* Early 20th Century actor, entertainer, and athlete
* Dedicated Stalinist
* Secret member of the Communist Party
* Died on January 23, 1976
Born in Princeton, New Jersey on April 9, 1898, Paul Leroy Robeson was the fifth and last child of Maria Louisa Bustill and the Presbyterian minister William Drew Robeson, the latter of whom was a former slave. Paul attended Rutgers University, where he earned Phi Beta Kappa honors, was twice named a consensus All-American in football, and excelled also in baseball, track, and basketball. Graduating as the valedictorian of his class in 1919, Robeson delivered a valedictory address titled “The New Idealism,” in which he endorsed a set of values that foreshadowed Martin Luther King’s later calls for interracial harmony and for a society where character was more important than skin color. Some key excerpts from the speech:
“We find an unparalleled opportunity for reconstructing our entire national life and moulding it in accordance with the purpose and the ideals of a new age. […]
“We of the younger generation especially must feel a sacred call to that which lies before us. I go out to do my little part in helping my untutored brother. We of this less favored race realize that our future lies chiefly in our own hands. On ourselves alone will depend the preservation of our liberties and the transmission of them in their integrity to those who will come after us. And we are struggling on attempting to show that knowledge can be obtained under difficulties; that poverty may give place to affluence; that obscurity is not an absolute bar to distinction, and that a way is open to welfare and happiness to all who will follow the way with resolution and wisdom; that neither the old-time slavery, nor continued prejudice need extinguish self-respect, crush manly ambition or paralyze effort; that no power outside of himself can prevent a man from sustaining an honorable character and a useful relation to his day and generation. We know that neither institutions nor friends can make a race stand unless it has strength in its own foundation; that races like individuals must stand or fall by their own merit; that to fully succeed they must practice their virtues of self-reliance, self-respect, industry, perseverance and economy.
“But in order for us to successfully do all these things it is necessary that you of the favored [white] race catch a new vision and exemplify in your actions this new American spirit. That spirit which prompts you to compassion, a motive instinctive but cultivated and intensified by Christianity, embodying the desire to relieve the manifest distress of your fellows; that motive which realizes as the task of civilization the achievement of happiness and the institution of community spirit. […] A fraternity must be established in which success and achievement are recognized, and those deserving receive the respect, honor and dignity due them.
“We, too, of this younger race have a part in this new American Idealism. We too have felt the great thrill of what it means to sacrifice for other than the material. We revere our honored ones as belonging to the martyrs who died, not for personal gain, but for adherence to moral principles, principles which through the baptism of their blood reached a fruitage otherwise impossible, giving as they did a broader conception to our national life. Each one of us will endeavor to catch their noble spirit and together in the consciousness of their great sacrifice consecrate ourselves with whatever power we may possess to the furtherance of the great motives for which they gave their lives.
“And may I not appeal to you who also revere their memory to join with us in continuing to fight for the great principles for which they contended, until in all sections of this fair land there will be equal opportunities for all, and character shall be the standard of excellence; until men by constructive work aim toward Solon’s definition of the ideal government– where an injury to the meanest citizen is an insult to the whole constitution; and until black and white shall clasp friendly hands in the consciousness of the fact that we are brethren and that God is the father of us all.”
On August 17, 1921, Robeson proposed to Eslanda “Essie” Goode, a pathology technician at New York’s Presbyterian Hospital. The couple were wed that same day by a town clerk, embarking upon a marriage that would endure until Eslanda’s death 44 years later.
Robeson enrolled at Columbia University Law School in 1921 and pursued his LL.B. degree while also playing in the National Football League in 1921-22. After graduating in 1923, he went to work for a New York law firm called Stokesbury and Miner. But Robeson soon quit this job when a white stenographer refused to take dictation from him because he was black.
Meanwhile, Robeson was deeply influenced by the Harlem Renaissance and the black cultural awareness that it had sparked in African Americans, and thus pursued a career in music and drama rather than jurisprudence. In 1924, Robeson was cast by Eugene O’Neill in his play, All God’s Chillun Got Wings, and he would later star in yet another O’Neill production, Emperor Jones. Robeson’s most important role was that of Othello in the Broadway play of the same name. His films included Emperor Jones (1933); Sanders of the River (1935); Showboat (1936); Song of Freedom (1937); Jericho (1938); Proud Valley (1939); and Tales of Manhattan (1942). From the 1920s through the 1940s, Robeson was one of the world’s leading stage and film performers. Moreover, between 1925-61 he released 276 musical and spoken recordings in many different styles including Americana, popular standards, classical music, European folk songs, political songs, poetry, and recited excerpts from plays.
On November 2, 1927, Paul and Essie Robeson’s only child, Paul Robeson Jr., was born.
In early 1934, Robeson enrolled in the radically leftwing School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), a constituent college of the University of London, where he studied phonetics and Swahili. His newfound interest in African history coincided with his writing of an essay titled “I Want to be African,” wherein he articulated his desire to embrace and celebrate his ancestry.
From 1927-1939, Robeson lived in London, where he was introduced to socialist ideals by his friend, the Irish playwright, polemicist and political activist George Bernard Shaw, and several leaders of the British Labour Party. He read the classic Marxist writings and became a devoted Communist, though he never formally acknowledged being a Communist Party member.
Historian Paul Kengor writes, “Paul Robeson Sr. was an unflagging admirer of Joseph Stalin, one of the most prolific killers in history. It was this that brought Robeson under congressional scrutiny in the 1930s when the Democrats ran Congress, the White House, and the attorney general’s office—long before Joe McCarthy emerged on the scene. Even the New York Times once called Robeson ‘an outspoken admirer of the Soviet Union.’ He was dedicated to the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) goal of fundamentally transforming America into a ‘Soviet American Republic.’”
In December 1934, Robeson and his wife Eslanda Goode visited the Soviet Union. It was the first of many visits that Robeson would make to the USSR. During that 1934 trip, the Robesons encountered William Patterson, a leader of the American Communist Party. They also met with two of Eslanda’s brothers, John and Frank Goode, who had decided they preferred life under Joseph Stalin to life in America. Said Robeson of his stay in the USSR: “Here, for the first time, I walk in human dignity.” He soon became a dedicated Stalinist, the first world-renowned performer to become a political activist during the peak years of his show business career.
After his 1934 pilgrimage to Russia, Robeson lauded that nation in an interview with the Moscow-funded Daily Worker in a piece that was published on January 15, 1935 under the headline, “‘I Am at Home,’ Says Robeson At Reception in Soviet Union.” In the article, Robeson described Russia as a paradise: “I was not prepared for the happiness I see on every face in Moscow. I was aware there was no starvation here, but I was not prepared for the bounding life; the feeling of abundance and freedom that I find here, wherever I turn.” “This is home to me,” Robeson added. “I feel more kinship to the Russian people under their new society than I ever felt anywhere else. It is obvious there is no terror here, that all the masses of every race are contented and support their government.” When asked about Stalin’s infamous purges targeting his political enemies, Robeson replied: “From what I have already seen of the workings of the Soviet Government, I can only say that anybody who lifts his hand against it ought to be shot!”
In a May 10, 1936 interview, Robeson said: “While in the Soviet Union I made a point to visit some of the workers’ homes, and I saw for myself. They all live in healthful surroundings, apartments with nurseries containing the most modern equipment for their children … I certainly wish the workers in this country — and especially the Negroes in Harlem and the South — had such places to stay in.”
Robeson, writes Paul Kengor, “was enamored with what he found in Stalin’s state, so much so that he moved his family there—his son included. They lived there, where they were given excessively special treatment. The Soviets rolled out the red carpet, literally.”
At the beginning of World War II, Robeson argued against U.S. intervention in the conflict. But his opinion made an abrupt about-face on June 22, 1941, when Germany launched a surprise invasion on the Soviet Union; his first loyalties were to the Soviets.
By 1949, Robeson was well aware of the horrors that the Soviet Union had witnessed during the infamous purges of the 1930s, but he would not betray his undying loyalty to Stalin. As Paul Robeson Jr. once explained, Robeson Sr. “had promised himself he would never publicly criticize the USSR . . . he believed passionately that U.S. imperialism was the greatest enemy of progressive mankind. . . . In such a context Paul would not consider making a public criticism of anti-Semitism in the USSR.”
Stalin recognized Robeson’s loyalty and thus awarded him the Stalin Peace Prize in 1952.
After Stalin died in 1953, Robeson wrote him a tribute entitled “To You, Beloved Comrade,” which included these sentiments:
“In 1937, a highly expectant audience of Moscow citizens — workers, artists, youth, farmers from surrounding towns — crowded the Bolshoy Theater. They awaited a performance by the Uzbek National Theater, headed by the highly gifted Tamara Khanum…. Suddenly everyone stood – began to applaud — to cheer — and to smile. The children waved. In a box to the right — smiling and applauding the audience — as well as the artists on the stage — stood the great Stalin.
“I remember the tears began to quietly flow. and I too smiled and waved Here was clearly a man who seemed to embrace all. So kindly — I can never forget that warm feeling of kindliness and also a feeling of sureness. Here was one who was wise and good — the world and especially the socialist world was fortunate indeed to have his daily guidance….
“Today in Korea — in Southeast Asia — in Latin America and the West Indies, in the Middle East — in Africa, one sees tens of millions of long oppressed colonial peoples surging toward freedom. What courage — what sacrifice — what determination never to rest until victory!
“And arrayed against them, the combined powers of the so-called Free West, headed by the greedy, profit-hungry, war-minded industrialists and financial barons of our America. The illusion of an ‘American Century’ blinds them for the immediate present to the clear fact that civilization has passed them by — that we now live in a people’s century — that the star shines brightly in the East of Europe and of the world. Colonial peoples today look to the Soviet Socialist Republics. They see how under the great Stalin millions like themselves have found a new life. They see that aided and guided by the example of the Soviet Union, led by their Mao Tse-tung, a new China adds its mighty power to the true and expanding socialist way of life. They see formerly semi-colonial Eastern European nations building new People’s Democracies, based upon the people’s power with the people shaping their own destinies. So much of this progress stems from the magnificent leadership, theoretical and practical, given by their friend Joseph Stalin.
“They have sung — sing now and will sing his praise — in song and story. Slava – slava – slava – Stalin, Glory to Stalin. 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. From his last simply written but vastly discerning and comprehensive document, back through the years, his contributions to the science of our world society remain invaluable. One reverently speaks of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin — the shapers of humanity’s richest present and future.
“Yes, through his deep humanity, by his wise understanding, he leaves us a rich and monumental heritage. Most importantly — he has charted the direction of our present and future struggles. He has pointed the way to peace — to friendly co-existence — to the exchange of mutual scientific and cultural contributions — to the end of war and destruction. How consistently, how patiently, he labored for peace and ever increasing abundance, with what deep kindliness and wisdom. He leaves tens of millions all over the earth bowed in heart-aching grief.
“But, as he well knew, the struggle continues. So, inspired by his noble example, let us lift our heads slowly but proudly high and march forward in the fight for peace — for a rich and rewarding life for all.
“In the inspired words of Lewis Allan, our progressive lyricist –
“To you Beloved Comrade, we make this solemn vow
The fight will go on – the fight will still go on.
Sleep well, Beloved Comrade, our work will just begin.
The fight will go on – till we win – until we win.”
Robeson remained a devoted Stalinist even after Stalin and the Soviets crushed national independence and democratic movements in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and elsewhere in eastern Europe; even after Stalin’s use of an illegal blockade in an effort to make the people of West Berlin submit to him; and even after the post-war purges inside the Soviet Union, the Communist invasion of South Korea, and Nikita Khrushchev’s 1956 “Secret Speech” detailing the late Stalin’s atrocities.
Robeson first became an aggressive political activist when the Spanish Civil War erupted in 1936. He sent some of the money that he earned from his concert performances to aid the Spanish Republic, which was supported by the Soviet Union. Robeson also donated some of his concert earnings to help the cause of striking miners in Wales. And after a June 1936 meeting with Jawaharlal Nehru, he publicly supported India’s independence as well as anti-colonial efforts in Africa.
Like other Communists, Robeson condemned British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain for his appeasement of Adolf Hitler in 1938 but vigorously defended Stalin’s signing of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact, whose terms divided Poland between Stalin and Hitler and allowed the Nazi dictator to begin World War II.
In 1941, Robeson joined Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Vito Marcantonio in a campaign to free Earl Browder, the leader of the American Communist Party and the head of a Soviet espionage ring, who had been imprisoned for passport violations.
In April 1941, Robeson performed at the first major American Peace Mobilization rally in New York, an event that was organized with help from the Comintern and Eugene Dennis, the latter of whom would go on to serve as general secretary of the CPUSA from 1945-57, and its national chairman from 1959–61.
Robeson was a member of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, which was an active CPUSA front group from 1941-1955.
In 1946, Robeson was summoned to appear before the so-called Tenney Committee, the California subcommittee of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). There — and also before the Senate Judiciary Committee in May 1948 — he refused to answer questioners asking if he was a member of the Communist Party.
In 1948 Robeson worked for the presidential campaign of Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace, who had served in the cabinet of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Robeson was a sponsor of the Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace which was held in in New York City from March 25 – 27, 1949, and was arranged by a CPUSA front organization known as the National Council of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions.
In August 1949, Robeson booked a concert in Peekskill, New York, which erupted into rioting that injured hundreds of people, thirteen of them seriously.
Robeson was a close friend of the Communist writer and poet Frank Marshall Davis, who would later become a mentor to a young Barack Obama.
During a Soviet-sponsored World Peace Congress meeting in Paris in April 1949, Robeson asserted that many black Americans — because of their bitterness over the racism they faced on a constant basis — would refuse to fight on the side of their own country if the United States and the Soviet Union hould ever go to war. Smithsonian magazine offers this account of Robeson’s remarks:
“When communists invited him to the stage at the Paris Peace Congress, Robeson was urged to say a few words after an enthusiastic crowd heard him sing. French transcripts of the speech obtained by Robeson’s biographer Martin Duberman indicate that Robeson said, ‘We in America do not forget that it is on the backs of the poor whites of Europe…and on the backs of millions of black people the wealth of America has been acquired. And we are resolved that it shall be distributed in an equitable manner among all of our children and we don’t want any hysterical stupidity about our participating in a war against anybody no matter whom. We are determined to fight for peace. We do not wish to fight the Soviet Union.'”
According to an Associated Press writer, Robeson’s actual quote was: “It is unthinkable that American Negroes would go to war on behalf of those who have oppressed us for generations against the Soviet Union which in one generation has raised our people to the full dignity of mankind.” This quote later became the subject of a House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearing in 1956.
During a concert tour of the USSR in June 1949, Robeson learned of Stalin’s planned liquidation of Soviet Jews — a liquidation that would aborted by Stalin’s death in 1953. Robeson asked to meet with two of his Jewish friends — the imprisoned Russian Yiddish poet Itzhak Fefer, whom he had met in the United States six years earlier, and the renowned Soviet theater actor and director Solomon Michoels. When Robeson saw Fefer — in a hotel room that Fefer knew had been bugged with Soviet government listening devices — Fefer, without speaking aloud, drew his fingers across his throat, indicating that Michoels had already been murdered, and that the same inevitable fate awaited Fefer and many other Soviet Jews as well.
Robeson chose not to tell anyone about Fefer and Michoels’ fate, or about what he had learned regarding Soviet anti-Semitism, since to do so would have hurt the Soviet cause in the Cold War. Thus, upon returning to America, he told the press that he had seen Fefer in good condition; that he had seen “Jewish people [living freely] all over the place”; that he had “heard no word about” Soviet anti-Semitism; and that the rumors of Yiddish writers being executed were utterly false. He did not even tell his comrades in the American Communist Party what he knew of the USSR’s treatment of Jews.
When Robeson refused to sign an affidavit disclaiming membership in the Communist Party, the U.S. State Department took away his passport in 1950 so that he could not perform abroad.
In the early 1950s, Robeson was on the editorial board of Freedom, a Communist Party propaganda publication based in New York City.
In June 1956, Robeson was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) after he refused to sign an affidavit affirming that he was not a Communist. When asked if he was in fact a Party member, he reminded the Committee that the Communist Party was a legal party and then repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer various questions. Below is a transcript of Robeson’s testimony before HUAC on June 12, 1956:
THE CHAIRMAN: The Committee will be in order. This morning the Committee resumes its series of hearings on the vital issue of the use of American passports as travel documents in furtherance of the objectives of the Communist conspiracy. . . .
Mr. ARENS [HUAC counsel Richard Arens]: Now, during the course of the process in which you were applying for this passport, in July of 1954, were you requested to submit a non-Communist affidavit?
Mr. ROBESON: We had a long discussion—with my counsel, who is in the room, Mr. [Leonard B.] Boudin—with the State Department, about just such an affidavit and I was very precise not only in the application but with the State Department, headed by Mr. Henderson and Mr. McLeod, that under no conditions would I think of signing any such affidavit, that it is a complete contradiction of the rights of American citizens.
Mr. ARENS: Did you comply with the requests?
Mr. ROBESON: I certainly did not and I will not.
Mr. ARENS: Are you now a member of the Communist Party?
Mr. ROBESON: Oh please, please, please.
Mr. SCHERER [Rep. Gordon Scherer]: Please answer, will you, Mr. Robeson?
Mr. ROBESON: What is the Communist Party? What do you mean by that?
Mr. SCHERER: I ask that you direct the witness to answer the question.
Mr. ROBESON: What do you mean by the Communist Party? As far as I know it is a legal party like the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Do you mean a party of people who have sacrificed for my people, and for all Americans and workers, that they can live in dignity? Do you mean that party?
Mr. ARENS: Are you now a member of the Communist Party?
Mr. ROBESON: Would you like to come to the ballot box when I vote and take out the ballot and see?
Mr. ARENS: Mr. Chairman, I respectfully suggest that the witness be ordered and directed to answer that question.
THE CHAIRMAN: You are directed to answer the question.
(The witness consulted with his counsel.)
Mr. ROBESON: I stand upon the Fifth Amendment of the American Constitution.
Mr. ARENS: Do you mean you invoke the Fifth Amendment?
Mr. ROBESON: I invoke the Fifth Amendment.
Mr. ARENS: Do you honestly apprehend that if you told this Committee truthfully—
Mr. ROBESON: I have no desire to consider anything. I invoke the Fifth Amendment, and it is none of your business what I would like to do, and I invoke the Fifth Amendment. And forget it.
THE CHAIRMAN: You are directed to answer that question.
MR, ROBESON: I invoke the Fifth Amendment, and so I am answering it, am I not?
Mr. ARENS: I respectfully suggest the witness be ordered and directed to answer the question as to whether or not he honestly apprehends, that if he gave us a truthful answer to this last principal question, he would be supplying information which might be used against him in a criminal proceeding.
(The witness consulted with his counsel.)
THE CHAIRMAN: You are directed to answer that question, Mr. Robeson.
Mr. ROBESON: Gentlemen, in the first place, wherever I have been in the world, Scandinavia, England, and many places, the first to die in the struggle against Fascism were the Communists and I laid many wreaths upon graves of Communists. It is not criminal, and the Fifth Amendment has nothing to do with criminality. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Warren, has been very clear on that in many speeches, that the Fifth Amendment does not have anything to do with the inference of criminality. I invoke the Fifth Amendment.
Mr. ARENS: Have you ever been known under the name of “John Thomas”?
Mr. ROBESON: Oh, please, does somebody here want—are you suggesting—do you want me to be put up for perjury some place? “John Thomas”! My name is Paul Robeson, and anything I have to say, or stand for, I have said in public all over the world, and that is why I am here today.
Mr. SCHERER: I ask that you direct the witness to answer the question. He is making a speech.
Mr. FRIEDMAN: Excuse me, Mr. Arens, may we have the photographers take their pictures, and then desist, because it is rather nerve-racking for them to be there.
THE CHAIRMAN: They will take the pictures.
Mr. ROBESON: I am used to it and I have been in moving pictures. Do you want me to pose for it good? Do you want me to smile? I cannot smile when I am talking to him.
Mr. ARENS: I put it to you as a fact, and ask you to affirm or deny the fact, that your Communist Party name was “John Thomas.”
Mr. ROBESON: I invoke the Fifth Amendment. This is really ridiculous.
Mr. ARENS: Now, tell this Committee whether or not you know Nathan Gregory Silvermaster.
Mr. SCHERER: Mr. Chairman, this is not a laughing matter.
Mr. ROBESON: It is a laughing matter to me, this is really complete nonsense.
Mr. ARENS: Have you ever known Nathan Gregory Silvermaster?
(The witness consulted with his counsel.)
Mr. ROBESON: I invoke the Fifth Amendment.
Mr. ARENS: Do you honestly apprehend that if you told whether you know Nathan Gregory Silvermaster you would be supplying information that could be used against you in a criminal proceeding?
Mr. ROBESON: I have not the slightest idea what you are talking about. I invoke the Fifth—
Mr. ARENS: I suggest, Mr. Chairman, that the witness be directed to answer that question.
THE CHAIRMAN: You are directed to answer the question.
Mr. ROBESON: I invoke the Fifth.
Mr. SCHERER: The witness talks very loud when he makes a speech, but when he invokes the Fifth Amendment I cannot hear him.
Mr. ROBESON: I invoked the Fifth Amendment very loudly. You know I am an actor, and I have medals for diction. . . . .
Mr. ROBESON: Oh, gentlemen, I thought I was here about some passports.
Mr. ARENS: We will get into that in just a few moments.
Mr. ROBESON: This is complete nonsense. . . . .
THE CHAIRMAN: This is legal. This is not only legal but usual. By a unanimous vote, this Committee has been instructed to perform this very distasteful task.
Mr. ROBESON: To whom am I talking?
THE CHAIRMAN: You are speaking to the Chairman of this Committee.
Mr. ROBESON: Mr. Walter?
THE CHAIRMAN: Yes.
Mr. ROBESON: The Pennsylvania Walter?
THE CHAIRMAN: That is right.
Mr. ROBESON: Representative of the steelworkers?
THE CHAIRMAN: That is right.
Mr. ROBESON: Of the coal-mining workers and not United States Steel, by any chance? A great patriot.
THE CHAIRMAN: That is right.
Mr. ROBESON: You are the author of all of the bills that are going to keep all kinds of decent people out of the country.
THE CHAIRMAN: No, only your kind.
Mr. ROBESON: Colored people like myself, from the West Indies and all kinds. And just the Teutonic Anglo-Saxon stock that you would let come in.
THE CHAIRMAN: We are trying to make it easier to get rid of your kind, too.
Mr. ROBESON: You do not want any colored people to come in?
THE CHAIRMAN: Proceed. . . .
Mr. ROBESON: Could I say that the reason that I am here today, you know, from the mouth of the State Department itself, is: I should not be allowed to travel because I have struggled for years for the independence of the colonial peoples of Africa. For many years I have so labored and I can say modestly that my name is very much honored all over Africa, in my struggles for their independence. That is the kind of independence like Sukarno got in Indonesia. Unless we are double-talking, then these efforts in the interest of Africa would be in the same context. The other reason that I am here today, again from the State Department and from the court record of the court of appeals, is that when I am abroad I speak out against the injustices against the Negro people of this land. I sent a message to the Bandung Conference and so forth. That is why I am here. This is the basis, and I am not being tried for whether I am a Communist, I am being tried for fighting for the rights of my people, who are still second-class citizens in this United States of America. My mother was born in your state, Mr. Walter, and my mother was a Quaker, and my ancestors in the time of Washington baked bread for George Washington’s troops when they crossed the Delaware, and my own father was a slave. I stand here struggling for the rights of my people to be full citizens in this country. And they are not. They are not in Mississippi. And they are not in Montgomery, Alabama. And they are not in Washington. They are nowhere, and that is why I am here today. You want to shut up every Negro who has the courage to stand up and fight for the rights of his people, for the rights of workers, and I have been on many a picket line for the steelworkers too. And that is why I am here today. . . .
Mr. ARENS: Did you make a trip to Europe in 1949 and to the Soviet Union?
Mr. ROBESON: Yes, I made a trip. To England. And I sang.
Mr. ARENS: Where did you go?
Mr. ROBESON: I went first to England, where I was with the Philadelphia Orchestra, one of two American groups which was invited to England. I did a long concert tour in England and Denmark and Sweden, and I also sang for the Soviet people, one of the finest musical audiences in the world. Will you read what the Porgy and Bess people said? They never heard such applause in their lives. One of the most musical peoples in the world, and the great composers and great musicians, very cultured people, and Tolstoy, and—
THE CHAIRMAN: We know all of that.
Mr. ROBESON: They have helped our culture and we can learn a lot.
Mr. ARENS: Did you go to Paris on that trip?
Mr. ROBESON: I went to Paris.
Mr. ARENS: And while you were in Paris, did you tell an audience there that the American Negro would never go to war against the Soviet government?
Mr. ROBESON: May I say that is slightly out of context? May I explain to you what I did say? I remember the speech very well, and the night before, in London, and do not take the newspaper, take me: I made the speech, gentlemen, Mr. So-and-So. It happened that the night before, in London, before I went to Paris . . . and will you please listen?
Mr. ARENS: We are listening.
Mr. ROBESON: Two thousand students from various parts of the colonial world, students who since then have become very important in their governments, in places like Indonesia and India, and in many parts of Africa, two thousand students asked me and Mr. [Dr. Y. M.] Dadoo, a leader of the Indian people in South Africa, when we addressed this conference, and remember I was speaking to a peace conference, they asked me and Mr. Dadoo to say there that they were struggling for peace, that they did not want war against anybody. Two thousand students who came from populations that would range to six or seven hundred million people.
Mr. KEARNEY: Do you know anybody who wants war?
Mr. ROBESON: They asked me to say in their name that they did not want war. That is what I said. No part of my speech made in Paris says fifteen million American Negroes would do anything. I said it was my feeling that the American people would struggle for peace, and that has since been underscored by the President of these United States. Now, in passing, I said—
Mr. KEARNEY [Rep. Bernard Kearney]: Do you know of any people who want war?
Mr. ROBESON: Listen to me. I said it was unthinkable to me that any people would take up arms, in the name of an Eastland, to go against anybody. Gentlemen, I still say that. This United States Government should go down to Mississippi and protect my people. That is what should happen.
THE CHAIRMAN: Did you say what was attributed to you?
Mr. ROBESON: I did not say it in that context.
Mr. ARENS: I lay before you a document containing an article, “I Am Looking for Full Freedom,” by Paul Robeson, in a publication called the Worker, dated July 3, 1949.
At the Paris Conference I said it was unthinkable that the Negro people of America or elsewhere in the world could be drawn into war with the Soviet Union.
Mr. ROBESON: Is that saying the Negro people would do anything? I said it is unthinkable. I did not say that there [in Paris]: I said that in the Worker.
Mr. ARENS: I repeat it with hundredfold emphasis: they will not.
Did you say that?
Mr. ROBESON: I did not say that in Paris, I said that in America. And, gentlemen, they have not yet done so, and it is quite clear that no Americans, no people in the world probably, are going to war with the Soviet Union. So I was rather prophetic, was I not?
Mr. ARENS: On that trip to Europe, did you go to Stockholm?
Mr. ROBESON: I certainly did, and I understand that some people in the American Embassy tried to break up my concert. They were not successful.
Mr. ARENS: While you were in Stockholm, did you make a little speech?
Mr. ROBESON: I made all kinds of speeches, yes.
Mr. ARENS: Let me read you a quotation.
Mr. ROBESON: Let me listen.
Mr. ARENS: Do so, please.
Mr. ROBESON: I am a lawyer.
Mr. KEARNEY: It would be a revelation if you would listen to counsel.
Mr. ROBESON: In good company, I usually listen, but you know people wander around in such fancy places. Would you please let me read my statement at some point?
THE CHAIRMAN: We will consider your statement.
Mr. ARENS: I do not hesitate one second to state clearly and unmistakably: I belong to the American resistance movement which fights against American imperialism, just as the resistance movement fought against Hitler.
Mr. ROBESON: Just like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman were underground railroaders, and fighting for our freedom, you bet your life.
THE CHAIRMAN: I am going to have to insist that you listen to these questions.
MR, ROBESON: I am listening.
Mr. ARENS: If the American warmongers fancy that they could win America’s millions of Negroes for a war against those countries (i.e., the Soviet Union and the peoples‘ democracies) then they ought to understand that this will never be the case. Why should the Negroes ever fight against the only nations of the world where racial discrimination is prohibited, and where the people can live freely? Never! I can assure you, they will never fight against either the Soviet Union or the peoples’ democracies.
Did you make that statement?
Mr. ROBESON: I do not remember that. But what is perfectly clear today is that nine hundred million other colored people have told you that they will not. Four hundred million in India, and millions everywhere, have told you, precisely, that the colored people are not going to die for anybody: they are going to die for their independence. We are dealing not with fifteen million colored people, we are dealing with hundreds of millions.
Mr. KEARNEY: The witness has answered the question and he does not have to make a speech. . . .
Mr. ROBESON: In Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being. No color prejudice like in Mississippi, no color prejudice like in Washington. It was the first time I felt like a human being. Where I did not feel the pressure of color as I feel [it] in this Committee today.
Mr. SCHERER: Why do you not stay in Russia?
Mr. ROBESON: Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here, and have a part of it just like you. And no Fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear? I am for peace with the Soviet Union, and I am for peace with China, and I am not for peace or friendship with the Fascist Franco, and I am not for peace with Fascist Nazi Germans. I am for peace with decent people.
Mr. SCHERER: You are here because you are promoting the Communist cause.
Mr. ROBESON: I am here because I am opposing the neo-Fascist cause which I see arising in these committees. You are like the Alien [and] Sedition Act, and Jefferson could be sitting here, and Frederick Douglass could be sitting here, and Eugene Debs could be here. . . . .
THE CHAIRMAN: Now, what prejudice are you talking about? You were graduated from Rutgers and you were graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. I remember seeing you play football at Lehigh.
Mr. ROBESON: We beat Lehigh.
THE CHAIRMAN: And we had a lot of trouble with you.
Mr. ROBESON: That is right. DeWysocki was playing in my team.
THE CHAIRMAN: There was no prejudice against you. Why did you not send your son to Rutgers?
Mr. ROBESON: Just a moment. This is something that I challenge very deeply, and very sincerely: that the success of a few Negroes, including myself or Jackie Robinson can make up—and here is a study from Columbia University—for seven hundred dollars a year for thousands of Negro families in the South. My father was a slave, and I have cousins who are sharecroppers, and I do not see my success in terms of myself. That is the reason my own success has not meant what it should mean: I have sacrificed literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars for what I believe in.
Mr. ARENS: While you were in Moscow, did you make a speech lauding Stalin?
Mr. ROBESON: I do not know.
Mr. ARENS: Did you say, in effect, that Stalin was a great man, and Stalin had done much for the Russian people, for all of the nations of the world, for all working people of the earth? Did you say something to that effect about Stalin when you were in Moscow?
Mr. ROBESON: I cannot remember.
Mr. ARENS: Do you have a recollection of praising Stalin?
Mr. ROBESON: I said a lot about Soviet people, fighting for the peoples of the earth.
Mr. ARENS: Did you praise Stalin?
Mr. ROBESON: I do not remember.
Mr. ARENS: Have you recently changed your mind about Stalin?
Mr. ROBESON: 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.
Mr. ARENS: I am glad you called our attention to that slave problem. While you were in Soviet Russia, did you ask them there to show you the slave labor camps?
THE CHAIRMAN: You have been so greatly interested in slaves, I should think that you would want to see that.
Mr. ROBESON: The slaves I see are still in a kind of semiserfdom. I am interested in the place I am, and in the country that can do something about it. As far as I know, about the slave camps, they were Fascist prisoners who had murdered millions of the Jewish people, and who would have wiped out millions of the Negro people, could they have gotten a hold of them. That is all I know about that.
Mr. ARENS: Tell us whether or not you have changed your opinion in the recent past about Stalin.
Mr. ROBESON: 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.
Mr. ARENS: You would not, of course, discuss with us the slave labor camps in Soviet Russia.
Mr. ROBESON: 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. . . . .
Mr. ARENS: Now I would invite your attention, if you please, to the Daily Worker of June 29, 1949, with reference to a get-together with you and Ben Davis. Do you know Ben Davis?
Mr. ROBESON: One of my dearest friends, one of the finest Americans you can imagine, born of a fine family, who went to Amherst and was a great man.
THE CHAIRMAN: The answer is yes?
Mr. ROBESON: Nothing could make me prouder than to know him.
THE CHAIRMAN: That answers the question.
Mr. ARENS: Did I understand you to laud his patriotism?
Mr. ROBESON: I say that he is as patriotic an American as there can be, and you gentlemen belong with the Alien and Sedition Acts, and you are the nonpatriots, and you are the un-Americans, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
THE CHAIRMAN: Just a minute, the hearing is now adjourned.
Mr. ROBESON: I should think it would be.
THE CHAIRMAN: I have endured all of this that I can.
Mr. ROBESON: Can I read my statement?
THE CHAIRMAN: No, you cannot read it. The meeting is adjourned.
Mr. ROBESON: I think it should be, and you should adjourn this forever, that is what I would say. . . .
The statement that Robeson was not permitted to read aloud, included the following remarks, among others:
“It is a sad and bitter commentary on the state of civil liberties in America that the very forces of reaction, typified by Representative Francis Walter and his Senate counterparts, who have denied me access to the lecture podium, the concert hall, the opera house, and the dramatic stage, now hale me before a committee of inquisition in order to hear what I have to say. It is obvious that those who are trying to gag me here and abroad will scarcely grant me the freedom to express myself fully in a hearing controlled by them.
“It would be more fitting for me to question Walter, [James] Eastland and (John Foster] Dulles than for them to question me, for it is they who should be called to account for their conduct, not I. Why does Waiter not investigate the truly ‘un-American’ activities of Eastland and his gang, to whom the Constitution is a scrap of paper when invoked by the Negro people and to whom defiance of the Supreme Court is a racial duty? And how can Eastland pretend concern over the internal security of our country while he supports the most brutal assaults on fifteen million Americans by the White Citizens’ Councils and the Ku Klux Klan? When will Dulles explain his reckless irresponsible ‘brink of war’ policy by which the world might have been destroyed?
“And specifically, why is Dulles afraid to let me have a passport, to let me travel abroad to sing, to act, to speak my mind? This question had been partially answered by State Department lawyers who have asserted in court that the State Department claims the right to deny me a passport because of what they called my ‘recognized status as a spokesman for large sections of Negro Americans’ and because I have ‘been for years extremely active in behalf of independence of colonial peoples of Africa.’ The State Department has also based its denial of a passport to me on the fact that I sent a message of greeting to the Bandung Conference, convened by [Jawaharwal] Nehru, Sukarno, and other great leaders of the colored people of the world. Principally, however, Dulles objects to speeches I have made abroad against the oppression suffered by my people in the United States.
“I am proud that those statements can be made about me. It is my firm intention to continue to speak out against injustices to the Negro people, and I shall continue to do all within my power in behalf of independence of colonial peoples of Africa. It is for Dulles to explain why a Negro who opposes colonialism and supports the aspirations of Negro Americans should for those reasons be denied a passport.
“My fight for a passport is a struggle for freedom—freedom to travel, freedom to earn a livelihood, freedom to speak, freedom to express myself artistically and culturally. I have been denied these freedoms because Dulles, Eastland, Walter, and their ilk oppose my views on colonial liberation, my resistance to oppression of Negro Americans, and my burning desire for peace with all nations. But these are views which I shall proclaim whenever given the opportunity, whether before this committee or any other body.
“President [Dwight D.] Eisenhower has strongly urged the desirability of international cultural exchanges. I agree with him. The American people would welcome artistic performances by the great singers, actors, ballet troupes, opera companies, symphony orchestras and virtuosos of South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, including the folk and classic art of African peoples, the ancient culture of China, as well as the artistic works of the western world. I hope the day will come soon when Walter will consent to lowering the cruel bars which deny the American people the right to witness performances of many great foreign artists. It is certainly high time for him to drop the ridiculous ‘Keystone Kop’ antics of fingerprinting distinguished visitors.
“I find no such restrictions placed upon me abroad as Walter has had placed upon foreign artists whose performances the American people wish to see and hear. I have been invited to perform all over the world, and only the arbitrary denial of a passport has prevented realization of this particular aspect of the cultural exchange which the President favors. […]
“My travels abroad to sing and act and speak cannot possibly harm the American people. In the past I have won friends for the real America among the millions before whom I have performed—not for Walter, not for Dulles, not for Eastland, not for the racists who disgrace our country’s name—but friends for the American Negro, our workers, our farmers, our artists.
“By continuing the struggle at home and abroad for peace and friendship with all of the world’s people, for an end to colonialism, for full citizenship for Negro Americans, for a world in which art and culture may abound, I intend to continue to win friends for the best in American life.”
In 1958, Robeson published an autobiography titled Here I Stand.
His public profile, however, shrank dramatically, and he was largely ignored by the Civil Rights Movement’s leading figures — aside from the young militants of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
One night in 1961, during his final stay in the Soviet Union, Robeson, who was slated to give a number of lectures and concerts in the USSR, attempted suicide by slashing his wrists with a razor blade in his Moscow hotel room, but he survived. His son, Paul Robeson Jr., later alleged that this event had been caused by CIA operatives who had slipped some synthetic hallucinogens into his father’s drink at a party — and thereby had caused him to become delusional. The elder Robeson’s biographer, Martin Duberman, attributed the suicide attemt chiefly to a bipolar disorder that allegedly plagued him.
Robeson’s suicide attempt caused him to subsequently cancel his plans to visit Havana, Cuba in the spring of 1961 to meet with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.
After the failed suicide attempt, Robeson returned to London where he remained under medical care until 1963. He then spent a brief period in East Berlin before returning to the United States late that same year.
Robeson engaged in a second failed suicide attempt in 1965 while he was in San Francisco. Though he survived, his health became permanently compromised — starting with double pneumonia and kidney blockage that afflicted him immediately afterward.
After Robeson’s wife, Eslanda, died in December 1965, Robeson went to live with his son’s family in New York.
Robeson made his final public appearance at a 1966 benefit dinner for the SNCC.
In 1968, Robeson moved in with his sister in Philadelphia, living there in total seclusion.
On April 15, 1973, more than 3,000 people gathered in New York’s Carnegie Hall to celebrate Robeson Sr.’s 75th birthday, though the guest-of-honor himself was unable to attend, due to illness. Among those on hand were Harry Belafonte, Ramsey Clark, Angela Davis, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Dolores Huerta, James Earl Jones, Coretta Scott King, Sidney Poitier, Pete Seeger, and Zero Mostel.
Robeson died of a stroke in Philadelphia on January 23, 1976.
More than two decades after his death, it was revealed that Robeson in fact had been a secret member of the CPUSA for decades. In the March 21, 1998 edition of the Communist newspaper The People’s Weekly World — less than three weeks prior to the celebration of what would have been Robeson’s 100th birthday — CPUSA General Secretary Gus Hall announced: “We can now say that Paul Robeson was a member of the Communist Party. … During the period of McCarthyism, most of the Party was forced underground. Paul, and other trade union leaders were part of that.”
At a public meeting held in May 1998, Hall declared that he wished to give “Comrade Paul” a special “birthday present … that no one else could give.” That present was Hall’s revelation that “Paul was a proud member of the Communist Party USA” and a man of deep Communist “conviction.” Hall added that Communism was “an indelible fact of Paul’s life, [in] every way, every day of his adult life”; that Robeson “never forgot that he was a Communist”; and that Hall had fond memories of “when I met with him to accept his dues and renew his yearly membership in the CPUSA.” Hall made these revelations in a speech that was subsequently reprinted in the Marxist journal Political Affairs.
Historian Ron Radosh puts these facts in perspective: “One has to understand how the Communist movement operated. Its major public figures were always told that to be effective, they had to deny their CP membership, and if accused of being a Red, to simply reply that the right-wing was again engaging in ‘Red-baiting.’ That was the tactic used by Robeson and by his son, when anyone — especially the press — made that accusation.”
Death of a Communist
By Paul Kengor
June 11, 2014