Paul Robeson (115 page)

10.
All the quotes continue to be from the two mss. previously cited (Ma Goode's twenty-page account and ER's lengthy Ms. Auto.), but the swimming anecdote is from ER Diary, Nov. 23, 1941, RA.

11.
Interview with Aminda Badeau (Mrs. Roy) Wilkins, March 12, 1985; “girl scientist” is from ER, Ms. Auto.; the analysis of her job derives from my interview with Henry A. Murray, Feb. 6, 1985. I haven't been able to verify Essie's claim to have been the first black of either gender on staff. By her own account (ER Diary, Nov. 4, 1931, RA) she once referred to “all the colored girls I had known at P and S [Physicians and Surgeons: Presbyterian] … and colored men”—though she didn't specify in what capacity they'd been there. Whether she was first or fifth, of course, her accomplishments remain considerable—the only point at issue is the extent to which she felt it necessary to embroider on an already considerable achievement. Near the end of her life, Essie herself referred to having worked at Presbyterian “at its most progressive stage” (ER to Helen Rosen, Oct. 15, 1963, courtesy Rosen).

12.
Interview with Henry A. Murray, Feb. 6, 1985. Dr. Smith Ely Jelliffe (the well-known psychoanalyst who edited the
Psychoanalytic Review
, was on the Presbyterian staff, and had a number of theatrical and literary patients including at various times Robert Edward Jones and Eugene O'Neill) thought well enough of Essie to remain her personal friend (ER Diary, Feb. 16, 1933, RA). She listed Jelliffe as one of her six referees when applying for a Guggenheim in 1931 (the application form is in RA).

13.
ER, Ms. Auto., RA.

14.
ER, Ms. Auto., RA. Before meeting Paul, Essie had seriously dated Oscar Brown, Sr., who had worked with Paul at Narragansett Pier (interview with Oscar Brown, Sr., July 2, 1986); see pp. 11–12.

15.
When Essie finally did become pregnant, she had to undergo corrective surgery in order to conceive. This by itself, however, proves nothing about what Essie did or did not tell Paul in 1921. Even if she had told him that she was pregnant, she herself may have been legitimately mistaken or misinformed.

In one letter (undated, July 1922, RA) Paul does say, “How happy I am that in choosing, I chose right. My Sweet helped me to choose and I'll be grateful to her always”—implying that Essie
had
to some extent forced his hand. But not, it would seem, to any significant extent, for in another letter (Aug. 10, 1922, RA) he harks back to “a year ago. I was in heaven. Just a-wooing my Dolly [his nickname for ER] and saying ‘She must be mine for life'”—a year ago meaning just
prior to their marriage. A third reference, moreover (PR to ER, Aug. 23, 1922, RA), bears directly and importantly on the suggestion that Essie forced him into marriage by falsely claiming to be pregnant: “Yes, sweet, I do hope we may be able to have a child. For your sake most of all—you do love them so. But you remember, sweet—when we married—I knew that perhaps it might not be our lot—no child can ever mean as much as my Dolly—And if there is any danger to be undergone beyond the normal—never.” This suggests Essie told him at the time of their marriage either that she might not be able to get pregnant—or that she
was
pregnant and had to abort for health reasons. One piece of evidence suggesting the latter interpretation comes from Essie's diary for March 4, 1931 (RA). In it she wrote: “I am off for New York today, on the Olympic. I've got to do a ‘job' and I think Dr. West, who did my other one more than 10 years ago, is the best bet. And also Presbyterian will be close to hand if anything goes wrong.” The “job” does sound like an abortion (or a curettage—see p. 150) and “10 years ago” would be 1921, the year Paul and Essie married. Further evidence of a pre-marital pregnancy comes from Freda Diamond (in multiple interviews). In later years Paul told Freda that Essie had come to him in 1921 with the claim that she had become pregnant but had aborted after a doctor warned her that she would be at high risk in giving birth (and had produced some sort of “proof” that she had actually had the abortion); according to this version, Paul remained skeptical but, out of his sense of “honor” at having made Essie pregnant, decided to marry her. Moreover, the possibility of deception on Essie's part can't be discounted because, by her own account, she was determined to marry Paul and by almost all other accounts was in active pursuit of what she wanted. Finally, the specific question of an actual versus a faked pregnancy may be insignificant, since it comes down to trying to prove or disprove a matter of degree: Essie
was
willing to deceive to get her way; the particular strategy she hit upon for that purpose becomes a secondary issue.

16.
Frankie did not see Paul again for more than twenty years, until she went backstage at
Othello
on Broadway. “He kissed me, he hugged me, and he was very glad to see me.” That was the last time they met (interview with Frances Quiett Challenger, Dec. 7, 1983).

17.
This account (including the quotations) is taken from letters from Gerry Neale Bledsoe to me, July 7, 1983; April 14, 1985. Commenting on Essie's protectiveness, Langston Hughes recalled that “Harlem wits have a story about a great public ball after one of Paul's concerts, where she went around the hall closing all the windows so ‘her baby' wouldn't catch cold! Then she took him home—on time!” (Hughes in New York
Herald Tribune
, June 29, 1930.)

18.
The quotations in this and subsequent paragraphs describing the marriage are from ER, Ms. Auto., RA. However, the quote from Essie's relative on p. 42 is from the transcript of an interview with Margaret Cardozo Holmes in the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe. Hattie Boiling remained a loyal friend of Essie's, once writing her appreciatively, “… your promises are as true as gold” (HB to ER, Oct. 6, 1934, RA). Hattie's husband, William (“Buddy”), had apparently known Paul since 1912—so at least, he stated on a June 27, 1922, passport affidavit (FBI NY 100-25857).

19.
ER, Ms. Auto., RA; William L. Patterson,
The Man Who Cried Genocide
(International Publishers, 1971), pp. 53–58. A description of living arrangements in Striver's Row is in Patterson, but in Essie's account she lists her address as 225 Seventh Avenue, which is not Striver's Row. Minnie's sister Sadie also remained a lifelong friend of Essie's. Patterson spells Minnie's last name “Summer,” Essie as “Sumner,” which is correct. Patterson (p. 53) describes Essie at the time as having “lively and searching” eyes and being, unlike Minnie, “deeply concerned with social problems,” “acutely aware of the racial issue”; judging from other evidence, Patterson's judgment was
ex post facto
, a description of Essie's political awareness as a middle-aged woman. One of the “fourths” for cards was Gene Sumner,
Minnie's cousin (handwritten recollections, DSMC).

20.
According to later FBI sources, Essie “attempted unsuccessfully in 1918 to enter Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons” (FBI Main 100-12304-11). May Chinn claims that she left her job at the Presbyterian lab in Sept. 1920 to study medicine at Columbia but “had several small illnesses during the first year and stayed away one day longer than they allow you.” They “gave her the chance of repeating the year,” but she decided not to, having by then met Paul (Sterner interview with Chinn). Essie's salary at Presbyterian is listed on her Guggenheim Fellowship application of 1931 (RA). The announcement card and the marriage license are in RA. According to Ben Robeson's daughter, Marian Liggins, Paul wrote to his older brother asking for permission to marry Essie, “and Daddy wrote back giving him all the reasons why he thought he should not marry her” (interview with Marian Liggins, Nov. 21, 1982). Robeson's fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, was founded at Cornell in 1906. Its members have included Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Andrew Young.

21.
The Columbia class dinner is described in the New Brunswick
Daily Home News
, Feb. 25, 1921, and is included here somewhat out of chronological order. ER's remark about “
ourselves
” is from ER ms. “Introduction to I Want You to Know” (July 1961, RA). There is intermittent correspondence from ER to Louis and Corinne Wright (including a letter of condolence to Corinne on Louis's death in 1952) in CML: Wright.

22.
This account of the impetus behind the production of
Simon
is from Mina Higgins, “Paul Robeson, Bright Star …,”
Sunday Times
(New Brunswick), June 15, 1924, an article for which Robeson himself apparently provided the basic data (Kenneth Q. Jennings, of the
Sunday Times
staff, to PR, Feb. 27, 1924, RA); and from Percy N. Stone's interview with PR in the New York
Herald Tribune
, Oct. 17, 1926 (“dragged him in”).

Torrence, who was white and well regarded at the time as a lyric poet, had caused a considerable sensation with the original production on Broadway of
Three Plays for a Negro Theater
(of which
Simon
was one) in April 1917. James Weldon Johnson hailed the opening as “the most important single event in the entire history of the Negro in the American theater.… The stereotyped traditions regarding the Negro's histrionic limitations were smashed” (
Black Manhattan
[Atheneum reissue, 1977], p. 175). Johnson emphasized that Torrence had gotten his way in insisting on a black cast. For additional details see Eugene Levy,
James Weldon Johnson
(Chicago University Press, 1973), pp. 302–4, and Edith J. R. Issacs,
The Negro in the American Theatre
(Theatre Arts, 1947), pp. 54–60. For more information on the Amateur Players, see Johnson,
Black Manhattan
, p. 179.

23.
Honoria Murphy Donnelly with Richard N. Billings,
Sara and Gerald
(Times Books, 1982). In a newspaper interview three years later, Robeson said, “I was broke at the time and it was far better than working in the Post Office for a month or so” (
World
, May 3, 1925). My reference to “several whites” is deliberately vague. Essie (Ms. Auto., RA), specifically names them as Robert Edmond Jones and Emilie (Mrs. Norman) Hapgood, respectively the set designer (he later designed the 1943–44
Othello
) and producer of the 1917 Broadway version of
Simon
, and Kenneth Macgowan, who in 1923 would join the Provincetown Players. Recent commentators have gone on to elaborate (as Essie did not) the consequences of their attendance. David Levering Lewis, for example (in his otherwise fine book
When Harlem Was in Vogue
), has them, in 1920, dashing backstage after the curtain “to offer him the lead in something called
The Emperor Jones
,” which Robeson (as Seton further advances the tale in
Paul Robeson
, p. 23) turned down: “I went home, forgot about the theatre, and went back next morning to Law School as if nothing had happened.” Thanks to O'Neill's biographer, Louis Sheaffer, who generously put certain unpublished manuscript materials in my hands, I do have some peripheral confirmation of the
Emperor Jones
offer to Robeson, but, like Sheaffer, have concluded it rests on uncertain memories
(Sheaffer to me, Sept. 29, 1982, July 28, 1986) and is finally not persuasive. The materials in question are recollections by Jasper Deeter and Cleon Throckmorton, two Provincetown Players stalwarts, as given to Sheaffer in interviews.

Deeter, who played Smithers in the 1920
Jones
production, told Sheaffer that he did approach Robeson about doing the lead role, but “Robeson stood up with self-aware dignity: ‘You may know this kind of person, and Mr. O'Neill may know this kind of person; but I don't.” Although such an exchange may have taken place, most likely it was in regard to the 1924 revival, since Deeter refers to Robeson as having been recommended to him (by
Crisis
magazine, not by fellow Provincetowners) as currently “the best Negro actor”—and in 1920 he was not so regarded.

The second testimony comes from Cleon Throckmorton, who designed the sets for both the 1920 and 1924 productions of
Jones
. He told Sheaffer that the following dialogue ensued when they approached Robeson in 1920: “We'd like you to be in a play by Eugene O'Neill.” “Never heard of him.” “Well, we think he's America's coming playwright and we think
The Emperor Jones
is a fine play.” “What sort of part is it?” “A railroad porter from a lowly background becomes emperor of a tropic island and then, under terror, slips back.” “Good day, gentlemen. I think you know more about that sort of life than I would.” This dialogue—pompous, rude, and surly—sounds wholly uncharacteristic of Robeson and throws the reliability of the entire testimony into question.

As Sheaffer wrote me (July 28, 1986), “Regardless of what Deeter and Throckmorton told me, I now feel most doubtful that Robeson was ever considered to play Jones in its first production. What stage experience did he have then? None. It seems absurd that anyone in the Village group would think for a moment of entrusting such an all-important part to a total novice.” I concur with Sheaffer's judgment. He added, though, that since both men “recall something about Robeson standing on his dignity when offered the part, there may be something to it, but exactly what?”

Though the evidence remains contradictory, it suggests, on balance, that if Robeson was considered at all for the first production of
Jones
, it was only by some lower-echelon Provincetowners, which is not the same as asserting—as others have—that an actual offer was made to him. What finally persuaded me that some
marginal
soundings might have taken place is the number of times Robeson himself makes reference to such an event in various interviews he gave over the years. He even went so far as to include a reference to it in the program notes for his Nov. 1929 Carnegie Hall recital (RA). Especially persuasive in this regard is the detailed (and otherwise uncommonly accurate) interview with Percy N. Stone printed in the New York
Herald Tribune
on Oct. 17, 1926 (the fact that it appeared in the widely read
Tribune
further suggests Robeson would have taken the utmost care to present his prior history accurately). In regard to the 1920
Jones
, the Stone interview reads as follows: “From way down in the village came eager scouts when the little shows [
Simon the Cyrenian
] were put on. They saw Robeson perform and when
Emperor Jones
was booked for the Provincetown Theater, up ran one of the attachés of that place with the script. He did not show O'Neill's play to Robeson; he sat down and read it through to him. At that time Robeson was quite sensitive about the Negro question. It was his first year in New York and the problems he faced made him race conscious. As the play was read, Robeson got madder and madder until, when that final line was reached, he wanted to throw the man out of the window. Instead, he just refused the part, much as he needed the money.” (Yet another persuasive piece of testimony to the same effect is Robeson's article “My Father's Parsonage …,”
Sunday Sun
, London, Jan. 13, 1929.)