a bus of Paul Robeson was quite was quite surprising to me.
Speaker We did that in a Welsh bar. In a small town on the coast, we walked out. No use to think that we might that we might talk about the effects of war.
Speaker You wanted to be reminded about his statement about the wonderful professors and wanted to I don’t know what that’s about you.
Speaker So you didn’t forget that, you know. Right.
Speaker One thing that that one should not lose sight of in dealing with Rabson and trying to understand him is that.
Speaker When you get tired, that’s what it is.
Speaker Yeah, yeah, yeah, that one thing that one should not lose sight of when considering Paul Robeson and his significance and how he. Arrived at his Triumph’s, which were considerable, is. Is his devotion to learning. And. Looking at his handwritten notes. From the London years of the 1930s. Particularly when he was a student at the London School of Foreign Languages. One finds him. Describing the relish with which he went to his classes on certain days when a certain professor would be teaching him a certain language. How great a professor he was. And his involvement with this particular cause.
Speaker It was said that. He was seldom seen.
Speaker Without a book which gets us back to his father’s reference, his father having remarked that all of the treasures of learning should be the Negros, not just industrial education, certainly not industrial education alone, but all of the treasures of learning should be the Negroes.
Speaker And so, Paul, like some of his nationalist predecessors, if you can use the term of the antebellum period, like Henry Highland Garnet, for example.
Speaker Like Thomas Sedney.
Speaker Was quite at home with European literature and with European languages, so you studied Latin and Greek, the way Garnette Exclave out of Maryland studied, studied Latin and Greek. And Paul was given to quoting European authors the same way that Garnette, who called on slaves in 1843 to rise up in rebellion in his famous address given in Buffalo, New York, of that year just as garnette. Would, quote, burn, he who is struck is the one to cry out as if the Robson’s conception of nationalism was radically different from the nationalism about which we hear so much in the late 20th century, antiwhite aspects of it. The the insularity of the nationalist Robson’s was was broader. There was this great regard for self-reliance. But there was also this recognition that unless you understood the world, there’s no chance of changing it. And in order to understand the world, there’s a heritage of learning that has passed and passed down through the centuries. They want you to attempt to grasp. He made that effort, just as do I make that effort, otherwise, there’s no there’s no hope of of of being able to change things.
Speaker Yeah, the reaction of when when Paul was back at UEC.
Speaker Paul’s statement for Hirak and 56, I guess it was one of the most amazing statements, if you wanted to just take a stab at that, that was completely defiant. I don’t want to use the term defiant statement that that was uncompromising.
Speaker That was unequivocal, that’s poles and heroic, that’s a statement I remember I remember very well picking up the Pittsburgh Courier, which was a paper that supported Rabson.
Speaker In good times and in bad times, Pittsburgh Courier in the Baltimore Afro-American. There is a story there for a book, I remember picking up the Pittsburgh Courier and seeing a photo of Paul during the proceedings.
Speaker But he was clearly annoyed by these people, and I remember reading column after column in the Pittsburgh Courier by Paul Paratus, one of the most courageous journalists, I think, of our time practice, who somehow supported Paul and DeBois during the Cold War period. On weekends, I would go to a newsstand, generally 47 Street and by the Afro-American and the Curia, and would read accounts of Robson’s activities and of Dubois’s activities there so that I would modify something that I said earlier that that suggested that the support was so terribly weak for Paul by saying that with respect to journalism. From within the black community could be hard to improve on the Afro-American and the courier in those years, as I’m certain that there must be some pressures applied to them. But yes, with any exceptions, they would have to be the exceptions operating on the scale on which they operate. These were major for blacks. Major weeklies wouldn’t be like the Sacramento Bee or some other paper or some paper coming out of Louisiana. Well, the defender was not as not the defender was not quite up. Defender was majors, you know, but the defender was not that great. A supporter of ropes and on occasion, the defender, for example, when when when when Robeson went before the House un-American Activities Committee, a man named Leggott who was. Working with the defender was a member of that delegation and the defender wrote very good editorials about what had gone on with respect to the matter of lynching. So one would have to include the defender, but not place it on quite the level of the Afro-American in the Pittsburgh Courier for support of black radicalism, as it were, and especially from Dubois Robeson in the years of the Cold War. And so what I’m suggesting is that certainly for scholars there, there is a story and a half, so to speak. In the coverage that one found in the defendant, the courier, and I think these were things which one could be quite proud, quite apart from from those papers, having met their journalistic obligations. But I would say that they exercised freedom of speech. They ordered the First Amendment. And their response to attacks on Rabson in Dubai during the Cold War. There’s one thing that we did. There’s one thing that we didn’t talk about, and that would be Robeson’s World Vision. For irruption, Schola has been contending that.
Speaker It’s very likely that. The. Failure of the Soviets. So wrenched his World Vision from its foundations that the effect of this was to. Severely. Um. Upset troops and psychologically. Failure of socialism. So wrenched ropes into WorldVision from. It’s grounding.
Speaker From its foundations that it very likely contributed to. Very serious psychological problems, I don’t think I’ve done an injustice to that to that assertion. I hope that I have and I think that’s roughly the argument. But it seems to me that that fails to take into account that at the very center of since World Vision, both culturally and politically. Was a vision of the role that might be played by the newly emerging colonial former colonial nations of Asia and Africa. That that seems to be at the center of Paul’s, certainly at the center of his cultural philosophy, certainly at the center of most of his writings with respect to American foreign, to foreign policy and imperialism.
Speaker So that there was no reason for. A wrenching from foundation, from foundations. Had been. Have been established. In that Princeton black community, as long as he continued to affirm the importance of African liberation and Asian liberation of the.
Speaker Of the role that that Afro Asian values might play in any new dispensation, in the creation of a new humanity, that would be no reason for the failure of socialism and the Soviet Union to have affected him that severely. It does not fall on the basis of what he is of his of his writings on the basis of his speeches.
Speaker It doesn’t follow to two to to even to drive the point home, perhaps even more clearly. I think it is fair to say that most people who knew Paul Robeson. Who talked to Paul Robeson, who listen to Paul Robeson in this country in the 40s, in the 50s, heard Paul Robeson focusing. Overwhelmingly on the plight of black people in America when he talked about.
Speaker Problems, problems of the working class in America overwhelmingly on the problems of blacks. This was certainly my experience when I was a teenager and Robeson spent some three hours in my home, the whole conversation was practically about the predicament of black people, because during this period of time, particularly in the 50s, Robeson ceased moving that much through the white communities of America for fear. Of possible harm being done to him, he moved more and more through the black communities of America and there were some there was some concern expressed about this in the media by some of his white friends about having to go into the ghettos of America in order to see him. And Paul’s response was that if you if you hesitate, if you’re reluctant about coming into the ghetto to see me, I don’t ever want to see you again. So, again, we’re talking about is a particular base and and what he how he’s sought refuge. With among his own people in this particular period of time, without abandoning at all, he’s concerned about the whole of humanity, but it was simply a logical step for him to take. The business of as long as I’m eating some good nourishing black eyed peas and cornbread, I’ll be all right.
Speaker You know, that kind of spirit animated him. In the 50s or in the period of Cold War, when I first encountered him, and I’m certain he was.
Speaker Much shaken by the revelations of Khrushchev with reference to Stalin, who wouldn’t be? But it wouldn’t be that that would cause any psychological. It seems to me. It wouldn’t be that as against something else that would cause psychological problems. I mean, I’m not certain what the nature of those problems are.
Speaker Yeah, you know, we haven’t really talked about this. And I don’t know if you want to go ahead with one scene. I mean, there’s a whole thing we could do about it. But when she died.
Speaker You know, do you have any idea why this is that same period where you haven’t really done research? So I don’t know if I ever ask it, but the.
Speaker You know that.
Speaker How do you think he was affected? I mean, obviously I can talk off the record about certain things, but not for there was no I mean, we can but this is on camera. So if you want to say anything, just cut.
Speaker Yeah. I thought I was going to get to see, but I think perhaps it’s best not to say anything about that.
Speaker If that’s your you know, it’s best not to say anything of that.
Speaker I still want to see that main collection, and Paul Junior has a lock and key on it, right. OK, uh, we have a lot of the diary. I think that this will quiet, please. I never really understood it. I never understood how Walter White happened to have been something of a favorite of polls.
Speaker I suspect it had a lot to do with the Harlem Renaissance years and people moving in and some of the circles that they were attending, many of the same parties. James Weldon Johnson gave great parties and with interesting people gathered at his parties and very often Walter White was there, Paul and S.E. were there. Other interesting people were there and they struck up a kind of social relationship because Paul never had never seems to have envisioned the time that the NAACP would leave black people to freedom. I don’t think he ever envisioned that, I mean, he said and in the Soviet Union around 1934 or five, that that he didn’t think freedom would ever come in America through any legal means, that when you when you talk of freedom, you don’t even talk of sacrifice. They’re going to be so many. They’re going to be so many people who will bite the dust, so to speak, that there’s no point even talking about sacrifice.
Speaker If we’re to become free, there will be so many sacrifices made. We won’t even talk about sacrifice. That’s something to ponder. Mean, look at Vietnam, for example, millions.
Speaker But but you actually think it’s your belief that he never really credited the NAACP as the organization, that he thought that the NAACP was important, he was a member of the NAACP, but I don’t think he ever believed that the NAACP would lead black people to liberation.
Speaker There was so much lacking there. A lot of good things were happening there as well. Boy, was there another interesting people were there. And he certainly favored the legislation that that the the decisions that the NAACP was able to excuse me, have the Supreme Court issue. He thinks that the NAACP was important. But when it comes to the liberation of black people, the full liberation of black people could take far more than the NAACP to pull that off.
Speaker So how it so? So therefore, his relationship with White, even in the beginning, was like cordial, cordial and I think warm.
Speaker I think they were good friends, but he was not unmindful of White’s differences with boy. Rosen was certainly far closer to Dubai than he was with white dewpoint, encountered all manner of problems from Walter White.
Speaker Of all that, Mr. Dubois encountered all manner of problems from from Walter White even to the to the extent that in early 1950, I think it was Walter White on hearing that the boy had been charged with being an agent of a foreign power, went to Washington, D.C. to talk to the people, apparently in the Justice Department to find out if they actually had the evidence to back up those charges return, saying that they had the evidence. He took the word of the people in the Justice Department over the word of WPT boy. That’s interesting. That’s extremely interesting. By this time in Dubai, we’re both in the Council on African Affairs to you on the Council on African Affairs. So Robeson had an ongoing sort of relationship.
Speaker So so what? Why why did White turn against Rosa, do you think?
Speaker I don’t think it would be fair to say that he turned against him. He certainly backed away from him. He certainly was critical of him. But I don’t know if it would be fair to say that he turned against him. In fact, Robertson was asked at one point. Well, ask at the point of White’s death by a very close friend.
Speaker Why are you going to the funeral? And Paul said, because I want to and because he’s that good friend of mine. In people who were close to Paul still wondered about.
Speaker His relationship with Walter White, I think he had liked Walter White for a long period of time, they were good friends and even though they differed politically, I mean, he NCLR, James, differed greatly politically.
Speaker James was a Trotskyite, but they were good friends. Whenever they saw each other, they were delighted to see each other. They didn’t talk politics necessarily. When James asked Rosen to to to to play in one of his plays, Robeson did. I mean, there were times when we set aside politics because he liked them, just as we all do, because you like the person and if you really like the person, you have very different politics from the person generally avoid talking about the politics. I think that’s probably what happened to some extent with respect to Walter White. But I think there’s more involved. I think the White threw his weight. On the side of those who are opposing ropes and at a most critical moment, I don’t know what ropes and thought about that, maybe there’s some evidence that evidence of what he thought somewhere in the ropes in manuscript collection, I’m not certain.
Speaker OK, it was good. OK. Uh.
Speaker Dealt with by someone else in an extremely important and extremely brief interview about Robson that Studs Terkel conducted some years ago with Earl B. Dickerson, Earl B. Dickerson’s mother took in washing in Mississippi and put him on a train and sent him north so that he could get an education.
Speaker Later went to a very good prep school in Evanston and then entered the University of Chicago as its first black student there, and she remarked me one day in the early 1950s when I went to see him for the first time, sitting behind his desk in his office, which is the president’s office signing checks. There was no one brighter than I when I was at the University of Chicago.
Speaker OK, he became a millionaire, but always maintained certain leftist leanings, probably because of his origins in Mississippi. It was mother’s experience as a Mississippi. He was interviewed by Studs Terkel. Instead remarked to him. Why was it that you supported Paul Robeson when almost everyone else, the black middle class and the black bourgeoisie? Ran away from and basically, why did you support Paul Robeson Dickason offered an extremely brief reply. All he said was. I was born in Mississippi. I didn’t get it immediately because I wanted to hear more, and then years later, on reflection, he said it all. I was born in Mississippi. That’s why I didn’t turn my back on him. Oscar Brown, senior. The father of Oscar Brown Jr., interestingly, though, no left winger. Had sufficient integrity. Not to turn on to boy, not to turn apparently on Rabson, this is unusual because the Alphas, which is Robson’s fraternity, wasn’t about to support Paul Robeson. They weren’t at all eager to support the boy, they were not about to support Paul Robeson and didn’t. So that years later, Dickerson, who was an alpha living on Lakeshore Drive in Chicago, was preparing to go to an Alpha convention. This is after Robson’s death had gotten his brothers in the fraternity to agree that there would be a special part of the program devoted to Paul Robeson. And I heard him. He’s in his 90s at this time. I heard him saying, you mean to tell me you’re only devoting 10 minutes to Robeson, the enlarged upon the time? OK, but he was an exception. He was an exception.
Speaker Just ask about this question, it seems to me that you sort of touched on was that.
Speaker The tragedy is not in Rowson, no, the tragedy is and why people did what? Where was the support for him?
Speaker The tragedy is revealed in the ugliness that one sees when one looks into a mirror. The tragedy is revealed in the cowardice. Of people, the fear of people at the time, the fear that even those who loved Rabson, let me give you a classic example. Robson went to Jamaica and ropes and went to Trinidad. And the one poem that he always recited was Langston Hughes, his freedom train.
Speaker That’s an aspect of Lincoln’s life that his biographers haven’t gotten into, is Robson’s his relationship with its in its form with with with Paul Robeson, particularly the Jamaican Trinidad part. When Langston wrote a book on Negro musicians during the period the Cold War. Langston refused to mention Robeson’s name. And it is it has been written that when you saw Paul, when the book came out, he saw Paul, that he broke down and cried. The boy was merciless, perhaps in his criticism of Langston for that in his autobiography, saying. We as a people. Langston included. Should hang our heads an everlasting shame, and the reason we hadn’t supported Robson was because. Of that slave mentality. That prevents us from taking our hits and, in fact, out of the dirt.
Speaker That’s what it is, that’s the tragedy that will not involve some.
Speaker And the greater tragedy, I mean, blacks have to share in this tragedy in order to build the honest with themselves. Having said that, the greater tragedy obviously resided elsewhere.
Speaker Because blacks were being pressured and God, there was fear, Rabson, the triumphs, the triumphs are fantastic. And to say, I mean his voice lives on. His voice lives on. That alone is a triumph. As Neruda says, Tower of the Sea, Tower, the sea, that’ll be the end.
Speaker OK.
