His antipathy to keeping a personal record has been the chief stumbling block to this biography, and especially to any effort at probing his inner life. Time and again, the material in the Robeson Archives consists of Essie’s, rather than Paul’s, jottings and musings. Since they were very different people, often at odds emotionally and politically, her account can hardly be taken as an accurate reflection of his. Yet, in the absence of other material, I have sometimes had to use Essie’s letters and diary (especially for the period of the twenties) as the chief sources for a given event. In doing so, I’ve tried to remain alert to the danger of equating her attitude with his—and have periodically alerted the reader as well (see, for example, note 43, page 601; note 38, page 624; note 41, pages 644–45). Robeson’s refusal to leave behind a detailed record of his own is consonant with his temperament. Accurately described by one of his close friends as “a man with a thousand pockets,” he disliked the notion of anyone’s being able to rummage through them all, to pierce the secretiveness he came to regard as necessary protection.
Since the Robeson Archives is heavily weighted with material Essie Robeson herself accumulated or wrote, I’ve attempted to leaven that bias by interviewing some 135 friends and associates of Robeson’s and by reading widely in other manuscript collections. Finally, nothing can substitute for Robeson’s own voice (nor can any amount of scholarly diligence invent one), but the interviews have thickened the number of perspectives on him, and the supplementary manuscript sources have yielded much additional material about him (and even a few supplementary letters by him)—as well as enriching the general contextual background. Below is a full listing of interviewees, followed by the manuscript sources consulted other than the Robeson Family Archives itself.
People Interviewed
James Aronson
Peggy Ashcroft
Etta Moten Barnett
Cedric Belfrage
Mirel Bercovici
Rada Bercovici
Eubie Blake
Charles L. Blockson
Leonard Boudin
Anne Braden
Geri Branton
Fredda Brilliant
Oscar Brown, Jr.
Oscar Brown, Sr.
Margaret Burroughs
Alan Bush
Angus Cameron
Lee Cayton
Revels Cayton
Frances Quiett Challenger
Si-lan Chen
Alice Childress
Herbert E. Cohen
Gertrude Cunningham
Peggy Dennis
Freda Diamond
Earl Dickerson
Hazel Ericson Dodge
Bess Eitingon
Inger McCabe Elliot
Emma Epps
Howard Fast
Andrew Faulds
Max Fink
Ishmael Flory
Moe Foner
Harry Francis
Milton Friedman
Indira Gandhi
John Gates
Nina Goodman (Mrs. Ben Davis, Jr.)
Sally Gorton (Mrs. Rockwell Kent)
Joseph Gould
Victor Grossman
Bonnie Bird Gundlach
Uta Hagen
John Hammond
Ollie Harrington
Dorothy Healey
Jean Herskovits
Lena Horne
Micki Hurwitt
Jean Blackwell Hutson
C. L. R. James
Ruth Jett
Howard Eugene (“Stretch”) Johnson
Barney Josephson
Alfred Katzenstein
Ursula Katzenstein
Larry Kerson
Ari Kiev
Bernard Koten
Joseph Lederer
Harold Leventhal
Elma Lewis
Jay Leyda
Marian Liggins
Diana Loesser
Sanford Meisner
Herbert Marshall
Josephine Martin
Carl Marzani
Jan Mason
Ivor Montagu
Chuck Moseley
H. A. Murray
William Mutch
Richard Nachtigall
Kay (Mrs. Aubrey) Pankey
Sam Parks
Graham Payn
Theodora Peck
Thelma Dale Perkins
Morris Perlmutter
Rose Perry
William Pickens III
Sidney Poitier
Martin Popper
Louis Rawls
Edward Rettenberg
Milton Rettenberg
Jim Richards
Alan Rinzler
Marilyn Robeson
Paul Robeson, Jr.
Earl Robinson
Robert Robinson
Flora Robson
Clara Rockmore
Ted Rolfs
Helen Rosen
Norman Roth
Rose Rubin
Annette Rubinstein
S. A. Russell
Bayard Rustin
Homer Sadler
Antonio Salemmé
G. Foster Sanford, Jr.
Junius Scales
Sylvia Schwartz
Pete Seeger
Jean Seroity
Marie Seton
Sadie Davenport Shelton
Robert Sherman
Frederick Shields
Julius Silverman
Ruby Silverstone
Abbott Simon
Anita Sterner
Michael Straight
Alexander Taylor
Studs Terkel
Edith Tiger
Chatman Wailes
Ruth Walker
Fredi Washington (Bell)
Elizabeth Welch
Aaron Wells
Rebecca West
Monroe Wheeler
Mrs. Harry White
Henry Wilcoxon
Doxey Wilkerson
Aminda Badeau (Mrs. Roy) Wilkins
Addie Wyatt
Asa Zatz
In addition, I have had access to Paul Robeson, Jr.’s interviews with: Peter Blackman, Bruno Raikin, and Marie Seton; and to Anita Sterner’s interviews (done for a 1978 BBC program on Robeson) with: Tommy Adlam, George Baker, Frank Barnes, Alfie Bass, Alan Booth, Dave Bowman, Lord Brockway, J. Douglas Brown, May Chinn, George C. Crockett, Jr., Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Leonard de Paur, Dai Francis, John Gerstadt, Leo Hurwitz, Emlyn Jenkins, Roderick Jones, Armina Marshall, James Monk, Mrs. Northcote, Will Paynter, “Princeton Old People,” Philip Stein, Phillip Thomas, Rachel Thomas, André Van Gyseghem, Otto Wallen, Charles Wright, Ellsworth Wright, Coleman Young.
Manuscript Sources
(other than the Robeson Family Archives)
AKADEMIE DER KÜNSTE DER DDR, PAUL ROBESON ARCHIV: assorted manuscript letters, first-person reminiscences of Robeson, extensive newspaper and photo collection.
AMISTAD RESEARCH CENTER: Fredi Washington Papers; Countee Cullen Papers
CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY: Claude A. Barnett Papers
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: Robert Minor Papers; Oral History Research Office (some two dozen pertinent interviews including especially those done with: Charles Ascher, Eric Barnouw, A. Philip Randolph, William Jay Schieffelin, Carl Van Vechten, Roy Wilkins, and Henry Agard Wallace); Paul Robeson Law School Records
COUNTWAY MEDICAL LIBRARY, HARVARD: Louis Wright Papers
DUSABLE MUSEUM, CHICAGO: Metz Lorchard Papers; Margaret Burroughs Papers
FDR LIBRARY, HYDE PARK: Eleanor Roosevelt Papers
INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL HISTORY, AMSTERDAM: Emma Goldman Papers
KURT WEILL FOUNDATION FOR MUSIC: Weill/Eslanda Robeson Correspondence
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS: Nannie H. Burroughs Papers; NAACP Papers; Mary Church Terrell Papers; Margaret Webster Papers
MOORLAND-SPINGARN RESEARCH CENTER, HOWARD UNIVERSITY: Bustill-Bowen-Asbury Collection; E. Franklin Frazier Papers; George Murphy Papers; William L. Patterson Papers; Jessica Smith Papers; Jacob C.
White Collection
NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, MANUSCRIPT DIVISION: Paul Kester Papers; Vito Marcantonio Papers; Joel E. Spingarn Papers; Carl Van Vechten Papers
NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, SCHOMBURG COLLECTION: Lawrence Brown Papers; Civil Rights Congress Papers; Melville J. Herskovits Papers; Alberta Hunter Papers; National Negro Congress Papers; Papers of the Black Academy of Arts and Letters; Pettis Perry Papers; William Pickens Papers; Paul Robeson Collection; Arthur Schomburg Papers
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, WAGNER ARCHIVES: Actors’ Equity Association Records
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY: Melville J. Herskovits Papers; Ira Aldridge Collection
PRESBYTERIAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY: Records of New Brunswick Presbytery
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY: Sylvia Beach Collection; Otto Kahn Papers
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES: assorted Paul Robeson-related material
SCHLESINGER LIBRARY, RADCLIFFE: Charlotte Hawkins Brown Papers; Margaret Cardozo Holmes interview
SMITH COLLEGE, SOPHIA SMITH COLLECTION, WOMEN’S HISTORY ARCHIVE: Ella Reeve Bloor (“Mother Bloor”) Papers
SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY, CARBONDALE, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS: Herbert Marshall Papers
STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY, WISCONSIN: Eugene and Peggy Dennis Papers Syracuse university: Earl Browder Papers
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS: R. Golding Bright Papers; Oral History interviews with Edwin Lester and Ed Biberman; Ralph Bunche Papers; George Johnson Film Collection
UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS, AMHERST: W. E. B. Du Bois Papers
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, BANCROFT LIBRARY: Noel Sullivan Papers
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, LABADIE COLLECTION: Maurice Brown/Ellen Van Volkenburg Papers
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, RANSOM HUMANITIES CENTER: Maxwell Anderson Papers; Frank Harris Papers; Alfred and Blanche Knopf Papers
YALE UNIVERSITY: James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of Negro Arts and Letters; Laurence Langner Papers; Eugene O’Neill Correspondence; Gertrude Stein Correspondence; Theater Guild Papers; Carl Van Vechten Papers
Additionally, a number of people have given me access to privately held manuscript material:
Peggy Ashcroft (ms. memoir)
Cedric Belfrage (Belfrage-Peggy Middleton correspondence)
Maimie Neale Bledsoe (ms. memoir and speeches)
Leonard Boudin (files on Robeson passport case)
A’Lelia P. Bundles (ms. letter)
Revels Cayton (ms. letter, biographicar materials)
Tim Couzzens (Robeson materials in William Ballinger and Winifred Holtby Papers)
Gertrude Cunningham (Nathan F. Mossell papers)
Lloyd L. Davies (ms. letters, reminiscences)
Freda Diamond (ms. letters)
Paulina Forsythe (ms. letters to Robeson during the dozen years, 1965–76, when he lived with her and her mother, Marian Forsythe, in Philadelphia)
Milton Friedman (court briefs)
Walter Goldwater (ms. letters)
Nina Goodman [Mrs. Ben Davis, Jr.] (ms. letters)
Rupert Hart-Davis (ms. letters)
Marie Jones (ms. letters)
Corliss Lamont (ms. letter)
H. A. Murray (ms. letters)
Kay [Mrs. Aubrey] Pankey (ms. letters)
Juliet [Mrs. Malcolm] Pitt (ms. letters)
Paul Robeson, Jr. (hospital records; book manuscripts (“With Malice Toward One,” “Gideon’s Journey”); Washington, D.C., FBI files)
Clara Rockmore (Rockmore-Robeson correspondence)
Helen Rosen (Rosen-Robeson correspondence)
Junius Scales (ms. memoir)
Marie Seton (ms. letters, book ms.)
Louis Shaeffer (interview notes)
Anita Sterner (tapes and transcripts of three dozen interviews for 1978 BBC program on Robeson)
Leonora [Pat] Gregory [Stitt] (ms. memoir and draft of book started with Robeson)
Studs Terkel (tape of others reminiscing about Robeson)
Nancy Wills (ms. memoir)
A number of people I corresponded with added further to the stock of primary materials through their anecdotes and personal recollections of Robeson (as well as by providing leads to others with firsthand accounts). In this regard, I owe special thanks to Kathryn Cavan Avery, Paul Avrich, Edward Biberman, Charles L. Blockson, George Breitman, Harry Bridges, Bob Cohen, Malcolm Cowley, Millia Davenport, Michael H. Ebner, Veit Erlmann, Kim Fellner, Bernard Forer, Joseph Gould, James Frederick Green, Judith Green, John Devereux Kernan, Ralph Kessler, David Randall Luce, Luretta Bagby Martin, Ruth C. McCreary, Jim Murray, Paul G. Partington, Robert Richter, Naomi Rogers, Irene Runge, Stanley Schear, Athene Seyler, Harry Slochower, George Spector, C. A. Tripp, Jules Tygiel, Mrs. William A. P. White, Nancy Wills, and Jane Wright.
Finally, additional documentation about Robeson was secured under the Freedom of Information Act. Some time ago, when access under the FOIA remained comparatively open, Paul Robeson, Jr., got considerable material from the Main Office files of the FBI (as well as some CIA and State Department documentation). Some of that material, however, consisted of condensations sent from the FBI’s New York Field Office, the originating branch for surveillance of Robeson. I felt it was urgent to secure the New York files themselves—especially after I discovered that surveillance had been so continuous and intense that the field office file had generated its own internal index (a so-called Correlation Summary, developed only for the very largest FBI collections). Unfortunately, by the time I began this biography in 1981, open access under the FOIA was a policy of the past. When I applied for Robeson’s New York file, I did get some material from the early forties, but for the later period I received little more than page after page of inked-out reports. In denying me access, the Bureau cited the now catchall justification of “national security.”
Given the persistent rumors that the FBI (as well as other government agencies) had had a direct hand in causing the deterioration in Robeson’s health during the fifties, I felt it was essential to try to extract additional materials from the recalcitrant Bureau. To that end, I initiated a formal lawsuit against the FBI through Edward Greer, the Boston lawyer with special expertise in FOIA files. Litigation dragged on for nearly three years. Ultimately, running out of money and nearing completion of the book, I had to agree to an out-of-court settlement that did secure for me some additional documentation, but not enough either definitively to corroborate or to disprove the rumored involvement of the FBI in Robeson’s physical and emotional collapse. None of the limited amount of material I received as a result of the court case contains any suggestion of FBI (or other governmental) complicity. Still, the issue must be considered unresolved. The mere existence (apparently unique, according to Ed Greer) of an FBI “Status of Health” file on Robeson remains unexplained, and there are enough other loose ends in the available evidence to make it impossible at this point in time either wholly to absolve or clearly to indict U.S. government agencies for playing a role in Robeson’s decline. Final judgment must await the release of all pertinent material. Unfortunately, that day may never come: during the course of litigation, the FBI lawyers told Greer—their tone sardonic—that some 56 volumes (out of a probable 103) in the Robeson file of the New York Field Office had “unaccountably disappeared.”
Notes
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS FOR MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS IN LIBRARIES
ARC
Amistad Research Center, Tulane University
BLUC
Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley
CHS
Chicago Historical Society
CML
Countway Medical Library, Harvard University
CU
Columbia University
DSMC
DuSable Museum for Black History and Culture, Chicago
FDR
FDR Library, Hyde Park, New York
IISH
International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam
Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, New York
LC
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
MSRC
Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University
NYPL/Ms. Div.
New York Public Library, Manuscript Division
NYPL/Schm
New York Public Library, Schomburg Collection
NUL
Northwestern University Library
PHS
Presbyterian Historical Society
PR Archiv, GDR
Paul Robeson Archiv, East Berlin
PU
Princeton University Library
RA
Robeson Archives, Howard University
RUA
Special Collections, Rutgers University Library
SIU
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
SL
Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe
SSC
Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College
SU
Syracuse University
UCLA
University of Southern California, Special Collections
U.Mass.
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
UM
Labadie Collection, University of Michigan
UT
Ransom Humanities Center, University of Texas
Yale
Beinecke Library, Yale University
CHAPTER 1 BOYHOOD (1898–1914)
1. It would serve no useful purpose to list the voluminous literature on race for this period—expecially since August Meier and Elliott Rudwick’s excellent From Plantation to Ghetto (Hill and Wang, 1970) summarizes the pertinent evidence and sources. For an updating, see Louis R. Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915 (Oxford, 1983).
2. WDR obituary in the Somerset Messenger, May 22, 1918 (year of degrees). The classmate (and subsequent relative by marriage) was Nathan F. Mossell. His comment on Lincoln University is in his ms. autobiography (which also includes part of his correspondence), generously loaned to me by a descendant, Mrs. Gertrude Cunningham. She also gave me a number of other documents of special value in reconstructing the history of the Robeson family; these are too scattered and numerous to list in full. Besides the Cunningham documents, I have found of special value, despite its distortions, Eslanda Robeson, Paul Robeson, Negro (Gollancz, 1930), hereafter ER, PR, Negro; Robeson’s own autobiography, Here I Stand (Beacon Press, 1970), hereafter PR, Stand; the Jacob C. White and Bustill-Bowser-Asbury ms. collections at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University, hereafter MSRC; Anna Bustill Smith, “The Bustill Family,” Journal of Negro History, Oct. 1925; and the collection of ms. letters given me by Paulina Forsythe, daughter of Marian Robeson Forsythe (Paul’s sister).
Paul Robeson Page 84