(Editor’s note: This is the second installment of a new monthly column).
Paul Robeson was born in Princeton, N.J., on April 9, 1898. His mother, Maria Louisa Bustill, was married to Reverend William Drew Robeson, who made his mark as the long-serving pastor of A.M.E. Zion in Sommerville, N.J.
Reverend Robeson taught Paul that he should have “unbending loyalty and integrity” no matter the circumstances. Reverend Robeson received his name as a slave from a slaveholding family.
Ironically, Paul Robeson, in his 1958 autobiography, Here I Stand, recounts a revealing chance encounter with a member of the slaveholding family of his father. The man, in a cordial manner, said, “Your father used to work for my father,” and Robeson retorted, “Let’s put it this way: ‘Your grandfather exploited my father as a slave.’”
Robeson’s understanding of the slave caste social relations was tethered to his understanding of race and class relations. He observed the social relations of Summerville and surrounding areas as such: “There were white workingmen who…unlike the Princeton blue-bloods, could see in a workingman of a darker skin a fellow being…of a totally different caste.”
Robeson’s social and political education was developed further while attending Rutgers University. As a member of the famous Walter Camp All-American team, he was not protected from his white teammates’ racism who, in one practice, gang-tackled him in a futile attempt to injure him.
Robeson earned a Phi Beta Kappa key, was class valedictorian and joined Alpha Phi Alpha, the oldest and most storied Black fraternity. Upon graduation, Robeson attended New York University law school and finished at Columbia Law in 1920.
His continued interest in football led him to become an assistant coach at Lincoln University, an HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), and he played three seasons of pro football.
But as the 1920s’ Harlem Renaissance exploded with W.E.B. Du Bois’s “gifts of Black folk,” Robeson was selected in 1923 to star in Eugene O’Neill’s play about interracial marriage, All God’s Chillun Got Wings, but his 1925 Hollywood film, Emperor Jones, established his stardom. Thereafter, Robeson traveled to London to continue to star in the production of Emperor Jones.
Upon Robeson’s return to the United States, Hollywood came calling, and he starred in a series of films that elevated his fame.
Because of his study of Black culture, he starred in the 1925 film by the renowned Black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux entitled Body and Soul. Robeson’s portrayal of a lascivious and alcoholic pastor was not well received by both Black churches and pastors.
However, Robeson did not shy away from controversial roles when he starred in the 1935 Zoltan Korda film Sanders of the River. Korda portrayed Robeson’s film character, Bosambo, as a lackey of British colonialism. The negative blowback forced Robeson henceforth to only star in films with positive Black images.
Subsequently, Robeson starred in the 1939 British film Proud Valley, which was filmed in South Wales and is a story about a coal miners’ labor strike, with Robeson as a stranded sailor who joins the strike and sings inspirational songs such as “Deep River” that spurred the workers to victory over the mine bosses.
Robeson solidified his cultural preeminence with his role as the Black Moor Othello in the 1944 Broadway production of Shakespeare’s Othello, with the husband-wife team of German actress Uta Hagan (Desdemona) and Hispanic Jose Ferrer (Iago). This Margaret Webster–directed production set a record with 296 consecutive performances.
In addition, Robeson’s interests in Black culture led him to collaborate with classically trained Black pianist Lawrence Brown. This team, for more than 40 years, sang and played recitals emphasizing slave and Negro spirituals. Both men’s grandfathers were born into American slavery.
Many of the songs sung were from Brown’s 1930s book, Negro Folk Songs. They first performed for the Greenwich Village Theater in 1925.
Robeson continued his acting in the premiere of the musical Showboat in London in 1935 and in the film of the same name in 1936. The hit song from the production in which Robeson sang was “Ol’ Man River.” At this time, his fame and popularity led to a performance in Buckingham Palace.
It was during the 1920s that Robeson courted and married Eslanda Cardozo Goode, who attained her anthropology doctorate with a research interest in African culture and society. Her lineage stemmed from a Sephardic Jewish man, Issac Nunez Cardozo.
Paul and Eslanda married in 1921 and had one son, Paul Robeson Jr. Eslanda was a close friend of her book editor, Pearl S. Buck, who was the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize.
In 1934, Robeson visited Russia and became enamored with the communist worker state. He observed, “In Russia, for the first time I felt like a full human being,” referring to Russia not having a Jim Crow color bar as in Mississippi.
Robeson’s radicalism was on full display when he went to Spain in 1931 to support the Spanish Republic against General Franco’s fascist forces. He sang for the progressive Loyalists and the many Black American soldiers who joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
With the outbreak of World War II and the Soviet Union becoming an American ally, Robeson threw all his energy and talent into supporting America’s war effort. Robeson toured and performed for USO (United Service Organizations) events during the war, but at the same time he advocated for the Double V, which stood for victory against Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini over there and victory against Jim Crow racism at home.
At this time, Robeson was the most famous African American in the world. He was featured in Time magazine and, in 1945, the NAACP honored him with its highest award, which was the Spingarn Medal.
In 1947, he sang the song “What Is America to Me,” also known as “The House I Live In.” CBS radio broadcast Robeson’s “Ballad for Americans” to millions.
With the end of WWII and the beginning of the Cold War, America used the song to emphasize America’s diversity and equality. President Harry Truman had just integrated the U.S. armed forces. A few words of the song confirmed a new era in America: “What is America to me? A name, a map, a flag I see, a certain word, democracy. What is America to me?…All races and religions. That’s America to me.”
This ideology or propaganda was a direct response to Russia’s assertion that in America the lynchings of Black people still occur in what might be called satirically the “land of the tree and home of the grave” for the Black proletariat living in the shadow of the plantation in 20th century America.
During the Cold War, the United States set up the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and under its chair, Joe McCarthy, initiated a new Red Scare witch hunt for anyone who had Soviet affiliations, however tangential or remote.
Robeson came within the crosshairs of HUAC when he made remarks at the 1948 Paris Peace conference critical of racism in America and expressing his doubts about whether Blacks were loyal to a system that oppressed them.
The U.S. government selected the most recognized Black American, Jackie Robinson, who had just integrated American baseball, to rebuke Robeson. Robinson was called before HUAC, with tremendous pressure to testify, and he said of Robeson that he was “silly” to think like that of Black American loyalty.
But the anti-Red hysteria was rabid within American culture, and we can see it when Robeson was prevented from performing by KKK right-wing conservatives and pseudo-patriotic goons at his scheduled concert in Peekskill, N.Y., on Aug. 27, 1949.
Robeson was there to give a benefit performance for the left-liberal Civil Rights Congress. His supporters were attacked with baseball bats, rocks and other dangerous objects. Blood literally ran into the streets.
HUAC also investigated the Council on African Affairs, which was a communist organization that advocated for the end to Jim Crow and the end to global imperialism in Africa and Asia. Du Bois, Alphaeus Hunton and Paul and Eslanda Robeson were prominent members.
Because of this affiliation, the FBI requested that the U.S. government rescind Robeson’s passport. This act led to his income from concerts declining 90%. Robeson did not get his passport back until the downfall of Senator Joe McCarthy and the end of the Red witch hunt.
Meanwhile, in 1951, Robeson and Black fellow traveler William L. Patterson, with the full support of the Civil Rights Congress, delivered a petition to the United Nations entitled “We Charge Genocide,” which chronicled the historic levels of racism, violence and murder of Blacks by White supremacists in America.
In his later years, Robeson continued his support for labor and radical social movements even as his health declined. Robeson was a social activist until the end of his life. Comrade Robeson passed from a series of strokes on Jan. 23, 1976.
A really nice essay.