Essie tried to ease Paul’s mind, joined in the effort by the Buch clinicians, and seconded by friends back home like Helen Rosen. Together they urged him to retire, in body and conscience; he had done his share, and more; it was better to end on a dignified note; now was the time for a younger generation of black leaders to shoulder responsibility; perhaps after he had recovered his health he might again consider an active role, but for the time being he should set his mind at ease by formally announcing that the public phase of his life was completed, by medical command. Paul said he agreed—and went on worrying. He could not shake a lifetime of trying to live up to those perfectionist demands his father had placed on him in childhood, and which he had long since internalized as his own, to live up to the dictum that he should always do better and more. He could never quite believe that he had done enough to allow him to retire with honor from the field. Particularly, he could not shake the wish to rejoin in a significant way a black-rights movement he had done so much to inaugurate, could not give up the hope that the new generation of black activists would make some request for his services that he would be able to fulfill, that together they might establish some continuity of purpose, some mutual acknowledgment of interconnection between the generations.56
Paul seemed unable to leave it alone, continuing to fret about whether he had a future, and if so whether he wanted one. Essie (at least as she reported to the family) told him he had to make the decision, had to tell her what he wanted to do, where he wanted to go. She drew up a list for him of the possible places they could live and the pros and cons of living there. On the morning of December 7, 1963, he told her he had made a decision. He wanted to go home—home to the States, to Jumel Terrace, to his grandchildren, to his people. Essie had several more go-rounds with him, but he held to his decision: “This is what he seems to want,” she reported to the family, “so we are going to have to go, as the British say.” She added, “I have a VERY good feeling about it myself.… I know your welcome, and your concern will warm his heart, and relax him very much. He knows you wont expect him to DO anything, just BE. That’s what everybody here wants, and hopes, but HE doesn’t leave it at that. He feels he should be doing something, saying something.” Dr. Katzenstein felt Paul’s decision to go back to the States was the right one. He was pleased that his effort to “treat the whole person” had led to some improvement, that Paul had gained weight and appeared more animated in manner; yet Katzenstein felt “there was no way of knowing if he stayed longer whether he would improve more.” He hoped Robeson “would find a peaceful home.”57
On December 17 Paul and Essie flew nonstop to London to collect some of their things from the Connaught Square flat and to take their leave of friends. On December 22 they boarded a BOAC jet for Idlewild Airport, New York.
Robeson was going home, as he had wanted to for years.
CHAPTER 25
Attempted Renewal
(1964–1965)
Three Port Authority policemen ran interference through the reporters as Essie on one side and Paul, Jr., on the other escorted Paul to a waiting car. As newsmen tried to throw questions at him, Robeson smiled away in benign silence. Only twice did he respond. When a television reporter stuck a microphone in his face, Robeson whispered that he had nothing to say for now but might “later on.” Asked by another reporter if he was going to take part in the civil-rights movement, he said, “I’ve been a part of the civil rights movement all my life.” As the repetitive question “Are you disillusioned with Communism?” continued to resound, Essie jumped in to say, “No, he thinks it’s terrific—he always has and he always will” (thereby further feeding rumors that her function was to muzzle him).1
A “Muted Return,” headlined the New York Post. “Native Son Robeson Back Without a Song,” chorused the Daily News. The conservative black New York Amsterdam News referred to Robeson in its lead sentence as “apparently disillusioned” and predicted he faced a congressional probe into his politics and a snubbing from black civil-rights organizations. Dorothy Kilgallen reported in her syndicated column that she had “received hundreds of letters protesting the fact that he was allowed to return”; she herself favored it as “a propaganda victory for our way of life.” Congressman William S. Mailliard protested Robeson’s return directly to the FBI; the Bureau replied that as a citizen he was entitled to come home. This did not mean that J. Edgar Hoover was ready to give up his pursuit of Robeson: he instructed the New York Office of the FBI to “ascertain the extent of his activities.” The office wired Hoover that, “not being certain” of Robeson’s attitude toward Communism, it “is not making any recommendation for an interview by newsmen upon his arrival back in the US”—an open declaration that it would and could manipulate the press. The New York Times featured Robeson’s return on the front page, described him as “much thinner and not his old vociferous self,” accounted for his illness as due to “a reported circulatory problem,” and reported that his “comfortable income” was still secure. To a separate profile piece the Times affixed the headline “Disillusioned Native Son.”2
Such polite indirection did not suit the purposes of the Herald Tribune, which opted for a frontal attack. In a lead editorial, the conservative paper—having never played any role itself in the civil-rights struggle—blasted Robeson for having “run away” when “the going got rough.” “He abandoned the battle, as well as his country, to indulge a juvenile’s taste for Marxist idealism, leaving it to others to stay at home to fight the war for civil rights.… Now that the back of the opposition to civil rights has been broken, Robeson returns anxious to jump on the bandwagon.… [He] always has and always will be a juvenile, with a big voice but a small mind … [and] would be more of a hindrance than a help to the civil-rights movement. His countrymen have proved that they can manage without him.” The attack could hardly have been phrased in a more hurtful way, fueling Robeson’s own nightmare fears that he had lost touch with the black struggle and that his earlier contributions to it would be forgotten or distorted.3
But not everyone had forgotten or felt malevolent toward him. As one indignant letter-writer to the Tribune put it, “Robeson jumping on the bandwagon now? Hell, man, he built that wagon—that’s John Henry himself you’re insulting.” In the Pittsburgh Courier, J. A. Rogers protested the Tribune’s “rough going-over,” accusing it of “sheer ignorance of the influence for good Robeson’s career and accomplishments have had on the race situation here.” And when W. E. B. Du Bois died at age ninety-five in Accra and Essie made her first public appearance, two months after arriving home, at a Carnegie Hall tribute to him, she got a standing ovation that lasted for minutes, clearly in the nature of a warm welcome home both for herself and for Paul.4
He himself could do little to respond to those who falsified his past accomplishments and gloated over his present disability. Having minimal energy and fearful of another relapse, he was unable to give interviews, let alone face the barrage of a formal press conference. Dr. Morris Perlmutter, once again taking over as Robeson’s physician (he had treated him in 1955–56), found him on arrival “emaciated … not very communicative, and … having severe insomnia. His appetite was quite poor and he complained of marked fatigue.” Perlmutter put him on Elavil and Librium and at bedtime chloral hydrate to induce sleep. He advised Robeson to remain quietly at home for the time being.5
“Home” alternated between his sister Marian’s in Philadelphia and the house at Jumel Terrace in Harlem that he shared with Essie. Marian provided the deeper level of comfort, though he did feel secure at Jumel, with its privacy and its considerate neighbors. “Paul roams freely from floor to floor,” Essie wrote Harold Davison in England, “retires any moment, bounces up and around as he feels like.” To make Paul more comfortable still, Freda Diamond sent over a reclining chair; Ben Davis and Lloyd Brown dropped by to visit; and Paul, Jr., arrived most mornings, bringing his work (translating technical journals), thus freeing Essie to resume her job as a United Nations
correspondent several days a week. Paul, Jr., arranged to take him to see a matinee showing at a neighborhood theater of Sidney Poitier’s film Lilies of the Field. “It went off beautifully,” Essie reported, “with no strain or worry, and just enjoyment, and feeling that this could be done more often!!” Their grandchildren were a source of particular delight: Essie (“Nana,” as David and Susan called her) was a doting and effusive grandmother, describing the children to friends as “so gay and healthy and normal and busy and interested and interesting.” “Grandpa Paul,” in his contrasting style, took pleasure in being around the children, but (in Marilyn’s words) “was more of an observer.”6
Early in March, some two months after returning, Big Paul ventured out to the apartment of his old friends John Abt (the lawyer) and Jessica Smith (the editor of New World Review) for a quiet dinner. It turned out to be less quiet than expected, yet Paul managed to hold his own. John Abt began “a terrific discussion” (in Essie’s words) by saying he had been disappointed in the Carnegie Hall tribute to Du Bois because only Lorraine Hansberry among the speakers had mentioned that he had joined the Communist Party. Having given one of the speeches at the tribute, Essie felt a bit aggrieved at Abt’s criticism until the others assured her that anything more would have been inappropriate for that meeting. Besides, she wrote George Murphy, “Just between you and me, we should not brag too much about his joining. It was a fine gesture, and wonderful. But it was at the end, and then he left. So, easy does it, record it with due respect and justice, but we should not BRAG.”7
Though fully aware of her advancing cancer, the irrepressible Essie was on the move again. She made up a “plan-of-action,” a list of things “To Do” and “Not To Do” for the rest of her life, “so as not to waste what I had left but use it to best advantage.” Following the success of her initial appearance at the Du Bois tribute, she agreed to take part in a panel at the American Institute for Marxist Studies organized by the historian Herbert Aptheker, to speak at the annual National Guardian luncheon, and then to embark on a two-week lecture tour to the West Coast. While she was away, Paul managed to take himself by train to Marian’s house in Philadelphia. By June he was feeling improved enough to go with Paul, Jr., to a baseball game, and Dr. Perlmutter noted with satisfaction that he was sleeping and eating better and had steadily put on weight. “The results so far have exceeded my best expectations,” Perlmutter wrote Robeson’s previous doctors in the U.S.S.R., England, and the GDR. “He is again the Paul Robeson with a lively interest in life, people, and the world around him.”8
Perlmutter’s own case records show a somewhat less euphoric result, but Robeson had indubitably improved. By mid-June he had put on thirty pounds and was near his normal weight of 250. “Paul is so much better,” Essie wrote a friend, “but he still says and feels he isn’t,” and still fretted that “people will not understand his idleness.” Perlmutter felt confident enough to reduce the medication, cutting out two Elavil and one Librium a day. Robeson’s energy level rose; he was less lethargic, more interested in his surroundings, better able to watch and enjoy television. He began to talk for the first time about possible activity, cautiously considering some limited public appearance. “He is now PLANNING, no less,” Essie wrote the Rosens. “On a low level, but never mind.”9
The right opportunity, though a sad one, came at the end of August. Ben Davis, Jr., died of pancreatic cancer on August 22 at age sixty. The loss of his great friend and comrade was compounded by the recent death of Du Bois, and the passing of his beloved brother Ben the previous year while he was incapacitated in Europe and unable to return home for the funeral. In making the effort to attend Ben Davis’s memorial, Robeson was saying goodbye to his brother and to Dr. Du Bois as well. He managed to say a few words, writing them out himself and delivering them without any hesitation or stumbling. A throng was waiting on the sidewalk outside when the two hundred mourners emerged from the chapel. Catching sight of Robeson’s still-towering figure, the crowd surged toward him; people called his name in admiration, reached over to pat him on the back or squeeze his arm. For a few moments he seemed trapped in the sea of well-wishers, and the police were unable to clear a path to him. But he finally edged his way to the curb and got into a cab—apparently none the worse, despite the sorrow and tension of the occasion.10
Indeed, he felt so encouraged that a few days after the funeral he issued his first public statement since returning home, directing his words exclusively to the black press. In it he spoke of his recovering health but said for the time being he would be unable to resume public life. He wanted it known, however, that “I am, of course, deeply involved with the great upsurge of our people. Like all of you, my heart has been filled with admiration for the many thousands of Negro Freedom Fighters and their white associates”—he had never veered from the vision of an integrated struggle, and world—“who are waging the battle for civil rights throughout the country, and especially in the South.” He took pride in pointing out that, when he had written in Here I Stand in 1958 that “the time is now,” some people had thought “that perhaps my watch was fast (and maybe it was a little), but most of us seem to be running on the same time—now.” He was also pleased that the call he had sounded in the book for unified action and mass militancy among blacks was no longer deemed “too radical.” Most black people, he felt, had finally come to agree with his 1949 Paris statement calling upon them to eschew foreign wars and to conserve their strength for the struggle at home, a struggle that black artists as a matter of course had now joined—though in his day he had been told to sing, not talk. “It is good to see all these transformations.”11
Emboldened, Robeson was willing for the first time to cast a wary eye on a writing project that he had previously dismissed out-of-hand as beyond his capacity. Three publishing firms had asked him to write some sort—any sort—of memoir, and offered him contracts. For a time (in Essie’s words) Paul was “absolutely adamant about being unable and unwilling to undertake this.…” But as he improved, Essie put out some documents and clippings from her voluminous files for him to read if he felt up to it, and before long he was browsing through them, asking questions to refresh his memory. He agreed to let his old friend Earl Robinson (composer of “Ballad for Americans”) bring a young Macmillan editor named Alan Rinzler over to the house. Rinzler, though white, was on the steering committee of SNCC and a devoted admirer of Robeson’s. He was shocked at the condition in which he found him. Instead of the vigorous, charismatic figure he had grown up admiring, he found a man who “seemed very faint and hesitant, as if brain-damaged. Both his speech and movement were slow.… He looked weak and frail. He seemed like he was eighty. I was stunned by his appearance.” Essie, on the other hand, struck Rinzler as charming and vigorous, deeply considerate of Paul—and definitely in favor of Paul’s writing the book. They talked for three hours. Rinzler offered a guarantee that the publisher would do no “doctoring” of the text and encouraged him to try “some conversations” with Lloyd Brown, his co-author on Here I Stand, as a way of generating a manuscript. Paul promised to think about the possibility further. “We were all surprised and delighted, and I think Paul surprised himself,” Essie wrote a friend.12
In October, during Robeson’s monthly office visit, Perlmutter found him “a little more restless,” but made no changes in his medications and no effort to discourage the light activity he’d begun. In November, perhaps overeager to capitalize on these limited gains, Robeson attended a U.S.S.R. reception at the United Nations, a National Council for American-Soviet Friendship celebration at Carnegie Hall, and a seventieth-birthday fete for John Howard Lawson, one of the Hollywood Ten—all within a week’s time. He got a tumultuous reception at each of the events. At the Soviet affair people kept coming up to him in disbelief, wanting to see for themselves if he was really there. At the Carnegie Hall occasion he got a standing ovation that lasted for a full five minutes when he put in a surprise appearance, telling the crowd how very good it f
elt to be there and how “very gratifying to see the remarkable growth and development on many levels” in the Soviet Union, a remark that may have struck some as curious, since the admired reformer Khrushchev had recently resigned under pressure. At Lawson’s birthday party Robeson gave a short speech in praise of the “dean of the Hollywood Ten,” which led Lawson later to write him that “words cannot express” the joy he had felt at Robeson’s presence.13
That round of activity temporarily slowed him. Essie wrote a friend that Paul “is thoroughly exhausted.… Although he is very happy that he has been able to do it all … the effort tires him because he does pay close attention to what everyone says to him, and so many people speak to him.” “Essie says ‘he’s depressed,’” Perlmutter recorded in his notes when he saw Robeson at the end of November, and he prescribed a repeat dose of medicine if he awakened at night. Even so, Robeson managed to begin work on a brief reminiscence of Du Bois for the militant new black magazine Freedomways. When the celebratory issue containing Robeson’s short article appeared in March, he not only attended the Freedomways party to celebrate publication but also chose the occasion to sing in public (“Jacob’s Ladder”) for the first time in nearly four years; he was given a standing ovation. At the beginning of the new year, 1965, there were two more deaths of prominent left-wing figures—the black Communist leader Claudia Jones at age forty-nine, and the gifted playwright Lorraine Hans-berry, who had worked with Robeson on the newspaper Freedom, of cancer at thirty-four. These poignant losses called out Robeson’s reserves of strength, and he decided to respond to both publicly. Against the continuing processional of death, he continued to test his ability to rejoin life.14
Claudia Jones had died at her home in London—having been deported from the United States under the Smith Act some years before—and Robeson made a tape recording for her funeral. On it he spoke of her as “one of the victims of the dreadful McCarthy period” and rejoiced that after her deportation she had found her place in London’s West Indian community helping to found and develop the West Indian Gazette. At Hansberry’s funeral, Robeson not only appeared personally—despite a blizzard—but also delivered a eulogy. Speaking in a voice the Times called “still compelling … his eyes cast downward, his hands moving restlessly,” he paid tribute to Hansberry’s “feeling and knowledge of the history of our people … remarkable in one so young,” and, as if encouraging himself to heed the advice, reminded the crowd that she “bids us to keep our heads high and to hold on to our strength and power—to soar like the Eagle in the air.”15
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