Paul Robeson (153 page)

46
. John Gray, field representative for the United Freedom Fund, who accompanied PR on much of the tour, wrote Louis Burnham and business manager Bert Alves (May 22, 1952, NYPL/Schm: PR), “Mobilization on this side of the border was non-existent, although some 1000 or so were there thru no special effort. Concert was
tops
. Response
grand
.” Bellingham
Herald
, May 19, 1952; Pacific
Tribune
, May 23, 1952; Vancouver
Sun
, May 10, 1952; FBI Main 100-12304-262, 263; a transcript of PR's brief remarks at the Arch are in RA. There was some disagreement between Harvey Murphy, regional director of the miners' union, and John Gray over what percentage of the money raised at the concert should go to the Freedom Fund and what percentage toward paying back union expenses (Murphy to Gray, May 30, 1952, NYPL/Schm: PR, which also contains statements itemizing income and expenses from the tour and correspondence about making the Peace Arch concert an annual event).

47
. Pettus to PR, Feb. 19, 1952; Murphy, Jr., to Pettus, April 14, 1952; Pettus to
Freedom
, April 16, 1952; Murphy, Jr., to Lester Catlett, April 18, 1952—NYPL/Schm: PR.

48
. Murphy to Catlett, April 18, 1952; Pettus to
Freedom
, April 26, 1952; Eleanor Nelson to Murphy, May 1, 1952, NYPL/Schm: PR.

49
. Pacific
Tribune
, May 16, 1952; Seattle
Post-Intelligencer
, May 8, 1952;
Daily People's World
, Northwest Edition, May 9, 1952; Seattle
Times
, May 8, 1952.

50
. Gray to Burnham and Alves, May 22, 1952; Pettus to Robeson and Gray, May 24, 1952, NYPL/Schm: PR;
Daily People's World
, May 16, 1952 (which reported that two local newspapers had refused ads for the concert).

51
. San Francisco
Examiner
, April 25, 1952; New York
Daily Compass
, May 23, 1952;
The Nation
, June 7, 1952 (Berkeley);
Morning Freiheit
, June 13, 1952;
Daily People's World
, April 25, 1952; San Francisco
Chronicle
, April 23, 1952; Chester to Murphy, Jr., April 23, 25, 1952; Murphy, Jr., to Chester, April 27, 28, 30, 1952;
Alves to Chester, June 2, 1952; Murphy, Jr., to Coleman Young, April 20, 1952; John Gray to
Freedom
, May 25, 1952—all NYPL/Schm: PR.

52
. Hershel Walker to Bertram Alves, May 28, 1952 (St. Louis); Mike Walter to Alves, May 20, 1952 (Milwaukee), NYPL/Schm: PR; two-page typed report, unsigned, on the University of Minnesota, RA; Pittsburgh
Courier
, June 14, 28, 1952; FBI office memos, June 6, 9, 1952, and Main 100-12304-266X;
Daily Worker
, April 29, 1952 (birthday).

53
. John Gray to Maurice Travis, July 17, 1952; Edith Roberts to Coleman Young, July 30, 1952, NYPL/Schm: PR. Robeson's income-tax returns in RA demonstrate that his financial situation was not acute, but PR was so indifferent to money matters that at one point Rock-more had to hound him for information about his tax returns (Rockmore to PR, Sept. 5, 1951, RA).

CHAPTER
20
CONFINEMENT
(1952–1954)

1
. Oshinsky,
Conspiracy So Immense
, passim. In March 1952 Robeson sent a message to the World Peace Council excoriating the continuing U.S. involvement in Korea: “The enormity of this crime”—he was apparently specifically referring to rumors that the United States had used bacteriological warfare—“against the brave Korean & Chinese People should bring down the wrath of all decent humanity upon the heads of the military & shapers of this genocidal policy” (draft, March 21, 1952?, NYPL/Schm: PR). As newly released documents have revealed, high-level discussion and planning took place during the Eisenhower administration for deploying nuclear weapons against North Korea and Communist China (the revelations are reported in
The New York Times
, June 8, 1984).

2
. Horace Alexander to PR, Feb. 24, 1952; Thelma Dale to PR, Feb. 26, 1952 (Progressive nominations), NYPL/Schm: PR; FBI New York 100-25857-1597 (convention); Horace Alexander to PR, n.d. (1952), NYPL/Schm: PR (California); interview with Annette Rubinstein, Dec. 5, 1983 (Bass remark); PR speech to NNLC convention, Cleveland, Nov. 21, 1952, RA (“fateful year”). I'm grateful to David Randall Luce, who was present in Ann Arbor, for his recollections, as well as pertinent Michigan state police documents, of that event (Luce to me, Sept. 19, 1982, plus enclosures).

3
. In PR's speech at the NNLC convention on Nov. 21, 1952 (ms. RA) he added: “Professor Mathews's son is one of those arrested in Capetown for his defiance of unjust laws. I ask you now, shall I send my son to South Africa to shoot down Professor Mathews's son on behalf of Charles E. Wilson's General Motors Corporation? …”; PR's column, Aug. 1952,
Freedom
(optimism).

4
. Copies of the minutes of the Progressive Party national-committee meeting of Nov. 29–30, 1952, and the secretary's report on the election are in RA.

5
. Both RA and NYPL/Schm: PR contain batches of congratulatory messages, mostly from abroad. The Kent telegram is in RA; Ferrer's statement is printed, among many other places, in the Pittsburgh
Courier
, Jan. 3, 1953. According to an FBI phone tap (FBI New York 100-25857-89), during World War II Robeson intervened to get a draft deferment for Ferrer, arguing that his presence in the cast was essential for the continuing run of
Othello
. Rockmore successfully sued in court to get the Stalin Prize money for Robeson tax-free because, like the Nobel, it was a “prize” (the five-year battle is described in the
Herald Tribune
, Feb. 5, 1959).

6
. PR's April 1952 Detroit speech, RA. Robeson's lawyers had made appeals for the return of his passport in Sept. and Dec. 1951 and March and Aug. 1952. A large amount of documentation connected with these appeals, and the one in Dec. 1952, is in RA, NYPL/Schm: PR, NYPL/Schm: CRC, and assorted FBI files. The documentation is too extensive to warrant detailed citation here. Several
additional points emerging from the documentation do, however, need to be stressed. First, PR's European supporters, as mentioned earlier, deliberately worked to get him invitations for commercial engagements so that (in the words of Desmond Buckle) they could “give real point to our demand for the restoration of your passport” (Buckle to PR, Sept. 14, 1951, RA). Second, a Provisional Committee to Restore Paul Robeson's Passport was formed late in 1951 to build up grass-roots support (Burnham/Patterson correspondence, NYPL/Schm: PR and CRC).

7
. An especially persuasive analysis of the shaky assumptions behind the Government's case is I. F. Stone in the
National Guardian
, March 14, 1952;
Daily Worker
, April 6, 1952;
Freedom
, April 1952.

8
. Both ER and PR wrote effusive eulogies of Stalin in
New World Review
, April 1953; and on March 26, 1953, PR spoke at a memorial meeting under the auspices of the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship about Stalin's “magnificent leadership” (FBI Main 100-12304-677). Among the accounts of PR's efforts in behalf of the Rosenbergs, are:
The New York Times
, Oct. 15, 1952;
National Guardian
, Nov. 6, 1952;
The Worker
, Nov. g, 1952, Jan. 12, 14, 1953; FBI 100-38128-9; FBI Main 100-12304-677. RA contains a typescript of PR's remarks at the Rosenberg Theatre Rally on Nov. 19, 1952. Among the many accounts of PR's continuing efforts to bring about an end to the Korean War are:
The Worker
, Sept. 28, Oct. 7, Nov. 16, Dec. 4, 1952; FBI New York 100-25857-1612, 1622;
Freedom
, Dec. 1952 (PR speech at NNLC convention).

9
. Multiple interviews with Helen Rosen.

10
. Ibid.

11
. Multiple conversations with PR, Jr.

12
. Multiple interviews with Helen Rosen. According to PR, Jr., they sometimes recorded in people's living rooms, or alternately at Nola and Esoteric Studios, where the owner's stood their ground even though FBI agents were all over them. Herbert Biberman, one of the Hollywood Ten, had earlier tried to form a company “to move into a number of cultural projects,” of which the first was expected to be a PR recording, but nothing further came of the plan (Biberman to PR, July 14, 1951, RA). Robeson frequently saw Biberman and his wife, the blacklisted actress Gale Sondergaard, when he was in California. At around the same time, Howard Da Silva, Sam Wanamaker (who would play Iago to PR's Othello in 1959), PR, and others had some notion of forming a theater-and-film group, but that, too, failed to materialize (Da Silva to PR, May 15, 1951, RA; Cleveland
Herald
, July 15, 1950; FBI Main 100-12304-255).

13
. The itemization of the earnings from
Robeson Sings
is in PR, Jr., to Rockmore, Oct. 6, 1953, RA.
The New York Times
complained that
Robeson Sings
was “cheapened by slickly commercial orchestral backgrounds” (Feb. 7, 1954). Another Robeson album,
I Came to Sing
, a recording of his 1952 Peace Arch concert, was released in 1953 by the Mine, Mill union (Canadian
Tribune
, March 23, 1953, May 4, 1954). Although the IRS audited Robeson repeatedly, it never found anything untoward. Thanks to Rockmore, PR even had enough money to set up Bruce Liggins, husband of his niece Marian, in medical practice, and to pay for his daughter-in-law Marilyn's school tuition. He also periodically lent money to Ben Davis and to his own brother Ben. PR's voluminous financial records are in RA.

14
. Dale to Crawford, April 6, 1953; Alves to Gray, July 1, 1953, NYPL/Schm: PR; J. Maceo Green, San Francisco
Sun
, June 13, 1953; interview with Thelma Dale Perkins, Nov. 11, 1986; interview with Stretch Johnson, March 5, 1985. Pete Seeger (phone interview, July 4, 1986) is the source for the NAACP story (having heard it from a member of the Oberlin NAACP chapter).

15
. Interviews with Dr. Aaron Wells, Jan. 8, April 23, 1983, multiple interviews with Rosen (Hellman). Bishop Clinton Hoggard, in an interview with Sterner, recalled a similar episode involving the Alpha Phi Alpha chapter in Washington, D.C., late in the fifties. PR had asked “to
meet with some of the brothers”; Hoggard had passed the word around but encountered considerable resistance: “They were very hesitant, especially those who were in government employ—‘Well, I can't be in a room where he is.'” As an example of another kind, Langston Hughes, in three of the children's books he published during the McCarthy years—
First Book of Negroes
(1952),
Famous American Negroes
(1954), and
Famous Negro Music Makers
(1955)—omitted all mention of Robeson (and Du Bois as well). Attempting to justify his action ten years later, Hughes cited pressure from his publishers (Hughes to William G. Home, Oct. 25, 1965, RA).

16
. This analysis of local black reactions to PR's tour is based on material in NYPL/Schm: PR, especially on the correspondence of Herschel Walker (St. Louis), Rev. Charles A. Hill (Detroit), John Gray (his letters back home to
Freedom
while on the road making tour arrangements), and Bernard Alves (particularly his letters from Atlanta and Cleveland when he was canvassing concert possibilities). A copy of McGowan's speech, printed as a pamphlet by the National Committee to Defend Negro Leadership, is in RA.

17
.
Daily Worker
, April 28, 1953; Rev. Charles A. Hill to John Gray, Nov. 30, 1953, NYPL/Schm: PR (Detroit); Bellingham
Herald
, Aug. 17, 1953; Vancouver
Sun
, Aug. 18, 1953 (Blaine);
Freedom
, May 1953. George Murphy, Jr., recalled “the plight we got into with Salem Methodist, even after the tickets were printed,” when the minister “got cold feet because of the pressure of some of his parishioners” (Murphy to ER, Feb. 22, 1958, MSRC: Murphy Papers). The Canadian organizers had predicted to Robeson that he would get a turnout of fifty thousand in Canada and five to ten thousand in the States (PR to Judy Rosen Ruben. July 28, 1963, courtesy of Rosen). According to
The Afro-American
(July 18, 1953), PR's appearance at the Lawndale Baptist Church in Chicago attracted only 200 people because “a number of persons were ‘intimidated' not to show up,” but he drew a large crowd for an outdoor concert in Washington Park.
The Afro-American
also reported that in Chicago “None of his activities received newspaper publicity; most of them received word of mouth notice or handbill announcement.”

18
. Seattle SA report, Oct. 12, 1953, FBI Main 100-12304-? (blurred) (Seattle); FBI New York 100-25857-15563 (“hideout”), 2617 (Pettus); telephone interview with Chief Jim Richards, Enfield, Feb. 1, 1985. PR's activities in behalf of the Smith Act defendants are too numerous to itemize. Some of the major rallies are described in
The Worker
, Feb. 24, March 17, 18, May 16, 1952, Feb. 11, 1953; important correspondence relating to plans for defense and protest are in NYPL/Schm: PR and CRC. Essie had also taken a highly visible role in the nationwide committee to aid the families of the Smith Act victims, which further persuaded the FBI that it had been right to reclassify her as a Communist (FBI Main 100-12304-297). In his autobiography, Junius Scales recalls that in the 1956–57 period, when the initial furor over the Smith Act trials had passed and funds were increasingly difficult to raise, PR came to the aid of his Defense Fund. He simply appeared one night when Scales (in his words) “was boring an audience of about a hundred or so in a wretched hall in the Bronx,” spoke eloquently of their common heritage as Southerners fighting against racism, and helped raise three or four times the sum Scales had hoped for. Moreover, that was the first of several appearances PR made in Scales's behalf (ms. of Scales autobiography, courtesy of Scales; since published as
Cause at Heart
[University of Georgia]).