Paul Robeson

by Martin Duberman

  19. The text of PR’s speech is in RA. The FBI, having long since decided that Freedomways (to say nothing of Robeson) was avowedly Marxist, conducted a “physical surveillance” of the Americana (FBI New York 100-25857-4704). PR’s remarks, along with the speeches by Hope R. Stevens and John Lewis, were published in the Summer 1965 issue of Freedomways; the editors excerpted PR’s comments.

  20. Joe North to Robesons, n.d., RA (“inspiring”); Norma Rogers to PR, May 6, 1965, RA (“memorable”); phone interview with Alan Rinzler, May 5, 1986; Liberator, June 1965. The quote from Azikiwe is in a letter to Alphaeus Hunton (Feb. 25, 1958, RA), which was apparently passed on to PR. In a letter to PR himself—the salutation is “My dear Hero”—Azikiwe expressed the fear that “we are now on the verge of realising our dreams, and I do hope that we shall not have dreamt and fought in vain. I say this because as I near my 54th milestone I begin to become disillusioned and I begin to appreciate the aphorism: things are not always what they seem” (Aug. 23, 1958, RA).

  21. Multiple conversations with PR, Jr.; interviews with Alice Childress, Sept. 19, 1983, Oct. 9, 1984.

  22. ER to Rosens, May 19, 1965, courtesy of Helen Rosen; ER to family, May 19, 1965, RA; Los Angeles Times, May 16, 1965; People’s World, May 22, 1965; the ms. of PR’s speech at the church is in RA—it was also recorded; interview with Chuck Moseley and Homer Sadler (PR, Jr., participating), May 3, 1982. Essie also gave a short speech (Morning Freiheit, May 27, 1965). Frankie Lee Sims had been treasurer of the Los Angeles Negro Labor Council in the early fifties, and her husband, George Sims, had been active in the AFL Carpenters Local; both were devout Baptists (Freedom, Dec. 1952). In Dorothy Healey’s view, to rely on Fritchman and his church as sponsors for Robeson’s one major appearance was tantamount to admitting that he had failed to “get a major black response.… You do that when it’s your last refuge and you have to show a big audience, and there’s no question he would … pack the church … but it wouldn’t be packed with black people” (interview, April 1982). Geri Branton (interview, April 2, 1982) confirms that he was not enthusiastically received “in the white or the black community.”

  23. Interviews (PR, Jr., participating) with Geri Branton. April 2, 1982; Dorothy Healey, April 1982; Rose Perry, April 27, 1982. According to Essie, Gus Hall was brought to the Simses’ house for a visit by Bill Taylor only “after respectfully obtaining permission … didn’t stay long. Nice visit … All cordial” (ER to family, May 31, 1965, RA). Some of Essie’s protectiveness seemed justified when the local Peekskill informer (see p. 371) reappeared in California. Somehow he had ingratiated himself with George and Frankie Lee Sims, and they recommended him to Robeson, who immediately remembered him and refused to get in a car he was driving (interviews with Helen Rosen).

  24. ER to family, May 19, 1965, RA. In that letter, Essie reported that Paul had been induced to sing by a woman in the audience who said “she would like to hear Paul sing 8 bars of Go Down Moses. Paul laughed, hesitated, then said, ‘O.K., I’ll try. I don’t know if it will come out, but I’ll try’. He then proceeded to sing it right through, beautifully, really beautifully, and the people went wild, and then the lady got up and said: ‘I just wanted to prove to you that you could do it’. And Paul said, ‘Well, you did!’ And the people were delighted.”

  25. ER to family, May 31, 1965, RA; multiple conversations with PR, Jr; phone interviews with Ruby Silverstone, Feb. 23, March 1, 1987.

  26. Phone interviews with Ruby Silverstone, Feb. 23, March 1, 1987; ER to family, May 31, 1965. Transcripts of Robeson’s various brief remarks at People’s World, etc., are in RA.

  27. Multiple conversations with PR, Jr. The June 4 Salute to Paul Robeson came off despite his absence and was well attended and enthusiastic (Alvah Bessie to PR, June 6, 1965; James Herndon [chairman] to ER. June 30, July 19, 1965; Mary Helen Jones to ER, July 7, 1965; ER to Herndon, July 8, 1965—all in RA; San Francisco Sun Reporter, May 22, June 12, 1965; Canadian Tribune, July 19, 1965, reprinting Alvah Bessie’s tribute). On June 13 a Musical Tribute to Robeson also came off as planned, sponsored by the San Francisco Negro Historical and Cultural Society; Ethel Ray Nance, who had been an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance, was the chair of the library committee (the program is in RA; Sun Reporter, June 12, 1965).

  28. It is Paul, Jr.’s belief that in the days preceding the Gracie Square admission Kline had prescribed amphetamines for his father, which were discontinued only because PR, disliking their effect, refused to take them. Dr. Kline had agreed to turn his records on PR over to me, having previously denied to Paul, Jr., that he still had them, but his sudden death intervened. In the absence of those records, the possibility of amphetamines’ being used can be neither confirmed nor denied. Perlmutter to PR, Jr., Oct. 31, 1979 (referral to Kline); interview with Pearlmutter, March 7, 1983; Gracie Square Hospital records (all courtesy of PR, Jr.) for the quotes about “scissors” and “difficulty,” recorded by a Dr. Robins when he took PR’s history from Essie on the day of admission. In his first entry under “Progress Notes” in the Gracie Square records, Perlmutter refers to the suicide attempt of the previous evening as having been made “with a double-edged razor blade.”

  29. The physicians’ reports and the nurses’ comments are all from the Gracie Square Hospital records, courtesy of PR, Jr.

  30. In the nurses’ notes for June 19, 1965 (Gracie Square Hospital), R.N. Paul Jones recorded, “He said many people felt that he was taking an active part in left wing organizations and this turned them against him.”

  31. Interview with Dr. Alfred Katzenstein (Buch Clinic), July 26, 1986. Dr. Katzenstein’s view that Robeson should have had intensive psychotherapy immediately following his ECT treatments—indeed, his view that ECT is only useful when done in conjunction with analysis—is not shared by most ECT specialists (see note 11, pp. 743–44). At any rate, Robeson never had rigorous psychoanalytic treatment.

  32. Interview with Dr. Ari Kiev, Dec. 14, 1982; follow-up phone discussion, Nov. 1, 1986; Du Bois, Negro Digest, March 1950.

  33. Interview with Dr. Ari Kiev, Dec. 14, 1982; follow-up phone discussion, Nov. 1, 1986.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Essie’s medical records are in RA; multiple conversations with PR, Jr., and with Helen Rosen.

  36. Multiple conversations with Helen Rosen.

  37. Multiple conversations with Helen Rosen and with PR, Jr.; Gracie Square Hospital records, courtesy of PR, Jr.; interview with Dr. Ari Kiev, Dec. 14, 1982. PR, Jr., ms. comments. Apparently Robeson was no longer on Librium, though it is not clear when he was taken off. Since that medication had worked so well, its withdrawal could alone account for his deterioration.

  38. Physicians’ reports and nurses’ notes are part of the Gracie Square Hospital records, courtesy of PR, Jr.; Essie’s medical records are in RA.

  39. Physician reports and nurses’ notes are from Gracie Square Hospital records, courtesy of PR, Jr. Dr. Kiev has indicated (in follow-up conversations of Nov. 11, 1986, and June 11, 1987) that, although it was contrary to his usual practice to put a patient on Valium and Thorazine, he felt the combination was indicated in Robeson’s case. Thorazine, then and since, is the most widely used of the major tranquilizers, and the amount Robeson got was below the recommended dosage. He received no more than three hundred milligrams on any one day (and probably less), while for “Hospitalized Patients: Acutely Agitated, Manic, or Disturbed,” the Physicians’ Desk Reference suggests that “500 mg. a day is generally sufficient” and “gradual increases to 2,000 mg. a day or more may be necessary” (PDR [Medical Economics Oradell, 1987], p. 1934). Moreover, the dosages used in clinical practices tend to run higher than what are generally viewed as the conservative estimates of the PDR.

  40. Multiple conversations with PR, Jr.

  41. Nachtigall’s report, along with the other medical data, is in the Gracie Square Hospital records, courtesy of PR, Jr.; multiple conversations with Helen Rosen and with PR.Jr.; confirming phone interview
with Richard Nachtigall, March 10, 1987.

  42. University Hospital (NYU) medical records, courtesy of PR, Jr. In my interview with him (March 7, 1983), Dr. Perlmutter confirmed that “some toxic reaction to the medication” apparently did play a role. He reiterated, too, that, after the complications from pneumonia and drug toxicity were resolved, Robeson’s degenerative arteriosclerosis may have remained a complicating organic factor in his continuing depression. In a phone interview (March 10, 1987) with Dr. Nachtigall, he confirmed his earlier view that Robeson’s high fever was a response to the combination of drugs he had been given. He also said, “It is theoretically possible that brain damage could result from such a high fever reaction,” but “doubted very much” that had been the case with Robeson.

  43. ER to Franz Loesser, Oct. 23, 1965, PR Archiv, GDR (“What happened?”); multiple conversations with PR, Jr.; ER’s statement is in RA; New York Journal-American, Oct. 18, 1965; New York World-Telegram and The New York Times, Oct. 19, 1965; the Presbyterian and University hospital records are in RA. In the weeks before Robeson disappeared he had been to Dr. Perlmutter’s office for a checkup and Perlmutter had increased his Valium dosage (Perlmutter’s medical records on Robeson, copy in RA); conceivably, the higher dosage contributed to his confusion.

  44. Essie’s medical records are in RA; multiple conversations with PR, Jr. The two fullest newspaper obits are: The New York Times, Dec. 14, 1965, and National Guardian, Dec. 18, 1965. Freedomways (Fourth Quarter 1965) put out a special supplement, “Tribute to Eslanda Robeson,” containing selections from her writings and reminiscences from friends (including the comments of Ruth Gage Colby, Essie’s U.N. friend). Essie died intestate; a statement in Surrogate’s Court to that effect, dated Feb. 18, 1966, and signed by PR, Sr., is in RA, which also contains many letters of condolence. Shortly before she died, Essie wrote to Peggy Middleton in London asking her to clean out the Connaught Square flat. Reporting on that to Cedric Belfrage, Middleton went on to make this mysterious comment: “I suspect I shall find that the housekeeper has been told to burn the letters. I’m not in favour of muck-raking biographies, but I somehow feel that all that stuff ought not to be destroyed. I’ll take a bet that it is though … I should be reluctant myself to set fire to it” (Middleton to Belfrage, Oct. 4, 1965, courtesy of Belfrage). Middleton may have been referring to letters from women to Essie that Paul, Jr., told me he destroyed because he considered them to be love letters.

  When near death, Essie had still managed, in the last few months of her life, not only to arrange for the disposition of the London Connaught Square flat, but also to convey approval for the formal establishment of a Paul Robeson Archiv in the GDR (ER to Harold Davison, Oct. 2, 1965; Peggy Middleton to Marilyn Robeson, Aug. 1, 1965; ER to Dr. Ossinger, Nov. 14, 1965; Diana Loesser to ER, Aug. 30, 1965; Victor Grossman to PR, Dec. 24, 1965; Alfred Katzenstein to PR, April 2, 1965—all in RA; Peggy Middleton to Cedric Belfrage, Oct. 4, Dec. 29, 1965, courtesy of Belfrage [Middle-ton, Harry Francis, and D. N. Pritt were suggested by ER as the English nominees for the Archiv committee; Middlelon favored linking Robeson and Du Bois in one archive]).

  CHAPTER 26 FINAL YEARS (1966–1976)

  1. According to Mrs. Gertrude Cunningham, a family relative who lived across the street, Paulina “was furious at all the attention Marian gave to her brother” (interview, Aug. 17, 1982).

  2. Lee Lurie to Harold Davison, Jan. 7, 1966 (“pretty rough”); Marian Forsythe to Lurie, Jan. 12, 18, plus an undated letter, 1966—all in RA; Marian to Larry Brown, undated Christmas card (1965?); letter, Jan. 12, 1966—both NYPL/Schm: Brown.

  3. Multiple conversations with Helen Rosen, with PR, Jr., and, separately, with Marilyn Robeson; interview with James Aronson, May 31, 1983; Carl Marzani to PR, March 25, 1966, RA; interview with Marzani, March 11, 1986 (“laid out”).

  4. George B. Murphy, Jr., to PR, Dec. 2, 1966 (Patterson); WilliamJ. McKenna, Jr., to PR, Oct. 27, 1966 (Rutgers); Thomas McDonough to PR, Nov. 30, 1966 (film); A. Philip Randolph to PR, June 22, 1966; Dr. Karel Duda to PR, Oct. 18, 1966 (Czechoslovak Ambassador); PR, Jr., to Duda, Oct. 26, 1966—all in RA. The FBI comment is in a Dec. 8, 1966, New York Office report, no file number; also FBI New York 100-25857-477 for New York Office’s furnishing data on Robeson to Philadelphia.

  5. Anna Louise Strong to Fritchman, Sept. 20, 1966; Fritchman to PR, Oct. 17, 1966—both in RA. Helen Rosen (in multiple conversations) supports Strong’s view that Robeson was upset over the Sino-Soviet split and leaned toward the Chinese. According to PR, Jr. (multiple conversations), his father told him in London in 1959, “In my head I’m still with the Russians but with my heart I’m with the Chinese”—though PR, Jr., has subsequently insisted, “That was with reference to a specific [unspecified] issue involving the third world, not an overall position.” Yet, when Newsweek printed a rumor in 1963 that Paul had been invited to China and was considering the invitation, Essie reassured the Soviet Ambassador to the GDR that it was “a malicious rumor out of whole cloth, just to aggravate” (ER to family, Nov. 16, 1963, courtesy of Paulina Forsythe).

  6. Multiple interviews with Marilyn Robeson; Marian Forsythe to Lee Lurie, Nov. 7, 11, 1966; Lurie to Forsythe, Nov. 9, 1966; Alvin I. Goldfarb to John Rockmore, Oct. 20, 1966—all in RA.

  7. Marian Forsythe to Lee Lurie, Nov. 7, 1966, April 24, July 2, 1967, RA; the closing statement on the Jumel Terrace sale is also in RA. The piano teacher-friend was Charlotte Turner Bell. She has published an account of her visits that, measured against a variety of other reports, seems exaggeratedly cheerful—e.g., see note 18 (Charlotte Turner Bell, Paul Robeson’s Last Days in Philadelphia [Dorrance & Co., 1986]).

  8. Joseph Martindale to PR, Nov. 14, 1967. As late as 1967, Robeson’s picture was absent from the gallery of football players in the Rutgers gym, and when students questioned it, university athletic officials replied that Robeson had failed to send his picture in; besides, “We do not brag about him.” His picture was finally hung in the late sixties, but the university continued to refuse to sponsor him for the National Football Hall of Fame (whose home was at Rutgers). Indeed, the 1950 reference work College Football listed a ten-man All-American team for 1918, omitting Robeson; PR, Jr., “Paul Robeson: Black Warrior,” Freedomways, First Quarter 1971).

  9. Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, Dec. 22, 1967; New York Post, Dec. 23, 1967; FBI 100-38128-162; FBI Main 100-12304 (no file number), December 8, 1967; Middleton to Belfrage, Feb. 1, 1968, courtesy of Belfrage. Visiting him in the hospital, Charles Blockson found Robeson’s “handshake firm and his eyes clear” (interview with Blockson, April 10, 1988). The newspaper accounts of Robeson’s illness prompted a number of letters from fans and friends (all in RA), expressing pleasure at having had some news of him, however unpleasant, and wishing him well.

  10. The Worker, April 7, 1968; Patterson’s speech was printed up for distribution by the CPUSA (a copy is in RA), with the appended remarks by Lightfoot and Mitchell. Citation for the establishment of the Paul Robeson Archive in the GDR is in note 44, p. 759.

  11. Franz Loesser to PR, Jr., and Marilyn, May 27, 1968 (GDR); Morning Star, March g, 28, April 10, 1968; Stage, March 14, April 10, 1968; the program for the London event is in RA, complete with a list of sponsors, including Oliver Tambo (also O. R. Tambo to June Purdie, Dec. 30, 1967)—all in RA.

  12. In 1968, when a new student-union building was under construction at Rutgers, the Black Student Union asked that it be named in Robeson’s honor. The question was left to a vote of the student body, which defeated the suggestion by a vote of 753 to 478; a second such proposal lost by fewer than two hundred votes (Rutgers Daily Targum, Nov. 15, Dec. 11, 1968). A year later, however, the Paul Robeson Arts and Music Lounge was dedicated in the student building; feeling the event had been allowed to take place without adequate ceremony, the eastern-region branch of Alpha Phi Alpha (Robeson’s fraternity) and the Student Center Board rededicated the lounge in April 1970. In 1971 the Harambee Organization, a black student g
roup at the Newark campus of Rutgers, proposed to the board of governors that the Newark Student Center be named after Robeson; the nomination was supported by thirty-seven other campus and community groups and passed by the Board (Philip Hoggard to PR, March 11, 1970, RA; Daily Home News, April 4, 1970; the New York Amsterdam News, April 18, 1970; Harambee to Board of Governors, Dec. 9, 1971; Karl E. Metzger [Board] to PR, Feb. 15, 1972—both in RA). In 1975 a proposal was made at Rutgers to change the name of Livingston College to Paul Robeson College. The faculty divided on the issue and the proposal was rejected (Rutgers Daily Targum, Nov. 14, Dec. 2, 4, 1975; Rutgers Alumni Magazine, Feb. 1976). Interview with Robert Sherman, March 21, 1983 (WQXR). The CBC broadcast produced hundreds of letters and phone calls, but Paul, Jr., angrily protested it; feeling it was now up to him to protect his father’s public image as well as his personal privacy, he accused the broadcasters (accurately, in my view) with having minimized his father’s contributions to black liberation and the colonial struggle, and with having perpetuated the falsehood that his father had lived in exile from the United States (PR, Jr., to Eleanor Fischer, March 29, May 1, 1971; Eleanor Fischer to PR, Jr., April 16, 1971—all in RA). On the Black Academy of Arts and Letters: C. Eric Lincoln to PR, April 21, 1970; Julia Prettyman to PR, May 14, June 3 (“immeasurable”), 1970—all in RA; NYPL/Schm has the BAAL Papers, and they document the unsuccessful effort to compile a film on PR as part of the awards ceremony, because of the refusal of film companies and network-television news broadcasters to cooperate in releasing material on him (see especially Julia Prettyman to Franz Loesser, June 23, Sept. 4, 1970; NYPL/Schm: BAAL also contains a transcript of the proceedings at the award dinner, along with surrounding correspondence about its preparation). Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Pete Seeger, Mary Travers, and Hattie Winston were among those participating in Local 1199’s tribute to PR (program is in RA; 1199 News, Feb. 1971; Moe Foner [executive secretary] to Lurie, Oct. 25, 1971, RA; interview with Moe Foner, Oct. 24, 1983). At the GDR celebration, planned to coincide with PR’s seventy-third birthday, William L. Patterson made the keynote speech and Angela Davis sent greetings from her prison cell. On the various awards given Robeson 1970–72: Josephine C. Macauley to PR, Feb. 8, 1970 (Negro History); Boston Globe, May 4, 1972 (Black Psychiatrists); Mahlon T. Puryear to PR, Aug. 22, 1972 (Urban League); Junius Griffin to PR, telegram, Nov. 9, 1972 (NAACP)—all in RA. The Ebony article appeared in its Aug. 1972 issue, and The New York Times piece, by Loften Mitchell (a reprint from Equity magazine), on Aug. 6, 1972. Also in the years 1970–72, Dizzy Gillespie presented a Tribute to Paul Robeson and Black Culture in the Princeton University Chapel on Dec. 7, 1971 (Ernest Gordon to PR, Dec. 1, 1971, RA); he was also one of thirty outstanding black instrumentalists and singers given the Ellington Medal in 1972 by Yale in honor of Duke Ellington (The New York Times, Oct. 9, 1972). Actors’ Equity Association passed a resolution setting up a committee to suggest “some suitable recognition” of his work (Fredrick O’Neal to PR, Jr., July 20, 1971, RA), and it eventually decided upon an annual award in his name in recognition of his “commitment to the struggle for a decent world”; as a special tribute, Robeson himself was named the first honoree (Labor Chronicle, June 1974). Columbia Records issued Paul Robeson in Live Performance in the spring of 1971 (Daily World, Nov. 1971).