Paul Robeson (141 page)

4.
ILWU Dispatcher
, Nov. 19, 1943; New York
Herald Tribune
, Jan. 7, 8, 12, June 8, 1944;
World-Telegram
, Oct. 13, 1943;
The New York Times
, Jan. 19, 1944 (equity). In 1944 Robeson was made an honorary member of the Fur and Leather Workers union at its biennial convention (
Daily Worker
, May 17, 1944).

5.
There are dozens of letters in RA requesting various favors from him. The log of PR's conversation with Yergan on Nov. 23, 1944, as recorded by the FBI, is Main 100-12304-25. Even before the pressure created by the election, Robeson wrote Van Vechten, “I've been a little worn and rushing about doing benefits, etc.… The matinee days are so wearing” (postmarked May 24, 1944, Yale: Van Vechten).

Robeson always kept a retreat to which he could repair when feeling overwhelmed, or simply in need of privacy. During his London years he had sometimes used producer Earl Dancer's place (for more on Dancer, performer and nightclub owner, see Ethel Waters,
His Eye Is on the Sparrow
, [Pyramid, 1967], especially pp. 172 ff.). In New York in the early forties, Jean Blackwell Hutson remembers that in order to locate him she had to “penetrate some personal hideaway of his own” (interview with Hutson, Sept. 21, 1983). For more on PR's “retreats,” see note 19, p. 710.

6.
New York
Herald Tribune
, Nov. 17, 1943, April 4, 1944 (Africa);
Daily Worker
, Aug. 28, 1943; Chicago
Defender
, July 24, 1943; Pittsburgh
Courier
, Dec. 25, 1943, Jan. 8, 1944 (hurt); PR speech, Jan. 2, 1944, radio station WEAF, several versions, RA; transcript of the radio program for the Entertainment Industry Emergency Committee, May 19, 1944, RA (black resentment); telegram signed by Walter White and PR soliciting additional signatures to protest lack of funding appropriation for the FEPC, June 10, 1944, LC: NAACP; PR's opening statement to the “Africa—New Perspectives” conference called by the Council on African Affairs, April 14, 1944 (Soviets; new imperialists), transcript in RA; the agenda and program for the CAA conference on Africa are in NYPL/Schm: NNC, as is the call for the Aug. 8, 1943, San Francisco Conference on Racial and National Unity in Wartime, at which PR spoke; transcript (RA) of broadcast interview, WHN, by William S. Gailmor with PR, April 1944, for the quote about black patriotism (the style is not PR's but the sentiment is).

Robeson also continued his activities in behalf of the war effort, appearing at bond rallies and participating in programs for the Office of War Information and the War Production Board (e.g., Silverman to PR, Feb. 3, 1944; Baren to PR, Feb. 15, 1944; Nelson to PR, June 7, 1944; Betz to PR, June 13, 1944; Smith to PR, Aug. 27, 1944—all RA). During the outbreak of race riots in Detroit, he sent a confidential memo to Roosevelt suggesting that “the tension is being fostered deliberately by anti-administration and anti-war elements” among white reactionaries (PR to Roosevelt, June 21, 1944; Jonathan Daniels to PR, June 27, 1944, RA).

7.
Interviews with Ishmael Flory, July 1–2, 1986;
Daily Worker
, Dec. 4, 1943; New York
Amsterdam News
, Dec. 11, 1943. On the career of Landis, see Jules Tygiel,
Baseball's Great Experiment; Jackie Robinson and His Legacy
(Random House, 1983), pp. 30–43. Ben Davis, Jr., records what seems to be a later (1945) meeting with the club owners and also notes that he and Robeson attended a small reception for Jackie Robinson after the Dodgers had signed him (
Communist Councilman from Harlem
[International, 1969], pp. 133–34).

8.
Daily Worker
, Oct. 23, 1943, Nov. 11, 1943; Wilson to PR, Nov. 1, 1943, RA; Naison,
Heyday
, p. 313; Ben Davis, Jr., to ER, April 27, 1943, RA (“membership”); FBI Main 100-12304-13 (Robeson for Congress). According to Howard “Stretch” Johnson, Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson, head of the “Black Mafia” and later a protector of Robeson's “contributed heavily” to Davis's campaign (interview with Johnson, March 5, 1985); for more on Bumpy Johnson and Robeson, see p. 312 and note 17, p. 695. Davis's record as a city councilman is discussed in Edwin R. Lewison,
Black Politics in New York City
(Twayne Publishers, 1974), especially pp. 76–79. Davis moved actively
against segregated housing, police brutality, and inadequate fire-department services in Harlem. He was also known for being available to his constituents.

9.
Interviews with Barney Josephson, March 23, 1982, April 2, 1985;
In Person: Lena Horne
, as told to Helen Arstein and Carlton Moss (Greenberg, 1950), pp. 180–85; Pearl Primus interview,
The New York Times
, March 18, 1979;
metro-Newark!
, Oct. 1979 (Vaughan). John Hammond recounts a similar incident in
On Record
(Summit, 1977), pp. 261–62. Interviews with Uta Hagen. Hagen also remembers one unhappy occasion when she and Paul went backstage to congratulate Billie Holiday after she had just given a “spectacular, totally controlled” performance—and found her crawling around on all fours, far gone on drugs.

10.
The many letters and telegrams are in RA, including a letter from Lillian Hellman (April 7, 1944) that she sent out to solicit greetings. In declining to serve as a sponsor for the event, Eleanor Roosevelt described Robeson as a man “whom I greatly admire” but added, “I wonder however, if your group would not be better off without my name this year when everything I do brings the cause criticism?” (Roosevelt to Yergan, March 3, 1944, FDR.) After seeing
Othello
, Mrs. Roosevelt wrote Joseph Lash, “Robeson is moving in it because the lines might be said by him today!” She added, however, that “the character is never quite convincing and all of a piece … to me” (as quoted in Joseph Lash,
A World of Love
[Doubleday, 1984], p. 84).

11.
The New York Times
, April 17, 1944;
Daily Worker
, April 10, 18, 1944;
PM
, April 17, 1944. The following year Robeson in turn paid his respects at the celebration for Mary McLeod Bethune's seventieth birthday (New York
Amsterdam News
, July 19, 1945).

12.
Department of the Army, File No. 100-25857-63. PR had sent Roosevelt a letter protesting a deportation order issued against Raissa Browder (
Daily Worker
, Dec. 14, 1943); the FBI was aware of the letter.

13.
Theresa Helburn (Theatre Guild) to PR, June 30, 1944 (closing), Yale: Theatre Guild. The previous record-holders for Shakespeare on Broadway had been a tie at 157 performances each for Jane Cowl in
Romeo and Juliet
in 1923 and Orson Welles's Julius
Caesar
in 1937.

14.
Interviews with Uta Hagen, June 22–23, 1982, Sept. 28, 1984. All Hagen quotations hereafter in this section, unless other sources are cited, are from my interviews with her.

15.
PR to ER, Aug. 29, 1941, n.d. (1942), RA.

16.
Sadie Davenport Shelton, who knew PR back in his undergraduate days, recalls, “He always liked light-skinned women” (interview, March 26, 1985, PR, Jr., participating). Skin color, of course, was not the sole variable in determining his preference. Sustained attraction for him seems to have hinged on a woman's being forceful, tough-minded, motherly, and loyal—an indomitable earth mother.

17.
Spector, “Hagen” (hate mail). Robeson later remarked that in Cincinnati he felt the climate was especially tense and in the performance that night “I was careful how close I got to Desdemona” (remark on “A Closer Look,” aired in 1979).

18.
Langston Hughes, for one, roundly applauded Robeson's refusal to play segregated houses, contrasting his attitude, in print, with Bill Robinson's: when Robinson's
Hot Mikado
hit segregated Washington, D.C. (a town Robeson refused to play), and blacks were denied admittance to the theater, Robinson “defended himself by saying that he was making $2,500 a week out of it. And he went right on playing” (Hughes, Chicago
Defender
, July 22, 1944, reprinted in
Negro Digest
, Sept. 1944).

19.
Another moment of hilarity had come while the show was still playing on Broadway. In saying his line “Since these arms of mine had seven years pith,” Robeson accidentally said “piss” instead of “pith.” Hagen, who had just turned upstage, shook with laughter, and they collapsed all over again later when Robeson added, “How would you feel if you'd been pissing for seven years?” (Sterner interview with James Monk.)

20.
Richardson to PR, April 6, 1973, courtesy of Paulina Forsythe. Richardson
had been elected to the state legislature in Indiana in 1932, during the height of KKK influence, and later won the first public-housing desegregation case (Indianapolis
Recorder
, Dec. 16, 1972). According to Earl Dickerson, a post-performance party in Chicago lasted until 6:00 a.m., with Etta Moten Barnett singing and Duke Ellington playing the piano (1969 tape, courtesy of Terkel; interview with Dickerson, July 2, 1986).

21.
Interview with Studs Terkel, June 30, 1986. The pertinent Chicago reviews are: Chicago
Daily Tribune
, Chicago
Sun
, Chicago
Herald-American
, Chicago
Times
—all April 11, 1945—and Chicago
Sun
and Chicago
Herald-American
, April 15, 1945. A large batch of other tour reviews are in RA. Though Hagen thought PR's performance on the tour was better, it was on the political platform that she felt he was without peer—his marvelous voice, his personal magnetism, and his profound conviction blending to produce “remarkable impact.” During
Othello's
six-week engagement in Chicago, Robeson made a number of political appearances. He was featured at United Nations Day (sponsored by the United Packinghouse Workers/CIO), attended a membership meeting of the United Auto Workers/CIO (Local 453 made him an honorary member), sang and spoke at a meeting sponsored by American Youth for Democracy, at a large event organized by the Chicago Council on African Affairs, at two synagogues, and at a hundred-dollar-a-couple dinner to benefit the Abraham Lincoln School (of which William Patterson was assistant director). Robeson sat for a portrait by Edward Biberman while in Los Angeles on tour and Biberman has provided a vivid account of Robeson's hectic schedule: “… we were never alone. He would always make several appointments here for the time that he was posing. Earl Robinson would be sitting at this piano banging away a new tune that he wanted Paul to hear, and somebody would be reading a script, and somebody else would be interviewing him” (Emily Corey interview with Biberman in 1977 for UCLA: Special Collections; Biberman to me, July 31, 1982).

22.
ER to PR, Dec. 1, 1946, RA; ER to Larry Brown, July 15, 1945, NYPL/Schm: Brown.

23.
ER to CVV and FM, July 15, Aug. 12, Sept. 9, Nov. 14, 1943, April 26, Aug. 18, Sept. 15, Oct. 3, 31, Dec. 14, 1944—all Yale: Van Vechten; ER to PR, Jr., Jan. 28, 1947, RA (Ma Goode); CVV to ER, Nov. 22, 1943, RA; ER to E. Franklin Frazier, Oct. 10, 1943, MSRC: Frazier (summarizing her work at Hartford). The Robesons had known Frazier as far back as the twenties (Frazier to ER, Oct. 21, 1932, MSRC: Frazier). As students, Pitt and Robeson had often sat together because of the alphabetical listing of names, and became friendly. I am grateful to Pitt's widow, Mrs. Juliet Pitt, for sending me the Robeson-Pitt correspondence, which suggests some marginal contact over the years. The correspondence consists of three letters from ER to Pitt from the forties (April 6, July 25, 1942, Sept. 9, 1945) and one (n.d. [probably 1931]) in which she apologizes for having spent one evening in London “burdening you with my troubles.” There is also one letter from Malcolm to Paul (March 30, 1942). When Shirley Graham published her largely imagined biography of Robeson in 1946 (
Paul Robeson: Citizen of the World
[Julian Messner, Inc.]), Pitt wrote to Robert C. Clothier, the president of Rutgers, to express his “discomfort” over Graham's “fictionalized” version of his undergraduate friendship with Robeson (Pitt to Clothier, July 11, 1946; Meder to Pitt, July 22, 1946, RUA).

24.
Herman Shumlin to ER, Oct. 5, 1944 (pronouncing
Goodbye Uncle Tom
on the “ponderous side”); ER to Shumlin, Oct. 16, 1944 (accepting his verdict with grace); Owen Dodson to ER, Nov. 2, 1944 (liking the play); Arthur S. Friend to ER, April 8, 1945; ER to Friend, July 19, 1945—all RA. She sent a film treatment to Kenneth Macgowan, then at Paramount Pictures (Macgowan to ER, Dec. 14, 1945, Jan. 2, 1946, RA). ER to Earl Browder, April 18, 22, July 11, Sept. 28, Nov. 7, 1944, Browder Papers, Syracuse University (henceforth SU: Browder); Browder to ER, May 29, 1944, RA; ER to CVV and FM, Aug. 9, 1945, Yale: Van Vechten (Paul's phone call). She was also
delighted at a call from Paul, Jr., saying that the whole campus at Cornell was talking about her book; he encouraged her to forget about attending his athletic events so dutifully if they stood in the way of her accepting lecture dates (ER to CVV and FM, Aug. 12, 1945, Yale: Van Vechten). Essie liked to remind Paul that she went to many more of Paul, Jr.'s athletic events than Paul did, even mentioning to Earl Browder how much Paul, Jr., would have liked it if his father could have attended more often (ER letters to Browder, 1944–45, SU: Browder). Apparently Essie's old friend Minnie Sumner was hired to prepare maps for the book (Day Co. to ER, Aug. 3, 1945, RA).

25.
ER to Larry Brown, Aug. 14, 1945 (enclosing two reviews), NYPL/Schm: Brown; ER to CVV and FM, Aug. 9, 12, 1945, Yale: Van Vechten; Viola V. Boyd (“Vie”) to Larry Brown, n.d. (1946); Rockmore to Brown, April 20, 1946, NYPL/Schm: Brown. Mary McLeod Bethune to ER, Feb. 27, 1946, RA (NCNW selection). RA contains many other letters congratulating Essie on the effectiveness of her lectures. The mss. of Essie's lectures during the 1944–46 period are in RA. The typed ms. of one talk is a stenotype and clearly demonstrates her effectiveness in question-and-answer exchanges. “I took off 20 pounds,” Essie exuberantly wrote Paul's sister, Marian, “exercised myself hard and flat, and have cleared my face out and have just had my hair done. What do you know? I think the big boy will be quite pleased. I'm at my best. And now is the time!!!!!” (ER to Marian Forsythe, April 4, 1945, courtesy of Paulina Forsythe.) Essie wrote this letter just a few days before her disastrous trip to see Paul in Chicago.