The Rise and Fall of Paul
Robeson
Paul Robeson (1898-1976), the singer/actor/political
activist, was dining in a restaurant when he spotted Jackie Robinson and Don
Newcombe, the baseball players, at another table. He asked a waiter to invite
them over, so he could introduce them to his friends.
Jackie Robinson
sent back an angry response: “Fuck Paul Robeson.”
That’s from a
biography that tells the story of the tragic life of this gifted man (“Paul
Robeson All-American,” by Dorothy Butler Gilliam, 1978). Robinson was angry because
of Robeson’s recent unpatriotic remarks—that American blacks would never fight
against the Soviet Union, even if there were a war between the two countries. Robinson
had testified before Congress that Robeson’s remarks were “silly.”
We’ll return to
Jackie Robinson later.
Robeson did make
horrible mistakes. He had a foolish love affair with the totalitarian Soviet
Union: He had never lost his wonderment and delight in discovering a country
where black people were treated as equals. When the Soviets attacked Finland,
he indefensibly supported the Soviets. He fulsomely praised Stalin and accepted
the Stalin prize; refused to acknowledge Stalin’s anti-semitic purges or the
sham 1930s trials; defended the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956; tried to
get the United Nations to condemn the United States for genocide against
blacks; and never joined the American civil-rights movement because James
Farmer, a prominent black, asked that he first publicly reject the Soviet Union
and communism. Even when Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler in
1939, Robeson said it in no way altered his convictions. The agreement, he said,
was forced on Russia by France and England’s refusal to help protect the Soviet
Uinion,
While he never
joined the Communist party, Robeson was clearly an unrepentant “fellow
traveler.”
When he had
visited the Soviet Union, Robeson said, he had felt “like a human being for the
first time since I grew up. Here I am not a negro but a human being. Before I came I could hardly believe that
such a thing could be….Here, for the first time in my life, I walk in full
human dignity.”
It was his fatal
flaw—a stubborn allegiance to the
communist Soviet Union. It ruined his reputation.
Robeson also had an unconventional
married life, and carried on many affairs, apparently with the knowledge of his
wife, Essie, an intelligent, helpful woman. She was justifiably furious. After
a while, they just had a “companionate” marriage.
Jose Ferrar, the actor, was married to Uta
Hagen, who played Desdemona to Robeson’s Othello, and Ferrar walked in on the
two of them in bed—not inside a theater. A divorce followed.
Robeson had
almost married another woman he had acted with, Peggy Ashcroft. In fact, there
were a few white women he almost married—but his black friends discouraged him.
They also discouraged him from joining the Communist party when he offered to,
thinking it might help the cause.
Robeson acted in a
good many movies, and his most memorable performance was as Joe in “Showboat,”
in which he sang “Ol’ Man River.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyJtGNk9iEU
He was so famous at one time—thanks
to performances in films, plays, concerts—that just about everyone wanted to meet
him, and he encountered Bernard Shaw, Harry Truman (he asked him to push for a
strong anti-lynching law, but Truman said it wasn’t the right time), Lena
Horne, Rebecca West, Pola Negri, Hart Crane, Heywood Broun, Mrs. Patricia
Campbell, Emma Goldman, G.B. Stern, Mary Garden, Gertrude Stein, Ramsay
MacDonald, Igor Sravinsky, Albert Einstein, Stanislavsky, Marian Anderson,
Alexander Woolcott, Lorraine Hansberry, Zero Mostel, and Nikita Khrushchev.
He became a famous singer, singing spirituals—which up to that time had
been generally considered third-rate music, like the cheap food that blacks
ate. Occasionally he sang opera—but said “I may sing a little opera in the
morning but only in the bathroom.” His voice, writes biographer Martin Duberman,
despite its warmth and richness, had a limited range. And the Met Opera, in
1933 when it featured an opera with a black man in it, “The Emperor Jones,” had
a white man in blackface sing the role.
Advised by his friend, the famous actress Mrs.
Patrick Campbell, to play Othello, Shakespeare’s Moor, he read the play—and easgerly
agreed to play Othello. In the play, he must kiss a white woman, Desdemona.
Very controversial. But he was amazingly successful as an actor. “Othello” became
the longest-running Shakespearean play on Broadway. Here’s an excerpt from
Robeson’s performance:
But because of
his strident and incessant left-wing activities, he became persona non grata in
the United States, loathed by hoi polloi, tailed by FBI agents, who listened to
his phone calls, shunned by record companies, theaters, and even by former
friends. He could not escape abroad: The United States took away his passport –
for eight years. People stopped attending his concerts. When he gave a concert
in Peekskll, New York, the citizens of that fair city, inflamed by local
newspapers, broke it up by attacking the concertgoers –and several had to be
hospitalized.
It was a time
when Americans, led by that sociopath Joe McCarthy, went nuts over Communism. Communists
were devils. Red-white-and-blue neck Americans saw Communists everywhere. In
Texas, being a Communist was made punishable by death. (Yet in my entire life,
and I’m pretty old, I’ve NEVER met a self-confessed Communist.)
One man who
remained a faithful friend of Robeson’s—accompanying him on walks to protect
him, eventually serving as a pallbearer at his funeral—was actor Sidney
Poitier. Harry Belafonte and Ossie Davis were other faithful friends. As was
Pete Seeger.
Eventually, during a thaw in U.S.Soviet relations, Robeson’s passport
was returned to him. At the Supreme Court, the liberal William O. Douglas led
those judges in ruling that Robeson should get his passport back—a man’s political
opinions should not deprive him of his freedom.
Late in life he
became deeply depressed. That’s what may happen to singers whose voices give
out, to athletes who lose their athleticism.He tried suicide by slitting his
wrists, and underwent 54 electroshock
treatments. A very sad conclusion to his life.
For a hero to
wind up in disgrace is not unusual.
Lance Armstrong. Bill Cosby. Pete Rose. Barry Bonds. Shoeless Joe
Jackson. (When a kid said to him, “Say it ain’t so, Joe,” that he didn’t accept
money to throw the 1919 World Series, Joe Jackson didn’t answer.) Sir Francis
Bacon was guilty of corruption. Bobby Fischer, the chess champion, was an
American hero who went crazy and turned against America. O.J. Simpson murdered
his ex-wife. As for Paul Robeson, he was disgraced not because of financial greed,
or sex, or taking illegal drugs, or murder, but because of his political views.
+++
Robeson was born in Princeton,
where his father was a minister—children of ministers tended to be remarkably
successful. After Somerville High School, he took a test and attended Rutgers
on a full scholarship – he was the only black there. He tried to join the
football team--he was 6 feet 2 and 240 pounds. In a scrimmage the Rutgers varsity
zeroed in on him, breaking his nose and inflicting other injuries. But ten days
later he returned—and made the team—and then made the All-American team three
times. He received letters in ten or 12 other sports at Rutgers—along with
making Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year and becoming valedictorian.
Being black, he was not allowed to
live on campus. And some schools, like William and Mary and Georgia Tech,
wouldn’t play Rutegrs in football because Rutgers had a black on its team.
Rutgers did play against Washington and Lee—after Rutgers agreed to bench Paul
Robeson for that game.
He decided
to go to law school, and chose Columbia over Harvard. As a lawyer, he joined a prestigious
firm and asked a secretary to take a letter. Said she, I don’t take dictation
from a nigger. He resigned.
Robeson didn’t
complain about it, but in the U.S. and even in Europe he was subjected to racial
prejudce. He had to use the freight elevator. When his light-skinned wife
bought two tickets to a play, he was told he couldn’t sit in the orchestra with
her. When he wanted to eat, in the Times Square area, he almost had to travel to
Harlem to find a place that served blacks. When he was preparing to sing at a
concert in Kansas City, the newspaper, the Star, agreed to run a story about
it—but without a picture. The paper never ran pictures of black people. In
Green Bay, Wisconsin, he and his wife were scheduled to check into a hotel—but
were told at the last minute that it didn’t accept blacks. But the hotel
relented. The Robesons were given a room on the first floor, so they wouldn’t
be seen from the elevator, and told to use the side stiarcase, to eat in their
rooms, and to “make themselves as inconspicuous as possible.” A newspaper
critic for the New York Telegram didn’t acccept Robeson as Othello. The critic
wrote: “There have doubtless been truly tragic negroes—but they are not really
representive of their rather happy go
lucky race.”
This disgusting prejudice
against blacks existed not long ago—and it still exists.
I remember
inviting a black friend to join a bunch of us in going out to dinner. I can’t,
he said, I need a shave. So, go to a barber and pay for a shave, I said. He
looked at me and said, no white barber around here would shave me.
In high school, in
New Jersey, there were no blacks in my classes. Finally, in my senior year, I
saw a black kid who had enrolled in our school playing softball. White kids
were gathered around him…hooting.
I had a black cleaning woman at one time. She
asked me, can I use the downstairs bathroom or must I go upstairs? Use the downstairs
one of course, I said. She looked grateful. I’m still shocked.
I worked at a
magazine with the sister of writer James Baldwin at one time. We would go out
to lunch together. We always would bring a third person along. A white man with
a black woman wasn’t acceptable.
+++
Asplendid book about Robeson is by Martin Bubl Duberman. 800
pages. When people ask m how I spent the summer of 2015, I’ll say, I read this
book…
In his old age, Paul
Robeson returned to the United States. This was his country and he missed it. He
was ill and depressed, going in and out of hospitals, seeing visitors only
seldom. He tried suicide by cutting his wrists. He underwent electroshock therapy—52
times—before dying. A very sad conclusion to his life.
What really hurt
him was that he wasn’t invited to take part in the civil rights movement. Black
leaders felt that Robeson’s pro-Soviet views would hurt the civil rights
struggle. A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkens, even Martin Luther King Jr. felt
that way. So they didn’t invite him to speak, they didn’t give him any credit
for the entire civil rights movemenbt.
You remember that Jackie
Robinson had cursed Paul Robeson? Yet Robeson, almost alone, had campaigned to
have black players admitted into baseball! Jackie Robinson should have been
grateful.
On the other hand, Jackie
Robinson, years later, became somewhat disillusioned with the slow progress of
black freedom, and he said, “I do
have increased respect for Paul Robeson who, over the span of twenty years,
sacrificed himself, his career, and the wealth and comfort he once enjoyed
because, I believe, he was sincerely trying to help his people.”
Unlike Robeson, Jack Robinson could admit
making a bad mistake.
***
But the disgrace into which Robeson fell has been lifting. We
Americans are a forgiving people. In 2004, the U.S. even issued a postage stamp
in honor of Paul Robeson. And there were celebratons all over the country.
In sum, Paul
Robeson was a good man, an amazingly gifted man, who went very wrong. He was too
stubborn; too loyal to a country tht didn’t deserve loyalty. How misguided his
impatience was is shown by the fact that Barack Obama is now our President. Paul Robeson would
have been amazed—and very, very pleased. And yes, he deserves some of the
credit.
Recordings
Ballad for Americans
Documentary, Here I Stand
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