Paul Robeson

by Martin Duberman

  41. Patterson, Man Who Cried Genocide, chs. 12, 13. NYPL/Schm: CRC contains considerable documentary material on the petition drive; of particular interest is Patterson’s letter to The New York Times (Nov. 26, 1951) chastising the paper for prominently reporting a call to investigate genocide charges against the Soviet Union while ignoring the genocide charges against the United States. Essie was one of the signatories to the final petition. Patterson recounts his disappointment with the genocide campaign (“It neither got the support nor recognition which I believed it deserved”) in WP to George B. Murphy, Jr., March 7, 1957, MSRC: Murphy. The 1951 petition to the UN on behalf of black Americans was in fact the third such. The first, presented by the NAACP, asked for a redress of grievances for black people in the United States and was edited by Du Bois. The second, presented by Yergan for the NNC, was initially drafted by Patterson. Both failed to secure a hearing in the Commission of Human Rights (Patterson to Oakley C. Johnson, June 10, 1952, NYPL/Schm: CRC).

  42. Krishan Chandar to PR, June 11, 1951, RA (Bombay); Daily Worker, July 3, 1951 (Paris); Lynford Joel Concertato, telegram, August 28, 1951 (British tour); Peter Blackman to Patterson, Sept. 19, 1951 NYPL/Schm: CRC (London), which also sounds the frequent complaint among Robeson associates that “he must answer letters or otherwise nobody knows what he wants done”—for this same complaint see also Earl Robinson to Hunton, Nov. 18, 1949, RA; Michael Hamburger to PR, July 10, 1951 (Aberdeen); Warren Brody to PR, May 9, 1951 (Harvard), both in NYPL/Schm: PR; FBI Main 100-12304-233 (sample opposition to PR); Isidore M. Cohen to PR, June 11, 1951, NYPL/Schm: PR. An additional batch of foreign invitations are in RA for the first few months of 1952. By that time Robeson’s lawyers and friends were making something of a concerted effort to solicit such invitations as a vehicle for challenging the State Department’s ban; as Essie wrote in response to one such invitation, “Thank you.… Every invitation is of great importance for us. For each one, we go again to the State Department for a passport” (ER to C. Bogdan, Rumanian legate, Feb. 15, 1952, RA; see also, D. N. Pritt to Patterson, Dec. 14, 1951, NYPL/Schm: CRC). PR to Lionel Kenner, Oct. 28, 1951, RA (common search). His brief Christmas message for 1950 had similarly stated, “Peace depends on the friendly, though competitive co-existence of different systems” (RA).

  43. The number of meraos, teletypes, and instructions relating to the Vancouver incident in RA are too numerous to cite individually. PR had attended a reception for Harry Bridges and had spoken out in his defense after the long-shoremen’s leader was convicted of perjury in a federal district court in California for denying under oath at the time of his naturalization that he had ever been a CP member (FBI Main 100-12304-255), a conviction subsequently reversed by the Supreme Court.

  44. Bellingham Herald, Jan. 31, 1952; Freedom, March 1952 (PR’s own account of Vancouver); Vancouver Daily Province, Jan. 29, Feb. 1,12, 1952; Vancouver Sun, Jan. 31, Feb. 8, 9, 1952.) Jerry Tyler, one of four union men who helped Robeson find accommodations in Seattle—he “wanted to get a room in the Negro community”—and to arrange a press conference, described the hours he spent with Robeson as a “thrill and inspiration.… How can you paint a word picture of the impact on yourself of a man so full of warmth and love that he stands like a giant, yet makes you feel, without stooping to you, that you too are a giant and hold the power of making history in your own hands as well?” (Tyler to Eddie Tangen, secretary-treasurer, National Union MCS, Feb. 3, 1952, NYPL/Schm: PR.)

  45. Morning Freiheit, Feb. 12, 1952 (miners’ convention); People’s World, Feb. 8, 1952 (PR’s speech); FBI Main 100-12304-253; FBI New York 100-25857-1548.

  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]).

  19. RA contains a multisided correspondence—between Essie and Rockmore, Rockmore and Julius Meltzer (the real-estate agent), and Bert McGhee and Rockmore (about rent)—relating to the Enfield sale in particular and PR’s finances in general; it is too bulky to cite in detail. It should be noted, though, that Rockmore occasionally wrote directly to Robeson admonishing him about his continuing indifference to his financial affairs (e.g., Rockmore to PR, Sept. 5, 1951, June 24, 1953, RA). The asking price on Enfield is in The New York Times, July 21, 1953. For a time Robeson himself seems to have agreed to Essie’s purchase of a building lot in the progressive residential area of Norwalk called Village Creek Colony (PR to Judy Rosen Ruben, July 28, 1953, courtesy of Rosen). In regard to PR’s finances, the black actress-activist Frances Williams has recorded a touching anecdote. Hearing that he was in bad straits, she told him, “‘Paul, I don’t want you to worry about that because, damn it, if we all have to stand on corners with cups, we’ll get enough money so you can keep going.’ He sat there and cried. I can see the tears coming down his face. He said, ‘Oh, baby you don’t have to worry about me and money.…’ This great man crying. Can you see me standing on the corner with a cup? I loved him. He was a great, great man” (Williams interview, 1981, with Kim Fellner and Janet Mac-Lachlan, transcript courtesy of Fellner). At this same time, the early fifties, Rock-more sold a small apartment PR had kept at 188 West 135th Street. The union activist Ted Rolfs (in an interview conducted for me by Eric Garber, Feb. 4, 1983, and my follow-up phone interview with him on Feb. 17, 1987) described the apartment as having a gigantic bed and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, along with iron protective guards on special windows and an iron floor-bolt on the front door. PR allowed Rolfs, who had been named a security risk, to stay in the apartment, but Rolfs described how difficult PR’s black neighbors in the building made it for him until they were finally persuaded he was not there to do Paul any harm. (For more on Rolfs, see note 47, p. 646, and note 17, p. 701.) PR sometimes stayed in this period at Ben Davis’s apartment and also at the Pettis Perry family’s apartment. A little later (around 1955) he used William Patterson’s apartment at 409 Edgecomb Avenue when Patterson was away.