22. ER to PR, Dec. 1, 1946, RA; ER to Larry Brown, July 15, 1945, NYPL/Schm: Brown.
23. ER to CVV and FM, July 15, Aug. 12, Sept. 9, Nov. 14, 1943, April 26, Aug. 18, Sept. 15, Oct. 3, 31, Dec. 14, 1944—all Yale: Van Vechten; ER to PR, Jr., Jan. 28, 1947, RA (Ma Goode); CVV to ER, Nov. 22, 1943, RA; ER to E. Franklin Frazier, Oct. 10, 1943, MSRC: Frazier (summarizing her work at Hartford). The Robesons had known Frazier as far back as the twenties (Frazier to ER, Oct. 21, 1932, MSRC: Frazier). As students, Pitt and Robeson had often sat together because of the alphabetical listing of names, and became friendly. I am grateful to Pitt’s widow, Mrs. Juliet Pitt, for sending me the Robeson-Pitt correspondence, which suggests some marginal contact over the years. The correspondence consists of three letters from ER to Pitt from the forties (April 6, July 25, 1942, Sept. 9, 1945) and one (n.d. [probably 1931]) in which she apologizes for having spent one evening in London “burdening you with my troubles.” There is also one letter from Malcolm to Paul (March 30, 1942). When Shirley Graham published her largely imagined biography of Robeson in 1946 (Paul Robeson: Citizen of the World [Julian Messner, Inc.]), Pitt wrote to Robert C. Clothier, the president of Rutgers, to express his “discomfort” over Graham’s “fictionalized” version of his undergraduate friendship with Robeson (Pitt to Clothier, July 11, 1946; Meder to Pitt, July 22, 1946, RUA).
24. Herman Shumlin to ER, Oct. 5, 1944 (pronouncing Goodbye Uncle Tom on the “ponderous side”); ER to Shumlin, Oct. 16, 1944 (accepting his verdict with grace); Owen Dodson to ER, Nov. 2, 1944 (liking the play); Arthur S. Friend to ER, April 8, 1945; ER to Friend, July 19, 1945—all RA. She sent a film treatment to Kenneth Macgowan, then at Paramount Pictures (Macgowan to ER, Dec. 14, 1945, Jan. 2, 1946, RA). ER to Earl Browder, April 18, 22, July 11, Sept. 28, Nov. 7, 1944, Browder Papers, Syracuse University (henceforth SU: Browder); Browder to ER, May 29, 1944, RA; ER to CVV and FM, Aug. 9, 1945, Yale: Van Vechten (Paul’s phone call). She was also delighted at a call from Paul, Jr., saying that the whole campus at Cornell was talking about her book; he encouraged her to forget about attending his athletic events so dutifully if they stood in the way of her accepting lecture dates (ER to CVV and FM, Aug. 12, 1945, Yale: Van Vechten). Essie liked to remind Paul that she went to many more of Paul, Jr.’s athletic events than Paul did, even mentioning to Earl Browder how much Paul, Jr., would have liked it if his father could have attended more often (ER letters to Browder, 1944–45, SU: Browder). Apparently Essie’s old friend Minnie Sumner was hired to prepare maps for the book (Day Co. to ER, Aug. 3, 1945, RA).
25. ER to Larry Brown, Aug. 14, 1945 (enclosing two reviews), NYPL/Schm: Brown; ER to CVV and FM, Aug. 9, 12, 1945, Yale: Van Vechten; Viola V. Boyd (“Vie”) to Larry Brown, n.d. (1946); Rockmore to Brown, April 20, 1946, NYPL/Schm: Brown. Mary McLeod Bethune to ER, Feb. 27, 1946, RA (NCNW selection). RA contains many other letters congratulating Essie on the effectiveness of her lectures. The mss. of Essie’s lectures during the 1944–46 period are in RA. The typed ms. of one talk is a stenotype and clearly demonstrates her effectiveness in question-and-answer exchanges. “I took off 20 pounds,” Essie exuberantly wrote Paul’s sister, Marian, “exercised myself hard and flat, and have cleared my face out and have just had my hair done. What do you know? I think the big boy will be quite pleased. I’m at my best. And now is the time!!!!!” (ER to Marian Forsythe, April 4, 1945, courtesy of Paulina Forsythe.) Essie wrote this letter just a few days before her disastrous trip to see Paul in Chicago.
26. The transcript of PR’s WHK talk is in RA; ER letters to Earl Browder, 1944–45, SU: Browder; ER to Ben Davis, Jr., July 27, 1944; Davis to ER, July 27, Nov. 18, 1944, Feb. 17, March 30, 1945, RA. Essie wrote Mrs. Roosevelt about her electioneering, enclosing a copy of one of her speeches (ER to Mrs. Roosevelt, Nov. 1, 1944; Mrs. Roosevelt to ER, Nov. 6, 1944, RA). Hubert T. Delany congratulated Essie on her role in the campaign (Delany to ER, Nov. 10, 1944, RA).
27. According to Revels Cayton, “The Party just railed at his ‘exploits,’ you know, his personal life … but they never had him up on the carpet about it, I don’t think.… I guess Ben spoke to him some” (interview with Cayton, April 29, 1982).
28. James M. Nabrit.Jr., to PR, April 20, 24, 1945, RA (Howard); Howard University Bulletin, Oct. 1, 1945, for the Howard citation to PR, delivered at the ceremony by President Mordecai John son. Acting Sec. NAACP (Wilkins) to Spingarn Medal Award Committee, March 21, 1943, LC: NAACP; interview with John H. Hammond, Aug. 8, 1985. The only written ballot I’ve found in the NAACP papers from absent committee members is Langston Hughes’s. He voted, in order of preference, for Robeson, Joe Louis, and Tobias (Hughes to Wilkins, March 24, 1945, LC: NAACP). It was also in April 1945 that Robeson won an award from the Negro Newspaper Publishers Association (Frank L. Stanley to PR, April 18, 1945, RA). PR crossed out this passage from the Seton ms. of Robeson: “… it had become a custom during the war years for Walter White to suggest someone other than Paul Robeson for the Springarn [sic] Medal. It had, in fact, reached the proportion of a Robeson family joke with everyone guessing as to whom Walter White would come up with this time. But in the summer of 1945 there wasn’t anyone, so, at last, Robeson had to get the Medal.”
CHAPTER 15 POSTWAR POLITICS (1945–1946)
1. His optimistic views are reflected in interviews with the Vancouver News-Herald, Jan. 11, 1945; Victoria (Canada) Daily Times, Jan. 13, 1945; Chicago Defender, Feb. 24, April 14, 1945.
2. Robeson’s activity, through the CAA, in preparing for the San Francisco conference was known in detail to the FBI, including an effort made to include the African leaders Nnamdi Azikiwe, Bankole (president of the Nigerian Trade Union Congress), and Esua (general secretary of the Nigerian Union of Teachers) in a broadcast dealing with the upcoming UN conference (FBI New York 100-25857-90). The FBI noted ominously (after tracking telephone conversations between Yergan and Rockmore) that PR had made a one-thousand-dollar contribution to the CAA in 1941 and, in response to Yergan’s special plea, an additional thousand in 1944 (FBI Main 100-12304-25, 27). New Africa, vol. 4, nos. 4–7 (May, June, July [“low ebb”], 1945). The CAA retained hope somewhat longer in the potential restraining power of the United Nations, a hope bolstered in 1946 by the successful passage in the General Assembly of a resolution introduced by Nan Pandit, chief of the Indian delegation, objecting to racial discrimination against Indians in South Africa. The Soviet Union supported the Indian resolution and the United States and Great Britain opposed it (New Africa, vol. 5, no. 11) [Dec. 1946]. I am grateful to my friend Rosalyn Higgins, the international law expert, for reading over this section on the United Nations.
3. New Africa, June 1945 (PR telegram); Stettinius to PR, June 6, 25, 1945, Jan. 19, 1946, NYPL/Schm: PR; Dulles to PR, Dec. 7, 1946, RA. Other Council members were also urged to telegraph Truman et al. (Hunton to E. Franklin Frazier, May 21, 1945, MSRC: Frazier).
4. New York Amsterdam News, June 16, 1945; Larry Brown to ER, Aug. 8, 1945; Abe Lastfogel (president, USO Camp Shows) to PR, Oct. 1, 1945; Chicago Defender, Aug. 25, 1945. FBI Main 100-25857-88 and 89 refer to attempted negotiations through Archibald MacLeish (then an assistant secretary with the State Department) for the Othello tour to Europe. Typical of the bizarre combination to be found in FBI documents of the arcanely well informed and the abysmally unfounded, the informant in FBI NY 25857–89 was unable to identify the “Joe” mentioned in the phone log as Joe Ferrer—though the Othello tour was currently in progress—but did at least suggest that “Joe” might “possibly [be] associated with Paul Robeson’s show.” A confidential informant reported to the FBI that Max Yergan, a “known active Communist” who exerted “considerable influence” over Robeson, had given him a going-away party on July 25, 1945, at his home, attended by “two Communist Chinese delegates to the San Francisco Conference” (FBI Main 100-12304-40, April 5, 1946).
5. FBI New York 100-25857-112 (disturbed); the quote about the “Sudeten soldiers” is from PR’s testimony before the Senate Judiciar
y Committee in 1948 (transcript in RA) in which he looked back to his views in 1945.
6. FBI New York 100-25857-112, 116, 120 (Yergan), 121, 123, 129; FBI Main 100-12304-40. Diane Sommers, Yergan’s secretary (and Ben Davis, Jr.’s lover), was another focal point of tension within the CAA office, since she was known to reproach Yergan for his “lavish personal expenses” paid for with CAA funds (Freda Diamond, ms. comments). FBI New York 100-25857-135, which is the log of a phone conversation between two unidentified people, reports their shared view that “Paul doesn’t know what’s going on [in terms of tension over Diane Sommers] so he would be rooting for her,” adding that Essie wasn’t aware of developments within the office, either; the log also contains the view of the two callers that Alphaeus Hunton and Doxey Wilkerson, the two respected, dignified, dedicated men who worked alongside Yergan in the CAA office, were temperamentally unsuited to deal with the tension, characterizing Hunton as a “guy [who] knows just one thing—his job. With all his guts he just sits there and pushes his pencil away … and [is] absolutely uninterested in anything else.” In 1948 Robeson joined Louise Bransten, Barney Josephson, Howard Fast, and Blackie Myers and Ferdinand Smith of the NMU in hosting a dinner for Frederick Field in “appreciation of his response whenever a progressive cause needed help” (PR to Corliss Lamont, April 21, 1948, courtesy of Lamont).
7. Robeson’s expressions of fear about the roles the U.S. State Department and Churchill were playing are also in The Afro-American, June 9, 1945, and the Boston Chronicle, Aug. 4, 1945. For confirmation of James F. Byrnes’s control of foreign policy during the last half of 1945, see Robert L. Messer, The End of an Alliance: James F. Byrnes, Roosevelt, Truman, and the Origins of the Cold War (University of North Carolina Press, 1982).
8. New Africa, vol. 2, no. 1 (Aug. 1943) (Labour conference); Robeson’s cable to Attlee is in the Manchester Guardian, Sept. 27, 1945.
9. New Africa, vol. 4, no. 8 (August-September 1945), no. 9 (October 1945).
10. Wilkins telegram to White, May 12(?), 1945; White memo of Aug. 24, 1945 (Rockmore’s suggestions); White memo to Wilkins, Sept. 5, 1945 (Welles, etc.)—all LC: NAACP; FBI NY 100-25857-10 (Clara Rockmore). Both Rockmore and Essie sent White lists of people to invite (RR to WW, Aug. 24, 1945; ER to WW, Aug. 25, 1945, LC: NAACP).
11. The text of Marshall Field’s remarks is in RA.
12. Pittsburgh Courier, Sept. 22, 29, Oct. 27, 1945; the FBI document quoting PR is a blurred Xerox, the file date Nov. 28, 1945, the file number illegible. The Spingarn dinner is also reported in FBI Main 100-12304-40.
13. White, “The Strange Case of Paul Robeson,” Ebony, Feb. 1951.
14. The four-page typed ms. of PR’s speech at the World Freedom Rally on Nov. 14, 1945, and the six-page ms. of his talk at the Institute on Judaism, Nov. 25, 1945, are in RA. FBI reports on preparations for the Nov. 14 event, including a phone tap between Yergan and Robeson, are in New York 100-25857-124, 133. A month later, continuing to emphasize the same themes, Robeson gave a statement to The People’s Voice stressing that “the domestic fascists … have boldly stepped forward to take up the battle … are powerful and influential. Their influence extends up to the very top of our government.” He expressed continuing optimism that although “the enemy is powerful … the masses of peoples are more powerful,” and if they stood together would “win the struggle” (two-page ms. statement is in RA).
As a result of the appearance of PR and several other actors at a Madison Square Garden rally late in Sept. to aid the victims of the Franco regime—at which Harold Laski attacked the Catholic Church for its support of Franco—the Catholic actor Frank Fay formally protested to Actors’ Equity (the dispute is detailed in FBI phone taps, New York 100-25857-110, 115, 116, 129). PR wrote Equity a blistering letter in response to Fay, defending his right to appear and expressing the hope of finding Fay someday “on the side of the great forces of anti-fascists—Catholic and non-Catholic” (PR to Equity Council, Oct. 2, 1945, Actors’ Equity Association Records, NYU: Wagner). The Constitutional Educational League published a thirty-two-page pamphlet, The Fay Case (RA) by Joseph P. Kamp, portraying Fay as “an old fashioned American,” all those connected with the Madison Square Garden rally as “Communists,” and Robeson himself as “Mr. Moscow.”
FBI Main 100-12304-23 (for the report that PR had joined the CP—while on a tour in England, inspired by Harry Pollitt the British Communist leader); FBI Main 100-12304-34 (“definitely classify”). The FBI had also been investigating Essie—triggered, apparently, by the report she “has mailed several letters addressed to Nehru” (FBI Main 100-12304-10?) but, after lengthy investigation, concluded that there was “no known Communist activity” on her part (FBI Main 100-12304-21), although she was “vitally interested in the matter of racial discrimination” (FBI Main 100-12304-14). Still, the FBI issued a “security index card” for her (FBI Main, June 10, 1944, file number blurred; additional reports on ER: FBI Main 100-12304-15 and 17).
15. Duclos’s “On the Dissolution of the Communist Party of the United States” is reprinted in Political Affairs, July 1945. Of the secondary works covering the Browder crisis, I’ve found Joseph R. Starobin, American Communism in Crisis, 1943–1957 (Harvard University Press, 1972), particularly useful.
16. FBI Main 100-12304-29 (June 9, 1945). In FBI Main 100-12304-40 (April 5, 1946), a confidential informant advised that Ben Davis, Jr., and PR had talked over the import of the Duclos article and “Robeson expressed himself as thinking that William Z. Foster was correct in his thinking about the matter.”
17. Pittsburgh Courier, July 6, 1946; Seton, Robeson, pp. 168–72. Because of the voluminous number of newspaper reviews in RA—and their repetitive nature, adding little to Larry Brown’s succinct summary quoted above—I have decided against specific citations from the reviews here.
Difficulties developed between PR and “Willie” Schatzkammer, the pianist who often appeared as an associate artist on PR’s concert programs; for a while (according to Rockmore) Robeson felt Larry Brown was allied with Schatzkammer, and Rockmore warned Brown that he was likely to become the brunt of “a great deal of hostility” because of this. In his letter to Brown. (March 4, 1947, NYPL/Schm: Brown) Rockmore never specified the nature of the Robeson-Schatzkammer dispute and referred to it only cryptically, but he advised Brown not to take sides openly with Schatzkammer for fear of alienating Paul. He closed his letter on a more light-hearted note, saying that all this would one day be “grist” for Larry’s “memoirs” of his life on stage with “La Hayes [Roland Hayes] and Le Robeson.” Rockmore asked Brown “to tear this letter up after you have read it.” FBI Main 100-12304-40 (JAFRC). Robeson’s endorsement of Quill was the subject of a separate report, FBI New York 100-25857-126 (Nov. 5, 1945). Revels Cayton received many requests for a Robeson appearance (they are in NYPL/Schm: NNC), but he reported that Paul’s singing schedule was so tough he didn’t “have the heart to ask him to do something for the Congress” [NNC] while he was out in California (Cayton to Matt Crawford, Jan. 14, 1946, NYPL/Schm: NNC).
18. In my discussions of foreign policy, I’ve found myself leaning (strongly) in the direction of the revisionist historians and have found Marty Jezer’s The Dark Ages: Life in the United States 1945–1960 (South End Press, 1982) consistently useful. The following have also been significant resources: John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War (Columbia University Press, 1972); Lloyd C. Gardner, Architects of Illusion (Quadrangle, 1970); Thomas M. Patterson, Soviet-American Confrontation (Johns Hopkins Press, 1973); Richard Freedland, The Truman Doctrine and the Origins of McCarthyism (Knopf, 1972). For a summary of Churchill’s unrelentingly anti-Soviet views and his insistence on maintaining British ascendancy in the Mediterranean, see Fraser J. Harbutt, The Iron Curtain: Churchill, America, and the Origins of the Cold War (Oxford University Press, 1986). Harbutt argues that the new Labour Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, worked with Churchill behind the scenes to shape a British anti-Communist con
sensus and that, in his Feb. 1946 visit to the United States, Churchill succeeded in recruiting a previously wavering Truman. In his impressive study, American Intervention in Greece, 1943–1949 (Columbia University Press, 1982), Lawrence S. Wittner concludes that the Soviet government took no direct action to aid the Greek left and that U.S. dealings with postwar Greece “are not very pretty” (see especially ch. 2).
19. FBI New York 100-25857-156 (March 21, 1946); California Eagle, March 14, 1946; Daily People’s World, March 26, 1946.
20. FBI New York 100-25857-156 (March 21, 1946).
21. Ibid. The FBI believed PR had “apparently increasingly come under the control of Max Yergan,” himself described as “a leader in Communist front activities,” and accurately characterized Robeson as being “reticent in giving his approval to send the [original] letter over signature” (Main 100-12304-40, April 5, 1946). Other prominent blacks, along with significant portions of the black press, protested Churchill’s speech (Mark Solomon, “Black Critics of Colonialism and the Cold War,” in T. G. Paterson, Cold War Critics (Quadrangle, 1971), pp. 217–19.
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