Paul Robeson (133 page)

67.
The three-page typescript of PR's speech, dated June 24, 1937, is in RA. The account of threats to ban or jam his broadcast is drawn from: Manchester
Guardian, Daily Mirror, Daily Worker
—all June 25, 1937;
News-Chronicle
, June 19, 1937;
Daily Herald
, June 24, 1937. The
News-Chronicle
, June 25, 1937, is among the papers reporting his speech as “the most striking.” The program of the event, listing the sponsors, is in RA. Yvonne Kapp, the principal organizer of the rally, called Robeson's speech “the finest an artist has ever made,” and Hilda Browning, of the National Joint Committee for Spanish Relief, credited
Robeson's personal appearance with the sellout crowd. John McMillan, of the publishing firm of William Heinemann Ltd., was so enamored of his “magnificent speech” that he tried (unsuccessfully) to persuade him to broaden it into a book (Kapp to PR and ER, Browning to ER, McMillan to PR—all June 25, 1937, RA).

68.
T. H. Lee to PR, Nov. 7, 1937, RA; Gollancz to PR, Sept. 22, 1937, RA (there are three versions of a blurb PR gave, at Gollancz's request, for Edgar Snow's
Red Star Over China
, written in ER's hand on the Gollancz letter); A. C. Thomas to ER, Nov. 8, 1937, RA (Friends U.S.S.R.); Agnes Maisky to ER, Jan. 16, 1938, RA;
Daily News-Chronicle
(London), Nov. 7, 1937 (“aspirations”);
Reynolds News
, Oct. 10, 1937 (“decadent”);
Daily Worker
, Nov. 22, 1937; Cripps to PR, Oct. 12, Dec. 4, 1937; Cripps to ER, Nov. 25, 1937, RA. For more on Robeson's connection with Unity Theatre, see pp. 223–24. Ambassador Azcarate invited the Robesons to dinner on Nov. 18, 1937, to meet Pablo Casals. Programs for PR's benefit concerts are in RA. At the Nov. 6, 1937, Queen's Hall meeting in support of China, PR shared the platform with the Dean of Canterbury, P. J. Noel Baker (Master of Balliol), and Ellen Wilkinson, MP. Robeson told the black press he was sick and tired of playing Uncle Tom roles, admitting that those who had earlier attacked his acceptance of such parts had been justified in their protests. He vowed for the future to avoid portraying caricatures (New York
Amsterdam News
, undated, 1937; Philadelphia
Tribune
, May 20, 1937).

69.
For more on the changes in lyrics, see note 14, pp. 604–05. The programs for PR's benefit appearances are in RA. Newspaper accounts of the Albert Hall rally include the
Daily Herald
and
News-Chronicle
, both Dec. 20, 1937. During this same period PR's gift of $250 initiated a fund-raising drive for the Negro People's Ambulance to Republican Spain, a cause whose sponsors came to include such black luminaries as Channing Tobias, A. Philip Randolph, William Pickens, Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright; the mimeographed report on the ambulance's Eastern tour is in RA. Finally, Robeson made a record in aid of the Basque Refugee Children's Fund for His Master's Voice.

CHAPTER
11
THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR AND EMERGENT POLITICS
(1938–1939)

1.
ER to William Patterson, March 22, 1938, MSRC: Patterson; ER Diary, 1938, and her eighty-page reworking of it (entitled “We Go to Spain”)—the two mss. are in RA and are hereafter cited together as ER, “Spain”; ER to CVV and FM, Jan. 21, 1938, Yale: Van Vechten.

2.
On the visa problem: James E. Parks (American Consul, London) to PR, Dec. 21, 28, 1937; Parks to ER, Jan. 7, 1938, RA. Robeson may have decided to go to Spain with Charlotte Haldane after he had sung at a benefit concert for the International Brigade (Dependents and Wounded Aid Committee) at Shoreditch Town Hall; Charlotte Haldane was hon. secretary of the group (CH to PR, Jan. 3, 1938, RA).

3.
The Guillén interview was originally published in the radical Cuban journal
Mediodía
, reprinted in a translation by Katheryn Silver in
World Magazine
, July 24, 1976; Manchester
Guardian
, Feb. 2, 1938.

4.
News-Chronicle
, Feb. 4, 1938;
Scotsman
, Feb. 4, 1938.

5.
ER, “Spain,” RA; ER Diary, January 23, 1938, RA (Minor).

6.
ER, “Spain,” RA.

7.
PR, Notes, 1938, “My Impressions of Spain,” nine ms. pp., RA; ER, “Spain,” RA (black soldiers). In the documentary film
The Good Fight
, Tom Page, another black American in the brigade, is quoted as saying, “For the first time in my life I was treated with dignity.” Langston Hughes, who was in Spain the year before Robeson and friendly with Guillén, also reported that “All the Negroes, of whatever nationality, to whom I talked, agreed that there was not the slightest trace of color prejudice in Spain” (
I Wonder As I Wander
[Hill & Wang, 1956], p. 351; the Hughes volume has considerable information
on blacks who served in Spain). Additional detail on the experiences of black Americans including information on Gibbs, Mitchell, and Pringle, is in James Yates,
Mississippi to Madrid: Memoirs of a Black American in the Spanish Civil War 1936–1938
(Shamal, 1986).

8.
PR, Notes, 1938. “My Impressions of Spain,” RA;
Daily Herald
, Feb. 4, 1938 (film). PR expressed the same sentiments to Nicolás Guillén about “big capital” controlling the film industry and insisting on “a caricature image of the Black, a ridiculous image, that amuses the white bourgeoisie, and I am not interested in playing their game.…” When Guillén asked him if that meant he was abandoning films, Robeson purportedly replied, “No, not that. What I won't do any more is work for the big companies, which are headed by individuals who would make me a slave, like my father, if they could. I need to work with small independent producers” (Guillen interview with Robeson, as reprinted in
World Magazine
, July 24, 1976). For more on Oliver Law, including a description of his death, see Steve Nelson, James R. Barrett, and Rob Ruck,
Steve Nelson: American Radical
(University of Pittsburgh, 1981), pp. 205–18.

9.
ER, “Spain,” RA; Sterner interviews with George Baker and Tommy Adlam. Charlotte Haldane published a series of brief notes in the
Daily Worker
(London) describing the trip to Spain. In
The Worker
for Feb. 15, 1938, she paid tribute to Essie as “one of the most gifted women I have had the pleasure of knowing” and made some affectionate fun of her recent obsession—much in evidence during the Spanish trip—of snapping pictures. Essie had taken up photography with her usual enthusiasm; on returning from Spain she took a course for a time with Marcel Sternberger (ER to CVV and FM, April 4, 1938, Yale: Van Vechten). She gave some of the Spanish photographs to William Patterson to publish and was annoyed when he captioned some of them inaccurately (ER to Patterson, April 5, 1938, PR Coll., NYPL/Schm).

10.
ER, “Spain,” RA.

11.
ER, “Spain,” RA; ER Diary, Jan. 30, 1938, RA;
Daily Worker
, Jan. 29, 1938.

12.
ER, “Spain,” RA. Apparently Robeson also met Hemingway, who was in Spain as a war correspondent for the North American Newspaper Alliance and was undergoing his own political metamorphosis. According to Norberto Fuentes (
Hemingway in Cuba
[Lyle Stuart, 1984], pp. 148, 187), Hemingway and Robeson were together at least twice (there is no mention of such meetings in Essie's diary or elsewhere), one time at La Moraleja, the palace of the Loyalist supporter, the Duchess of Aldama, on the outskirts of Madrid, where Hemingway drank too much and fell asleep.

13.
ER Diary, Jan. 30, 1938, RA; Manchester
Guardian
, Feb. 15, 1938 (Gols).

14.
ER Diary, Jan. 30, 1938, RA; ER, “Spain,” Jan. 1947, RA (“barrier”).

15.
PR,
Stand
, p. 53; PR, Notes, 1938, “My Impressions of Spain, RA; Worthing
Herald
, Sept. 23, 1938 (“murdered”); ER, “Spain,” RA; ER to CVV and FM, April 4, 1938, Yale: Van Vechten (Cortez; Moscow); Madeleine Braun (Paris) to PR, Feb. 11, 1938, RA; ER to Patterson, March 22, 1938, MSRC: Patterson. The importance of the Soviet role in Spain in cementing loyalty to the U.S.S.R. for many others besides Robeson is well documented (see, for example, Steve Nelson,
The Volunteers
[Masses and Mainstream, 1953], and John Gates,
The Story of an American Communist
[Chilton, 1961]). There are a half-dozen letters from Castillo in RA.
L'Humanité
, Feb. 7, 1938;
Ce Soir
, Feb. 12, 1938. ER to CVV and FM, April 25, 1939, Yale: Van Vechten (Ruiz). In 1947 Castillo and his family were living in exile in Mexico (ER, “Spain,” Jan. 1947, RA). When Rockmore declined his help with the exhibition, Freda said to Paul, “Rockmore may be your lawyer but he's not your friend”—causing Paul “to roll on the floor with laughter” (multiple interviews with Diamond; ER to Freda Diamond, April 11, 15, 21, 1939, courtesy of Diamond). According to Freda Diamond, Paul showed up at the New York opening of Cristobal's paintings as a surprise, carrying under his arm a portrait Cristobal had done of Pauli.

16.
ER to Kaye, March 21, 1938, RA (return to States); ER to Patterson, March 22, 1938, MSRC: Patterson; ER to Patterson, April 5, 1938, NYPL/Schm, PR Coll.

17.
The interview with Ben Davis, Jr., is in the
Sunday Worker
, May 10, 1936; multiple interviews with Marie Seton, Aug.-Sept. 1982; Hugh Thomas,
John Strachey
(Harper & Row, 1973), p. 159. According to PR, Jr., his father told him in 1938 “that because he [Paul] had developed a close friendship with Kazakov, Kazakov's arrest and the absurd charges against him had been an important factor in fueling his [Paul's] doubts about the charges leveled in the 1937 trials” (PR, Jr.'s written comments on ms.). I have found no evidence in specific support of this claim, but one fragment of general evidence has emerged in Lia Golden's reminiscences, “Black Americans' Uzbek Experiment,”
Moscow News
, Sept. 20–27, 1987. Golden reports that in the summer of 1937 the Robesons vacationed at Kislovodsk with her parents, Oliver John and Bertha Golden, and she, Lia (age four), remembers “the adults discussing some thing and arguing heatedly. During that trip Paul Robeson could not find many of his friends. My father too lost many of his acquaintances.… Later I found out that Paul Robeson had made official inquiries regarding his arrested friends, trying to help them. In reply, one of them was brought from prison.…” The latter statement may be a garbled version of the PR-Feffer incident in 1949 (see pp. 352–53). Robert Robinson believes that PR knew almost nothing of the purges (which to Robinson were familiar from disappearances within his own factory), and ascribes PR's comparative ignorance to his unwillingness to talk at length with other blacks resident in the U.S.S.R. who might have disabused him of his growing faith in the Soviet system (interview with Robinson, May 18, 1988). On the other hand, PR may have been concerned about Robinson's already welldeveloped anti-Soviet sentiments (on account of which, apparently, he decided not to help Robinson get permission to leave the U.S.S.R.) and may simply have decided not to discuss the purge trials with
him
(Robinson,
Black on Red
, esp. pp. 313–17).

18.
ER to CVV and FM, April 4, May 18, July 16, 1938, Yale: Van Vechten; Ma Goode, ms., “The Education of My Grandson,” RA; Ma Good to the Associated Negro Press, Feb. 20, 1942, CHS: Barnett (“we left Moscow in tears”);
News-Chronicle
, Jan. 25, 1938 (“Russian children”). There is a letter full of veiled references about the situation in the U.S.S.R. and the inadvisability of keeping Pauli in school there (“I am telling you this strictly privately.… The idea of bringing Pauli up in Russia was originally a good one, but according to reliable information—circumstances have changed”) in RA from Kurt Shafer of the International Relief Association for Victims of Nazism to PR, April 26, 1938. Interviewed after his return to London, Pauli told a reporter he had had many friends in Russia and hoped to go back there to school (
Soviets Today
[Australia], Oct. 1, 1938). Because of the Spanish and Russian visas on Essie's passport, the Germans had already confiscated it once (ER to Patterson, April 5, 1938, PR Coll., NYPL/Schm). Not wanting anyone “to believe that we have taken him out,” the Robesons at first explained Pauli's reappearance in London as merely a holiday visit (ER to Patterson, April 5, 1938, PR Coll., NYPL/Schm).

19.
Philip Noel Baker to PR, Feb. 9, 1938 (IPC); Nancy E. Bell to PR, Feb. 14, 1938 (IPC); E. E. Brooke to ER, April l2, 1938 (Basque); Marian Wilbrahan to PR, May 10, 1938 (BYPA); Trent to ER, April 2, 1938 (music); Walter Starkie to ER, April 26, 1938 (music); Eisenstein to ER, April 9, 1938—all RA; Leyda,
Kino
, p. 360 (roadblocks). The preliminary draft of a proposal to the Rockefeller Foundation for an International Theatres Foundation is in RA, along with a letter from Ambrose to PR, Jan. 5, 1938, making reference to earlier discussions.

20.
Holt to PR, June 10, 1938, RA; ER to CVV and FM, April 4, 1938 (Albert Hall), Yale: Van Vechten. For the 1937–38 season, Holt, in his advertising, had placed Robeson's name alone, above all the others, in a star-studded list that included Gigli, Richard Tauber, Kreisler,
Yehudi Menuhin, Lawrence Tibbett and Rachmaninoff (placard courtesy of Freda Diamond). The critics of the Albert Hall concert were less ecstatic than the audience (e.g.,
Evening News
and
Daily Mail
, April 4, 1938).
Daily Worker
, June 16, 1938 (anthem); Mary Atherton to PR, June 13, 1938; Judith Todd to PR, June 27, 1938, RA. In signing a contract with Roman Freulich of Los Angeles to make a film, PR insisted on a clause guaranteeing him final cut—and when Freulich failed to come up with a script that met his approval, he canceled the deal. However, it was probably not for political reasons but for musical ones—his antipathy to appearing in opera, even one by an old friend—that at this same time Robeson turned down an offer to appear in Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson's
Four Saints in Three Acts
, recommending Todd Duncan as a replacement. The contract with Freulich, dated Feb. 1938, is in RA; ER to CVV and FM, May 18, 1938, Yale: Van Vechten (film refusal); ER to Mrs. Kaufman, June 9, 1938, RA (
Saints
).