by Phil Keith
* * *
Paul Robeson was one of the most intriguing and polarizing figures of the twentieth century. After the passing of Frederick Douglass in 1895 (the year Bullard was born) and before the rise of Dr. Martin Luther King in the 1950s, there were very few more prominent figures on the stage of black activism than Paul Robeson. Often forgotten today, in the wake of Dr. King, Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Al Sharpton, and others, Robeson, for several decades, was arguably the most famous black man in America.
He was born in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1898, the youngest of seven children (two of whom did not live beyond childhood). His father was a former slave turned Presbyterian minister. When Robeson was six, his mother, who was nearly blind, got too close to a kitchen stove and her garments caught fire. She was burned so badly that she died soon thereafter. Paul’s father, William Sr., did the best he could to raise his children as a single parent, while also tending to his flock at the Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church in Princeton.
Perhaps Robeson’s stirrings as a social agitator came from his father who, in 1901, ended up on the wrong side of a congregational disagreement. The white overseers of Reverend Robeson’s black congregation wanted him to stop preaching about “social injustice.” The reverend refused and he was voted out after twenty years of steadfast service. The family then moved to Westfield, NJ, where Pastor William became head of the Downer Street Saint Luke African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. After several years as head of that congregation, he was transferred to the Saint Thomas AME Zion Church in Somerville. This would be the reverend’s last parish, as he died, age seventy-three, while still in charge, in 1918.
Young Robeson was a natural athlete who also had, once past puberty, a stunningly powerful basso profundo voice. A star player in several sports in high school, he was offered a scholarship to Rutgers. When he matriculated, in 1915, he became only the third African American student to have attended the state college of New Jersey. Even though an “enlightened” Northern college, Rutgers, at that time, still harbored a great deal of latent racism and Robeson had to battle it the entire time he was an undergraduate. He bore down on his studies, winning many hearts and minds in the process. It did not hurt that along the way he lettered in five sports and led the football team to two championships. He was a first-rate debater, outstanding actor, All-American and member of Phi Beta Kappa. His classmates elected him valedictorian of the Class of 1919.
After Rutgers, Robeson enrolled at New York University Law School, but after a semester he transferred to Columbia University School of Law. He said he “felt more comfortable” living in Harlem and attending a law school that tended to be more liberal. To pay for his education he played professional football on the weekends. He signed on for one year with the Akron Pros (NFL champions in 1920) then started for the Milwaukee Badgers in 1921-22, a team that was a predecessor to the Green Bay Packers. He completed his law degree—and his professional football career—in 1922.
Two years earlier he had met Eslanda Cardozo Goode at the Columbia University summer school. “Essie” was from a long line of slave families but her paternal great-grandfather was a Sephardic Jew whose family had been expelled from Spain in a seventeenth century upheaval. She considered herself to be Jewish and her religion was to become a factor in Robeson’s career and public persona. Essie had a bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois and was attending Columbia to pursue a medical degree. The two fell in love and married in 1921 and Essie, seeing her husband’s potential in many areas, decided to give up her pursuit of medicine and manage his career. She was the one who convinced Robeson to seriously pursue professional acting and singing, something he often joked that he did to “get her to quit pestering me.”
Essie had good instincts. Robeson had a fabulous voice and a wonderful stage presence. Soon, he was singing in major productions on Broadway, producing his own one-man shows, acting in movies, and traveling around the country and most of Europe.1 Robeson set aside his career as a lawyer to pursue the much more lucrative entertainment gigs he was being offered. Along the way, in 1927, the couple had their one and only child, Paul Jr.
In the 1930s Robeson began to have a political and ideological awakening, and became much more aware of his African heritage. While performing a series of shows in London, he took time to learn a number of African dialects at the School of Oriental and African Studies. During the same sojourn he wrote a widely read essay titled “I Want to Be African.”
In 1934, Robeson accepted an invitation to visit the Soviet Union, at the behest of Sergei Eisenstein, the acclaimed Soviet movie director. On the way, he and Essie passed through Nazi Germany. The racist attitudes he encountered there horrified him. By contrast, in the Soviet Union—or at least the society that was shown to him—Robeson felt “liberated.” He said of his experiences there: “Here I am not a Negro but a human being for the first time in my life. I walk in full human dignity.” His experiences in Soviet Russia made a lasting impression on Robeson, to the point where he began to defend Communism fully (although he never joined the Communist Party).
Like Eugene Bullard, Robeson was exposed to a completely new culture after which he began to fully understand the boundaries of the racial divides in his native country. He brought the ideals of Soviet society back to the United States with him and used them frequently to combat Jim Crow America. It would bring him no end of grief and would shape the arc of the remainder of his career and life.
By the late 1930s, Robeson was among the most widely recognized entertainers in the world and a bankable Hollywood star. Gaining great acclaim, he appeared in the film version of the Eugene O’Neill classic The Emperor Jones and the adventure flick King Solomon’s Mines. He was also a ready player in just about any cause to advance labor, anti-Fascism, and racial equality or oppose political oppression. He supported the anti-Franco Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, even traveling to Spain to entertain the Republican wounded. He backed Jawaharlal Nehru’s thrust for Indian independence and sided with China against the Japanese. After he learned a patriotic pro-China anthem and sang it in Chinese, the ballad was adopted as (Republican) China’s national anthem.
During World War II, while Bullard was fighting in and then escaping France, Robeson pitched in fully in support of America. He gave numerous benefit concerts around the nation to help underwrite the war effort, he sang with shipyard workers as they toiled away building America’s fleet, and he hosted a regular radio broadcast of patriotic songs called “Ballad for Americans.” He found time to advocate for black players in Major League Baseball and even met with the legendary commissioner of baseball “Kennesaw Mountain” Landis2 to push for inclusion (to no immediate effect).
In 1946, Robeson met with President Harry Truman to urge antilynching legislation in the wake of four young blacks (two couples) having been hanged from a tree in Georgia. Robeson, somehow, offended the president’s native Southern sensibilities, and Truman abruptly ended the meeting. As a result, Robeson enthusiastically supported Henry Wallace for president in 1948, including a risky, life-threatening tour through the South stumping for a candidate labeled a socialist.
In June 1949, Robeson was invited to speak at the Paris Peace Congress. In his electrifying talk he extolled the white immigrants and black workers who had built America and declared, “We shall support peace and friendship with all nations, with Soviet Russia and the People’s Republic [of China].”
These remarks would have been incendiary enough, but for some unknown reason, the Associated Press reported that Robeson said, “It is unthinkable that American Negroes would go to war on behalf of those who have oppressed us for generations against a country (the Soviet Union) which in one generation has raised our people to the full dignity of mankind.”
It has never been determined how his remarks became so mangled. It was later discovered, by looking at the actual time marks, placed by the teletype machines automatically, that t
he AP’s misrepresentation was actually being broadcast at the exact time that Robeson was beginning his speech. Obviously, someone was given a copy of Robeson’s remarks in advance (not an uncommon practice, even today) and decided to alter them. The “editor” was never discovered.
Both sets of thoughts, though one was less volatile than the other, were like matches to gasoline. Robeson spent years decrying the false copy, but it never did much good. People believed what they wanted to believe. The immediate result was a hue and cry that reverberated across America. One of the most recognized African American actors in the land was suddenly a pariah to anyone who believed that Communists were infiltrating the American way of life—and millions did. The infamous House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in Congress was immediately on Robeson’s back, calling witnesses, like Jackie Robinson, to testify against him. Movie and stage roles began evaporating. Recording contracts vanished. His popularity as an entertainer plummeted.
The firestorm was still raging as Robeson was scheduled to give an outdoor concert in Lakeland Acres just north of Peekskill, New York, on August 27, 1949. Robeson had performed three times already at Lakeland without incident. The spot was close enough to Harlem to be easily accessible by car or bus and yet away from the sweltering streets of late summer. The August concert was to be a benefit for the Civil Rights Congress, an organization founded in 1946 to primarily speak out against legal injustices against African Americans. This group was quickly labeled “Communist.” Although the group had no such affiliation, it, too became a ready target for the HUAC.
On the morning of the scheduled concert, people started arriving early, but few in this crowd were concertgoers. Most of the early arrivals were there to prevent the concert from happening at all: hundreds of local residents showed up with baseball bats and bags of rocks. The local American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars chapters turned out their members to prevent the “Commies,” “niggers,” and “kikes” from holding their show. A likeness of Robeson was strung up on a large oak tree and a group of Klansmen set up a cross on the hillside near the stage and proceeded to set it on fire.
As concertgoers got off the trains and arrived by bus and car, they were pelted with rocks. Several people were dragged from cars and beaten. The anti-Communist vigilantes screamed epithets involving blacks, Jews, and “reds.” Robeson’s car was hit by stones, and its windows shattered. He tried to get out of his car several times to reason with the protesters but was dragged back in by his friends as cascades of small missiles were hurled in his direction. Neither the local or state police forces detailed to monitor the crowds lifted a finger to break up the riots or help the concert promoters.
After several hours of threats, beatings, and pushing and shoving, it was decided to cancel the event. The concert attendees got back on the trains and buses, many of them bleeding from cuts and scrapes. The mayor of Peekskill deemed it a “peaceful protest.” The state police commander huffed and said the whole affair was outside his jurisdiction. The local Joint Veterans Council simply declared it a “parade” held without disorder and “perfectly disbanded.”
For Robeson and his supporters, it was a terrible disgrace. They vowed to push ahead and pledged that next time they would be better prepared. Three days later, Robeson spoke to a crowd of over three thousand, including Eugene Bullard, at the Golden Gate Ballroom in Harlem. Robeson pledged to make another attempt, vowing to “be loyal to [the] America of true traditions; to the America of abolitionists, of Harriet Tubman, of Thaddeus Stevens, of those who fought for my people’s freedom. Not of those who tried to enslave them. I’ll be back with my friends in Peekskill.”
The concert was rescheduled for September 4. This time, the early arrivals would be on the side of Robeson and his friends. The newly formed Westchester Committee for Law and Order was put in charge of preconcert staffing and protection. Over 2,500 union workers from the Fur and Leather Workers, the Longshoremen and the United Electrical Workers agreed to form a human cordon around the site for the rescheduled concert. This time the venue was the old Hollow Brook Golf Course in Cortlandt Manor, about four miles from Peekskill, on US 202.
Twenty thousand people showed up and the security contingent directed by the Westchester Committee and the New York Communist Party effectively kept all local protestors, and even the police, far from the concert.
The audience was warmed up by piano performances from the prize-winning Juilliard virtuoso Leonid Hambro and the Russian sensation Ray Lev, playing pieces by Bach, Chopin, Ravel, and Prokofiev. Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie were on hand and Seeger performed his ballad (later made famous by Peter, Paul and Mary) “If I Had a Hammer.”
As the main act, Robeson belted out several of his favorite songs, to the utter delight of the crowd. He gave a stirring rendition of “America the Beautiful,” an aria from “Boris Godunov,” several Negro spirituals, and ended with “Ol’ Man River,” his signature song from Showboat. He appealed for funds to support the Civil Rights Congress then closed the show. The concert did not go off without incident, however.
Wearing his ever-present beret, a white dress shirt, and black trousers, Eugene Bullard had arrived on one of the Harlem buses just as the concert was starting, shortly after 2:00 p.m. The protective cordon of union workers and Communist Party men had moved away from the entrance to the concert and onto the golf course to better protect the thousands who were already on the grounds. This left the approximately nine hundred local and state police officers on duty outside the concert to keep the late-arriving concert-goers, Bullard among them, from the hundreds of baseball bat–waving veterans, anti-Communist locals, Klansmen, and anti-Semites who had gathered—once again—to disrupt the performance.
As witnessed by Paul Robeson Jr., one of the protestors spat on Bullard as he walked by, striding toward the entrance. Bullard, of course, could not let the slight pass without reacting. He spat back. This brought an instant reaction by a Westchester County deputy sheriff, who was standing three feet away. As documented clearly by photographers there at the time, the deputy began shouting at Bullard then beating him with his nightstick. Bullard raised his arms above his head to wield off the blows, then he staggered back and fell to the ground. Other police joined in on the beating, which lasted almost a minute.3
Bullard was bruised, and also received a couple of scrapes, but he was not deterred. When the police moved on to other victims, the proud war veteran and Resistance fighter got up, recovered his beret, placed it back on his head, brushed himself off, and continued on into the concert, with others following him inside, defying the glares of the police and protestors.
After the concert, those who had attended took buses and private cars back to Harlem and elsewhere in New York City. Since one-third of the crowd had been African American, they became easy targets. Most of the vehicles were forced down the two roads available—and both were lined with thousands of angry locals, VFW members, anti-Communists, and American Legionnaires. They threw rocks and insults at every vehicle that looked “black” or “Communist,” including one bus of schoolchildren from Harlem returning from a summer camp. They had nothing to do with the concert, but the bus driver had gotten lost and ended up in the concert traffic. Twelve children were injured by broken glass and flying stones.
Pete Seeger and his wife and children rode along with Woody Guthrie and their car was pelted with hundreds of stones. Seeger tacked up a shirt on one of the windows to prevent flying glass from harming anyone. Later, using the old saying, “If life sticks you with lemons, make lemonade,” Seeger used the rocks that landed in the car in the construction of his chimney at the cabin he built in Fishkill, New York. For decades, they provided a reminder of the Peekskill events.
* * *
1 Especially praised were his performances in Showboat and Othello, in both the US and Europe.
2 The very same Judge Landis who sat on the bench during the trial o
f Jack Johnson.
3 Robeson Archive, video entitled “Peekskill Outrage.” Also on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pgyACdT1rM (accessed 12/08/2018).
25
NOT-SO-SENTIMENTAL JOURNEYS
The beating inflicted on Eugene Bullard in Peekskill was painful, and it further insulted a body that had experienced more than its share of injuries. He felt some pride, though, that it had not occurred during a back-alley brawl but in defense of civil rights. The Pittsburgh Courier had declared the Peekskill incidents among the “blackest and most shameful spectacles in American history.”
Amazingly, the newly inflicted injuries did not slow him down. On the contrary, it revived, for a short while, the interest of the American public in the story of the “first Negro fighter pilot.”
Pictures of Bullard, on the ground, after being struck by the troopers, appeared on the front pages of the New York Daily Mirror and the New York Amsterdam News. Captions correctly identified him and several lines were written about his status as a former pilot and his gallant service in two world wars. For Bullard, it was the first time his legend, or any part of it, had been told accurately in any American newspaper. The story created a minor flurry of interest in Eugene Bullard but was soon subsumed in the general disinterest of the American public in any positive news about what were routinely referred to as “colored people.”
The Peekskill Riots, as they became known, were indeed an ugly blot on American racial history. However, despite the bravery of those who attended—including that of Eugene Bullard, rising from the ground after a beating to lead others forward—the violent incidents were merely a blip on the civil rights radar. Paul Robeson called a general press conference the day after, September 5, at the Council of African Affairs on 26th Street in Manhattan. Professor Lloyd reports that Bullard “appeared with fifteen other people, most of them, like him, bandaged, to testify against police brutality aimed especially, in their view, at African Americans. Bullard said he was a disabled veteran of two foreign wars and that he had been knocked down and beaten by police for trying to enter the grounds.”1