Paul Robeson (155 page)

39
. Multiple conversations with PR, Jr.

40
. Interviews with John Gates (June 8, 1982 and Feb. 13, 1984).

41
. Multiple conversations with PR, Jr. The story about “toning down” was Ben Davis's, who told it to Robeson, who told it to PR, Jr.

42
.
The Afro-American
, March 13, 1954; Patterson to John Gray, Feb. 25, 1954; Richard Greenspan to Gray, March 8, 1954, NYPL/Schm: PR (Guatemala); PR telegram to Neruda, July 12, 1954, RA (Guatemala); FBI New York 100-25857-1950? (Guatemala), 1981 (McCarran); minutes of the Formation of Kenya Aid Committee, NYPL/Schm: PR; Hunton to “Dear Friends,” May 18, 1954 (Conference in Support of African Liberation), LC: NAACP;
Daily Worker
, April 27, 1954 (subversive). In the March 1954 issue of
Freedom
, PR also wrote presciently about Vietnam in an article entitled “Ho Chi Minh Is the Toussaint L'Ouverture of Indo-China”: “Vast quantities of U.S. bombers, tanks and guns have been sent against Ho Chi Minh and his freedom-fighters; and now we are told that soon it may be ‘advisable' to send American GI's into Indo-China in order that the tin, rubber and tungsten of Southeast Asia be kept by the ‘free world'—meaning White Imperialism.”

43
. The large number of letters, cables, minutes, and memos relating to the spring 1954 passport campaign—as well as messages of thanks from PR—in both RA and NYPL/Schm: PR are too numerous for detailed citation. Additional sources for piecing together the story of the campaign are issues of the
National Guardian
, May-June 1954, and
Bulletin of the World Peace Council
, July, Aug., Sept., Oct. 1954.

44
. Interview with Diana Loesser, July 29, 1986. The Jewish-owned business concern NAHUM offered free space for future meetings, and the local Jewish paper,
Jewish Chronicle
, provided strong editorial support.

45
. The “Salute” did not bring out the number of blacks that had been hoped for: “… it was not what we wanted by any means as to composition” (John Gray to Mary Helen Jones, June 9, 1954, NYPL/Schm: PR); interviews with Alice Childress, Sept. 19, 1983, Oct. 9, 1984.

46
. Details of the Chicago incident are in correspondence between Ishmael P. Flory, secretary of the Committee for African Freedom (the sponsoring group), and John Gray, field representative of the
Freedom
Fund, NYPL/Schm: PR. Flory gave me additional details in our interviews of July 1–2, 1986, including the information that an alternate concert at a black church in Chicago was “packed,” with people “standing all along the walls.” Another left-wing Chicagoan, Norman Roth, told me (phone interview, June 26, 1986) that he witnessed black policemen forming a gauntlet for PR and telling him (while looking over their shoulders at their white officers), “Good work, Paul; good work, Paul.” The correspondence
between Gray and James T. Wright, also at NYPL/Schm, details the hiring of Wright and Boudin. I am greatly indebted to Leonard Boudin for turning over to me his complete files on the Robeson passport case.

47
. Celia L. Zitron to PR, June 16, 1954 (Smith Act); Mary Helen Jones to John Gray, Nov. 17, Dec. 19, 1954; Jessica Smith to ER and PR, June 1, 1954 (
New World Review
)—all in NYPL/Schm: PR; (Essie served as editorial consultant on black and colonial questions for
NWR
); FBI New York 100-25857-2074, 2124 (
New World
dinner);
Daily Worker
, Oct. 20, 1954 (for PR on Essie's contributions); Jessica Smith to “Dear Friend,” Aug. 11, 1954, MSRC: Smith Papers. There is a large correspondence in RA relating to the business affairs and recording arrangements of Othello Recording Company; in 1954 Othello issued a new PR album,
Let Freedom Sing
, and in 1955,
Solid Rock: Favorite Hymns of My People
, and entered into arrangements to send special language matrices to Hungary, the U.S.S.R., Czechoslovakia, and Poland, bringing in for Robeson some needed funds (in Jan. 1955, for example, Paul, Jr., was able to send Rock-more a royalty check for PR's account for $3,451.25, and in May another for nearly $3,000). Robeson paid tribute to Marcantonio, both in a private telegram to his widow (Aug. 10, 1954, NYPL/Schm: PR) and in an article for
Freedom
(Aug. 1954). Through
Freedom
Associates, he hailed him as “the Thaddeus Stevens of the first half of the 20th century” and “the foremost spokesman for the rights of man the Congress of the United States has produced in the 20th century” (the statement, dated Aug. 12, 1954, is in RA).

The National Negro Labor Council had been officially launched in a convention in Cincinnati in 1951 as a mass organization to fight against limited job opportunities and Jim Crow and to build unity between black and white workers. PR was given honorary membership in the Council and was present at its inaugural convention, speaking and singing to the delegates (his speech is reprinted in the
Daily World
, April 8, 1976). He remained active in the NNLC, playing a particularly dramatic role at the second annual convention, in Cleveland in 1952, when he brought the delegates to their feet with a resounding declaration that black youth should not participate in “shooting down the brave people of Kenya” (
Daily Worker
, May 7, 1951 June 16, 1952; Pittsburgh
Courier
, Nov. 10, 1951; New York
Amsterdam News
, Dec. 3, 1951;
Freedom
, Jan., Dec. 1952). At the third annual convention, in Chicago in 1953, he reiterated yet again the sentiments of his 1949 speech in Paris: “No one has yet explained to my satisfaction what business a black lad from a Mississippi or Georgia sharecropping farm has in Asia shooting down the yellow or brown son of an impoverished rice farmer”; the audience, according to
Freedom
(Oct. 1953), responded “with a thunderous cheer.” At the 1954 convention, in New York, he gave a powerful speech assailing the U.S. government for refusing to trade with China, Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union while fostering trade with fascist Spain and with Malan's South Africa: “If politics is to be the yardstick in international trade it means that the U.S. government is saying to 15,000,000 Negroes that it approves the politics of the most oppressive racist dictatorship on the face of the globe today” (ms. of speech in RA). PR did not engage in behind-the-scenes strategy sessions but, rather, “came in more or less as a great man” to sing and talk (interview with Oscar Brown, Jr., Dec. 27, 1986; Brown was especially active at the 1952 convention in Cleveland). PR, Jr., insists to the contrary that his father attended and spoke at committee sessions and met privately with the top leadership group (PR, Jr., ms. comments).

48
. George B. Murphy, Jr., to Du Bois, Aug. 31, 1956, U. Mass.: Du Bois; New York
Age
, July 30, 1949; interview with Kay Pankey, July 26, 1986. Essie's two-hundred-dollar monthly allowance was apparently provided in addition to her hotel bills and other standing expenses, leading Rockmore once again to warn Paul about “the monthly drain that goes on ceaselessly” (Rockmore to PR, May, 1954, RA). A confidential FBI informant reported that another reason propelling
PR's move was that McGhee was “at present, very ill and under doctor's care” (FBI Main 100-25857-2273). The informant also claimed that until the move PR had visited his brother Ben only infrequently because the two “do not get along too well.” In fact it was Essie who did not get along with either Ben or his wife, Frankie.

49
. My view of Robeson's family culture and also the particular environment of the parsonage is especially indebted to insights from multiple conversations with Marilyn Robeson, and from my interview with Marian Liggins, Ben and Frankie Robeson's daughter (Nov. 21, 1982).

50
. Interview with Howard Fast, Nov. 21, 1986; multiple interviews with Helen Rosen.

51
. Spottswood to PR, Feb. 16, 1955, RA. When Frances (“Frankie”) Robeson died, in 1957, Paul attended the services along with A.M.E. Zion Bishops Rt. Rev. William J. Walls, Spottswood, and Brown (Chicago
Defender
, Dec. 21, 1957; Pitts burgh
Courier
, Dec. 28, 1957).

CHAPTER
21
BREAKDOWN
(1955–1956)

1
. Ms. of PR article for
Liberation
(Paris), dated June 19, 1954, RA; FBI New York 100-25857-2063 (Ben Gold), 2108 (ALP), 2142 (Lightfoot); FBI Main 100-12304-316 (Patterson and Davis); Muriel Symington to John Gray, Nov. 20, 1954, NYPL/Schm: PR (Patterson). A handwritten speech by Robeson in Patterson's behalf is in MSRC: Patterson (n.d. [c. August 1954]); in it, Robeson reiterated his view that “When the Americans know the truth—the simple truth—they'll put a fast end to many of these present fascist-like absurdities, an end to the blatant destruction of our Constitutional rights.” When the London
Daily Herald
asked Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., to write a thousand-word profile on PR, he protested directly to the
Herald
on the basis of Powell's support of “the aggressive war policy of the Republican government” and the “cold-war policy of the preceding Democratic administration. Though his ‘bipartisan' political conformity qualifies Rep. Powell for a passport, I cannot see that it qualifies him in any way to present an objective report on me to your readers” (Powell to PR, July 16, 1954; PR to
Herald
, Sept. 11, 1954, RA). FBI New York 100-25857-2284 (“specific information”).

2
.
The New York Times
, Feb. 24 (Hammett), 25, 26 (Robeson testimony); New York
Herald Tribune
, Feb. 24 (Hammett), 26 (editorial). For a particularly smooth bit of savagery against Robeson that appeared at this very time, see the ch. entitled “George” in Murray Kempton's
Part
of Our Time
(Simon and Schuster, 1955). Among other claims, Kempton insists that the character of Sebastien Cholmondley (a fatuous, pretentious, self-deceived black man) in Evelyn Waugh's 1928 novel
Decline and Fall
was meant as a portrait of Robeson.

3
. PR to Josephus Simpson (assistant managing editor,
The Afro-American
), Dec. 19, 1953 (“magnificent”);
Freedom
, Feb. 1955; Swarthmore
Phoenix
, May 3, 1955. Robeson also used his involuntary idleness to further his musical studies and to return to the study of languages and cultures which had so preoccupied him twenty years earlier. In a short article in
Spotlight on Africa
(February 1955), he reiterated the familiar themes of his 1934–36 notes, i.e., the similarities between many African languages and other cultures such as Chinese, especially in their structures and in the “thinking” be hind the language.

4
. There is considerable correspondence in NYPL/Schm: PR, especially between John Gray and Lynne Childs, Mary Helen Jones, Matt Crawford, Rev. Stephen H. Fritchman, and Horace Alexander, detailing the plans and difficulties of arranging a California tour for Robeson in 1955 (“We're going to keep banging away,” Mary Helen Jones wrote Gray in a letter of Oct. 19, 1954, “because if we do give up the concert idea then Mr. Charlie will really know he's got us down”). Robeson's comments while in L.A. are from the
Daily People's World
, March 17, 1955. Whether the car episodes represent
a deliberate attempt to harm Robeson cannot be conclusively decided from the evidence, but both Paul Robeson, Jr., and Lloyd L. Brown believe that they did (
Daily World
, Oct. 25, 1979 [PR, Jr., interview]; Lloyd L. Brown, “Did They Try to Kill Paul Robeson?,” ms. in RA). In a similar vein, PR, Jr., asserts that he has “credible evidence that in the middle 1950's and early 1960's the CIA considered the possibility of assassinating Robeson” (ms. comments), but if so he has not shared it with me. Having carefully studied all the
currently available
evidence, I do not find PR, Jr.'s assertion persuasive.

5
. Patterson to U Nu, Oct. 21, 1955, MSRC: Patterson;
The Afro-American
, May 21, 1955;
The New York Times
, April 23, 1955; New York
Amsterdam News
, May 14, 1955. Powell did, however, speak out several months later for the return of PR's passport (London
Daily Worker
, Sept. 22, 1955). Two years later Essie wrote another blast at Powell, in relation to the violence against school integration at Little Rock High, Arkansas. When Louis Armstrong reacted to Little Rock by saying, “The Government can go to Hell; it's getting almost so bad a colored man hasn't got any country,” most of black America rejoiced (not least over the fact that Armstrong, who had long continued to play before segregated audiences, had at last spoken out). But Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., appearing on the TV program “Youth Wants to Know” on Sept. 19, 1957, said that Armstrong didn't understand international affairs, that he was just a musician. Soon after that, in a sermon on Little Rock to his congregation at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, Powell said the President could not send federal troops to Little Rock without making “a confession of our moral decadence,” precipitating “a second civil war and sending democracy down the drain for at least a generation and maybe forever.” On all these counts, ER excoriated Powell (“Daniel Louis ‘Satchmo' Armstrong, Spokesman,”
International Life
, Oct. 1957). PR's remarks at Swarthmore are from
Freedom
, May-June 1955. The earlier move to bar him from CCNY is reported in the Pittsburgh
Courier
, Dec. 1, 1951, and
Campus
, Dec. 6, 1951. A confidential memo to Walter White (dated Nov. 28, 1951) in LC: NAACP reports a conversation with Dr. Kenneth Clark, then chairman of the committee in charge of the use of the Great Hall at CCNY, in which Clark said he “would like to be in a position to recommend that if the Hall is opened to Robeson it should be in a forum type of affair with a representative of our Association, preferably you, so that both sides of the question would be presented.” Walter White appended to the memo, “As there is a possibility that I shall be out of the country on January 10 [the suggested date for the forum] it is impossible for me to attend.”