Paul Robeson

by Martin Duberman

  The local informer turned up again in 1965, when the Robesons were in California (see note 23, p. 757). Recognizing him, Essie made sure that people on the left knew his history (interview with Claire “Micki” Hurwitt, May 14, 1982). In Jan. 1950 leaders of veterans’ organizations in the Peekskill area held the first in what was planned to be a series of meetings “to arouse America to the danger of Communism.” It was addressed by former Rep. Hamilton Fish, whose isolationist views had cost him his congressional seat during the war; he called for outlawing the Communist Party and preparing for a war with Russia (New York Daily Compass, Jan. 23, 1950). The National Guardian reported (Oct. 3, 1949) that in defense of the Cortlandt ordinance a Legion spokesman said, “It may be unconstitutional, but when the Constitution was written it was never considered what would happen later—people trying to overthrow the government.”

  21. The full transcript of the grand-jury report is in RA. The New York Daily Compass (Oct. 24, 1949) reported on the rigged proceedings during the grand-jury investigation—including the with holding or cropping of crucial photographic evidence. In response to Dewey’s Sept. 14 statement, the CAA circulated an open letter to President Truman—the sixty-odd signatories included C. B. Baldwin, Charles Chaplin, Dean Dixon, E. Y. Harburg, Charles P. Howard, John Howard Lawson, and Rockwell Kent—declaring that the state of New York could “not be relied on to protect the basic constitutional rights of its citizens” and appealing to the federal government for an investigation. Truman did not respond, but he had earlier said that he agreed with Mrs. Roosevelt in deploring the lawlessness at Peekskill.

  22. New York Herald Tribune, Dec. 16, 1949; New York Daily Mirror, Dec. 19, 1949 (Winchell); New York Daily Compass, Dec. 20, 1949, March 1, 1950; The New York Times, Dec. 16, 1949, Nov. 11, 1950, Jan. 24, 1952 (dismissal); New York Amsterdam News, March 24, 1951. O. John Rogge, a former assistant U.S. attorney general who had subsequently become active in the Progressive Party—and later became a conservative anti-Communist—headed the group of lawyers handling the action. One of the youthful lawyers was Bella Abzug; her extensive correspondence with William Patterson is in NYPL/Schm: CRC. In other subsequent developments, one of the rioters was appointed a police officer in Yorktown Heights, and Superintendent Gaffhey admitted before a Senate crime-investigating committee that he had covered up a report on gambling in Saratoga (Daily Worker, Jan. 19, 1950, March 19, 1951).

  23. New York Herald Tribune, Sept. 9, 1949.

  24. New York Herald Tribune, Sept. 21, 1949; New York Amsterdam News, Sept. 24, 1949; Hartford Courant, Sept. 21, 1949; The Afro-American, Oct. 1, 1949; FBI New York 100-25857-740 (shouldn’t have called Robeson). On Oct. 10 PR joined sixty others in a signed appeal to Attorney General J. Howard McGrath to quash the Foley Square indictment; McGrath refused to meet with the delegation (Daily Worker, Oct. 11, 1949). Belknap, Cold War Political Justice, pp. 106–7, states that “the singer had no knowledge of any facts relevant to the case and … his appearance was just a publicity stunt”; the comment seems gratuitous. The verbatim transcript of PR’s testimony is contained in a special agent’s report to Hoover, Sept. 22, 1949, FBI Main 100-12304-? (illegible).

  25. Pittsburgh Courier, Sept. 17, 1949. In a separate column accompanying the interview, Graves expressed his annoyance at the difficulty he had had in getting to PR and the fact that once he did, “The interview … was monitored by the inner circle of party dialecticians who had all the facile answers straight out of the book, in case Paul needed any help. Robeson, who knows the handbook very well himself, didn’t need much help.… One cannot escape the feeling that this man is deeply sincere in his desire to do something about the degrading humiliations and indignities suffered by Negroes in this country.… Whether Robeson is or is not a Communist (and there can be little doubt that he is in the minds of those who listen to him), the racial injustices which he so vigorously protests are real, not fancied.”

  26. Congressional Record, Sept. 21, 1949, p. 13375; New York Amsterdam News, Oct. 1, 1949.

  27. Four-page typed copy of Gwinn’s Sept. 23, 1949, remarks, RA. The AP reports are in Eyewitness: Peekskill, U.S.A., which also remarks that in the week following the concert the Klan received 722 letters of application from people in Westchester County.

  28. The Afro-American, Oct. 1, 1949. ER had just (Sept. 1949) returned from the Continental Peace Conference in Mexico—“The Boss,” she wrote Larry Brown, had sent her down to take his place (ER to LB, postcard, Sept. 11, 1949, NYPL/Schm: Brown). PR had apparently intended to attend the Congreso Nacional Por la Paz y La Democracia in Havana as well, but finally had to decline because (as he telegraphed) “Presence here imperative” (Edith Garcia Buchaca telegram to PR, July 13, 1949; Louise T. Patterson to Buchaca, July 14, 1949; Patterson to Dr. Ortiz, July 25, 1949; PR telegram to Buchaca, Aug. 1, 1949—all in RA). The FBI had followed PR’s Mexican plans (FBI New York 100-25857-752). In Nov. Essie went to peace conferences in Moscow and Peking. “This has been a marvellous experience,” she wrote Larry Brown from Peking, “which still seems like a terrific and wonderful dream” (Dec. 26, 1949, NYPL/Schm: Brown). The full transcript of the conference of women in Moscow is in RA; in it ER is quoted as emphasizing “the necessity for unity of the efforts of women throughout the world in the struggle for peace.” During this entire period ER continued to work hard at her writing, polishing yet again her novel about a black girl passing for white (which she now called Color), and writing Oscar Hammerstein II that she thought her ms. “may be the idea for a musical play” (South Pacific had just opened) and inquiring about the script Goodbye Uncle Tom she had earlier sent him (ER to Hammerstein, n.d. [Oct. 1949], RA). On at least one occasion, an effort was also made to block ER from speaking in public (at a Progressive Party meeting in Trenton, N.J. [Daily Worker, Oct. 21, 1949]).

  29. “My Day,” Sept. 7, 1949. Mrs. Roosevelt wrote two other “My Day” columns relating to Peekskill, on Sept. 3 and Sept. 6, showing herself in the first one to be misinformed in her reference to the Peekskill meeting’s being sponsored by the ACLU (she apologized in the column of Sept. 6) and in saying that “Paul Robeson left this country and took his family to the U.S.S.R. until the coming of the war.” In Atlanta to attend a conference of Southern churchwomen on Sept. 8, she termed the recent violence at Peekskill “perfectly outrageous” and added that the North was “quite as bad” in its racial discrimination as the South (Boston Daily Record, Sept. 9, 1949). The ACLU statement, with a covering letter to Mrs. Roosevelt from John Haynes Holmes and Arthur Garfield Hays (Sept. 26, 1949), along with Mrs. Roosevelt’s reply (Sept. 30, 1949), is in the FDR Library. In one other reference to PR in a “My Day” column (Jan. 19, 1950), Mrs. Roosevelt wrote, in regard to his Paris Peace Conference remark, “It seems strange to me that Mr. Robeson does not refute that statement. I cannot believe that he made it, since his own son served brilliantly in World War II. [PR, Jr., in fact served in the Army Air Force in 1946–7, just after World War II, and was not sent overseas.] Also, I think he knows his own people too well really to believe that they [would] … refuse to defend this soil of ours.” The New Yorker, comparably, declared that when Robeson “mixes Ol’ Man River with Ol’ Man Marx he is being unfair to the Mississippi and is playing fast and loose with the Negro race, for whom he purports to speak. Robeson lost ‘the people’ as an audience when he began to make pronouncements that were largely unpopular” (Sept. 24, 1949).

  30. Randolph’s letter, dated Sept. 30, is in The New York Times, Oct. 9, 1949; the text of Frazier’s remarks, which were made at a meeting in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 13, 1949, is in RA. PR wrote Frazier to thank him (Oct. 27, 1949, MSRC: Frazier). Alice Dunnigan letter, n.d. (1949), CHS: Barnett (Hughes).

  31. New York Daily Compass, Sept. 25, 1949; Larry Adler, It Ain’t Necessarily So (Grove, 1984), p. 130; The New York Times, Sept. 8, 1949 (Pittsburgh rally); Pittsburgh Press, Sept. 29, 1949 (cancellation); The Afro-American, Sept. 24, 1949 (Ohio); letter (Sept. 15, 1949) and statement from t
he Cincinnati Committee to Welcome Paul Robeson are in RA, as in the “Official Statement of the Cleveland Committee on the Oberlin Incident,” which contains PR’s rationale for cancellation; Chicago Defender, Oct. 15, 1949 (“cold feet”) (Newsweek, Oct. 17, 1949, took the same tack); Daily Worker, Oct. 12, 1949 (Cleveland); FBI New York 100-25857-904 (Cleveland).

  32. Interviews with Ishmael Flory, July 1–2, 1986, and Rev. Louis Rawls, July 1, 1986; National Guardian, Oct. 3, 1949; (White Sox) Chicago Sunday Times, Oct. 8, 1949 (Sherman); Rawls was related to Claude Lightfoot, the Chicago CP leader, and was approached by Flory, also a CP activist.

  33. Daily Worker, Sept. 26, 1949 (Walls); Chicago Defender, October 1, 1949 (overflow); FBI Main 100-12304-(illegible); The Afro-American, Oct. 1, 1949 (disturbances).

  34. FBI Main 100-12304-172; FBI New York 100-25857-895A; San Francisco Voice, Sept. 29, 1949; National Guardian, Oct. 3, 1949; California Eagle, Sept. 22, 29, Oct. 5, 6, 13, 1949. Director Sam Wood, founder of Alliance of American Ideals, had decreed in his will that no beneficiary except his widow could collect his inheritance without first filing an “anti-Communist” affidavit with the probate court; the contents of Wood’s will were released to the press on the eve of PR’s concert.

  35. National Guardian, Oct. 3, 1949; California Eagle, Sept. 29, Oct. 3, 13, 1949; Los Angeles Mirror, Oct. 1, 1949; Daily Worker, Oct. 4, 1949; The Afro-American, Oct. 15, 1949.

  36. FBI Main 100-12304-161; FBI New York 100-25857-914A; Detroit News, Sept. 25, 1949; Daily Worker, Oct. 10, 12, 1949; The Afro-American, Oct. 29, 1949. Back in June, Dean Joseph L. Johnson had written to PR to say, “I want you to know that, in spite of all these attacks and smears, I have seen or heard nothing that I am willing to accept as evidence of disloyalty to our country, the United States of America. Your outstanding achievements and your courage, in my way of thinking, are still a credit both to yourself and your people” (June 14, 1949, RA).

  37. Washington Star, Oct. 1, 1949; Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 14, 1949 (Strout); Washington Post, Oct. 19, 1949; PR to Frazier, Oct. 27, 1949, MSRC: Frazier.

  38. Swami Avyaktananda to PR, Oct. 14, 1949 (World Religions); Curie telegrams to PR, Oct. 14, Nov. 11, 1949; PR to Jean Lafitte, Oct. 19, 1949 (Curie); Louise T. Patterson to Curie, Nov. 11, 1949; John Takman to PR, Sept. 13, 1949 (Sweden); telegram to PR, Oct. 17, 1949 (All-India); Nan Pandit to ER, Sept. 26, 1949—all in RA. PR, Jr., feels that another reason his father refused to see Nehru is that he was convinced the “secret” meeting would not remain secret (PR, Jr., ms. comments). While Nehru was away, Acting Prime Minister Patel apparently hinted to U.S. officials that he might take responsibility for refusing PR (who had been rumored to be making a trip to India) a visa (FBI Main 100-12304–176, 180).

  Paul’s reaction to Nehru’s 1949 visit is from Seton (interviews, Aug.-Sept. 1982), as told to her directly by ER. But Annette Rubinstein recalls a somewhat different version, also told to her by ER. According to Rubinstein, Essie solved the dilemma of Paul’s refusing to see Nehru by scheduling a dinner party for a night when Paul would be out of town. She then sent Nehru a telegram in PR’s name expressing his regret at not being able to attend (interview with Rubinstein, Dec. 5, 1983). According to Geri Branton, Robeson later told her that he regretted his snub of Nehru—“I think it’s probably the only time I ever heard him say that—that there was a certain act he had regretted” (interview with Branton [PR, Jr., participating], April 2, 1982).

  39. Ben Davis’s reaction to sentencing is in Ware, Hastie, p. 228.

  40. New York Post Home News, Nov. 2, 6, 1949; New York Daily News, New York Daily Mirror, New York Telegram, New York Journal-American, New York Sun—all November 4, 1949; FBI New York 100-25857-895; interview with Ollie Harrington, July 29, 1986; interview with Revels Cayton, April 29, 1982; Cayton to me, May 30, 1988 (giant); interview with Dorothy Healey (PR, Jr., participating), May 1, 1982 (“use us”).

  CHAPTER 19 THE RIGHT TO TRAVEL (1950–1952)

  1. New York Daily Compass, Oct. 13, 1949 (UN debate). The Council of American-Soviet Friendship was originally set up with Edward Smith, former chairman of the NLRB, as its first executive director. After relations between the two countries soured, Richard Morford, a Christian Marxist, took over as director. PR was active in the Council from its inception (interview with Abbott Simon, March 27, 1982; Corliss Lamont to PR, March 4, 1946; Muriel Draper to PR, Dec. 18, 1947, RA).

  2. The typescript of PR’s Nov. 10, 1949, speech at the Waldorf is in RA. The speech was reprinted as a pamphlet: Paul Robeson, The Negro People and the Soviet Union.

  3. The New York Times, July 19, 1949; National Guardian, July 25, 1949.

  4. Conversations with PR, Jr.; interview with Wilkerson (PR, Jr., participating), Dec. 3, 1983.

  5. New York Amsterdam News, Dec. 31, 1949; FBI New York 100-25857-888; The Afro-American, March 7, 1950 (surveillance).

  6. New York Daily Compass, Feb. 21, 1950 (preliminaries); Daily News, June 2, 1950 (Tito); National Guardian, March 8, 1950 (Wallace); New York Post Home News, Feb. 27, 1950; two different versions of PR’s speech to the convention are in RA. According to Seton (Robeson, p. 222), PR moved from the white Croydon hotel in Chicago, where the Progressive Party convention was taking place, to the Evans Hotel in the black South Side, explaining his action to her this way: “I’m no longer going to stay in downtown white hotels where Negroes have to come and see me where they cannot live. Any of my white friends who want to see me here can come to the South Side and see me, or if they are afraid to come I never wish to see them again.”

  7. Multiple interviews with Helen Rosen; PR, “Here’s My Story,” Freedom, May 1951 (applauding China’s new government).

  8. National Guardian, March 22, 1950; New York Journal-American, March 13, 1950; David M. Oshinsky, A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy (The Free Press, 1983), pp. 100–106; J. Fred MacDonald, Blacks and White TV: Afro Americans in Television Since 1948 (Nelson-Hall, 1983), pp. 50–57.

  9. Press releases from the Associated Negro Press, March 20, 22, 1950, CHS: Barnett; Daily Worker, March 21, 1950 (PR on Roosevelt); the “private citizen” was Mrs. Ethel Hykin, who kindly sent me a copy of Mrs. Roosevelt’s reply to her, dated March 27, 1950.

  10. Daily Worker, March 17, 1950 (PR statement); FBI Main 100-12304–190 (Mrs. Roosevelt); The Afro-American, March 25, 1950; J. Fred MacDonald, Black and White TV, pp. 54–55; New York Amsterdam News, March 18, 1950 (Smith); Louise T. Patterson to William H. Gray, Jr. (editor-manager, Philadelphia Afro-American), March 29, 1950; Carl Murphy to PR, May 8, 1950; ER to Murphy, May 14, 1950 (Honor Roll), RA; statement by C. B. Baldwin, Progressive Party, March 13, 1950, NYPL/Schm: PR; memo from Henry Lee Moon to Wilkins, March 23, 1950, LC: NAACP; New York Telegram-Sun, March 1950. The following year a Conference on Equal Rights for Negroes (in which PR participated) spelled out some additional statistics on discrimination: the largest movie union, IATSE, had no black members; only thirty-six of the twenty thousand persons employed in advertising were blacks, and most of them held menial jobs; almost no blacks were employed in the symphonic-music field, in the editorial or business departments of the large newspapers, or in the production or technical side of television and radio (Daily Worker, Nov. 14, 1951).

  11. Some of the letters containing invitations are in RA, others in NYPL/Schm: PR; I will not attempt to cite them individually. The following newspaper accounts detail Robeson’s various speeches and appearances: Daily Worker, March 17, 23, May 2, 18, 24, 25, 1950; Morning Freiheit, April 15, May 22, 1950; San Francisco Chronicle, May 16, 1950; also, Charlotta A. Bass to PR, March 31, 1950, NYPL/Schm: PR. Special-agent reports to the FBI contain additional details: FBI Main 100-12304-193, 195, 196, 198; FBI New York 100-25857-1043, 1075 (describing PR’s appearance at the funeral of Moranda Smith, leader of the tobacco workers in Winston-Salem, N.C., who had died in her mid-thirties of a cerebral hemorrhage).

  12. PR, Jr. (multiple conversations), is the source for PR’s distrust of ER
’s speaking for him. The details of ER’s national speaking tour are documented in a diary she kept during 1950 (RA) and in an exchange of letters with Louise Thompson Patterson (as well as between Patterson and some of Essie’s hosts), which are also in RA. The FBI St. Louis report is in FBI Main 100-12304-188, the reference to the Security Card in FBI New York 100-25857-1151. The typed mss. of ER’s speeches, including “Communism” and “Women and Progressive America,” are in RA. The description of the black ministers in Detroit is from ER to Charles Howard and George Murphy, March 10, 1950, NYPL/Schm: PR (in which she also denounces Herbert Hill). On Muriel Draper’s death in 1952, Essie was elected national co-chair (along with Virginia Epstein) of the Women’s Division of the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, and Jessica Smith was elected vice-chair, a position Freda Diamond had already held (Richard Morford to Patterson, Dec. 9, 1952, NYPL/Schm: CRC).

  13. Daily World, June 2, 1950; Daily Worker, June 6, 1950; Shaw to PR, June 13, 1950, RA. At the conference Robeson joined the majority in voting against the readmission of delegates from Yugoslavia, telling the press that “Yugoslavia has tied itself firmly to the capitalist camp.…” (Time, June 12, 1950).

  14. Interviews with Chatman Wailes, July 1, 1986, and Ishmael Flory, July 1–2, 1986; Seton, Robeson, pp. 225–27; the typescript of Robeson’s speech is in RA. The Harlem Trade Union Council published Robeson’s speech, under the title Forge Negro-Labor Unity for Peace and Jobs, as a pamphlet in August 1950. Annette Rubinstein has contrasted Robeson’s attitude when traveling in behalf of left-wing causes in 1949–50 with that of some of the prima donnas in the progressive movement. One well-known writer threw a scene when told he would only have a berth rather than a private room during a scheduled train trip. By contrast, Paul—whose large bulk really did require something more than a berth—said that money for a roomette for him was better spent on organizational work (interview, Dec. 5, 1983).