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The FIR Vault

PAUL ROBESON: A FORGOTTEN RENAISSANCE MAN

By • Oct 30th, 2012 • Pages: 1 2 3 4

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In THE EMPEROR JONES

Robeson was blacklisted by concert managers and was removed from the list of All-Americans. During ’49 and ’50, over 85 Robeson recitals were cancelled. His income, which had been $104,000 in ’47, fell to $2,000. He was ignored by the media – except for references to him as a “commie” or “left winger.” A typical diatribe appeared in the September 4, ’54 “Saturday Evening Post.” Robeson, along with Charlie Chaplin, was harangued for “serving the communist conspiracy”; both were described as “Soviet weapons in the war for the minds of the world’s colored peoples, and especially for the Red capture o Africa.” During the ’30s, only FDR was better known internationally than Robeson. Two and three decades later, whole generations of Americans grew up without ever having heard of him.

Robeson never faltered in his ideals. He wrote in his autobiography, Here I Stand, (published in ’58): “I saw no reason why my convictions should change with the weather. I was not raised that way, and neither the promise of gain nor the threat of loss has ever moved me from my firm convictions.” A House Un-American Activities Committee member once asked him why he did not choose to make his home in Russia. “My father was a slave and my people died to build this country,” he retorted, “and I am going to stay here and have a piece of it just like you. And no fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear?” He also shouted at the Committee: “You are the non-patriots and you are the un-Americans, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”

In ’58, a Supreme Court ruling restored Robeson’s rights as a world traveler. “I have been a prisoner for seven years,” he stated at the time, “yet I have not been on trial.” He tried to revive his career. He gave a farewell concert at Carnegie Hall, his first appearance there since ’47; he toured the West coast, recorded an album and then left the country. While in Russia in ’59, he became ill and was hospitalized. He was chronically ill after ’61; he returned to the United States two years later and lived in seclusion with his wife in Harlem. When Eslanda Goode Robeson died in December, ’65, her husband moved to Philadelphia to live with his sister, Mrs. Marion Forsythe. Her home was located on Walnut Street just a few short miles from the Liberty Bell. He avoided publicity and rarely gave out interviews. “He wants to live his life out quietly,” his son explained, “unmolested by the people who attempted to destroy him.”

Several of Robeson’s albums were reissued by RCA, Vanguard and Columbia Records during the early ’70s. On April 15, ’73, a “75th Birthday Salute to Paul Robeson” was held at Carnegie Hall. In attendance were Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Coretta Scott King, Angela Davis, Ramsey Mark, Zero Mostel, Dizzy Gillespie, Richard Hatcher, Odetta, Leon Bibb, Pete Seeger, James Earl Jones, Joseph Papp and Cesar Chavez.

Philip Hayes Dean’s one-man play, Paul Robeson, starring James Earl Jones, was presented on Broadway in ’78. Dozens of prominent black artists, writers, educators and political and religious leaders damned the work. Typical was James Baldwin, who alleged that the play portrayed Robeson as a “misguided, tragic hero.”

But Paul Robeson could be hurt no more. He had died in Philadelphia at the age of 77, on January 23, ’76.

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