Paul Robeson (59 page)

For a time she had high hopes her play would finally find a producer, her spirits soaring each time a favorable reading suggested a possible
production—but none materialized. Her book on Africa had quite a different outcome. When she finished the manuscript (initially called
African Material
, then changed to its publication title,
African Journey
) she sent it around widely for comment—including a copy to Earl Browder. “I would not like—however inadvertently”—she wrote Browder in a covering note, “to say anything about my favorite subjects (Africa, and the Color Problems) which would in any way contradict what we all believe.” She asked him to let her know “privately, not for quotation in any way, what you think about its possible implications or repercussions.” Browder read the manuscript immediately, found it “not only interesting, but sound,” and advised her to publish it. “What a grand relief,” she wrote back—and included for his further scrutiny her doctoral dissertation
and
the script of her play (“I know this is a terrific nerve on my part … [but] I feel you are interested in these problems, and would not like me to make any mistakes in my handling of them”). Published in August 1945,
African Journey
(illustrated with photographs Essie herself had taken) was well received by the critics and quickly sold out its first printing. Reading
The New York Times
' review (“an extremely attractive and natural book”) in an airport, Paul called Essie and told her he'd “got the thrill of his life” from the review; “He's a Sweetie-Pie,” Essie commented to the Van Vechtens.
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She was thrilled at the book's reception and at the follow-up requests for public appearances, and made no bones about her excitement. “Quite frankly,” she wrote Larry Brown, “I don't know whether I'm coming or going,” and thanked him for “having been my loyal fan for lo these many years. And especially because you always encouraged me when I was down, and nobody paid me any mind.” To the Van Vechtens she reported that even Ma Goode had taken to deferring to her “with incredible respect.” Adding still further to Essie's sense of worth was the active role she began to play locally in politics. Speaking widely in the Connecticut area on race relations, she proved highly effective, and quick, sharp, and forthright in spontaneous question-and-answer exchanges with her audiences. After hearing Essie speak on one occasion, a close friend of Larry Brown's wrote him, “Mrs. Robeson was a tremendous hit here. The only lecturer able to hold students in their seats during the entire lecture series. She was terrific.
And stunning
. Improved 100% in appearance.” In 1945 the National Council of Negro Women selected her as “one of twelve outstanding women in American life.” Bob Rockmore had a different view of Essie's accomplishments, speculating archly in a letter to Larry Brown as to whether Paul had conferred with Essie about “competing” with her as a public lecturer and whether having two rival speakers “within one hearth” might “disturb the family harmony. (Ha ha).” Rockmore's patronization of Essie further fed her well-established dislike of him.
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In the 1944 presidential campaign, Paul and Essie had both stumped for Roosevelt, Paul on the national level, Essie on the state one. On radio
station WHK on election eve, Paul had praised the President as one who “rightly believes the rights of man more important than the rights of private property.” On election day, Essie had written Earl Browder, “I've just come home from casting my straight Democratic vote, and feel very elegant indeed.” In both her pre- and postelection appearances she expressed political views closer to those of Paul than had earlier been the case. In “The Negro and Democracy,” one of her standard talks, she praised the lack of discrimination in CIO unions like the National Maritime Union, characterized the Soviet Union as having “solved” (“thoroughly, completely and very successfully”) the minority problem, and in strong terms decried the continuing prejudice against blacks in the United States; she even expressed the view—an advanced one for the mid-forties—that only “legislation and force will settle this thing.” When Essie wrote Ben Davis, Jr., about a “practical plan” she and Pearl Buck had started to work on for federal guarantees of civil rights, he responded that her activity “was confirmation of my long-held view of your capacity to make independent contributions to the people's movement in this country.” And when she subsequently sent Davis some unspecified “information … in regard to Paul,” he replied, “It seems a confirmation of your course of action. Don't be provoked into deviating from that course, for every sort of provocation is bound to rise. It is the penalty for being the wife of a great man—one of the great men of the day. And he is fortunate to have such a strong and realistic mate.”
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That cryptic exchange almost certainly referred to one, or several, of Paul's concurrent affairs. The Communist Party apparently advised Robeson at several different points in his life—the word carried through Ben Davis, Jr.—that it felt his divorce from a black woman to marry a white one would be a mistake, that it would inflame his black constituency, alienate his white one, decrease his prestige and political clout. As a close friend, Davis probably knew the usual course of Paul's love affairs at least as well as Essie did, and realized that, since Paul's breakup with Yolande in the early thirties, he had not again seriously contemplated divorce and remarriage, preferring his freedom to a binding relationship, however lonely that freedom sometimes made him. But just in case Paul might once more be tempted to remarry, Davis probably thought it wise to confirm Essie in her already well-settled intention to rise above Paul's affairs, to pursue an independent course—and to remain married to him. It was a strategy she had adhered to from the mid-thirties on, though now and then, under special provocation (such as when given “inferior” accommodations in Chicago), she would take to lecturing Paul about her entitlement and the danger of his compromising his public image.
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For the time being, that public image continued to shine brightly, the luster further enhanced in 1945 by two additional honors: Howard University conferred on him an honorary degree, and the NAACP awarded him
its prestigious Spingarn Medal. Established in 1914 by the late Joel Spingam, then chairman of the NAACP board, the medal was presented annually “to the man or woman of African descent and American citizenship, who shall have made the highest achievement during the preceding year or years in any honorable field of human endeavor.” The Spingarn Medal carried more prestige in the black community than any other award, and in winning it in 1945 Robeson edged out Channing H. Tobias (New Deal official and member of the NAACP board of trustees) and Joe Louis. The participating members of the nominating committee—A. Philip Randolph, Dr. John Haynes Holmes, and Judge William H. Hastie—had split in a close vote: two first places and one second to Robeson, one first and two seconds to Tobias, and three third places to Joe Louis. Because of the near-tie, the absent members of the nominating committee were polled, and Robeson emerged the winner. When his name was presented to the full board, it was approved—though, in the memory of one of its members, the record producer John H. Hammond, there was some expression of dissent. Because of Robeson's commitment to
Othello
—the tour ended late in May 1945, but the show had then reopened in New York for a three-week run at the City Center—he would be unable to accept the Spingarn Medal until October. That occasion would prove a political milestone for him.
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CHAPTER 15

Postwar Politics

(1945–1946)

In the closing days of World War II, Robeson had continued to feel broadly optimistic, as he told several interviewers, that “the forces of progress are winning,” that Jim Crow in the United States was on the run, that the days of colonial rule in Africa were numbered, and that international acceptance of the Soviet Union's right to exist was assured. But within months of Truman's accession to the presidency in April 1945, and the shifts in policy that his administration inaugurated, Robeson's optimism was shaken, and his mood gradually darkened.
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The first major setback to his hopes came at the United Nations Conference in San Francisco in April-May 1945, when the Western powers adopted a set of resolutions on the colonial issue that, from Robeson's perspective, raised the specter of continuing exploitation of Africa and other parts of the world. He had been hopeful that the United States would lead the way in establishing the principle that all colonial possessions—not merely those wrested from the defeated Axis powers—would be placed under United Nations trusteeship as a guaranteed route to effective independence. Robeson, and the Council on African Affairs he headed (which by the mid-forties was the most important American organization dealing with Africa) considered the trusteeship issue of crucial importance for the postwar world.

Instead, the United States introduced a set of proposals at San Francisco for a trusteeship system that fell woefully short of what the CAA had desired: no firm limits set on the length of supervision, no insistence that the Allied powers put their own territorial possessions on the path to self-government, no provision for the representation of colonial peoples
themselves in trusteeship administrations—and no guarantee that the Soviet Union would have a voice on the Trusteeship Council. With the call of American naval authorities in the summer of 1945 for permanent U.S. control of strategic Pacific islands like the Marshalls and the Carolines, the future of the underdeveloped world seemed once more thrown into doubt—and white-supremacist imperialism once more thrust to the fore. Robeson began to fear that the United States would throw its weight not behind freedom for dependent peoples but for maintaining the prewar colonial systems of France and Great Britain—a move concealed behind politics of confrontation with the Soviet Union. The columns and editorials in
New Africa
, the influential monthly bulletin of the CAA, measure the gradual decline in expectations: from enthusiastic congratulations to President Roosevelt for refusing to postpone the UN conference (Roosevelt died just before the San Francisco sessions convened), to sadness and anger over the actual trusteeship proposals and resolutions that emerged from there. By the close of the UN conference,
New Africa
was writing, “The hope and faith which the people of Africa and Asia had in America when Roosevelt was alive is now at low ebb.”
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In his capacity as chairman of the CAA (which the FBI had already begun to brand a “Communist” organization), Robeson wired President Truman and Edward R. Stettinius, chairman of the U.S. delegation to San Francisco (and soon to become its chief delegate to the UN), urging more clear-cut “expression to and support [for] the principle of full freedom within [a] specified time for all colonial peoples.” Stettinius replied belatedly and evasively; John Foster Dulles, also a member of the U.S. delegation, wrote to Robeson the following year on the specific issue of incorporating South-West Africa into the Union of South Africa, declaring, “I did not feel that the United States, in view of its own record, was justified in adopting a holier-than-thou attitude toward the Union of South Africa.” To Robeson, the UN conference in San Francisco, and the subsequent defense of its decisions by U.S. officials, signaled a dangerous revival of imperialist ardor both at home and abroad.
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A USO overseas tour that Robeson undertook in August 1945 heightened his uneasiness. He had planned to take
Othello
to Europe immediately following the close of its American tour to perform before black troops, but when it proved impossible to clear in time all the necessary channels—diplomatic and theatrical—he and Larry Brown decided to accept the USO offer as an alternative arrangement, especially since they would be part of the first interracial unit to be sent overseas (it included as well the violinist Miriam Solovieff and the pianist Eugene List). The month-long trip involved thirty-two appearances, taking Robeson to Germany, Czechoslovakia, and France, and the black paper the Chicago
Defender
reported that his presence overseas proved “a boost to the colored troops' morale who needed it badly.” He did bring the black
troops an essentially optimistic message about the increased economic opportunities they would find on returning home, but in other regards he warned them that they would “find an America not greatly altered in terms of their position.”
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But he did not share with the troops the full extent of his concern. In fact, what he saw and heard overseas profoundly disturbed him. The “unwillingness” of American authorities to proceed with de-Nazification seemed to Robeson a deliberate strategy for restoring German power as rapidly as possible, to serve as a counterweight to the influence of the Soviet Union. This interpretation was confirmed in his mind on hearing American army officers in Germany—in particular, officers in Patton's Third Army, in Bavaria—talk glibly and ferociously of “pushing straight on to Moscow and destroying the Bolshies while they're weak.” In Czechoslovakia, Robeson's observations persuaded him that the American military would support only those Czechs who had been “collaborationists and Sudeten soldiers” (the Sudetenland, a part of western Czechoslovakia on the German border, had been strongly pro-Nazi).
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As soon as he got home, Robeson asked Max Yergan to arrange through the auspices of the CAA a private meeting of seventy-five to a hundred people in which he could “unburden himself” about his experiences in Europe and, he hoped, raise ten thousand dollars to go on the air for one or two national hookups so he could get his message of concern across to a large audience. The meeting took place on October 21, 1945, at the home of Frederick V. Field, the wealthy white left-wing sympathizer whose wife, Edith Field, served as CAA treasurer. A somewhat disappointing forty or fifty people showed up. The FBI had bugged preparatory phone conversations between the organizers, and the reports reveal that the effort to gather people to hear Robeson may have been hampered by a growing distrust of Yergan among progressives—a distrust that would erupt into bitter confrontation on the Council of African Affairs within two years.
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