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ON PAUL ROBESON: THE ORIGINAL CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER
November 26th 2000
It has recently been reported that Paul Robeson’s only son is writing a comprehensive biography on his father. I cannot wait for that book. Meanwhile, I have read a good book by M. Duberman on Paul Robeson. I wish to share that book with you, albeit it is an old book (1988). It is the only one of its kind.
Paul Robeson was a great African American. Martin Duberman quotes some participants at the seventieth birthday celebration of Paul Robeson as stating that “The white power structure has generated a conspiracy of silence around Paul Robeson. It wants to blot out knowledge of this pioneering Black American warrior … Because of this there exists a young generation of freedom fighters who are unaware of this great man and his outstanding contributions to their struggle.” (p.542) He wrote this in 1968 and Robeson was still alive. He died in 1976. You can imagine what it is like now when he is dead – almost totally forgotten. As early as 1972, Coretta Scott King stated as well, echoing the 1968 statements quoted above, that Paul Robeson was buried alive.
Rev. Jesse Jackson is quoted as saying at the funeral of Max Robinson (the first Black anchor of a major network TV news program in the U.S.A.) that Robinson was a crusader, prophet and pioneer in the struggle for civil rights along the lines of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Jesus Christ (Vanity Fair, June 1989 p. 70). If people who should know better omitted Robeson, you can imagine why it is perfectly logical that the man is buried even from the living. Until relatively recently, Malcolm X was also buried. Fortunately, no one could afford to bury Martin Luther King Jr. and obviously for very different reasons, which it is not necessary to go into. Here, we are concerned with Paul Robeson.
Duberman, I do not think, consciously wrote this monumental volume to resurrect Robeson. Whatever the reason for writing this book, Durberman has done tremendous service to history, to Black struggles, to civil rights and the defense of constitutionalism in the U.S. and everywhere.
It is probably no exaggeration to state that in the fifties, Robeson had no equal, both black and white, in articulating not only what concerned Blacks in the U.S.A., but also what concerned the colonial peoples, the aborigines in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere, what concerned peace, disarmament, the white and black working class and constitutionalism in the U.S.A. Most people were cowed by the MacCarthyite terror, but not Robeson. He was harassed, his passport was withdrawn and his life was sabotaged in numerous ways. It is a mark of a man who could survive all that harassment. He soldiered on. But he broke down in the end (1965-76). It was also due to old age. He had been born in the previous century. He was after all, a mere human being.
The U.S. press, which has regarded itself as free, clearly showed in those days that it was in the pocket of whoever was calling the tune. Duberman shows that there was a possibility of the FBI planting stories or bending stories against Robeson. A segment of the Black press also followed suit. Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman show in their writings on the media that the media seems not to have wholly come out of the MacArthyite era. They still sing the tune of the invisible orchestra.
For those who had never heard of Paul Robeson, this book will be an eye opener indeed to this great warrior, it will also be an eye opener to the U.S. history and indeed world history from the thirties (the Spanish Civil War) through the forties (World War II) and fifties (Cold War and civil rights struggles) to the sixties (civil rights struggles and colonial liberation). This book makes Robeson the center of this era. He most likely was. He was in touch with everybody who was moving and shaking the world: Soviet leaders, the FBI representing American leaders, European leaders and opposition parties, communist parties in most countries, the Indian leaders, leaders of colonial liberation movements, etc. It would be hard to find anybody who was so centrally placed as Robeson was from the thirties to the early sixties. He was a linguist as well; he spoke Russian fluently. Above all, Robeson was an artist, a conscious one at that. He politicked through music and speeches and films. He traveled extensively. That is why he was at the center of all freedom loving peoples and at the periphery of those who hate freedom. W shall not forget Robeson again. In a previous article, I had placed Robeson as the second most influential personality of the twentieth century, second only to Mahatma Ghandi. This category includes only people who were leaders but never became presidents or Prime Ministers of their countries. Paul Robeson branched off from the roots planted by the great W.E.B. Du Bois, a subject of a future article.
When his son’s book comes out, Robeson’s glorious struggles and his contributions to freedom may sink into the public consciousness forever. He remains a great warrior and a pioneer for liberty.
