Paul Robeson

by Martin Duberman

  40. Leys to Barnes, June 14, 1935, copy to the Robesons (RA).

  41. In this and the following paragraph I am quoting directly from PR’s own Notes, 1935, as sent to the journalist Marcia de Silva. Despite her efforts, these were neither included in the article as published in Nash’s (Dec. 1935) nor subsequently printed as a corrective in the letter she wrote to the editor (a truncated version of her letter is in Nash’s for Jan. 1936). De Silva explains all this in a letter to PR of Nov. 16, 1935, RA.

  42. PR, Notes, 1935, and Notes, 1936, RA; Nash’s, Dec. 1935. In his Notes, 1939 (RA), PR continues to speak of the Afro-American as “essentially African in his cultural heritage.” For one example of Robeson being mislabeled an “African nationalist” in this period, see Fischer, Men and Politics, p. 192. Fischer met Robeson soon after Sanders and, visiting him at home, found him “immersed in Black Zionism, and the rooms were filled with African masks, weapons, trophies and jungle knickknacks.” Fischer claims to have predicted that “Moscow would cure him of his African nationalism” and claims, too, to have suggested Robeson go there. Although Robeson would not, after the thirties, often sound in public the themes of cultural nationalism, his reaffirmation in PR, Stand, p. 35, and the reference in a statement he drafted in 1957 suggest they continued to exert at least some hold over him: “As for me, my proudest heritage is the knowledge of the richness and depth of the age-old African culture from which I and my people spring” (ms. statement in response to article in The Worker, Jan. 23, 1957, RA).

  43. PR, Notes, 1935, and Notes, 1936, RA.

  44. James, “Paul Robeson: Black Star,” p. 112.

  45. The various drafts of the prologue to Best’s film are in RA, along with Best to PR, May 26, June 2, 1936; Best to ER, May 28, Sept. 4, 1936; The Worker, April 12, 1937. Ten years later Joseph Best sent Robeson an account of the film’s subsequent history, also revealing that Robeson had invested £250 in it. According to Best, the film was well received in the trade papers, but he “soon found that there was a dead set against it originating from S. Africa House.” He was asked to cut out “many references,” but refused. When the film failed to get many bookings, Best withdrew it and then put out a shorter version under the title Africa Sings. This got a “fair showing,” and he “managed just to recoup” expenses and to draw “about even” (Best to PR, Feb. 18, 1944, RA).

  46. Telegram, Carl Laemmle, Jr., to Universal, Sept. 20, 1935, RA; New York Tribune, May 15, 1936; The Taller, June 17, 1936; New York Amsterdam News, June 20, 1936; California Eagle, May 8, 1936 (“shiftless moron”); The Black Man (London), Jan. 1937; Robinson to ER, Aug. 26, 1936, RA; Emma Goldman to PR, Oct. 21, 1935, IISH, courtesy of Richard Polenberg; Eisenstein to PR and ER, Feb. 1, 1937, RA. The Show Boat reviews are also summarized in Beulah Livingstone (Universal Pictures) to ER, May 22, 1936, RA, and ER to CVV and FM, May 25, 1936, Yale: Van Vechten.

  47. ER to CVV and FM, April 27, 1936, Yale: Van Vechten; Pittsburgh Courier, May 20, 1937.

  48. Interview with Elizabeth Welch, Sept. 6, 1982 (PR, Jr., participating); Pittsburgh Courier, May 20, 1937; Hughes to ER, July 16, 1938, RA. The white press was largely favorable—e.g., “A thoroughly entertaining film” (The Era [London], Aug. 19, 1936); “Robeson comes into his own” (Film Pictorial, March 6, 1937). However, there were some decided negatives—e.g., Picturegoer, March 6, 1937; The Spectator, Sept. 26, 1936, and The Bystander, Sept. 30, 1937, which called the film “sentimental, over-coloured and unreal.”

  49. PR, Jr., ms. comments (authorities opposed), as borne out by an editorial in The Cape Times (Feb. 1, 1935) expressing the hope that “if Paul Robeson comes to South Africa it will be to confine himself [to the] field of music, and not to indulge in the fanciful suggestions given to the Press.” ER’s remark was made in a newspaper interview she gave to a South African newspaper (the Argus, undated clipping in RA); ER to CVV and FM, May 25, 1936, Yale: Van Vechten.

  50. Interviews with Seton, Aug.-Sept. 1982. The remaining information about the Leys circle comes from Tim Couzens of the African Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, the product of his research into the Winifred Holtby Papers at Hull Central Library and the William Ballinger Papers at the University of Cape Town Archives (research he has generously shared with me). The quotations are from the following documents: ER to Holtby, n.d. (1935), Holtby Papers; Holtby to Margaret Ballinger, April 16, 1935; Holtby to the Ballingers, May 20, 1935; Holtby to Leys, April 17, 1935, Ballinger Papers. Tim Couzens also generously put in my hands a copy of the novel Wild Deer by Ethelreda Lewis. The leading character in Wild Deer is a black American singer of international renown, and the novel recounts his experiences when visiting Africa. Lewis wrote PR to say, “The central figure … is not Paul Robeson,” but it is probably based on a composite of Robeson and Roland Hayes (Lewis to PR, Oct. 31, 1932, RA). This entire backlog of events may help to explain Essie’s caution with the Cape Town reporters when responding to questions about Paul’s political plans.

  51. ER to CVV and FM, May 25, 1936, RA; the letters of introduction are in RA; ER to CVV and FM, postcard.June 6, 1936, Yale: Van Vechten; ER to PR, June 4, 1936, RA. I. Schapera (professor of anthropology at Cape Town University), Dr. Bokwe, Max Yergan, Dr. James Moroka (later president-general of the African National Congress), and Rheinallt Jones of the South African Institute of Race Relations in Johannesburg were especially helpful (e.g., Jones to ER, June 12, 1936, RA).

  52. ER to PR, June 4, 17, 21, 23, 1936, RA; ER to Marie Seton, July 28, 1936, courtesy of Seton; ER, African Journey (John Day Co., 1945) passim; Cape Town Argus, n.d., (clipping in RA); Johannesburg Sunday Times, July 5, 1936 (interview with ER); New York World-Telegram, Sept. 11, 1936 (report on trip). C. L. R. James was also of the opinion “that people were looking to Paul to start … a movement.” (James, “Paul Robeson”) ER to Jackman, Oct. 6, 1936, Yale: Van Vechten (“grand dreams”). Jackman had begun to edit Challenge with Dorothy West, and in the issues of Jan. and June 1936 had published Essie’s “Black Paris” in two parts. Arthur Schomburg, for one, was acid about the new journal: “It does not seem to challenge anything,” he wrote Nancy Cunard (Schomburg to Cunard, June 9, 1936, NYPL/Schm).

  53. PR referred to his Aug. 1936 vacation in the U.S.S.R. in the five-page ms. Notes, 1938, RA, subsequently published as “Why I Left My Son in Moscow,” Russia Today, Feb. 1938. Robert Robin son, who again saw PR during his 1936, visit, found him more fully committed to the Soviet Union than he had been in 1934 (interview with Robinson, May 18, 1988). Peggy Dennis told me about the consultation over Pauli (interview, April 1982 [PR, Jr., participating]). She has also written about it in The Autobiography of an American Communist (Westport, 1977). pp. 119–20.

  54. New York Amsterdam News, July 1, 1938; Pittsburgh Courier, Aug. 14, 1937. The negative critics were particularly harsh about the artificial placement of the songs and the foolishness of their lyrics (e.g., The Spectator, July 30, 1937). Robeson did not have the contractual power to veto the anachronisms, but he seems to have had enough informal clout to bring about some changes in the plot line: a handwritten note by Essie appended to the screen treatment (RA) registers objection to indiscriminate scenes of killing: “No blood orgies. OK one or 2 killed in melee … but no general killing.” PR was paid eight thousand pounds for ten weeks (Harold Holt to ER, Dec. 14, 1935, RA). For a persuasive reading of King Solomon’s Mines as a defense of the British Empire, see Jeffrey Richards, “Patriotism with Profit: British Imperial Cinema in the 1930s,” British Cinema History, ed. James Curran and Vincent Porter (Barnes and Noble, 1983).

  55. Interview with Elizabeth Welch, Sept. 6, 1982 (PR, Jr., participating); Picturegoer Weekly, Oct. 26, 1935 (comic part); ER to “Ann,” postcard, Jan. 3, 1937, Yale: Van Vechten. “We are both so proud of YOU,” Van Vechten wrote ER on hearing about her movie role, knowing well her need for acknowledgment as an independent person (CVV to ER, June 22, 1937, RA). Hearing the news that Essie was going to act, Flora Robson wrote to congratulate he
r: “I hope you’ll love it and succeed, and get where you want to—the production side” (FR to ER, Dec. 30, 1936, RA).

  56. Fenn Sherie (one of the two scriptwriters) and “Arthur” to J. Edgar Wills, Oct. 14, 1936, RA (script; title). Welch and Essie did not get along well: “Essie didn’t care for me. Essie didn’t care for a lot of ladies. She was nervous of Paul, you see.… She had no humor. I mean, she may have had some in her own way, but she didn’t have any of ours” (interview with Welch, Sept. 6, 1982).

  57. ER to CVV and FM, Feb. 9, 1937, postcard, Yale: Van Vechten; Moscow Daily News, Dec. 20, 1936; also Moscow News, Dec. 30, 1936. The Dec. 1936 Workers’ Moscow review was translated for me (as well as much other Russian-language material) by Eisenstein’s sister-in-law Zina Voynow; she characterized the Eisenstein review as typical of his style “when he was not doing real criticism.” Ma Goode’s ms., “The Education of My Grandson” (RA), details both the discrimination young Pauli had already faced and his contentment at the contrasting atmosphere of the Soviet school.

  58. ER to “Ann,” Jan. 3, 1937, postcard, RA; ER to CVV and FM, Feb. 9, 1937, postcard, Yale: Van Vechten; Sunday Worker, May 10, 1936 (Davis). On Stalin’s collectivization policies, see Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow (Oxford, 1986); however, for exaggerations in Conquest’s account, see Jeff Coplan, “In Search of a Soviet Holocaust,” the Village Voice, Jan. 12, 1988, and also the follow-up letters in the Voice, Feb. 2, 10, 1988.

  59. Film Pictorial, May 10, 1937 (“mix”); ER to CVV and FM, Feb. 9, 1937, postcard, Yale: Van Vechten.

  60. California Eagle, May 21, 1937; Picture Show, May 15, 1937; New York Amsterdam News, n.d. (1937) (Kalsoun); Egyptian Gazette, Feb. 6, 1937 (cinema); Evening News, April 13, 1937: “My voice is embarrassingly delicate. I simply can’t afford to play tricks with it.”

  61. Interview with Henry Wilcoxon (PR, Jr., participating), Sept. 1982. Wilcoxon and Essie seem to have gotten along well despite his finding her “sharp”; there are several chatty (undated) letters from him to her in RA.

  62. Wilcoxon interview, Sept. 1982.

  63. Evening Standard, Dec. 22, 1936 (Kouka); The New York Times, Aug. 17, 1938. The Times (London), Nov. 11, 1937, ran a representative English review: “This film begins admirably … then declines into the commonplace.” In a reverse of the usual reception, Washington Afro-American, Aug. 20, 1938, praised Robeson more highly than did any of the white reviewers: “… in ‘Dark Sands,’ he is permitted to redeem himself completely.” On the commercial failure of fericho, see Ernest Betts, Inside Pictures (Cresset, 1960), pp. 11–14.

  64. Pablo Azcarate (Spanish Ambassador) to PR, April 26, 1937, Jan. 19, 1938; Yergan to PR, May 25, 1937, RA. The program for the Victoria Palace concert is in RA; among the patrons listed are Dame Sybil Thorndike, Rebecca West, Havelock Ellis, John Gielgud, and John Cowper Powys.

  65. ER to CVV and FM, May 30, 1937, Yale: Van Vechten; Moscow Daily News, May 15, 1937; E. C. Goode (“Ma” Goode), “The Education of My Grandson,” ms., RA. Jean Blackwell Huston (interview, Sept. 21, 1983) told me an anecdote about meeting PR in Moscow in 1937 that bears repeating for its insights into his personality: “I was walking along the street, and I was wearing the homespun clothing that they wore, which I had acquired by exchanging with some people I met going south on a train.… However, I was still wearing my American shoes. And when Robeson saw me, he thought he must be seeing somebody from home.… So he followed me. You know, he had a wonderful sense of humor.… I remember then I turned around and he said, ‘Is you is or is you ain’t?’… Then he walked along and showed me the sights of Moscow.… I think this was characteristic of him—that he would forget where he was supposed to be and just impulsively be kind and cordial to a person.”

  66. ER to CVV and FM, May 30, 1937, Yale: Van Vechten. The quotes expressing Paul’s views in this and the following paragraphs are taken from two of his statements, “National Culture and the Soviet Union” (written for the Sunday Worker, Oct. 10, 1937; ms. in RA) and an untitled four-page ms. in RA, there given the title “Soviet Worker, 1937.” Years later, recalling his 1937 attendance at the Uzbek National Theater (and writing for a pro-Soviet journal), Robeson described the performance as “national in form, socialist in content,” and the Uzbek people as “quite comparable to some of the tribal folk of Asia—quite comparable to the proud Yoruba or Basuto of West and East Africa, but now their lives flowering anew within the socialist way of life” (New World Review, April 1953).

  67. The three-page typescript of PR’s speech, dated June 24, 1937, is in RA. The account of threats to ban or jam his broadcast is drawn from: Manchester Guardian, Daily Mirror, Daily Worker—all June 25, 1937; News-Chronicle, June 19, 1937; Daily Herald, June 24, 1937. The News-Chronicle, June 25, 1937, is among the papers reporting his speech as “the most striking.” The program of the event, listing the sponsors, is in RA. Yvonne Kapp, the principal organizer of the rally, called Robeson’s speech “the finest an artist has ever made,” and Hilda Browning, of the National Joint Committee for Spanish Relief, credited Robeson’s personal appearance with the sellout crowd. John McMillan, of the publishing firm of William Heinemann Ltd., was so enamored of his “magnificent speech” that he tried (unsuccessfully) to persuade him to broaden it into a book (Kapp to PR and ER, Browning to ER, McMillan to PR—all June 25, 1937, RA).

  68. T. H. Lee to PR, Nov. 7, 1937, RA; Gollancz to PR, Sept. 22, 1937, RA (there are three versions of a blurb PR gave, at Gollancz’s request, for Edgar Snow’s Red Star Over China, written in ER’s hand on the Gollancz letter); A. C. Thomas to ER, Nov. 8, 1937, RA (Friends U.S.S.R.); Agnes Maisky to ER, Jan. 16, 1938, RA; Daily News-Chronicle (London), Nov. 7, 1937 (“aspirations”); Reynolds News, Oct. 10, 1937 (“decadent”); Daily Worker, Nov. 22, 1937; Cripps to PR, Oct. 12, Dec. 4, 1937; Cripps to ER, Nov. 25, 1937, RA. For more on Robeson’s connection with Unity Theatre, see pp. 223–24. Ambassador Azcarate invited the Robesons to dinner on Nov. 18, 1937, to meet Pablo Casals. Programs for PR’s benefit concerts are in RA. At the Nov. 6, 1937, Queen’s Hall meeting in support of China, PR shared the platform with the Dean of Canterbury, P. J. Noel Baker (Master of Balliol), and Ellen Wilkinson, MP. Robeson told the black press he was sick and tired of playing Uncle Tom roles, admitting that those who had earlier attacked his acceptance of such parts had been justified in their protests. He vowed for the future to avoid portraying caricatures (New York Amsterdam News, undated, 1937; Philadelphia Tribune, May 20, 1937).

  69. For more on the changes in lyrics, see note 14, pp. 604–05. The programs for PR’s benefit appearances are in RA. Newspaper accounts of the Albert Hall rally include the Daily Herald and News-Chronicle, both Dec. 20, 1937. During this same period PR’s gift of $250 initiated a fund-raising drive for the Negro People’s Ambulance to Republican Spain, a cause whose sponsors came to include such black luminaries as Channing Tobias, A. Philip Randolph, William Pickens, Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright; the mimeographed report on the ambulance’s Eastern tour is in RA. Finally, Robeson made a record in aid of the Basque Refugee Children’s Fund for His Master’s Voice.

  CHAPTER 11 THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR AND EMERGENT POLITICS (1938–1939)

  1. ER to William Patterson, March 22, 1938, MSRC: Patterson; ER Diary, 1938, and her eighty-page reworking of it (entitled “We Go to Spain”)—the two mss. are in RA and are hereafter cited together as ER, “Spain”; ER to CVV and FM, Jan. 21, 1938, Yale: Van Vechten.

  2. On the visa problem: James E. Parks (American Consul, London) to PR, Dec. 21, 28, 1937; Parks to ER, Jan. 7, 1938, RA. Robeson may have decided to go to Spain with Charlotte Haldane after he had sung at a benefit concert for the International Brigade (Dependents and Wounded Aid Committee) at Shoreditch Town Hall; Charlotte Haldane was hon. secretary of the group (CH to PR, Jan. 3, 1938, RA).

  3. The Guillén interview was originally published in the radical Cuban journal Mediodía, reprinted in a translation by Katheryn Silver in World Magazine, July 24, 1976; Manches
ter Guardian, Feb. 2, 1938.

  4. News-Chronicle, Feb. 4, 1938; Scotsman, Feb. 4, 1938.

  5. ER, “Spain,” RA; ER Diary, January 23, 1938, RA (Minor).

  6. ER, “Spain,” RA.

  7. PR, Notes, 1938, “My Impressions of Spain,” nine ms. pp., RA; ER, “Spain,” RA (black soldiers). In the documentary film The Good Fight, Tom Page, another black American in the brigade, is quoted as saying, “For the first time in my life I was treated with dignity.” Langston Hughes, who was in Spain the year before Robeson and friendly with Guillén, also reported that “All the Negroes, of whatever nationality, to whom I talked, agreed that there was not the slightest trace of color prejudice in Spain” (I Wonder As I Wander [Hill & Wang, 1956], p. 351; the Hughes volume has considerable information on blacks who served in Spain). Additional detail on the experiences of black Americans including information on Gibbs, Mitchell, and Pringle, is in James Yates, Mississippi to Madrid: Memoirs of a Black American in the Spanish Civil War 1936–1938 (Shamal, 1986).

  8. PR, Notes, 1938. “My Impressions of Spain,” RA; Daily Herald, Feb. 4, 1938 (film). PR expressed the same sentiments to Nicolás Guillén about “big capital” controlling the film industry and insisting on “a caricature image of the Black, a ridiculous image, that amuses the white bourgeoisie, and I am not interested in playing their game.…” When Guillén asked him if that meant he was abandoning films, Robeson purportedly replied, “No, not that. What I won’t do any more is work for the big companies, which are headed by individuals who would make me a slave, like my father, if they could. I need to work with small independent producers” (Guillen interview with Robeson, as reprinted in World Magazine, July 24, 1976). For more on Oliver Law, including a description of his death, see Steve Nelson, James R. Barrett, and Rob Ruck, Steve Nelson: American Radical (University of Pittsburgh, 1981), pp. 205–18.