SYMHC Classics: Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson’s stances on political and civil rights issues and his communist affiliations catalyzed protests that were fueled with an undercurrent of racism and antisemitism.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. I drove past an exit for Peakskill, New
York last week, and that reminded me of our episode
on Paul Robson and the Peak Skill riots. And around
the same time, there were also a bunch of headlines
about a proposed measure that would make it easier for
the State Department to revoke people's passports or refuse to
issue those passports, which also reminded me of this episode.

(00:25):
Since the United States revoked Paul Robson's passport for his
activism and political speech, that passport measure in question was
ultimately cut from the bill that it was supposed to
be part of, but all of this was still on
my mind. This episode originally came out on October third
of twenty twenty two, and at the beginning we mentioned

(00:46):
another podcast that Tracy used to be on called This
Day in History Class. At that time, This Day in
History Class was still being produced, but it is no
longer releasing new episodes. We also do not have any
news or any update to show here about a proposed
biopic of Paul Robison, which we mentioned at the end
of this episode. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class.

(01:10):
A production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. Back when
I was also on another podcast in addition to this
one called This Day in History Class, which is a
podcast that still exists, but I haven't been on it

(01:32):
in a couple of years because that was too much
work to do. I did an episode on the Peak
Skill Riots, and it has been on my list for
a longer episode over here since then because This Day
in History Class is like five to ten minutes long
per episode, and I thought it wanted to have a
longer treatment of it. I bumped it up to the
top of my list when it came up in our

(01:55):
recent episode on Eugene Jock Bullard. And so it is
today episode of the show, and the Peakskill Riots surrounded
a concert by singer and activist Paul Robeson. So we're
going to start with some background on him. Paul Bustill
Robeson Senior was born in Princeton, New Jersey, on April ninth,
eighteen ninety eight. He was the youngest of four children

(02:17):
born to William Drew Robeson and Maria Louisa Bustell. William
had been enslaved from birth and had become a minister
after liberating himself in eighteen sixty and Maria was a teacher. Sadly,
Maria died in a fire when Paul was only six.
Throughout his life, Robesen was a high achiever academically. He

(02:38):
earned the highest score in the state on a scholarship
exam to attend Rutgers University. Then he graduated from Rutgers
as valedictorian with honors that included Phi Beta Kappa and
membership in the Kapain Skull honor society. He played multiple
sports at the varsity level and was a two time
All American in football at Rutgers and then as a

(03:00):
former He was praised for his skills in both acting
and music, with a just beautiful voice that was described
in terms like magnificent and celestial. And he did all
this while faced with oppressive and sometimes violent racism. He
was the only black student in his class at Rutgers
when he started in nineteen fifteen, and he was the

(03:21):
university's first black student athlete. White football players physically attacked
him during tryouts, and at one point he was pulled
from a game when Washington and Lee University threatened not
to play if he was on the team. Robesen stood
up against this and other abuse, not only for his
own sake, but for that of others. In an interview

(03:43):
in nineteen forty four, he said of his time at
Rutgers quote, I wasn't just there on my own. I
was the representative of a lot of Negro boys who
wanted to play football and wanted to go to college,
and as their representative, I had to show that I
could take whatever was handed out. After graduating from Rutgers,
Robeson went on to Columbia University, where he earned a

(04:05):
law degree in nineteen twenty three. But he found that
because of his race, he did not have a lot
of opportunities as a lawyer, so he focused on becoming
an entertainer, appearing on stage in New York and London
and acting in films. In nineteen twenty five, he also
launched a career as a singer, with a repertoire that
came to focus on spirituals working songs and songs associated

(04:27):
with the labor movement. His wife, Islanda, was his manager.
They had married in nineteen twenty one Robeson's career really flourished,
both as an actor and as a singer, and it
was groundbreaking. For example, for decades, the title role of
Othello had been played by white men in blackface, and
in the US it was almost unheard of for a

(04:50):
black man to start in a role opposite a white woman.
But Robeson broke this color line, appearing as a fellow
in London in nineteen thirty and on Broadway in nineteen
forty three. This Broadway production of Othello ran for two
hundred ninety six performances, which set a record for Shakespeare
on Broadway. By this point, Robesen was also outspoken against

(05:14):
both racism and fascism. Starting in the nineteen thirties, he
had become increasingly focused on equal rights for racial and
ethnic minorities and on workers' rights in economic equality. He
saw both his performances and his life as a way
to support democracy and equality and to oppose fascism, colonialism, exploitation,

(05:35):
and war. He traveled internationally as part of this, including
making a trip to the Soviet Union in nineteen thirty four,
and there he found an affinity with its workers and
its peasant class, and he also said he felt like
this was the first place he had ever been where
he had been treated like a full human being, rather

(05:55):
than targeted and vilified because of his race. After this
busin that he had started learning Russian and adding Russian
songs to his repertoire. He frequently talked about the huge
difference and how he was treated in the USSR as
compared to how he was treated in the US. This
sympathy with the Soviet Union had a major impact on

(06:17):
his life and career after World War II, with the
start of the Cold War. At that point, it would
have been seen as deeply suspicious for any American to
express these kinds of views, but it was especially suspicious
coming from a black man, particularly a black man who
was also outspoken on subjects like racial and economic equality.

(06:38):
In April of nineteen forty nine, Robesen was invited to
perform at the Paris Peace Congress also called the World
Congress of the Peace Partisans. This was a peace conference
that had been established by the Soviet Union. After his
musical performance at the conference, he spoke extemporaneously, and according

(06:59):
to a French transcript, he said, quote, we in America
do not forget that it is on the backs of
the poor whites of Europe and on the backs of
millions of black people. The wealth of America has been acquired,
and we are resolved that it shall be distributed in
an equitable manner among all of our children. And we

(07:19):
don't want any hysterical stupidity about our participating in a
war against anybody, no matter whom we are determined to
fight for peace. We do not wish to fight the
Soviet Union. However, before he even started speaking, a different
quote had already been filed with the Associated Press. The

(07:41):
AP reported Robeson is saying, quote, it is unthinkable that
American Negroes would go to war on behalf of those
who have oppressed us for generations against one which in
one generation has lifted our people to full human dignity.
The AP write up also reported that Robeson had called
President Truman's program for colonial development in Africa an invasion

(08:04):
that equated to a new slavery. The New York Times
ran both this AP report and another article on April
twenty first of nineteen forty nine. This other article was
headlined Paris quote Peace Congress, a sales US and Atlantic
packed upholds Soviet This piece quoted Robesen as saying, quote,

(08:25):
we colonial peoples have contributed to the building of the
United States and are determined to share in its wealth.
We denounced the policy of the United States government, which
is similar to that of Hitler and Goebbels. We want
peace and liberty, and we'll combat for them, along with
the Soviet Union the democracies of Eastern Europe, China, and Indonesia. Immediately,

(08:47):
Robesen was denounced as a communist and a trader. Newspapers
sought comment from other prominent black people, expecting them to
denounce Robesen as well. The US State Department demanded a
response from Roy Wilkins and Walter White of the NAACP,
and the House an American Activities Committee brought in Jackie

(09:07):
Robinson to testify against Paul Robson in July of nineteen
forty nine. Robesen and Robinson were two of the most
famous black men in the United States at this point,
and so this was an intentional effort to try to
get an equally prominent black man to denounce Paul Robson.
Jackie Robinson apparently reluctantly testified that Paul Robson did not

(09:31):
speak for all black people, and that while he was
entitled to his own views, he sounded silly expressing them
in public. Jackie Robinson also said of the ongoing civil
rights struggles in the US, quote, we can win our
fight without the communists, and we don't want their help.
All of this was happening just at the start of
the Second Red Scare. Civil rights, labor rights, and other

(09:55):
progressive organizations were already under a lot of scrutiny did
have communists among their members. The Communist Party also advocated
for things like labor rights and equal civil rights across
races and sexes, so it made it easy to brand
other organizations fighting for these same things as communists. Many

(10:16):
civil rights organizations and their leaders were eager to distance
themselves from Communism as much as possible, and all of
this fed into why some of the people and organizations
who had previously seen Robeson as an ally suddenly shunned
him and even condemned him. At first, Robeson, who was
still in Europe, had no idea what was happening back

(10:38):
in the United States, and when he found out, he
initially did not realize the scope of it. He thought
he could just issue a response when he got back home,
but once it became clear, it was really devastating, especially
when it came to Jackie Robinson's comments. As a black
athlete himself, Robeson had actively supported Robinson's efforts to break

(11:01):
the color line in Major League Baseball, and publicly, Robesen
maintained his support, saying quote, I have no quarrel with Jackie.
I have a great deal of respect for him. He
is entitled to his view. I feel that the House
Committee has insulted Jackie. It has insulted me, it has
insulted the entire Negro race. All of this happened shortly

(11:25):
before Robeson was supposed to perform near Peakskill, New York.
He had performed in and around Peak Skill at least
three times in previous years, and while there had been
some protests, including by the American Legion when he was
at Peak Skill Stadium in nineteen forty seven, this time
was different. We'll talk more about that after a sponsor break.

(11:54):
The concert that Paul Robesen planned to perform on August
twenty seventh of nineteen forty nine was just outside of Peakskill,
New York at Lakeland Acres Picnic Ground. It was sponsored
by Pete Seeger's booking agency People's Artists, Inc. This was
a fundraising event, with proceeds going to the Harlem Chapter
of the Civil Rights Congress. This was a civil rights

(12:17):
and legal defense organization whose founder, William L. Patterson, was
also a leader in the Communist Party USA. This organization
was focused on protecting the civil rights of black people
and communists, so as an organization it faced a lot
of suspicion. Peak Skill is in Westchester County, and this

(12:38):
area had previously been both agricultural and industrial, but all
of that had declined, allowing developers to buy up large
tracts of land for cheap and then build summer resorts.
About eighteen thousand people were living in Peakskill year round,
and in the summer it was host to about thirty
thousand vacationers, most of them Jewish people from New York City.

(13:00):
Robeson's music was widely popular among Jewish people, which was
one of the reasons for an annual summer concert in
Peak Skill. Except for the people whose livelihoods depended on
this summer crowd, the town's year round residents generally did
not like them. Every summer, locals dealt with traffic and
crowds and shortages of just basic goods and stores, along

(13:24):
with just suddenly being vastly outnumbered by people they did
not see as part of their community. In some cases
actively disliked because of anti semitism, and other cases just
like felt like they had different cultural priorities and views.
I feel like this is the refrain of everyone who
lives in a tourism town. Yeah, peak season is always

(13:46):
please get these people out of here. Leading up to
the concert, the Peak Skill Evening Star published numerous articles, editorials,
and letters to the editor about it. Most of them
were negative, describing Robeson as a communist and a subversive
and the concert as a threat to Peak Skill. On
August twenty third, an article ran under the headline Robeson

(14:07):
concert here aids subversive unit in it set in part quote,
every ticket purchased for the Peak Skill Concert will drop
nichols and dimes into the basket of an Unamerican political organization.
The time for tolerant silence that signifies approval is running out.
A letter to the editor by local veteran leader Vincent J.

(14:27):
Boyle equated communism with polio. In other words, it was
a terrifying, contagious disease capable of silently infecting people. Public
sentiment among peak skills year round residents was overwhelmingly against
the concert. Multiple organizations spoke out against it, including the JCS,

(14:47):
the Kawanas Club, and the Knights of Columbus, but there
were at least a few people who defended Robeson's rights
of play. One letter to the editor from August twenty
six set, in part quote, the Prince danger that appears
on the horizon is that those who think of themselves
as good Americans should become panicky and forget if they

(15:08):
ever fully understood and truly appreciated the great value of
democratic principles, the greatest of which is tolerance for the
expression of minority and unpopular ideas, freedom of speech, press,
and orderly assembly. Another letter made a similar argument, although
both of the people who had written these letters were

(15:31):
very careful to point out that they personally were not communists. Afterward,
they were both subjected to a lot of harassment and threats.
In light of all this, the concerts organizers made three
different requests for police protection. Those requests were all ignored. Meanwhile,
the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars were

(15:52):
planning a protest parade. The Joint Veterans Council supported a
protest as well. In addition to the allegations that Robesen
was a Communist subversive, the picnic area where the concert
was being held was adjacent to cemeteries where veterans were buried,
which the veterans groups found deeply offensive. On August twenty seventh,

(16:12):
several people arrived at the picnic area to set up,
including putting out one thousand rented folding chairs. One was
novelist Howard Fast, who was one of the last people
able to make it into the picnic area before demonstrators
from the American Legion blocked the entrance. Although the organizations
that were planning to protest the concert stressed that their

(16:34):
demonstrations would be peaceful, the situation in the picnic ground
quickly became ugly and violent. Demonstrators made a bonfire from
the chairs and songbooks that were being used for the event.
Robesen was lynched in effigy, and someone burned across. People
shouted things like quote, we're Hitler's boys here to finish

(16:55):
the job, as well as yelling white supremacist, racist, and
anti submity slogans. The few people who had gotten there
early to set up wound up cornered on the stage
singing we Shall Not be Moved, which was the only
music for the evening. Robeson had been kept out as
a venue. When it was clear that the concert wasn't happening,

(17:16):
some of the demonstrations organizers started calling for people to disperse.
Police then cleared the area, but some of the people
who had been protesting took their antagonism out into the community,
mostly targeting Jewish people, artists, people who lived in the
area or were there for the summer that, for whatever
reason the protesters saw as suspicious or subversive peakskill. American

(17:41):
Legion leader Milton Flint said of this quote, our objective
was to prevent the Paul Robeson concert, and I think
our objective was reached, and Robeson later said quote, they
were not merely attacking me personally. They were attacking the
Negro people, the Jewish people, and all who stand for
peace and democracy in America. Robesen and other people who

(18:03):
had been involved in this concert met at Harlem's Golden
Gate Ballroom shortly after all this, and they decided to
reschedule the concert for September fourth, which was the Sunday
of Labor Day weekend. This time, the venue was in
the neighboring town of Cortland, in the Hollowbrook Country Club.
Once again, locals in peak skill and community and city

(18:24):
groups planned a protest to oppose the concert. Since requests
for police protection had gone unheeded in August, concert organizers
worked with several trade unions to make a plan for
union members to defend the concert site. It's really not
clear how many people would have attended the August twenty
seventh concert if it had been able to go on,

(18:45):
but the crowd on the afternoon of September fourth was huge,
with estimates ranging from fifteen thousand to twenty five thousand people.
In addition to Paul Robesen and Pete Seeger, other performers
were added to the set, singing classical music, folk songs,
and spirituals, and giving an appeal for funds from the
Civil Rights Congress. Union members made a shoulder to shoulder

(19:09):
human wall all around the crowd and the stage as
a physical barrier between them and the protesters. The concert
itself went well. Pete Seeger later described feeling a sense
of relief and accomplishment that their plans to protect everyone
and get through the concert had worked. But then as
the crowd tried to leave, the police funneled everyone through

(19:31):
the same exit and down miles of the same long
winding road where people were waiting with piles of rocks
to throw at the cars and buses as they went by.
The rocks had been put there ahead of time to
throw at vehicles and the people in them as they left.
Paul Robeson was driven out of the area, hiding in
the floor of a van with the hope that he

(19:52):
wouldn't be spotted. His son, Paul Robson Junior, was married
to a white woman, and members of the crowd threatened
to murder a different black man who was in the
car with the white woman in a case of mistaken identity.
Pete Seeger was in a car with his wife and
two young children, along with his father in law and
a couple of other people. Segar described one of his

(20:14):
children in the floor of the car covered in shattered
glass as they tried to get out. When they drove
past a police officer and Segar asked if they were
going to do something. The officer just said, quote, move on.
Seger kept the two rocks that smashed through the windows
and later used them as part of the chimney in
the home that they built. At least fifteen cars were

(20:36):
overturned as people tried to leave. Through all of this,
some of the bus drivers fled, leaving around one thousand
passengers stranded in this melee. Meanwhile, back at the concert site,
demonstrators attacked people who were still trying to leave. Someone
spit on Eugene Bullard, who we just had an episode about,

(20:57):
and after he spit back, he was badly including by police,
And even though all this was caught on video, no
one was ever prosecuted for it. Although no one was killed,
at least one hundred and forty people were injured during
all of this, and some of them were seriously injured.
And once again, as the crowd moved away from the
scene of the concert, violence spread out into the community,

(21:19):
targeting black and Jewish people who were still in the
area with harassment, threats, and slurs. After all of this,
news coverage generally condemned the violence, while often subtly or
sometimes directly, blaming robes In for it, framing him as
an anti American communist. The New York Times reporting said,

(21:41):
in part quote, lamenting the twisted thinking that is ruining
Paul Robson's great career. We defend his right to carry
his art to whatever peaceably assembled groups of people he wishes.
That is the American way. New York Governor Thomas Dewey
ordered an investigation that was handled by District Attorney George Finelli,
and it absolved police of any blame, but an ACLU

(22:04):
investigation concluded that the Westchester police had allowed the violence
to happen. The ACLU also noted that state troopers on
hand had tried to break up fights or protect people
when they witnessed violence, but the state troopers were far
outnumbered by other officers, making up about two hundred of
the roughly nine hundred and fifty officers present. The ACLU's

(22:26):
report on the violence also included this statement quote, A
comprehensive and patient investigation of these incidents brings to light
one outstanding fact that the rioters believed they were carrying
out a patriotic duty in what they did. They believed
that the nation would applaud them, and the national press

(22:46):
would lend them support. They believed that in denying freedom
of speech to a political minority, they were following the
lead of the federal authorities. We're going to talk more
about the aftermath of all of this after we first
pause for a little sponsor break. After the violence of

(23:13):
September fourth, nineteen forty nine, a lot of people in
and around Peak Skill maintained that communists had provoked the violence,
but the only provocation they were referencing was Paul Robesen
having played a concert. There was no evidence that communists
had called for or instigated any violence, although there was

(23:34):
ongoing Ku Klux Klan activity in the area. The ACLU
report concluded that the Klan was not responsible for the rioting.
There had even been a protest sign in the August
twenty seven parades that had read, quote twenty years ago,
we cleaned out the Klan, now we'll clean out the
Kamis that said. Cross burning is heavily associated with the Klan,

(23:56):
and crosses were burning during the riots and violence does
seem to have inspired later clan activity, with clan members
burning crosses that bore the label quote we protest, Paul Robeson,
and communism. The riots also inflamed racism and anti semitism
more generally. In late August and early September of nineteen

(24:18):
forty nine, people in and around Peak Skills started displaying
signs in their windows that read wake Up America. Peak
Skill did. This also appeared on protesters signs, and it
became a bumper sticker. In response to this and other incidents,
including a controversy at Sarah Lawrence College, which is also
in Westchester County, the American Legion in Westchester County established

(24:42):
its own Unamerican Activities Committee in nineteen fifty two. Simultaneously,
the riots inspired the civil rights and labor rights movements,
including a new wave of protest songs. An album called
The Peak Skill Story, including both music and spoken word
by Paul Robson, How How Fast, Pete Seeger and the Weavers,

(25:02):
was released just days after the riots. Seeger's song hold
the Line was part of this album and begins, let
me tell you the story of a line that was held,
and many brave men and women whose courage we know well,
how we held the line at Peak Skill on that
long September day. We will hold the line forever till
the people have their way. Nobody was ever prosecuted for

(25:25):
the violence or destruction of these two events. Paul Robsen
and twenty six others did file a two million dollars
civil suit against Westchester County and two of the veterans
groups involved, but that was eventually dismissed, and all the
musicians associated with the concert had their careers disrupted. Performers
including Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger, and Woody Guthrie, who had

(25:47):
been at the concert but had not performed, were turned
away by venues, had bookings canceled, and were otherwise closed
out of the industry. Prominent politicians and people in other
industries cut ties with them, sometimes publicly, but this was
by far the worst for Paul Robson. He did not
back down on any of his statements about US foreign

(26:10):
policy or colonialism or racism, or his experiences as a
black man in the United States versus in the Soviet Union.
The FBI investigated him four years, but Paul robes and
file on the FBI website where it keeps its vaults
of stuff from Foyer requests, includes thirty one parts, and

(26:31):
some of them are hundreds of pages long. None of
this stopped his activism, though, and he did not back
away from his support of communism or the Soviet Union.
In nineteen fifty, he published a pamphlet called the Negro
People in the Soviet Union, in which he described the
Soviet Union as inspiring the independence movements in Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia,

(26:54):
and India. He also talked about Europe's colonization of Africa,
saying quote, the Soviet Union is the friend of the
African and West Indian peoples, and no imperialist wolf described
as a benevolent watchdog, and no Tito disguised as a
revolutionary can convince them that Moscow oppresses the small nations.

(27:15):
Later on in the pamphlet, he wrote quote, the Soviet
socialist program of ethnic and national democracy is precisely the
opposite of the Nazi, fascist, South African and Dixiecrat programs
of racial superiority. That same year, the US became involved
in the Korean War, which Robesen also spoke out against.

(27:36):
As he was preparing for an international tour of concerts
and peace rallies, the State Department canceled his passport. Immigration
officials were also instructed to keep him from traveling to
Canada or Mexico, where passports were not required. Although he
was still in demand as a performer outside the United States,

(27:57):
he wasn't allowed to travel to work, and he was
also banned from most domestic venues, so for the most part,
he couldn't work in the US either. His remaining performances
had to work around this. At one point in nineteen
fifty two, he did an outdoor concert in Washington where
part of the crowd of twenty five thousand people was

(28:17):
across the border in Canada. Robeson later said his annual
income dropped from one hundred thousand dollars to two thousand dollars.
After the Peakskill riots, he and his wife, Islanda, lost
their home in Connecticut and moved to Harlem, New York
as a note. They were married until her death in
nineteen sixty five, but their relationship was sometimes strained. They

(28:40):
had remained married in spite of a pattern of extramarital
affairs on Paul's part. As Robeson tried to find other
ways to make ends meet, he started a newspaper called Freedom,
which was one of the few publications in the US
to extensively report on apartheid in South Africa. During this period,
A paper ran until nineteen fifty five. In nineteen fifty six,

(29:02):
Robeson tried to get his passport restored, and during that
process he refused to sign an affidavit stating that he
was not a communist. Afterward, he was called before the
House on American Activities Committee, where his testimony was truly defiant.
He was just not going to cooperate with what he
saw as a total sham of a proceeding. He repeatedly

(29:25):
refused to say whether he was a communist. He invoked
the Fifth Amendment over and over, and he called the
proceedings ridiculous. He said at one point quote, I am
not being tried for whether I am a communist. I
am being tried for fighting for the rights of my people.
I stand here struggling for the rights of my people
to be full citizens in this country. And they are not.

(29:47):
They are not in Mississippi, and they are not in Montgomery, Alabama,
and they are not in Washington. They are nowhere. And
that is why I am here today. You want to
shut up every Negro who has the curve ridge to
stand up and fight for the rights of his people,
for the rights of workers. And I have been on
many a picket line for the steel workers too, and

(30:08):
that is why I am here today. He also elaborated
on that quote that had been misreported and had fed
into the Peak Skill riots quote. No part of my
speech made in Paris says fifteen million American Negroes would
do anything. I said. It was my feeling that the
American people would struggle for peace, and that has since

(30:30):
been underscored by the President of the United States now
in passing, I said it was unthinkable to me that
any people would take up arms in the name of
an Eastland to go against anybody. Gentlemen, I still say
that this United States government should go down to Mississippi
and protect my people. That is what should happen. And

(30:50):
when asked repeatedly whether he had praised Joseph Stalin, he
finally answered, quote, whatever has happened to Stalin, gentlemen, is
a question for the Soviet Union. And I would not
argue with the representative of the people who, in building
America wasted sixty to one hundred million lives of my people,
black people drawn from Africa on the plantations you are

(31:12):
responsible and your forebears for sixty million to one hundred
million black people dying in the slave ships and on
the plantations. And don't ask me about anybody please. When
the meeting was finally announced as adjourned, Robeson said quote,
I think it should be, and you should adjourn this forever.

(31:33):
In addition to having been essentially blocked from his career
as a performer after this, Robeson's name was removed from
the College Football All American roster. So one thing that
we do need to note here is that Robeson's praise
for the Soviet Union went way beyond his own experience
of racial oppression as a black man. So many of

(31:55):
the quotes we have read from him, he had a point.
He was correct in his notation that the United States
was expecting young men, especially young black men, to go
to war while not protecting black men at home. Like
a lot of what he was saying was absolutely valid.
But what we're talking about as far as his opinions
went beyond that, it's likely that when he visited the

(32:17):
Soviet Union in nineteen thirty four, he did not know,
for example, about the Holla demor Soviet authorities took steps
to hide that from prominent visitors, and a lot of
the other most notorious actions on the part of the
Soviet Union had not happened yet when he was there
in nineteen thirty four. But by the time Robesen appeared

(32:38):
before the House on American Activities Committee, it was clear
that Stalin's control of the Soviet Union had been ruthlessly
authoritarian and dictatorial, and that he and his administration had
carried out purges and mass deportations and executions, unjust imprisonments,
and industrialization and collectivization efforts that had led to to

(33:00):
widespread famine and death. But Robesen never publicly reconsidered his
early support of the Soviet Union or its leaders, including
Joseph Stalin, and he also praised other Communist dictators, including
Mao Zedong, for example. After Stalin's death in nineteen fifty three,
Robeson published a eulogy that was full of effusive praise, saying,

(33:21):
in part quote yes, through his deep humanity, by his
wise understanding, he leaves us a rich and monumental heritage.
Most importantly, he has charted the direction of our present
and future struggles. He has pointed the way to peace,
to friendly coexistence, to the exchange of mutual scientific and
cultural contributions, to the end of war and destruction. How consistently,

(33:46):
how patiently he labored for peace and ever increasing abundance,
with what deep kindliness and wisdom he leaves tens of
millions all over the earth bowed in heart aching grief.
At least in earlier years like the nineteen thirties and forties,
Robesen seems to have been concerned that if he denounced

(34:06):
anything the Soviet Union was doing, it would feed into
anti Soviet and anti Communist fervor, which he thought would
do more harm than good. And he repeatedly made the
point that the United States had this long history of
slavery and genocide that really wasn't acknowledged when the US
was condemning atrocities that were carried out by other nations.

(34:27):
But we really do not know his thoughts on why
he continued to so vocally support and praise Stalin and
other Soviet leaders, as well as other dictators when all
of this became more known, or why he pointedly criticized
the imperialism of Western nations while seemingly ignoring Russian imperialism

(34:48):
In Eastern Europe. In nineteen fifty eight, the US Supreme
Court issued a ruling in Kent versus Dulles, finding that
it was unconstitutional to deny someone a passport because they
were a communist or refused to sign an affidavit regarding
whether they were a communist. Afterward, Robeson's passport was finally
restored and he left the country, But all this had

(35:11):
been emotionally and financially devastating. He experienced periods of profound
depression and other mental illness, and at various points was
hospitalized for treatment in Moscow. In nineteen sixty one, he
tried to take his own life. He returned to the
US in nineteen sixty three, where his life was increasingly
secluded and reclusive. In nineteen seventy two, Jackie Robinson published

(35:35):
an autobiography titled I Never Had It Made, in which
he suggested that if he had to do it all
over again, he would not have spoken out against Paul Robeson.
He also said that his respect for Robeson had increased
over the years because he had sacrificed everything he had,
including his wealth and career, to try to help people.

(35:56):
Paul Robson died in Philadelphia on January twenty third, nineteen
sive seventy six, at the age of seventy seven. There
are a number of books and films about Paul Robson's life,
and in twenty fourteen it was announced that director Steve
McQueen was working on a biopic. I have not been
able to find anything more recent than that since like

(36:17):
twenty sixteen or so, so not sure what the status
of that is. Sometimes his projects move very slowly. Yeah,
sometimes they move very slowly, and sometimes they just kind
of sputter out evaporate, So who knows. Thanks so much
for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to

(36:39):
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