Paul Robeson

by Martin Duberman

  That said, Essie advised Paul to “heave a deep breath.… I’ll take you further along the garden path and prepare yourself, because its going to be rough walking.” She had a couple of questions she needed to ask. First and foremost: “Am I to continue to be Mrs. Robeson? Yes or No.” The last time she’d been in Rockmore’s office, he’d confided “that you had been going to marry Freda, and proved to me that you were.” That news, Essie continued in her letter, “set me back. Maybe I wasn’t even Mrs. Robeson any more.” She wanted to know. And she also wanted a guaranteed personal allowance (“I should have had one ever since we returned to America. Otherwise I’m being your wife for my living, only, and am merely a paid housekeeper. I feel I rate better than that. Anyway, good housekeepers come high, these days”). The assured income would allow her “to do something on my own.… I may even be able to make myself independent, so if ever you want to shed me, it should be easy.… My wings are itching, and I think I’m going to fly. But I want good visibility before I take off.” Having had her say, Essie promised not to bring up “my personal business” again; “I’ve said everything that’s been on my mind for some time, and I feel better for saying it, no matter how it comes out.”41

  Essie knew how to tough it out, but Paul knew when and how to acknowledge the din—in order to neutralize it and to be better able to proceed on his own unencumbered way. He told Essie (as she reported to Paul, Jr.) that he “couldn’t imagine anything more reasonable” than her insistence on a hundred dollars a week for the house and a hundred a month for her personal allowance, and said that in the future, if she needed more, she should come to him directly, immediately. Just two months after sending her husband what read like a firm ultimatum, Essie was confessing to her son that she herself wasn’t “clear” about what was going on. “Bobby does his ground-work dirty. He tells me one thing, and The Papa another. And what with all the misunderstanding, and inefficient (deliberately so) interpreting, The Papa and I get more and more distant.” Essie may to some degree have decided against greater clarity with Paul, Jr., to spare him—he had apparently expressed concern over the possibility of a formal split between his parents—for when she did allude to additional complications it was in a protectively evasive way: “Of course, bad news is bad news, but if its well delivered, it isnt as bad as it could be. Maybe this is over your head. And anyway, there may be no bad news at all.… Anyway, you make plenty of sense when you say: If the three of us cant work everything out, we ought to give up. That’s my sentiments. And I too, think its high time the three of us DO work it out.”42

  Essie, quick to flare, knew how to back down when it appeared her belligerence might threaten her own vital interest in remaining Mrs. Robeson. She knew that Paul, ordinarily less quick to react, capricious about the details of ordinary life, had a powerful will. If he came to feel that his essential interests were at stake, he could prove by far the more intractable of the two, difficult to turn from any course of action upon which he had decided, insistent, ultimately, on doing exactly what he wanted and telling others only precisely what he wanted them to know. “Nobody tells me anything,” Essie complained to Revels Cayton, aware somewhere in her depths that the brash appurtenances of command she liked to flaunt were pale shadows of her husband’s quietly powerful authority (and no match for it). Having openly broadcast her complaints, she now wisely decided, “once and for all, to close ranks with him.”43

  CHAPTER 16

  The Progressive Party

  (1947–1948)

  Henry A. Wallace, Roosevelt’s Vice-President and now Truman’s Secretary of Commerce, began to speak out against administration foreign policy in 1946. He, like Robeson, deplored Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech at Fulton, Missouri, and counseled Truman to adopt a more flexible attitude toward the Soviets in order to control atomic energy and to maintain peace. Truman ignored him. On September 12, 1946, Wallace delivered a crucial speech at a meeting sponsored by two groups (Robeson was affiliated with both) that later that year were to merge into the Progressive Citizens of America; in it, Wallace forcefully attacked the emergent Anglo-American “get-tough” policy toward Russia, arguing that nations with different economic systems could and must live in peace together (the same argument Robeson employed when testifying before the Tenney Committee three weeks later in California). Wallace’s speech caused an uproar, with Secretary of State Byrnes threatening to resign and the foreign-policy hard-liners in both parties repudiating it. On September 20 Truman requested and received Wallace’s resignation from the Cabinet. The rift had been opened that would lead to Wallace’s third-party Progressive race in the presidential election of 1948, but throughout most of 1947 he explicitly refrained from declaring his candidacy. Robeson, meanwhile, remained primarily absorbed in fighting political battles on his own front.1

  They began to multiply. As early as the spring of 1946, local rightwing forces had succeeded in banning various Win the Peace meetings at which Robeson had been scheduled to appear, or in forcing him to shift concert halls. Embarked on yet another four-month, cross-country concert tour with Larry Brown in January 1947, Robeson arrived in St. Louis, Missouri, to find himself in the middle of a controversy about segregated facilities in the city’s theaters. When the Civil Rights Congress of St. Louis called for a demonstration in front of the American Theater, Robeson joined the picket line of about thirty people. At a press conference the next day he created another flurry by announcing that at the conclusion of his current tour in April he intended to abandon the theater and concert stage for two years in order to “talk up and down the nation against race hatred and prejudice.… It seems that I must raise my voice, but not by singing pretty songs.” For the immediate future he would sing only “for my trade union and college friends; in other words, only at gatherings where I can sing what I please.” A few days later the left front wheel came off a car in which Robeson was riding on a highway near Jefferson City. Fortunately the car had been moving at a moderate speed and no one was hurt. The Pittsburgh Courier did not hesitate to report the episode as “a prejudice-prompted attempt on the life of Paul Robeson.” The driver of the car told the Courier that “the wheel showed definite signs of having been tampered with.”2

  Both the FBI and the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, on their respective fronts, took due note of Robeson’s announced intention to devote himself to political activity. J. Edgar Hoover, in an apparent decision to formalize charges against him, had already ordered the New York Office to “prepare a report in summary form” setting forth “only such information of a legally admissible character as will tend to prove, directly or circumstantially, membership in or affiliation with the Communist Party, and knowledge of the revolutionary aims and purposes of that organization.” Hedda Hopper rushed to her own set of barricades. When Robeson came to California in March, she devoted most of her column to lambasting him for having sung the Russian “People’s Battle Song” and for remarking in public on the effort “in America today to kill the liberal movement, to crush the labor movement, to stifle the cries against reaction.” Such talk, in Hedda Hopper’s view, was an example of Robeson’s “abusing the precious heritage of freedom given us by our Constitution in flaunting the preaching of our most dangerous enemy.…”3

  When Robeson reached Peoria in April, the sniping against him mushroomed into a full-blown public confrontation. From the first announcement of a Robeson concert in Peoria, there had been rumblings of opposition. Then, two days before the concert, the House Committee on Un-American Activities cited him, along with nearly a thousand others (including Henry Wallace, David Lilienthal, and Harlow Shapley, the Nobel Prize-winning astronomer from Harvard), as one “invariably found supporting the Communist Party and its front organizations.” Edward E. Strong, organization secretary of the National Negro Congress, gave vent to the anger felt by many progressives: “The Un-American Committee in Washington has allegedly been carrying on an investigation of un-American organizations and subversives. W
hom have they attacked? The C.I.O. but not the Ku Klux Klan; Paul Robeson but not Theodore Bilbo; not a single group guilty of burning Negroes, gouging out the eyes of veterans, and subverting the Constitution throughout the South … have been called to the stand.… The un-American forces … in the name of ‘patriotism’ would deny the great Robeson the right to sing in Peoria, while the supporter of fascism during the war, Flagstad, is singing and being acclaimed at Carnegie Hall in New York.”4

  When word of HUAC’s citation reached the Peoria City Council, it immediately passed a resolution opposing the appearance of “any speaker or artist who is an avowed propagandist for Un-American ideology.” A group of local citizens protested this affront to civil rights, declaring that “there are few progressive independent thinking people who have not been branded ‘red’ at some time or other since Hitler developed this technique to destroy democracy and bring Nazi-fascism to Europe.” Peoria Mayor Carl O. Triebel agreed momentarily to make City Hall’s assembly room available to the citizens’ group so it could hold a reception for Robeson. But Triebel held to his promise for only one day, rescinding it under a barrage of pressure from “patriot” groups on the following afternoon—the day Robeson, accompanied by Max Yergan, arrived in Peoria. He came despite rumors of impending violence and although William Patterson had reported that he had seen more guns in Peoria “than he ever had before.” Denied a place to sing, and refused time to present his case on the local radio station, Robeson was reduced to meeting with a handful of people in the living room of Ajay Martin, a union official and the president of the Peoria branch of the NAACP.5

  Interviewed by the local press, Robeson declared, “I have been all over the world and the only time I have seen hysteria reach these heights was in Spain under Franco and Germany under Hitler.” (Mayor Triebel responded that he and the City Council were only trying “to prevent bloodshed.”) Asked by the reporters for the fiftieth time that week whether or not he was a Communist, Robeson responded with the same formula he had used when testifying before the Tenney Committee: “There are only two groups in the world today—fascists and anti-fascists. The Communists belong to the anti-fascist group and I label myself an anti-fascist. The Communist Party is a legal one like the Republican or Democratic Party and I could belong to either. I could just as well think of joining the Communist Party as any other. That’s as far as you’ll get in any definition from me.” Robeson put it more succinctly still to a reporter from Marshall Field’s liberal paper, the Chicago Sun: “If Communism means pointing out to the people that their lives are being dominated by a handful, I guess I’m a Communist.” He vowed that he would return to Peoria, and swore to “fight this violation of civil liberties.”6

  The repercussions within Peoria itself centrally involved Clifford Hazelwood, commander of the black Roy B. Tisdell American Legion Post in the city, and also local vice-president of the NAACP. Hazelwood had spoken out against the anti-Robeson campaign, and the executive board of Tisdell had then accused him of “communistic activities and ideologies.” It did so without first consulting the membership, and a fight within the Tisdell post ensued; the membership voted against the executive board’s denunciation of Hazelwood, which in turn led the Legion’s state commander to revoke the post’s charter, to padlock its meeting house, and to confiscate its material assets. The word was spread that the entire Tisdell post was “communistic.” Hazelwood had in the meantime appealed to his friend Senator Everett M. Dirksen for FBI information about the validity of the accusations against Robeson, and Dirksen sent the letter on to J. Edgar Hoover. Simultaneously Hazelwood appealed to the national offices of the NAACP for help in clearing his name, and Roy Wilkins supported his request for an FBI investigation, emphasizing in a letter to Hoover the need to refute “the misguided (or deliberate) attempt to use Hazelwood’s connection with the NAACP to imply in some manner that this Association is engaged in spreading communistic ideology”; Wilkins made no protest or appeal in Robeson’s behalf. J. Edgar Hoover turned over the entire Dirksen-Hazelwood-Wilkins correspondence to the Attorney General’s office for further action, and eventually all parties were notified that neither the FBI nor the Justice Department felt empowered—in the absence of any “violation of federal law”—to proceed with an investigation.7

  “The Peoria affair,” Robeson told the Chicago Sun, “is a problem bigger than just me.” He characterized “the situation in America” as “much more serious than people realize” and predicted that the incident would be a signal to other localities to proceed against him. Within weeks, the Albany, New York, Board of Education announced that it was canceling permission for him to give a scheduled concert at Livingston High School. Albany’s Mayor Erastus Corning II proudly took credit for being the moving spirit behind the cancellation. But this time around, local protest proved substantial, and the black sponsors of the recital (an affiliate of the Israel A.M.E. Church) brought legal action to restrain the Board of Education from barring Robeson.8

  In the ensuing hearing, Albany’s corporation counsel argued before the court that neither the Board nor the city “will subsidize Communism or anything having to do with Communism. The color of Paul Robeson’s skin has nothing to do with this case, but the color of his ideologies has.” But Supreme Court Justice Isidore Bookstein ruled that Albany could not bar Robeson from singing because of his alleged sympathies with Communism and issued an injunction restraining the Board of Education from interfering with the concert. Bookstein did stipulate, however, that Robeson confine himself to his musical program. According to the newspapers, he did just that, “speaking only to describe some of the songs he was about to sing as encores.” But to the Army Intelligence agents covering the event, he “complied with the letter of the law” while defying its spirit; in singing encores relating to Republican Spain, the Soviet Union, and the Chinese antifascists, Robeson had, the intelligence agents insisted, “managed to further the CP line by means of his songs.”9

  The following month, the police commissioners in Toronto also issued Robeson a permit to sing only on condition that he not talk at his concert. Angered by the escalating restrictions on him, Robeson spoke out at a Council on African Affairs rally in New York. “This could happen,” he said, “to any American who believes in democracy and says so fearlessly. This is the heart of the issue. Whether I am or am not a Communist or Communist sympathizer, is irrelevant. The question is whether American citizens, regardless of their political beliefs or sympathies, may enjoy their constitutional rights. If the government is sincerely concerned about saving America from subversive forces, let our officials … stop worrying about the Communists whom they suspect of subversive activities and start doing something about the fascists who are openly parading their disdain of civil rights and democratic procedures here in America today.” He concluded by saying, “I, however, am going to function exactly as I have tonight, at other times.… I come from the people, and from the side of the people.… I want nothing back but the kind of affection that comes to me tonight, the kind of feeling that you’re there—that’s what allows me to do what I do—because you are there! I want no political office of any kind, nor will I ever seek one.…”10

  Two weeks later Newsweek published a sardonic article entitled “Paean From Pravda,” reporting that the Soviet Union had recently expressed “gratitude” for its American friends, listing among them Henry Wallace, Albert Einstein, Professor Ralph Barton Perry of Harvard, former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Joseph E. Davies—and Paul Robeson. The nationally syndicated conservative columnist George E. Sokolsky followed through with an article holding Robeson himself responsible for the Peoria incident: “If Robeson chooses to be both singer and propagandist, that is his risk. Those who favor causes must risk the consequences of opposition. Better men than Paul Robeson have been thrown to the lions.” (J. Edgar Hoover liked Sokolsky’s column so much he wrote on the bottom of it, “A good summary on Robeson so don’t let it get lost.” It wasn’t.)11

&nbs
p; When Robeson made a brief trip to the Panama Canal Zone at the end of May, the FBI monitored his movements. The agent covering Robeson’s concert in Panama City sounded crestfallen that “In spite of predictions the concert was free from any Communist or union propaganda.” But if Robeson held his tongue while in the Canal Zone, he immediately aired his views on returning to the States. Speaking in Miami under the sponsorship of the Southern Negro Youth Congress, he “stunned” the assembly with the vehemence of his views on U.S. policy in the Zone. Blasting the U.S. government for “keeping the black masses in ignorance and pitiful poverty,” he excoriated as well the powerful clique of local politicians who cooperated with U.S. officials. He devoted the proceeds from several subsequent concerts to setting up a Canal Zone scholarship fund for the education of black teachers, and in 1948 he joined Du Bois, Charlotta Bass (publisher of the California Eagle), and Charles P. Howard (lawyer and publisher) in establishing a committee to fight Jim Crow social and economic discrimination in Panama.12

  Despite the mounting harassment, Robeson remained a popular public figure during the summer and fall of 1947, and very much in demand. In a Gallup Poll released in June, he was one of forty-eight runners-up in a survey of the public’s “ten favorite people.” That same month he sang to a capacity house at Symphony Hall in Boston “while scores outside vainly sought admission,” and in July he sold out Lewisohn Stadium in New York City. Dozens of left-wing organizations vied for his presence as guarantor of a large turnout; he gave preference to the Civil Rights Congress, the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, and, as the prospects of a Wallace campaign increased, to the Progressive Citizens of America. He agreed to become one of the PCA’s host of notable vice-chairmen, and on September 11 shared the platform in Madison Square Garden to hear Wallace, on the first anniversary of his dismissal from Truman’s Cabinet, tell the crowd of nineteen thousand that the country was suffering from a “psychosis about communism, which has been carefully nurtured by men whose great fear is not communism but democracy.”13