Paul Robeson

Paul LeRoy Bustill Robeson (April 9, 1898–January 23, 1976) concert singer, scholar, actor of film and stage, All-American and professional athlete, writer, multi-lingual orator and lawyer who was also noted for his wide-ranging radical leftist activism including anti lynching legalization, anti-colonialism and eventually Stalinist Russia. A forerunner of the US civil rights movement, Robeson was a trade union activist, Phi Beta Kappa Society laureate, and a recipient of the Spingarn Medal and Stalin Peace Prize. Robeson achieved worldwide fame during his life for his artistic accomplishments, and his outspoken, radical beliefs which largely clashed with the colonial powers of Western Europe and the Jim Crow climate of the pre-civil rights United States, thus becoming a prime target during the McCarthyist era.

Initially an apolitical artist, Robeson was the first major concert star to popularize the performance of Negro spirituals and was the first black actor of the 20th century to portray Shakespeare's Othello on Broadway. As of 2009 Robeson's run in the 1943–45 Othello production still holds the record for the longest running Shakespeare play on Broadway. In line with Robeson's vocal dissatisfaction with movie stereotypes, his roles in both the US and British film industries were some of the first parts ever created that displayed dignity and respect for the African American film actor, paving the way for Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte.

At the height of his fame, Paul Robeson decided to become a primarily political artist, staunchly affiliated with Communist causes, speaking out against fascism and racism in the US and abroad as the United States government and many Western European powers failed after World War II to end racial segregation and guarantee civil rights for people of color. In Robeson's view, Communism would do more for the liberation of peoples of color then capitalism would. Robeson thus became a prime target of the Red Scare during the late 1940s through to the late 1950s. His passport was revoked from 1950 to 1958 under the McCarran Act and he was under surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency and by the British MI5 for well over three decades until his death in 1976. The reasoning behind his persecution centered not only on his beliefs in socialism and friendship with the Soviet peoples and open support of Joesph Stalin but also his Marxist work towards the liberation of the colonized peoples of Africa, the Caribbean, Asia and the Australian aborigines. Robeson wanted these peoples to overthrow Capitalism in hopes that they would become Communist and controled by the Soviets. Robeson was also targeted for his support of the Soviet backed International Brigades, his efforts to push for anti-lynching legislation and the racial integration of major league baseball among many other causes that challenged white supremacy and advocated Communism on six continents.

Condemnation of Robeson and his beliefs came swiftly from both the United States Congress and many mainstream black organizations including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).To this day, Paul Robeson's FBI file is one of the largest of any entertainer ever investigated by the United States Intelligence Community, requiring its own internal index and unique status of health file. Despite being blacklisted and limited activity in his later years, Paul Robeson remained, throughout his life, committed to Communism and anti-colonialism and was unapologetic about his political views including his support of Joesph Stalin.

Robeson was a hero to the far left and while not formally a member of the Communist Party, it relied upon him for support in their relentless efforts to appeal to black Americans. His efforts to turn blacks against America failed, and the civil rights movement kept its distance from this provocateur who threatened to disgrace and distort their movement on behalf of civil rights and American values. And in 2004, after nearly a decade of intense lobbying and petitioning of the United States Postal Services' citizens stamp advisory board by Communists, Paul Robeson was finally featured on a US postage stamp. The Paul Robeson Commemorative Postage Stamp is the 27th stamp in the Black Heritage Series.

Career pre-Cold War

After graduating with top academic and athletic honors from Rutgers University in 1919, Robeson graduated from Columbia Law school. Racism at the time limited his options in the field of law so he drifted into entertainment.

In the 1920s, Robeson found fame as an actor and singing star of both stage and radio with his bass voice and commanding presence. He was one of the few true basses in American music, with his beautiful and powerful voice descending as low as C below the bass clef. In addition to his stage performances, his renditions of old Negro spirituals were acclaimed for there beauty in singing and Christian lyricism. Robeson and his accompanist and arranger Lawrence Brown were the first to bring them to the concert stage. Paul Robeson recorded over a hundred songs. He also demanded that many of his films defy stereotypes of blacks, making him first black actor to attempt to play roles which had dignity and stressed African pride.

His first roles were in 1922 playing Simon in Simon the Cyrenian at the Harlem YMCA and Jim in Taboo at the Sam Harris Theater in Harlem. Taboo was later re-named Vodoo. He was acclaimed for his 1924 performance in the title role of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones in 1920.

Othello and Showboat

In 1930 Robeson starred in the title role in William Shakespeare's Othello in England, when no U.S. company would employ him for the part. Peggy Ashcroft co-starred as Desdemona. He would reprise the role in New York in 1943, and tour the U.S. with it until 1945. His Broadway run of Othello is still, as of 2009, the longest of any Shakespeare play. He won the Spingarn Medal in 1945 for his portrayal of Othello. For the Broadway production Uta Hagen layed Desdemona, and José Ferrer played Iago. Robeson's final portrayal of Othello in 1959 at The Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon was directed by Tony Richardson and also proved to be his theatrical swan song.

Robeson also played the role of Joe, which was written for him, in the 1928 London production of Show Boat, and repeated his performance in the 1932 Broadway revival of the show, the 1936 film version, and a 1940 Los Angeles stage production. His rendition of "Ol' Man River" is widely considered the definitive version of the song with Robeson making alterations to the lyrics to transform it from a song of black lament to one of defiance and perseverance.

Hollywood and international film career

Robeson's earliest surviving film is 1924's Body and Soul a silent film directed by Oscar Micheaux in which Robeson played a preacher with a split personality.

At the height of his popularity in the 1930s, Robeson became a major box office attraction in British films such as Song of Freedom and The Proud Valleyabout Wales. Briefly returning to the US he reprised his title role in Dudley Murphy's film version of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones in 1933.

The 1936 Universal Pictures film Show Boat was a box office hit for Robeson, and the most frequently shown and highly acclaimed of all his films. His performance of "Ol' Man River" for this film was particularly notable. He was also King Umbopa in the 1937 version of King Solomon's Mines.

Ballad for Americans

After a return from Europe during the interwar period, he performed Patriotic cantata with lyrics by John La Touche and music by Earl Robinson. Originally titled, The Ballad for Uncle Sam, it was written for a Works Progress Administration theatre project called Sing for Your Supper.

Robeson performed "Ballad" on the CBS radio network in 1943, accompanied by chorus and orchestra. Bing Crosby would also record a commercially successful recording of the piece but the song is almost always associated with Robeson as it represents the pinnacle of his music and radio career prior to the Cold WarHe would perform it at The Hollywood Bowl to the largest sold-out crowd in its history.

Rumors of Communist party membership

In 1946, Robeson was questioned by the Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities in California, informally known as the Tenney Committee. When he was asked whether he was a member of the Communist Party, Robeson replied that he might as well have been asked whether he was a registered Democrat or Republican—in the United States the Communist Party was equally legal. But, he added under oath, he was not a Communist. There is no clear evidence that Robeson ever was a member of the Communist Party. According to records released under the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI believed that Robeson might have joined the Party under the name "John Thomas" but "his Communist Party membership book number is not known." Robeson's biographer, Martin Duberman, concludes that "he was never a member of CPUSA, never a functionary, never a participant in its daily bureaucratic operations." Paul Robeson, Jr. has also stated on numerous times that his father was never a member of the CPUSA. Had Robeson actually been a Communist party member he would have been jailed under The Smith Act, as the surveillance on his life was virtullay nonstop during most of his adult life.

Stalin

Robeson is often criticized for accepting the Stalin Peace Prize, eulogizing Stalin, and continuing to support the Soviet Union and not formally denouncing the regime, despite conflicting accounts that show his awareness of state-sponsored intimidation and murder. In his testimony to HUAC, he stated that,

"I have told you, mister, that I would not discuss anything with the people who have murdered sixty million of my people, and I will not discuss Stalin with you." And "I will discuss Stalin when I may be among the Russian people some day, singing for them, I will discuss it there. It is their problem." Asked if he had praised Stalin during his previous trip to the Soviet Union, Robeson replied, "I do not know." When asked outright if he had changed his mind about Stalin he implored,

"Whatever has happened to Stalin, gentlemen, is a question for the Soviet Union, and I would not argue with a representative of the people who, in building America, wasted sixty to a hundred million lives of my people, black people drawn from Africa on the plantations. You are responsible, and your forebears, for sixty million to one hundred million black people dying in the slave ships and on the plantations, and don’t ask me about anybody, please."

When Robeson was given the news of Stalin's 1939 non aggression pact with Hitler, also known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, he saw the agreement as having been forced on Russia by the unwillingness of the French and British forces "to collaborate with the Soviet Union in a real policy of collective security"-personally writing in his journal that an Anglo-Russian pact "would have stopped Nazi aggression"-thus leaving the USSR with no alternative choices in shoring up its borders.

According to records released under the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI believed that Robeson might have joined the Party under the name "John Thomas" but "his Communist Party membership book number is not known." Robeson's biographer, Martin Duberman, denies that "he was never a member of CPUSA, never a functionary, never a participant in its daily bureaucratic operations." Paul Robeson, Jr. has also stated on numerous times that his father was never a member of the CPUSA. But Robeson had been identified as a member of the CPUSA by Manning Johnson, a CPUSA member, in testimony to the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1949. Johnson revealed that:

“

...we were told, under threat of expulsion, never to reveal that Paul Robeson was a member of the Communist Party because Paul Robeson's assignment was highly confidential and secret...Paul's assignment was to work among the intellectuals, the professionals and artists that the party was seeking to penetrate and influence along communist lines. As long as Paul Robeson's identify with the party was kept secret, so long would his work among these groups be effective and serve the best interests of the party...

”

When Robeson was put under oath by the House Committee on Un-American Activities he refused to answer questions whether he had ever known Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, Leon Josephson, Louise Bransten and Gregory Kheifits, the San Fransisco KGB Rezident, by invoking the Fifth Amendment. Asked if he attended a meeting in the home of Louise Branston in 1945, Robeson invoked the Fifth Amendment.

In 1988, Robeson's membership in the party was confirmed by CPUSA General Secretary Gus Hall in a pamphlet entitled, Paul Robeson : An American Communist. [1] Hall wrote,

“

My own most precious moments with Paul were when I met with him to accept his dues and renew his yearly membership in the CPUSA. I and other Communist leaders like Henry Winston, the Party's late, beloved national chair, met with Paul to brief him on politics and Party policies and to discuss his work and struggles.""

”

One of the most vocal contemporary conservative voices to challenge Robeson's legacy for his CPUSA membership is David Horowitz the founder of David Horowitz Freedom Center. David Horowitz mentioned in his 2006 book The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America the historian Eric Foner lauding Robeson at a 2003 teach-in at Columbia University and then responded by saying,:"It's true that Paul Robeson was never satisfied with his country. He was an icon (and member) of the American Communist Party, who received a Stalin Peace Prize from the dictator himself."

In accepting the Prize, Robeson stated, "We know how Truman betrayed the American people in their hopes for peace, how he betrayed the Negro people in their thirst for equal rights, how he tore up the Bill of Rights and subjected the whole American people to a reign of FBI-terrorization."

The Soviet Union and communist advocacy

Following Paul Robeson's first trip to Russia in late 1934, he became an ardent lover of not just the Soviet Union's and its peoples, but Russian culture and history. Robeson became fluent in Russian, studied Russian history in depth, learned about the many national minorities (eg: Yakuts, Uzbeks, Tartars) and wrote numerous essays and articles demonstrating his deeply held beliefs that the US should seek peace and understanding with Soviet Russia.

Support for Stalin

Despite the fact that in 1947 Stalin joined the United States in supporting the creation of Israel, and supported Israel in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, he ordered the murders of many Jewish intellectuals and artists living in the Soviet Union during the 1940s and 1950s. Robeson is often criticized for continuing to support the Soviet Union despite his awareness of state sponsored intimidation and murder. Having experienced firsthand for himself during the 1930s a climate in Russia that he perceived as free from racial prejudice and then to see no western country or superpower actively attempt any comparable commitment to the rights of minorities or blacks, Robeson indefatigably refused any pressure to publicly censure the Soviet experiment. In his opinion, the existence of the USSR was the guarantee of political balance in the world. During a 1949 address to the Communist front National Council of American-Soviet Friendship , Robeson spoke::

"Yes, all Africa remembers that it was Litvinov who stood alone beside Haile Selassie in Geneva, when Mussolini's sons flew with the blessings of the Pope to drop bombs on Ethiopian women and children. Africa remembers that it was the Soviet Union which fought the attempts of the Smuts to annex Southwest Africa to the slave reservation of the Union of South Africa... if the peoples of the Congo refuse to mine the uranium for the atom bombs made in Jim Crow factories in the United States; if all these peoples demand an end to floggings, an end to the farce of 'trusteeship' in the former Italian colonies.... The Soviet Union is the friend of the African and the West Indian peoples.":

According to Joshua Rubenstein's book, Stalin's Secret Pogrom, Robeson also justified his support on the grounds that any public criticism of the USSR would reinforce the authority of anti-Soviet elements in the United States which, he believed, wanted a preemptive war against the Soviet Union.The serious consideration by the US of a pre-emptive strike against the USSR is documented in Gregg Herken's ,'The Winning Weapon: The Atomic Bomb in the Cold War, 1945-1950.

Stalinist apologists which include Martin Duberman, Philip S. Foner, Marie Seton, Paul Robeson Jr and Lloyd Brown also concur with Robeson's own words, that he felt that criticism of the Soviet Union by someone of his immense international popularity would only serve to shore up anti-communist elements in the U.S. Robeson is on record many times as stating that he felt the existence of a major socialist power like the USSR was a bulwark against Western European capitalist domination of Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

Stalin Peace Prize

In 1952, Robeson was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize. In April 1953 shortly after Joseph Stalin's death he wrote a eulogy entitled To You Beloved Comrade, which included these sentiments:

"Forever will his name be honored and beloved in all lands. In all spheres of modern life, the influence of Stalin reaches wide and deep. … his contributions to the science of our world society remains invaluable. One reverently speaks of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin -- the shapers of humanity's richest present and future. … Yes, through his [Stalin's] deep humanity, by his wise understanding, he leaves us a rich and monumental heritage. ... How consistently, how patiently, he labored for peace and ever increasing abundance, with what deep kindliness and wisdom."

Dr. R. J. Rummel, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii, is the scholar who first coined the term democide (death by government). Dr. Rummel states,

"[T]he Soviet Union appears the greatest megamurderer of all, apparently killing near 61,000,000 people. Stalin himself is responsible for almost 43,000,000 of these. Most of the deaths, perhaps around 39,000,000 are due to lethal forced labor in gulag and transit thereto. .

Though Robeson would continue to praise the USSR throughout his life, he would neither publicly denounce nor praise Stalin personally after Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 Secret Speech exposing Stalin's "mistakes."

Unapologetic Stalinist

During the early days of his retirement and even after his death, rumors about his health and its connections to his supposed disillusionment with the USSR continued to persist. There were even claims that he was living in self imposed exile in the Soviet Union with The New York Times calling him "The disillusioned native son."

At no time during his retirement (or his life) is Paul Robeson on record of mentioning any unhappiness or regrets about his beliefs in socialism or his unwavering devotion for the Soviet Union nor did he ever express any disappointment in its leaders including Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. Moreover, only a few sources out of thousands interviewed and researched by two of his biographers Martin Duberman and Lloyd Brown agreed with the claims made in the mainstream media of Robeson's supposed embitterment over the USSR.

Modern opinions on Robeson and the Soviet Union

Many right wing scholars and journalists use Robeson's friendship with the peoples of USSR and his deep admiration of Russian culture as a means to incorrectly label him a Stalinist and effectively negate his other achievements and political affiliations including his lifetime connections and friendships with American and European Jews Movie reviewer, Richard Corliss wrote in 1998 that Robeson "... was also a stubborn apologist for communism, Stalin-style." and that he "... could sell sand to Saharans, but he couldn't peddle Stalin to America.... If Robeson rejected a homegrown system of oppression to embrace another, more toxic one, that was his right."

David Horowitz

One of the most vocal contemporary conservative voices to challenge Robeson's legacy for his friendship with the Soviet Union is David Horowitz the founder of David Horowitz Freedom CenterDavid Horowitz mentioned in his 2006 book The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America the distinguished historian Eric Foner lauding Robeson at a 2003 teach-in at Columbia University and then responded by saying,

"It's true that Paul Robeson was never satisfied with his country. He was an icon (and member) of the American Communist Party, who received a Stalin Peace Prize from the dictator himself."

Despite Horowitz's in-depth knowledge of the Communist Party (his parents were both members), Robeson is not on record anywhere as ever being a Communist Party member nor did he ever meet Stalin. The Stalin Peace Prize was awarded to Robeson at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C. by embassy officials. Had Robeson been a CP member he would most likely have been jailed under the Smith Act, the FBI surveillance on his life being virtually non-stop during the late 1940s and 1950s. Furthermore, Horowitz has quoted in his autobiography, Radical Son, that Robeson was "guilty with remorse at the end of his life" about not "saving Itzik Feffer's life". Horowitz does not his cite sources though, and nor has he ever been close to or affiliated with Paul Robeson or his family. As he would have been ten years old at the time of the alleged conversation and having never met Paul Robeson, the veracity of his statement could be called into question.

Liberal and far-left scholars

Many liberal or centrist political interpreters of Robeson's life feel he was "duped", "victimized", "misled" or even "used" by the Soviet Union. Far Left and communist scholars tend to point to conflicting accounts and evidence in regards to what Robeson may have actually said to Paul Robeson Jr regarding Itzik Feffer (as he is the only one his father confided to who has gone on record). They also question the authenticity and the credibility of both mainstream and right wing historical interpretations of Communism and Robeson in juxtaposition with Western Europe and American capitalism.

Quotes

• "I love this Soviet people more than any other nation."

See also

• Alice Barrows
• Frank Marshall Davis

External Links

• Testimony to the House Committee on Un-American Activities
• FBI file Paul and Eslanda Robeson, 2680 pages.
• CPUSA celebrates the life of Paul Robeson, Youtube
• Soviet Anthem sung in English by Paul Robeson