Exile of a Great American Artist

Communist, fellow traveler, crimson, pinko, commie, helpful fool — the searing epithets of the Chilly Warfare have misplaced their sting however of their day they have been lacerating. Relying on the place the recipient was positioned on the left-of-center spectrum, a profession is perhaps stalled, derailed, or killed. 

Paul Robeson was known as all of the above, along with the extra acquainted slurs utilized to a Black man who confirmed a little spunk in a Jim Crow tradition. The preeminent artist-activist of mid-twentieth century America, Robeson was immersed in, or fairly beat again towards, the principle currents of his instances — the Jazz Age, the Great Despair, World Warfare II , and the Chilly Warfare — with a promethean expertise that discovered expression in just about each medium of the favored arts — stage, data, live shows, radio, and movie. On no matter platform, in no matter period, informing his participation, and the response to it, was his id as a robust Black man who performed towards stereotype. 

So prodigious was Robeson’s expertise and off-the-charts his virtuosity that memoirs, biographies, and documentaries chronicling his life are inclined to lean in the direction of hagiography. It comes with the territory. He appeared sculpted from Greek marble: his six-foot-three body supported “227 pounds of bone and muscle,” as a reporter for the Afro-American wrote. The voice match the outside: a deep, resonant baritone that appeared to swell up from deep inside his soul, as if, mentioned multiple listener, he was channeling the sorrows and aspirations of his individuals.

Born on April 9, 1898, in Princeton, NJ, the son of a former enslaved one that turned a minister and a mom who was a trainer, Robeson was reared in an environment of academic uplift and spiritual devotion. He simply met the {qualifications} for “the talented tenth,” the vanguard of Black super-achievers anointed by W. E. B. Du Bois, however by any sane calculus Robeson was amongst a choose one %, or just sui generis.     

In 1915, Robeson entered Rutgers Faculty and 4 years later emerged a star athlete and scholar. He was not restricted to a single taking part in subject both in sports activities (baseball, basketball, and soccer) or the humanities (performing, oratory, and singing). Virtually all the time, he was the primary of his race to obtain the honour bestowed and there have been many: he left campus as an All-American tight finish with eleven varsity letters — and a Phi Beta Kappa key.  

From Rutgers, Robeson went to Columbia College Regulation College, the place he earned his diploma in 1923, although he by no means practiced. Two years earlier Robeson met and married Eslanda (“Essie”) Good, who matched him in smarts and formal credentials. She can be his life companion, profession supervisor and political co-conspirator. 

In fact, the function Robeson was born to play was not written by Eugene O’Neill. But even within the boundary breaking Jazz Age, an American model of Othello, the place the lead actor needn’t “black up” with burnt cork, was out of the query. It could be in London, the location of the unique premiere, that Robeson, in 1930, first performed the tragic Moor of Venice, reverse Peggy Ashcroft as Desdemona. Not till a Theatre Guild manufacturing in 1943 did Robeson break the colour line in America, above the Mason-Dixon line at the least, with Jose Ferrar as Iago, who stole the present, and Uta Hagen, taking one thing of a profession danger, as Desdemona.  

The logical showcase for Robeson’s expertise was the movement image medium, however scant choices existed for a Black man unwilling to shuck and jive. A fellow Black artist, the pioneering filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, gave Robeson his first display function in Physique and Soul (1925), casting him in two elements, as a huckster Black minister and his hard-working twin brother. The Black press known as Physique and Soul “the greatest picture ever produced with a Negro cast” (there was minimal competitors), however mainstream — that’s, white — response was nonexistent: “race films” have been relegated to a subaltern circuit of segregated “race theaters.” 

Hollywood didn’t beckon. In lieu of a main studio contract, nevertheless, Robeson acquired star billing (one other first for a Black man) for an unbiased manufacturing, launched via United Artists, and shot in New York, the function movie model of The Emperor Jones, produced by John Krimsky and Gifford Cochran; directed by Dudley Murphy, a versatile filmmaker at dwelling with each experimental and studio system cinema; and written by Du-Bose Heyward, creator of the 1925 novel Porgy. 

Nevertheless retrograde the racial politics and overwrought the melodrama might look at present, The Emperor Jones was in its time an unprecedented cinematic celebration of potent Black masculinity. In a chain gang sequence, Robeson is shot from low angle, full body, head-to-toe, bare-chested, in striped pants, in leg irons, hammering rocks with a sledgehammer, radiating an vitality that can’t be shackled. By no means once more would he be accorded such a commanding starring function on the American movement image display. The British nevertheless embraced him. Most of Robeson’s restricted filmography within the Thirties — Borderline (1930), Sanders of the River (1935), The Track of Freedom (1936), King Solomon’s Mines (1937), Darkish Sands (1937), Massive Fella (1937), and The Proud Valley (1940) — are British productions that received little discover, and typically not even a business launch, in the USA. 

By then, Robeson was devoting his formidable skills to a different subject. The financial devastation of the Great Despair and the racism of his homeland had pushed him leftward politically — laborious left, to the Soviet Union. He stood there rock stable for the remaining of his life. Robeson turned a tireless proponent for the causes that animated American leftists of all stripes within the Thirties: labor solidarity, the Republican aspect within the Spanish Civil Warfare, anti-Nazism, and, of course, equal rights for Black Individuals. Now, when he sang “Ol’ Man River,” he refitted the lyrics to swimsuit the event. “I’m tired of livin’ and feared of dyin’” turned ”I have to carry on struggling till I’m dyin’” and “you get a little drunk and you land in jail” turned “you get a little spunk and you land in jail.”

Predictably, Robeson’s political activism attracted the eye of J. Edgar Hoover, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. For greater than forty years, Hoover’s G-men devoted a whole bunch of hundreds of man hours to the menace that was Paul Robeson: debriefing informants, wiretapping telephone conversations, and monitoring rallies, live shows, and performs. All through the information, FBI brokers repeatedly discuss with Robeson as “an avowed communist” and “an alleged member of the Communist party,” however the smoking gun — a photostat of a communist get together card — will not be reproduced. Irrespective of. If Robeson had any misgivings about Stalinist Russia, he by no means expressed them. To interrupt ranks with the united states, he mentioned, can be “reactionary.”

After the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor, for the primary and solely time, Robeson’s artwork and politics have been in excellent synch with the wants of the federal authorities: triumphalist patriotism and egalitarian tolerance. Throughout WWII, as a dwelling entrance warrior, he bought battle bonds, headlined incentive rallies, and added his title to Workplace of Warfare Info-approved programming on radio. The battle years additionally marked his last look in a main Hollywood movie, a segregated sequence with Ethel Waters within the episodic Tales of Manhattan (1942). 

The mutual affection was quick lived. The top of World Warfare II meant the top of Allied unity. Virtually in a single day — or extra exactly March 5, 1946, when Winston Churchill delivered his Iron Curtain speech in Fulton, MO — “Uncle Joe” Stalin, the kindly pipe smoking chief of our gallant Russian allies, morphed into the sinister face of the Soviet menace.  

Unconcerned that the zeitgeist had shifted, Robeson by no means flinched. In 1946, known as earlier than the Joint Truth-Discovering Committee of Un-American Actions, the state of California’s model of the U.S. Congress’s Home Committee on Un-American Actions (HUAC), Robeson refused to say whether or not he was a communist however admitted his allegiance to the trigger. He mentioned he would definitely want being a member of the Communist Occasion to being a Republican.

In lots of respects, 1949 was Robeson’s breakthrough — or breakaway — 12 months from postwar American tradition. In Paris for a communist-backed Peace Convention, he mentioned that Black Individuals would refuse to combat in an American battle. In Moscow for his first postwar go to, he beheld an earthly paradise whose system in a single era “has raised our people to the full dignity of mankind.”  

Again dwelling, the blowback from Paris and Moscow was fierce. Newspaper editors typeset snarky headlines (“Old Man Volga” was a favourite) and columnists supplied the inevitable recommendation to adore it or go away it. Hollywood’s right-wing political motion group, the Movement Image Alliance for the Preservation of American Beliefs, printed adverts within the commerce press: “Give the Commies Enough Robeson and They’ll Hang Themselves.”

Robeson ignored the flak and pressed ahead. On August 27, 1949, he scheduled a live performance for the profit of the Harlem chapter of the Civil Rights Congress. The positioning was the Lakeland Acres picnic grounds off the principle freeway close to Peekskill, NY. 

The present drew a big crowd, not all of whom have been followers. 1000’s of anticommunist agitators, skilled patriots, and unreconstructed confederates gathered to protest and disrupt. The cultural historic echoes — an unruly mob out for blood, incited by a transgressive Black man — have been unattainable to overlook. A cluster of blazing crosses on the horizon illuminated the hyperlink. Robeson got here to the location, however seeing the violent mobs and the dearth of police safety, he retreated to keep away from bloodshed.   

The live performance was rescheduled for September 4, 1949, on the close by grounds of Outdated Hole Brook Golf Course. Given a week to marshal their respective forces, each side have been out in drive and able to rumble. The Robeson viewers was estimated at 20,000; the protestors at 8,000. In place of the unique, effigies of Robeson have been hung up with indicators studying: “Wake Up America. Peekskill Did.”

Regardless of the hazard — males with weapons have been noticed within the neighborhood and Robeson made an inviting goal — he went on with the present. Surrounded by bodyguards, he sang “Ol’ Man River” with the “I must keep fighting until I’m dying” lyric change.  

After the present, a melee ensued. “An undetermined number of Robesonites were stoned and cut by glass when their auto windows were smashed,” reported the New York Every day Information. “When some of them resisted, they were hit with nightsticks and forced to sit on the grass as the police continued their search.” It was condign punishment, implied the tabloid.

What have been dubbed “the Peekskill riots” acquired widespread protection from the newspapers, radio, and newsreels — and on the brand new display simply getting into the media panorama. WPIX, the New York-based community that billed itself as The Information Tv Station, broadcast newsreels of the Peekskill Riots that very same night time at 7:15 p.m. on the Telepix information program. “Robeson concert starts riot,” learn the title card.

The video report on the Peekskill riots was one of the few instances that the title and picture of Paul Robeson — who had conquered stage, radio, data, and the movement image display — appeared on tv in Chilly Warfare America.

Exiled From the Airwaves

The consensus of the company executives working the brand new consensus medium in postwar America was that communists shouldn’t be seen on it. Robeson was one of the primary performers to be blacklisted from tv, and his banishment lasted longer than some other performer of the blacklist period — twenty-five years, ending solely along with his loss of life. 

Paradoxically, it was the nice intentions of an outdated good friend of Robeson’s that led to the everlasting no admittance coverage. In 1950, former First Woman and liberal normal bearer Eleanor Roosevelt entered the lounge medium with a faux-cozy speak present entitled Immediately with Mrs. Roosevelt. Debuting on February 12, 1950, the present was telecast on Sunday afternoons from 4:00-4:30 p.m. on a “sustaining basis” — that’s, the community picked up the tab in hopes that the present would achieve a following and appeal to a business sponsor. 

Immediately with Mrs. Roosevelt originated within the Colonial Room of the Lodge Park Sheraton in New York, with the visitors seated round a desk presided over by the hostess. Mrs. Roosevelt’s entry to A-list energy brokers was confirmed by the line-up for the primary telecast, a dialogue of the hydrogen bomb: Albert Einstein (on movie); J. Robert Oppenheimer, the daddy of the atomic bomb; David Lilienthal, chairman of the Atomic Power Fee; and Sen. Brian McMahon, chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Power.  Nobody turned down an invite from Eleanor Roosevelt. 

On the shut of the present of March 12, 1950, announcer Ben Grauer teased subsequent Sunday’s episode: Mrs. Roosevelt can be in dialog with Paul Robeson; Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., and Perry Howard, from the Republican Nationwide Committee of Mississippi. The subject on the espresso desk was to be “The Position of the Negro in the American Political Picture.” 

No sooner had Robeson’s title gone out over the airwaves than the NBC switchboard lit up with offended calls from Chilly Warfare media warriors. Not in contrast to a military of X-bots at present, a community of anti-communist crusaders stood prepared to choose up a phone or hearth off a telegram each time a suspected communist is perhaps poised to subvert the airwaves.

By 3:00 p.m. on Monday, NBC had caved to the stress. “Robeson will not be on Mrs. Roosevelt’s program next Sunday,” introduced Charles R. Denny, NBC’s govt vice chairman. “We are agreed that his appearance would lead only to misunderstanding and confusion and no good purpose would be solved in having Robeson speak on the issue of Negroes in politics.”  

Robeson responded on model. “I won’t be silenced,” he informed a crowd on Chicago’s southside the week after the cancellation. “I shall continue to fight for a decent life for the Negro people and all oppressed people, and for a peaceful world in which all men can walk with full human dignity.” 

Robeson’s case was an early warning signal of a new enterprise mannequin. In June 1950, the tv blacklist was codified when American Enterprise Consultants, a self-styled communist alert community, printed a skinny quantity entitled Purple Channels: The Report on Communist Affect in Radio and Tv, a supply e book for broadcasters cautious of platforming the fallacious performer. In alphabetical order, the e book listed 151 allegedly subversive artists and tallied up their offenses. Robeson was not included within the checklist, most likely as a result of any enumeration of his offenses — signed petitions, appearances at rallies, public statements, and so forth. — would have taken up too many pages. Nevertheless, performers could possibly be listed in Purple Channels merely for being Robeson adjoining. The musician Dean Dixon made the checklist for being “a supporter of Paul Robeson”; the poet and author Shirley Graham for being a biographer of Robeson; and the live performance pianist Ray Lev for attending the Peekskill live performance.

Robeson, unrepentant, paid dearly for his constancy to the Soviet Union. His annual revenue dropped from $100,000 in 1947 to $6,000 in 1952. In 1951, when MGM remade Present Boat, Robeson was not thought of as a candidate to reprise the function of Joe, and never as a result of he was too outdated. 

Robeson gave his critics lots of ammunition. On December 21, 1952, on the event of Josef Stalin’s 73rd birthday, Moscow introduced that Robeson had been awarded the Stalin Peace Prize for being “the standard bearer of the oppressed Negro people and all honest Americans struggling against imperialist reactionaries preparing a disastrous war for Americans.” Robeson was thrilled by the popularity. “The Stalin Peace Prize will inspire me to work more diligently than ever before for the kind of world I know is possible and which is the dream of all mankind,” he declared at a press convention. 

In 1950, within the wake of Paris and Peekskill, the U.S. State Division lifted — that’s confiscated — Robeson’s passport on “the ground that his travel overseas would be prejudicial to the best interest of the United States.”  It was a widespread authorities tactic throughout the McCarthy period: on the speculation of holding your folks shut however your enemies nearer, the State Division denied freedom of journey to Individuals who would possibly preach an un-American gospel past the three-mile restrict.

All through the Nineteen Fifties, Robeson made repeated efforts to acquire a new passport for live performance and talking engagements abroad, however the State Division all the time denied his request. The feds have been adamant that Robeson first wanted to “answer questions in respect to Communist Party membership.” Robeson simply as adamantly refused. 

In the meantime, on June 12, 1956, Robeson responded to an overdue summons to look earlier than a subcommittee of the Home Un-American Actions Committee.  In contrast to the hearings into alleged communist subversion in Hollywood in October 1947, the committee was investigating whether or not communists — like Robeson — had obtained passports to journey overseas to advertise anti-American propaganda. Just like the screenwriters John Howard Lawson and Dalton Trumbo in 1947, the witness was loud and defiant. “You are the non-patriots and you are the un-Americans and you ought to be ashamed of yourself!” Robeson shouted at his interrogators. In contrast to Lawson and Trumbo, nevertheless, he was not dragged from the witness desk, which might have a difficult activity for a sergeant at arms. 

A vindication of kinds lastly got here on June 16, 1958, when the U.S. Supreme Court docket overturned the U.S. State Division’s warrantless seizure of the passports of U.S. residents. On June 26, 1958, the reluctant State Division lastly issued Robeson a passport. 

Robeson set off for friendlier territory: the UK, the place he was welcomed as a conquering hero. On July 28, 1958,  on a 30-minute particular for ATV entitled “Paul Robeson Sings,” he carried out on tv for the primary time. “Paul Robeson’s personality, as towering as his build, shone right through his half hour stint,” mentioned Selection’s London primarily based reviewer. 

American tv viewers have been no so lucky. To the top, the blacklist denied Robeson entry to the American airwaves. Tv was the one media platform that, in America at the least, Robeson didn’t grasp, for causes that had nothing to do along with his talent set. 

For the subsequent a number of years, Robeson toured the non-American world.  In 1963, in deteriorating well being each bodily and emotionally, he returned to the USA.  He spent the remaining of his life in digital seclusion, often rising to obtain an award or honor an outdated good friend, a melancholy final act to a as soon as vibrant public life. On January 23, 1976, he died of issues of a stroke. 

Being lifeless did nothing to make Paul Robeson much less controversial. In 1978, Robeson was refused a star on Hollywood’s Stroll of Fame. Politics, claimed the person in cost of the sidewalk, had nothing to do with it: Robeson merely wasn’t nicely sufficient recognized. A firestorm of protests erupted and the Stroll of Fame fee unexpectedly backtracked. Robeson received a star, which was devoted on April 9, 1979, his birthday. Additionally in 1978, Paul Robeson, a one-man present starring the late James Earl Jones, maybe the one actor with the stature and charisma to embody the unique, was mounted on Broadway. Activists denounced the play as “a pernicious perversion of the essence of Paul Robeson.” It closed after 77 performances. 

Immediately, Robeson is remembered as an ascendant determine in any cultural historical past of America within the twentieth century, the topic of thick biographies, the inspiration for educational conferences, and the subject of worshipful documentaries.  

But, as all the time with the blacklisting of a nice artist, it’s the might-have-beens which are most haunting, the absence of the work Robeson was not allowed to do. In one other world, a status Hollywood manufacturing of Othello, starring Robeson, with Jose Ferrer whispering into his ear as Iago, and a gutsy younger display ingenue — Julie Harris? Susan Strassberg? — as Desdemona, might need been launched, a model to scare away each Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier from blacking up for the half. Or, since we’re dreaming, a assortment of stay performances on the tv selection reveals of the Nineteen Fifties, preserved on chalky kinescope.