18. Chicago Defender, Aug. 3, 1940; interview with Earl Robinson, Aug. 17, 1986. Robeson flew to Hollywood; it was his first time on a plane and, according to Essie, he “loved the trip” (ER Diary, June 5, 1940, RA).
19. Multiple interviews with Freda Diamond.
20. Multiple interviews with Freda Diamond; ER to Toni Strassman, June 6, 1938; ER to Nan Pandit, Aug. 15, 1951; ER to Nehru, Sept. 17, 1957, RA. Many entries in PR’s datebook for 1941 (RA) list appointments with Freda.
21. The executed documents turning over control to Rockmore are in RA. Interviews with Clara Rockmore, April 26, 1983, March 17, 1984; ER Diary, June 5 (Columbia), 9, 12, 1940, RA; Frances Taylor Patterson (who taught Essie film at Columbia) to ER, May 20, 1940, RA (Black Progress); David Bader to ER, June 1, 7, 1940 (Uncle Tom), RA; Nehru to ER, July 10, 1940, RA. In Erik Barnouw’s recollection, Essie registered for his class because “She wanted to develop a formula for a series to present her husband on the air” (Shannon Shafly and Mark Langer interview with Barnouw, 1975, Columbia University Oral History Project). ER’s trip to Central America is fully documented in her diary for Aug. 1940 and in the several long letters she wrote to Pauli and to her mother (all in RA). No letters were sent directly to Paul, nor do the other letters make any mention of him—which cannot have been an accident. Paul also signed up at Columbia—for nine credits in Russian and Chinese—but there is no record of his attending classes.
In the years immediately preceding their return to the States, tension between Paul and Essie had receded but not disappeared. In 1938, for example, she wrote the Van Vechtens, “Paul actually came out on the tender to meet me at Southampton when I returned. I was so astonished. I never expected anything like that and never even looked. Idly watching the tender arrive, I noted a very big lump of brown, and it was Paul!! Well, well” (ER to CVV and FM, Aug. 17, 1938, Yale: Van Vechten).
22. Theodore Ward (president, Negro Playwrights) to ER, May 30, 1940; Ward to ER, June 25, 29, 1940, RA; Daily Worker, July 27, 1940 (inaugural); Sunday Worker, Sept. 15, 1940 (Davis); the Pittsburgh Courier (Sept. 14, 1940) and the New York Amsterdam News (Sept. 14, 1940) also carried articles about the opening; Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Andy Razaf, Hazel Scott, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Morris Carnovsky (of the Group Theatre) were among the other participating celebrities.
23. PM, Sept. 17, 1940 (Spanish songs); Jessica Smith to PR, July 5, 1941, March 26, 1942, MSRC: Jessica Smith Papers. At the same time, a film PR made while in Spain was recovered (William Pickens to PR, Oct. 22, 1940, RA, enclosing a statement from Nancy Cunard about the film); George Gregory to PR, Oct. 12, 1940, RA (Harlem); Madame Sun Yat-sen to PR, Sept. 1940, RA (China); Frederick V. Field to “Brother Robeson,” Sept. 20, 1940 (conscription); Dreiser to PR, May 14, 1940, RA; Herald, March 30, 1941; Daily Province (Vancouver), Oct. 31, 1940; Jane Swanhuysen to Marcantonio, Nov. 11, 1940, NYPL, Ms. Div.: Marcantonio (Emergency Peace Mobilization).
24. Interviews with Clara Rockmore, April 26, 1983, March 17, 1984.
25. Interviews with Clara Rockmore, April 26, 1983, March 17, 1984. “Paul’s attitude to me is really touching,” Clara Rockmore wrote her husband (n.d. [1940s]); also PR to Bob Rockmore, Nov. 3, 1944—both courtesy of Clara Rockmore.
26. Interviews with Clara Rockmore, April 26, 1983, March 17, 1984. PR’s popularity with college audiences is amply attested to in the local and campus reviews of his concerts. Daily Home News (New Brunswick), Oct. 10, 1940: “tumultuous applause by 3,600”; Hamilton Republican, Oct. 17, 1940: “established a record for the largest attendance at a non-athletic event in Colgate history”; Daily Cardinal (University of Wisconsin), Oct. 22, 1940: “a tremendous ovation”; Seattle Times (University of Washington), Nov. 7, 1940: “turbulent applause.” Clara and Larry Brown were very fond of each other; there’s a letter in NYPL/Schm: Brown, Nov. 5, 1940, from Bob Rockmore to Brown expressing his gratitude for “all your kindness and consideration to Clara.”
27. Interviews with Clara Rockmore, April 26, 1983, March 17, 1984; follow-up phone interview with Revels Cayton, May 30, 1987 (Vanessi’s); the incident at Vanessi’s is also described in the San Francisco People’s World, Nov. 15, 1940, The New York Times, Nov. 10, 1940, and the Sunday Worker, Nov. 17, 1940; the lawsuit in the Chicago Defender, Nov. 30, 1940, which reports that damages in the sum of $22,500 were being sought. In a lighter vein, Leonard Lyons reported in his gossip column, “The Lyons Den” (New York Post, Dec. 4, 1940), that, when Robeson was dining on a Chicago-bound train with Oscar Levant and Marc Connelly, a Pullman waiter approached Robeson for an autograph. He obliged, and the pleased waiter left—without asking Levant or Connelly for their autographs. Robeson purportedly smiled and said, “No offense—it’s just racial solidarity.”
28. Interviews with Clara Rockmore, April 26, 1983, March 17, 1984; multiple interviews with Helen Rosen (rage).
29. Interviews with Clara Rockmore, April 26, 1983, March 17, 1984. In some of the quotes from Rockmore I have removed ellipses between comments she made at different points in our interviews, combining them to avoid endless diacritical marks. Of course, as Alan Bush, who accompanied PR in the later fifties, pointed out to me: “There’s no such thing as natural singing. If there is, it’s unbearable to listen to. People who think they sing by the light of nature, you would never wish to hear them a second time. Now, he was a developed singer, very highly developed technically, but he sounded absolutely natural. And so you would think he was born to sing.… He had relative pitch” (interview with Alan Bush, PR, Jr., participating, Sept. 3, 1982).
Toward the end of the tour, Robeson started to cup a hand behind his ear in order to hear himself better; he retained the habit of ear-cupping thereafter. He also participated, during this same period, in an experiment with an electronic device (“Synthia”) developed by Prof. Harold Burris-Meyer, theater sound-research director at the Stevens Institute of Technology, to enable a singer to hear his own sound without producing acoustical distortions or amplification in the concert hall (papers, newspaper articles, and correspondence surrounding the experiment are in RA).
30. ER to PR, Nov. 3, 5, 9, 1940, RA; ER to CVV, Nov. 7 (weight), 9 (parents’ functions), 1940; ER to CVV and FM, Nov. 15, 1940, Yale: Van Vechten. “We’ve been hanging around for months, doing nothing, since ‘John Henry’ closed, and were beginning to get restless,” Essie wrote John P. Davis, describing her own turmoil more than Paul’s (ER to Davis, April 20, 1941, National Negro Congress Papers—hence-forth NYPL/Schm: NNC).
31. Hartford Courant, April 2, 1941 (worker); ER to CVV and FM, Nov. 27, 1941 (“Big Paul”), RA; PR to ER, Aug. 29, 1941, RA; Freda Diamond ms. comment (scaffold). Essie bombarded Bob Rockmore with itemized bills and enthusiastic reports about the detailed adventures of settling in. Various friends—including Minnie Sumner, Hattie Boiling, Bert and Gig McGhee, Sadie Sumner, Essie’s brother John Goode, Freda Diamond, and Walter White’s son, Pidgy White (to visit Pauli)—came up for a look at the new place, and all expressed enthusiasm (e.g., ER to Rockmore, June 16, July 13, 23, Aug. 10, 25, 1941, RA). Rockmore periodically showed his exasperation with Essie’s nest-building expenditures, writing her that until the last of the renovations and improvements were finally finished, there would “be no peace on earth for anybody” (Rockmore to ER, Aug. 12, 1941, RA).
32. Of special value in understanding the Popular Front years (though it is concerned primarily with the leadership, not the rank and file of the CP) is Harvey Klehr, The Heyday of American Communism (Basic Books, 1984).
33. It’s impossible to cite with any thoroughness the large literature on these issues, but I found of special value (along with Klehr, Heyday) Raymond Wolters, Negroes and the Great Depression (Greenwood, 1970), Bert Cochran, Labor and Communism (Princeton, 1977), John B. Kirby, Black Americans in the Roosevelt Era (University of Tennessee, 1980), and, above all, Naison’s indispensable Communists in Harlem.
The Robesons were never more than marginally acquainted with the Ralph Bunches. In
1932 Essie interviewed Bunche for a book she was planning at the time on prominent black figures and found him “attractive and very, very interesting” (ER Diary, Sept. 26, 1932, RA). A telling anecdote about Robeson and Bunche was told to me by Jean Herskovits, daughter of Melville Herskovits: The family had recently returned from Trinidad where Jean (age four) had picked up fluent pidgin English. Robeson was the first black man Jean had seen since Trinidad, and when he swept her up in his arms on arriving at the Herskovits house, she enthusiastically greeted him in pidgin. Robeson and Jean’s parents burst out laughing. “Thank God she didn’t do that with Ralph [Bunche]!” Paul said. In 1949, when Robeson was under fire from the established black leadership, Bunche is quoted as saying, “I have always admired Mr. Robeson’s singing more than his social philosophy” (as quoted in Gilbert Ware, William Hastie: Grace Under Pressure [Oxford, 1984], p. 229). Subsequently, Robeson apparently made a disparaging remark about Bunche (Corliss Lamont to PR, Dec. 1, 1950, NYPL/Schm: PR Coll.).
34. ER to Davis, April 20, 1941, NYPL/Schm: NNC; Rajni [Patel] to ER, April 26, 1940, RA (India); PR joined Theodore Dreiser in cabling his support of the British People’s Convention (Jan. 4, 1941), hailing its struggle against imperialist war aims—both men’s statements are in RA. Alphaeus Hunton served as a chairman of the NNC’s Labor Committee, and Doxey Wilkerson headed its Civil Affairs Committee. Both men subsequently moved to the Council on African Affairs, and Hunton became a close Robeson associate. John P. Davis resigned from the NNC early in 1943; at that time the national office closed, though the Council continued to function for a while longer in New York before folding into the Civil Rights Congress (Dorothy Hunton, Alphaeus Hunton: The Unsung Valiant [privately printed by Dorothy Hunton, 1986]).
35. Daily Worker, Feb. 1, Oct. 1, Dec. 16, 18, 1941 (Browder), March 25, 1942 (“anti-fascist”); Citizen’s Letter to Free Earl Browder, 1941–42 (PR was one of the Sponsors of the National Conference to Free Earl Browder), NYPL: Marcantonio. Gurley Flynn’s statement about PR’s expenditures in Browder’s behalf was reported in War Dept., March 15, 1943, FBI 100-26603-1067, p. 2. The March 17, 1941, mass “Free Browder” rally was formally billed as a sixtieth birthday celebration for William Z. Foster, general secretary of the CPUSA. Browder himself appeared at the rally and received an ovation; as did Robeson when introduced by Robert Minor, then acting secretary of the CPUSA. In tribute to Foster, Robeson sang Marc Blitzstein’s “The Purest Kind of Guy.” Other speakers included the black Communist leader James W. Ford and Israel Amter, New York State chairman of the Party. Theodore Dreiser sent a telegram.
36. In a commencement speech he gave at the Manual Training School on June 10, 1943, PR advised blacks to “view the whole struggle within the Labor Movement as our struggle. We must fight for our rights inside our labor organizations—for here are, for the most part, our real allies—those who suffer as we, subject to the same disabilities as we. Organizations as N.M.U.—militant sections of C.I.O.—prove point” (typed ms. in RA). He reiterated the theme yet again in accepting an honorary degree from More-house College in 1943 (the typed ms. is in RA). For a full discussion of Robeson’s role with the UAW, see Charles H. Wright, Robeson: Labor’s Forgotten Champion (Balamp, 1975), pp. 83–103. In the general discussion which follows of CPCIO interaction, I am heavily indebted to Mark Naison’s study Communists in Harlem, especially pp. 261–73. A sympathetic view of the relationship between the CP and the CIO is ably argued in Harvey A. Levenstein, Communism, Anticommunism, and the CIO (Greenwood Press, 1981). In Levenstein’s estimate, as many as eleven of the CIO’s thirty-three affiliates during World War II had substantial Communist leanings (including the UEW, the ILWU and the NMU). For the contribution of the CP to industrial unionism in Detroit, see Roger Keeran, The Communist Party and the Auto Workers Union (Indiana University Press, 1980). For a less favorable interpretation of the CP’s influence on trade-unionism, see Nelson Lichtenstein, Labor’s War at Home (Cambridge University Press, 1982). See also p. 419, and note 33, p. 712.
37. In his brilliant discussion of Communism’s failure to ignite the black working class, from which many of my own views derive, Naison additionally suggests that the CP’s “artificially imposed interracialism” made workingclass blacks, who preferred the coherence and integrity of their own fraternal and social institutions, uncomfortable; similarly, the demands the Party placed on the skills of verbal dialectics alienated the many blacks who were recent rural migrants (Naison, Communists in Harlem, especially pp. 279–83).
38. Daily Worker, Dec. 17, 1941; Ford Facts, May 17, 1941; News of Connecticut, Aug. 1, 1941 (hailing the CIO’s stand against discrimination). The program for “The Negro in American Life”—which was repeated—is in RA, along with newspaper accounts of the event and an enthusiastic thank-you letter from Dave Greene (executive secretary of the IWO) to PR, April 4, 1941. Fort Wayne U.E. Herald, April 1, 1943.
39. Lucy Martin Donnelly to PR, April 23, 1941 (PR’s concert for Chinese scholarships at Bryn Mawr, April 18, 1941), with enclosures, RA; Frank Kai-ming Su (China Aid Council) to ER, Feb. 5, 1941, RA; PM, March 30, 1941 (DAR). Anson Phelps Stokes, who had been a canon of the cathedral in Washington when the Marian Anderson issue arose and had helped spearhead the protest, sent PR his deep regrets over the DAR’s latest refusal, along with a copy of the pamphlet Art and the Color Line, which he had written in response to the Anderson protest (Stokes to PR, April 19, 1941, RA).
40. Press release of the Associated Negro Press, CHS: Barnett.
41. Press release of the Associated Negro Press, CHS: Barnett; Cornelia Pinchot to Eleanor Roosevelt, April 13, 1941, along with ms. drafts of her press release, Roosevelt Papers, Hyde Park (hereafter FDR). On Aug. 7, 1941, Zola Ardene Clear, who had been publicity director of the Washington Committee for Aid to China, gave extended testimony about the incident before the Dies Committee in which she accused the NNC of Communistic duplicity throughout (House Hearings concerning Un-American Propaganda Activities, 1941, pp. 2366–79).
42. NNC press release, CHS: Barnett; Pinchot to Roosevelt, April 13, 1941, FDR. Pinchot’s statement to the papers about her reasons for withdrawing, and also a separate statement she released to the black press, are printed in full in House Hearings concerning Un-American Propaganda Activities, 1941, pp. 2374–76.
43. The program for the April 25, 1941, Uline Arena concert is in RA. It did list Dr. Hu Shih as an “Honorary Sponsor”—apparently he changed his mind—and contains a printed “commendation” from the NNC to the Washington Committee for Aid to China for its “excellent work.” Apparently Robeson sang the Chinese Communist “Cheelai” (“March of the Volunteers”) for the first time, of what would become many, at the Uline concert (Liu Liang-mo to ER, April 11, 1941, RA, containing the words to “Cheelai” and a piano accompaniment, as PR had requested). Newspaper accounts of the concert are in the Washington Post, April 26, 1941, the Times-Herald, April 26, 1941 (“Willkie”), and the Philadelphia Inquirer, May 3, 1941. Letters of thanks from Muriel Koenigsberg (executive secretary, WCAC) to PR and to ER, both April 30, 1941, and from Frank Kai-ming Su to PR, Sept. 5, 1941, are in RA.
44. Klehr, Heyday, p. 399.
45. Daily Worker, July 4, 23, 1941; Sunday Worker, July 6, Nov. 2 (masses), 1941; Vancouver News-Herald, Vancouver Sun, Nov. 22, 1941; Chicago Defender, Nov. 1, 1941; Rose N. Rubin to PR, May 1, 1941; Harriet L. Moore (American Russian Institute), May 2, 1941, RA; PM, April 30, 1941 (Benny Goodman); Hewlett Johnson letter dated Oct. 17, 1941, RA. Two weeks after Pearl Harbor, Robeson, in a single five-day period, sang before a record crowd at the Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, gave a benefit concert in Oakland for Medical Aid to Russia, and participated in the Russian War Relief concert in San Francisco (People’s World, Dec. 18, 1941); programs in RA.
46. These examples of the shift in American opinion about the Soviet Union are quoted in Irving Howe and Lewis Coser, The American Communist Party (Da Capo Press, 1974), pp. 431–33.
47. R. P
. Bonham, District Director, to FBI Special Agent in Charge (hereafter SAC), Seattle, FBI Main 100-12304-1 (“reputedly”); R. B. Hood, SAC, to Director, April 3, 1942, blurred file number 100-12304-?; “Summary of Chinese Writing in Brown Notebook,” by Harold L. Child, April 24, 1942, FBI Main 100-12304-5; Hoover to SAC L.A., May 27, 1942, file number blurred; Foxworth to Director, Sept. 19, 1942, FBI Main 100-12304-6 (Wo-Chi-Ca). According to Mother Bloor, Robeson “helped a lot to build one of the finest music rooms in the country” at Camp Wo-Chi-Ca: “It is like a temple” (Bloor to “My dear Family,” Sept. 28, 1947, SSC).
For a discussion of the provenance and substance of the FBI files used here (and throughout the rest of the book) see my Note on Sources, p. 557. The year 1941 saw a general increase in FBI activity regarding “the threat of Communism.” Its efforts remained somewhat episodic until early 1946, when the Bureau inaugurated a formal strategy of “educating” the public by a variety of devices, including the selective leaking of confidential files to “friendly” newspaper columnists like Walter Winchell, Drew Pearson, and George Sokolsky (Kenneth O’Reilly, “The FBI and the Origins of McCarthyism,” Historian, vol. XLV [May 1983], pp. 372–73).
48. Hoover to Lawrence M. C. Smith, Chief, Special War Policies Unit, Jan. 12, 1943, FBI Main 100-12304-8 (custodial detention); Guy Hottel, SAC, to Director, Aug. 26, 1943, FBI Main 100-12304-10 (“leading”); Office of Naval Intelligence memo, Jan. 14, 1942, FBI NY 100-25857-3A; War Department letter, March 15, 1943, 100-26603-1067, p. 2, NY 100-25857-8.
49. Interviews with Uta Hagen, June 22–23, 1982, Sept. 28, 1984.
50. The typed mss. of PR’s speeches at Morehouse and to the Herald Tribune Forum are in RA. In a radio address over WEAF on Jan. 2, 1944, PR decried the continuing denial of full citizenship to blacks (typed ms. of speech, RA).
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