I
Portland Observer
Thursday, January 29, 1978
Pag* 3
Paul Robeson: The Forerunner
Paul Kobeson i i dead at the age of 77.
Robinson, who waa 'one of the great
leadera of the Poat World W ar I I era. ia
largely unknown to the present genera
lion because of a government media
conspiracy first to alander him and then
to remove him from hiatory.
Paul Kobeson's achievements in aev
eral fielda were unprecedented; he
challenged the raciam of thia country and
linked the atruggle of Black Americana
for liberation to thoae of oppreaaed
l*eople throughout the world; and he
withstood a maaaive campaign by the
government and the white media to
ailence him.
The arhievementa of Paul Kobeaon
have deliberately been hidden from the
American people and in the worda of hia
ton, Paul. Jr., “Not only haa a web of liea
and falaifirationa been institutionalized,
but hia entire record of achievement haa
all but been eradicated in the United
Statea the facta about Paul Kobeaon
have been removed from available
reference material.“
Paul B. Kobeaon waa born in Princeton,
New Jeraey in 189«, the youngeat child of
Keverend William Kobeaon, who had
earaped from alavery at the age of fifteen.
Kobeaon won a arholarahip to Kutgera
University, which he attended from 1915
to 1919, one of the moat racist periods in
Americn hiatory. and waa one of two
Blarka on campus.
He won Phi Beta
Kappa honors in hia Junior year, waa
valedictorian of hia class, a debating team
champion, won thirteen varsity letters in
four sports. Ironically he was not invited
to participate in the Glee Club because of
its social events.
Kobeaon was one of the greatest
football players of all time.
He was
selected by W alter Camp for the 1917 and
1918 All American teams. In 1917 Camp
said, "there has never been a more
serviceable end. both inattack and
defense, than Kobeaon." Kobeaon was
6'3" tall and weighed 217 pounds. On
defense he was considered the best
middle line barker of his era. (“College
Football," published in 1950 and called
the "most complete record compiled on
college football," listed a ten-man All
American team for 1918, leaving Kobeson
off the roster.)
Kobeson earned a degree in law at
Columbia University in 1923.
Kobeson began his singing career with
a New York concert in 1925. The New
York World wrote: "A ll those who
listened last night to the first concert in
the country made up entirely of Negro
music...may have been present at a
turning point, one of those thin points of
time in which a star is born and not yet
visible
the first appeaAnce of this folk
wealth to be made without deference or
apology. Paul Kobeson's voire is difficult
to describe. It is a voice in which deep
bells ring..."
The New York Times said: "M F
Kobeson's gift is to make them (spiri
tuals) tell in every line, and not by any
outward stress, but by an overwhelming
inward conviction. Sung by one man.
they voiced the sorrows and hopes of a
people."
T hirty years later, British music
commentator Benny Gwen said. "He is
one of those all too rare people who ran,
through some miraculous alchemy of the
spirit, reach out. and within the scope of a
single gesture or phrase, touch the hearts
of both galleryites looking for a good time
and the intellectuals probing for The
Message.
When he sings I hear the
unsullied expression of human spirit."
Kobeson was one of the world's leading
concert singers during the 1930's and
1940's and his singing career spanned 35
years, from 1925 through 1960, yet he is
barely mentioned in the American
literature On musicians of the period.
Kobeson starred in over ten major
plays in the United States and England,
including “Porgy and Bess;" three
Eugene O’Neill plays
"A ll God's
Children," “The Hairy Ape." and “The
Emporer Jones”; and "Show Boat". He
portrayed "Othello" in the 1943 1944
Broadway production which set an all
time record for a Shakespearean play on
Broadway with 296 performances. He
played Othello in Ixmdon at Stratford
on Avon, England in 1930 and 1959. He
received the Donaldson Award for the
best acting performance in 1944 and the
Gold Medal for the Best Diction in
American Theater from the American
Academy of Arts and Science.
In 1924. Robeson starred in a Black
produced film, "Body and Soul;" in 1930
in an experimental film "Borderline;" and
from 1932 through 1939 he starred in
eight major movies in England and the
United States. He left the film industry
in 1939, denouncing Hollywood: "The
industry is not prepared to permit me to
portray the life or express the living
interests, hope's and aspirations of the
struggling people from whom I come..."
In reference books published in the
U.S. about the theater and films, Robeson
is seldom ever mentioned. The television
industry put an iron clad ban on him.
Today, most newsreel and film footage on
Robeson has vanished ■■ it has been
confiscated
and most of the newsreel
footage available has had the sound track
erased.
Of particular concern to those whites
who attempted to silence Robeson was
his unusual intelligence. He continued to
study all of his life. He mastered 25
languages and taught himself to speak
and w rite Chinese.
The reason for the erasure from the
public record of an outstanding athelete,
singer and actor was his determination to
use his Ulents in an all out struggle
against oppression. He said, “The artist
must elect to fight for Freedom or
Slavery. I have made my choice."
Although successful and secure in his
career, his concern was for the poor and
oppressed of the world and he made his
art a weapon for the people.
A fter living abroad for twelve years
and experiencing freedom for the first
time, Robeson returned to the United
States in 1939
During the decade before Montgo
mery. Pau! Kobeson gave inspiration to
the Freedom Movement. Following the
Second World W ar, Blacks were involved
in industrial union organizations, which
put Black and white workers together in
the steel, packing house, longshore and
auto industries. Around the world, the
movement for independence was growing
Mahatma Gandhi and J. Nehru in India,
the uprising of the Indonesians, Ho Chi
Mihn in Vietnam and the establishment of
the People's Republic of China. England
and Europe moved toward the left. The
Iron Curtain dropped over Europe and an
Iron Curtain was being dropped over the
rights of Blacks in the United States.
Into this milieu, one of hope for the
oppressed but from which aspirations for
freedom would be drowned by the
counter revolution, stepped Paul Kobe
son.
Kobeson was huge in stature, eloquent
and fearless in his castigation of.
racism, and on established folk hero. He
provided a special link with the people of
the Third World through his life abroad
and his personal acquaintance with many
of Africa's emerging leaders. He was one
of the few who understood the implica
lions of the growing movement toward
facism in the United States.
In 1946 he led a delegation to visit
President Truman, asking that Truman
sponsor anti lynching legislation, Ijit e r
he led a mass mobilization in Washington,
D.C. demanding that Congress pass a fair
employment practice bill. As a co-chair
man of the National Negro Congress, he
presented "W e C harge G enocide,"
accusing the United States government
of crimes against Black citizens, to the
United Nations. He cancelled a series of
eighty concerts in Scandanavia, with a
fee of $100,000, when he learned the
sponsoring organization endorsed NATO ,
"because the guns of N A T O are
ultimately pointed at African people
struggling for their independence."
As the country slipped into "McCar
thyism". with its witchhunts, jailings and
black lists, every organization that was
attacking racial segregation was put on
the "subversive list."
Despite the atmosphere of repression,
Kobeson fought back.
In 1948, Robeson accepted the vice
chairmanship of the Progressive Party,
which besides running Henry Wallace for
the Presidency, ran several Blacks for
high office.
A nation w ide media cam paign
against Robeson followed. Concert halls
were cloned to him and organizations that
sponsored his concerts were threatened.
He continued to sing and speak in spite of
the repression, saying, “I will not retreat
one thousandth part of one inch."
Robeson’s passport was revoked by the
government in 1950. By this time the
McCarthy investigations were at their
height.
W hite racial hysteria was
rampant. Confederate flags flew across
the South. 5 million were unemployed,
and the Korean war began.
In 1952,
President Truman signed an unpreci
dented Executive Order, which was read
to Kobeson at the border when he
attempted to enter Canada for a concert
(passports are not necessary for exit to
Canada).
I t forbade him to set foot
outside the United States in penalty of
five years in prison and $5,000 fine and
added that United States border person
nel had been advised to apprehend him;
by any means necessary if he attempted
to cross the border. Standing under the
Peace Arch at Blaine. Washington, he
sang to 40,000 people assembled on the
Canadian side of the border.
In spite of his confinement to the
United States, invitations were received
from around the world.
So much
pressure mounted from abroad that
Truman offered to return his passport if
Kobeson would agree to sing and not
speak abroad.
A fter a world wide
campaign and a Supreme Court ruling,
his passport was returned in 1958.
He went abroad to fill television and
theater engagements in Europe. Austra
lia and New Zealand, tnen returned in
1963.
His remaining years were in
retirem ent due to poor health.
When Robeson's book "Here I Stand",
was published in the United States (by a
Black publisher) the white boycott of the
book was a near total success. W ith one
insignificant exception, no white com
mercial newspaper orznagazine in the
entire country as much as mentioned the
book. The book was praised in England,
Japan, and other countries abroad. In
India it was reviewed as a four page
supplement to Blitz, under the heading
“Black Voice of God."
In the U.S. the cause was taken up by
the Black press. It was reviewed by
many Black newspapers and serialized in
the Afro American. The only negative
review was by the N A A C P, which was
caught up in the fear of "communist
infiltration" of its ranks and had expelled
one of its founders, W .E.B. DuBois The
NA ACP's Crisis called Robeson one
who “imagines his misfortunes to stem,
not from his own bungling, bet from the
persecution of 'the white folks on top' "
DuBois, however said, “The persecution
of Paul Robeson by the government...has
been one of the most contemptible
happenings in modern hiatory."
Beniamin Da via. a noted
Bhtek
Coam uniat r a r ty leader, said the b o » *
was boycotted by the press because the
book, “brings forward a people's program
of action, which, if seized upon by the
Negro people and their allies, could not
fail to have the most profound positive
effects upon the present struggles of the
Negro for dignity and full citizenship.'*
(A second edition was published in
1971 by Beacon Press.)
Paul Kobeson first visited the Soviet
Union in 1934.
In Moscow, Robeson
found a friendliness toward him that he
did not experience in the United States.
He said, “Here for the first time in my life
1 walk'tn full human dignity.” He viaited
the Soviet Union many times and stayed
in Moscow for a year in 1937 and 1938. He
visited Spain during the Spanish reVolu
tion, singing in the anti facist trenches.
Kobeson was always welcome in the
USSR as a friend. A mountain in Central
Asia was named for him
and in
1952 he was awarded the Stalin Peace
Prize.
Of his relationship with the Soviet
Union and the question of communist
affiliation, Robeson wrote in 1958:
“M y views concerning the Soviet Union
and my warm feelings of friendship for
the peoples of that land, and the friendly
sentiments which they have often e x
pressed toward me, have been pictured
as something quite sinister by Washing
ton officials and other spokesmen for the
dominant white group in our country. It
has been alleged that I am part of some
sort of 'international conspiracy.'
“The truth is: I am not and never have
been involved in any international
conspiracy of any other kind, and do not
know anyone who is. It should be plain
to everyone
and especially Negroes
that if the government officials had a
shred of evidence to back up that charge,
you can bet your last dollar that they
would have tried to put me under their
jail! But they have no such evidence,
because that charge is a lie...
“...In 1946, at a legislative hearing in
California. I testified under oath that I
was not a member of the Communist
Party, but since then I have refused to
give testimony or to sign affidavits as to
that fact. There is no mystery involved in
this refusal...I have made it a m atter of
principle, as many others have done, to
refuse to comply with any demands of
legislative committees or departmental
officials that infringes upon the Constitu
tional reports of all Americans."
Why was Robeson treated as a
non person -- erased from the pages of
history? I t was because Paul Kobeson
was a man.
In spite of the racism,
degredation and humiliation heaped on
him as a Black - he surmounted the
obstacles and actualized his potential for
creativity, manhood and humanity. He
not only struggled for liberation of Blacks
in the United States but reached across
the seas to join that struggle with the
oppressed people of the world.
He said,
"...I learned that the essential charac
ter of a nation is determined not by the
upper classes, but by the common people,
and that the common people of all nations
are truly brothers in the great family of
mankind." This belief in the oneness of
humankind, about what I have often
spoken in concerts and elsewhere, has
existed within me side by side with my
deep attachment to the cause of my own
race."
Lloyd Brown, one of the member of
“Othello Associates" that published the
1958 edition of "Here I Stand", wrote in
1971, "inevitably, like a mountain peak
that becomes visible as the mist is blown
away, the towering figure of Paul
Robeson will emerge as the thick white
fog of lies and slanders is dispelled. Then
he will be recognized and honored here in
his homeland, as he is throughout the
Robeson the Forerunner.”
I 1)11
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