Paul Robeson

Once there was a very talented man by the name of Paul Robeson. His story is a story of America in many ways, and it had astronomical highs and abysmal lows. He was an intelligent, articulate man who sang like a baritone angel. He was the son of an escaped slave and a Quaker, and he attracted the attention of the US government with his political activity to the point where they took away his passport and ultimately his career.

I find this man fascinating not just for his talent but for his story. His life had everything. As I mentioned, his father, William Drew Robeson, was an escaped slave from North Carolina. He ran away and fought for the Union in the civil war, after which he went to Lincoln university to become a minister. He married a Quaker woman named Anna Louisa Robeson whose family had been abolitionists who had maintained stops on the underground railroad. Paul was the youngest of eight children. His mother died when he was six years old and his father moved the family to Somerville, New Jersey. Paul grew up helping his father and singing in his church. When he was 17, Paul won a scholarship to Rutgers university, where he was only the third African-American student in the school's history. Paul "swept the gym", which is to say that he participated in every sport offered at the school and excelled at all of them. He was an "All American" football player and he earned twelve varsity letters for sports in four years. But he was not just an incredible athlete. He was good at everything. He excelled academically too. He delivered his senior year graduation speech, and all the while he was doing work in the community to help his fellow African-Americans. He exceeded expectations in everything he put his hand to.

He went on to graduate from Columbia university law school in 1923 and went to work for an NYC law firm, but others in the firm resented having to work with a black lawyer and pushed him out. Reportedly he left after a white secretary refused to take dictation from a black man. He turned to the theater and put his incredible baritone voice to work for him. Since Paul's father had been a slave and a minister, Paul knew all of the spiritual hymns and African-American music and he would give concerts made entirely of African music after he traveled to Africa to study it. He made albums and starred in both theater productions and films. His first film role was in Camille in 1926. He went on to make many memorable films such as Showboat and Emperor Jones and The Proud Valley, for which he traveled to the mining communities of Wales and found kinship with the Welsh miners because they recognized him as another human being. The Welsh are a musical people, and take great pride in their singing. They invited Paul Robeson to take part in their most ancient and traditional music festival, the Eisteddfod. To them, his singing voice was the only credential he needed.

He moved to England during the 1930's and played what is considered the most superb Othello in the history of the play. In 1933 he donated all of the proceeds from All God's Chillun to Jewish refugees fleeing Germany. He sang to Loyalist troops in the Spanish civil war and spoke out against the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. In 1934 he visited the Soviet Union because of his increasing political awareness. He began using his fame and influence to advocate for the labor movement and socialist causes. He sang in 25 languages for what he considered the human struggle common to all. He was welcome everywhere from a tribal hut in Nigeria to the Royal Albert Hall in London. In 1939 he returned to the US and continued to work for worker's rights, giving concerts with songs from the Little Red Songbook, a famous book of protest and labor union songs.

Because labor unions were associated with communism and Robeson was very famous, very popular and very involved, he attracted the attention of the FBI after the war. He became a target of McCarthy, and he refused to go back on any of his activism for labor causes. In 1949 he gave a concert in Peekskill, New York with Pete Seeger and Sidney Poitier. There was a riot, and the police stepped aside to let the mob attack the singers. He had also made many trips to the Soviet Union, which made him someone very interesting to the anti-communist forces in the government. In 1950 they withdrew his passport because he wouldn't sign an affadavit denying membership in the communist party. He was blackballed. He couldn't travel overseas to work and he couldn't work anywhere in the US because nobody would risk booking him. In 1953 he gave a concert at the Peace Arch at the International Peace Gardens on the border of the US and Canada. His audience sat on the Canadian side of the border and listened to him singing and speaking from the American side.

Finally in 1958 the Supreme Court of the US reinstated his passport and overturned the affadavit ruling that had taken it away eight years before. He immediately left the US to live in Europe and travel to Soviet bloc countries, but his years of harassment and blacklisting by US government agencies had taken their toll on his mental health. His emotional state deteriorated while he was in Moscow, and in 1961 during a party he went into another room and tried to take his own life. He was taken to a Soviet hospital suffering from extreme paranoia and tried once more to kill himself. His son says that he believes that Robeson had been targeted by the CIA and MI5, and had perhaps even been subjected to psychological harassment as part of MKULTRA. Whether or not this is true, Robeson had attracted their attention with his outspokenness and his willingness to travel to the Soviet Union during the cold war. It's entirely possible that he was targeted in this way. He went back to London after his release from the hospital in Moscow and suffered a panic attack when passing the Soviet embassy. He was hospitalized again and released again, then hospitalized again in East Germany. He was released again and went back to England where he was hospitalized again and appeared to stabilize. The English doctors advised that he retire and live out the rest of his life quietly. By this point Robeson agreed with them, and went to live in obscurity in Philadelphia until his death in 1976. Between 1963 and 1976 he was invited to take part in many events honoring his life's work, but he made few public appearances and saw very few visitors. He held fast to his socialist beliefs until his death. He died of the complications of a stroke, and following his death he lay in state in Harlem. In the end, he had been silenced and his mental and physical health had been ruined because of the political pressure brought to bear on him for his outspoken views. He was a magnificent man in every sense of the word, but because he was popular and had what amounted to a social megaphone, he made himself into a target to be taken down.

When people wonder why African-Americans can never truly succeed in America, it is the examples of people like Paul Robeson that come to mind. He excelled. He was articulate and talented and intelligent. He was the son of a man who freed himself and a woman who had worked to end slavery. He had learned his people's struggle from an early age. He came from that and won a scholarship and made himself into a man of stature. He did it all on natural, inborn talent. He had none of the advantages but he did that for himself. Because he climbed to the top on his own merits, he had to be cut down and put back in his place. Because he was articulate and famous, he was dangerous. The idea that a man that talented and with convictions that strong could be destroyed for it the way he was seems the deepest sort of tragedy there is.