Paul Robeson (137 page)

36.
In a commencement speech he gave at the Manual Training School on June 10, 1943, PR advised blacks to “view the whole struggle within the Labor Movement as
our
struggle. We must fight for our rights inside our
labor organizations
—for here are, for the most part, our
real allies
—those who suffer as we, subject to the same disabilities as we. Organizations as N.M.U.—militant sections of C.I.O.—prove point” (typed ms. in RA). He reiterated the theme yet again in accepting an honorary degree from More-house College in 1943 (the typed ms. is in RA). For a full discussion of Robeson's role with the UAW, see Charles H. Wright,
Robeson: Labor's Forgotten Champion
(Balamp, 1975), pp. 83–103. In the general discussion which follows of CPCIO interaction, I am heavily indebted to Mark Naison's study
Communists in Harlem
, especially pp. 261–73. A sympathetic view of the relationship between the CP and the CIO is ably argued in Harvey A. Levenstein,
Communism, Anticommunism, and the CIO
(Greenwood Press, 1981). In Levenstein's estimate, as many as eleven of the CIO's thirty-three affiliates during World War II had substantial Communist leanings (including the UEW, the ILWU and the NMU). For the contribution of the CP to industrial unionism in Detroit, see Roger Keeran,
The Communist Party and the Auto Workers Union
(Indiana University Press, 1980). For a less favorable interpretation of the CP's influence on trade-unionism, see Nelson Lichtenstein,
Labor's War at Home
(Cambridge University Press, 1982). See also p. 419, and note 33, p. 712.

37.
In his brilliant discussion of Communism's failure to ignite the black working class, from which many of my own views derive, Naison additionally suggests that the CP's “artificially imposed interracialism” made workingclass blacks, who preferred the coherence and integrity of their own fraternal and social institutions, uncomfortable; similarly, the demands the Party placed on the skills of verbal dialectics alienated the many blacks who were recent rural migrants (Naison,
Communists in Harlem
, especially pp. 279–83).

38.
Daily Worker
, Dec. 17, 1941;
Ford Facts
, May 17, 1941;
News of Connecticut
, Aug. 1, 1941 (hailing the CIO's stand against discrimination). The program for “The Negro in American Life”—which was repeated—is in RA, along with newspaper accounts of the event and an enthusiastic thank-you letter from Dave Greene (executive secretary of the IWO) to PR, April 4, 1941. Fort Wayne
U.E. Herald
, April 1, 1943.

39.
Lucy Martin Donnelly to PR,
April 23, 1941 (PR's concert for Chinese scholarships at Bryn Mawr, April 18, 1941), with enclosures, RA; Frank Kai-ming Su (China Aid Council) to ER, Feb. 5, 1941, RA;
PM
, March 30, 1941 (DAR). Anson Phelps Stokes, who had been a canon of the cathedral in Washington when the Marian Anderson issue arose and had helped spearhead the protest, sent PR his deep regrets over the DAR's latest refusal, along with a copy of the pamphlet
Art and the Color Line
, which he had written in response to the Anderson protest (Stokes to PR, April 19, 1941, RA).

40.
Press release of the Associated Negro Press, CHS: Barnett.

41.
Press release of the Associated Negro Press, CHS: Barnett; Cornelia Pinchot to Eleanor Roosevelt, April 13, 1941, along with ms. drafts of her press release, Roosevelt Papers, Hyde Park (hereafter FDR). On Aug. 7, 1941, Zola Ardene Clear, who had been publicity director of the Washington Committee for Aid to China, gave extended testimony about the incident before the Dies Committee in which she accused the NNC of Communistic duplicity throughout (House
Hearings
concerning Un-American Propaganda Activities, 1941, pp. 2366–79).

42.
NNC press release, CHS: Barnett; Pinchot to Roosevelt, April 13, 1941, FDR. Pinchot's statement to the papers about her reasons for withdrawing, and also a separate statement she released to the black press, are printed in full in House
Hearings
concerning Un-American Propaganda Activities, 1941, pp. 2374–76.

43.
The program for the April 25, 1941, Uline Arena concert is in RA. It did list Dr. Hu Shih as an “Honorary Sponsor”—apparently he changed his mind—and contains a printed “commendation” from the NNC to the Washington Committee for Aid to China for its “excellent work.” Apparently Robeson sang the Chinese Communist “Cheelai” (“March of the Volunteers”) for the first time, of what would become many, at the Uline concert (Liu Liang-mo to ER, April 11, 1941, RA, containing the words to “Cheelai” and a piano accompaniment, as PR had requested). Newspaper accounts of the concert are in the Washington
Post
, April 26, 1941, the
Times-Herald
, April 26, 1941 (“Willkie”), and the Philadelphia
Inquirer
, May 3, 1941. Letters of thanks from Muriel Koenigsberg (executive secretary, WCAC) to PR and to ER, both April 30, 1941, and from Frank Kai-ming Su to PR, Sept. 5, 1941, are in RA.

44.
Klehr,
Heyday
, p. 399.

45.
Daily Worker
, July 4, 23, 1941;
Sunday Worker
, July 6, Nov. 2 (masses), 1941; Vancouver
News-Herald
, Vancouver
Sun
, Nov. 22, 1941; Chicago
Defender
, Nov. 1, 1941; Rose N. Rubin to PR, May 1, 1941; Harriet L. Moore (American Russian Institute), May 2, 1941, RA;
PM
, April 30, 1941 (Benny Goodman); Hewlett Johnson letter dated Oct. 17, 1941, RA. Two weeks after Pearl Harbor, Robeson, in a single five-day period, sang before a record crowd at the Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, gave a benefit concert in Oakland for Medical Aid to Russia, and participated in the Russian War Relief concert in San Francisco (
People's World
, Dec. 18, 1941); programs in RA.

46.
These examples of the shift in American opinion about the Soviet Union are quoted in Irving Howe and Lewis Coser,
The American Communist Party
(Da Capo Press, 1974), pp. 431–33.

47.
R. P. Bonham, District Director, to FBI Special Agent in Charge (hereafter SAC), Seattle, FBI Main 100-12304-1 (“reputedly”); R. B. Hood, SAC, to Director, April 3, 1942, blurred file number 100-12304-?; “Summary of Chinese Writing in Brown Notebook,” by Harold L. Child, April 24, 1942, FBI Main 100-12304-5; Hoover to SAC L.A., May 27, 1942, file number blurred; Foxworth to Director, Sept. 19, 1942, FBI Main 100-12304-6 (Wo-Chi-Ca). According to Mother Bloor, Robeson “helped a lot to build one of the finest music rooms in the country” at Camp Wo-Chi-Ca: “It is like a temple” (Bloor to “My dear Family,” Sept. 28, 1947, SSC).

For a discussion of the provenance and substance of the FBI files used here (and throughout the rest of the book) see my Note on Sources, p. 557. The year
1941 saw a general increase in FBI activity regarding “the threat of Communism.” Its efforts remained somewhat episodic until early 1946, when the Bureau inaugurated a formal strategy of “educating” the public by a variety of devices, including the selective leaking of confidential files to “friendly” newspaper columnists like Walter Winchell, Drew Pearson, and George Sokolsky (Kenneth O'Reilly, “The FBI and the Origins of McCarthyism,”
Historian
, vol. XLV [May 1983], pp. 372–73).

48.
Hoover to Lawrence M. C. Smith, Chief, Special War Policies Unit, Jan. 12, 1943, FBI Main 100-12304-8 (custodial detention); Guy Hottel, SAC, to Director, Aug. 26, 1943, FBI Main 100-12304-10 (“leading”); Office of Naval Intelligence memo, Jan. 14, 1942, FBI NY 100-25857-3A; War Department letter, March 15, 1943, 100-26603-1067, p. 2, NY 100-25857-8.

49.
Interviews with Uta Hagen, June 22–23, 1982, Sept. 28, 1984.

50.
The typed mss. of PR's speeches at Morehouse and to the
Herald Tribune
Forum are in RA. In a radio address over WEAF on Jan. 2, 1944, PR decried the continuing denial of full citizenship to blacks (typed ms. of speech, RA).

51.
Typed ms. of speech delivered at the commencement of the Manual Training School on June 10, 1943, RA.

An encyclopedic listing of Robeson's nonstop round of appearances during this period would be tediously repetitive, and I've decided instead to cite only a few of the more significant: At a “Defend America Rally” in Los Angeles on Dec. 22, 1941, called by the NNC in conjunction with “100 leading Negro citizens,” he encouraged the full mobilization of the black community (
People's World
, Dec. 22, 26, 1941). In Dec. 1941 he gave a brief concert for the inmates at San Quentin Prison (
The Other Side of the Inside!
, December 25, 1941;
Daily Worker
, Dec. 27, 1941). His appearances at warbond rallies included one in Boston (Boston
Post
, Aug. 12, 1942) as well as the first interracial bond rally in Detroit, in which he was joined by Supreme Court Justice Murphy, Marian Anderson, Joe Louis, Olivia De Havilland, and Bill (Bojangles) Robinson (Detroit
Evening News
, June 1, 1942). His work for the troops included a radio broadcast, “Salute to the Champions,” for which Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson sent him a letter of thanks (Oct. 1, 1941, RA). The following year Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Secretary of the Treasury, sent him a gold-embossed citation (dated May 17, 1942, RA) “In recognition of distinguished and patriotic service to our Country”—namely, a recital at West Point (Alvin D. Wilder, Jr., to PR, Jan. 12, 1942, RA), and a “Salute to Negro Troops,” a pageant celebrating black war heroes held at the Cosmopolitan Opera (New York
Amsterdam Star News
, Jan. 17, 1942). On March 22, 1942, PR was the guest of honor at a dinner “in tribute to Anti-fascist fighters” held at the Hotel Biltmore, chaired by Dorothy Parker and attended by a thousand people, including a large turnout of celebrities (Dorothy Parker to ER, March 17, 1942; New York
Amsterdam Star News
, March 28, 1942). Another dinner, however, was attacked as “Communist-inspired.” Also held at the Biltmore, it was a dinner-forum in behalf of exiled writers interned in French concentration camps, with Lillian Hellman and Ernest Hemingway as cochairs. Seven hundred people attended, but Governor Herbert H. Lehman and others withdrew after the
World-Telegram
attacked the event as “Communist-inspired.” At the dinner, Hellman protested the accusation.
PM
quoted her as saying (Oct. 10, 1941), “I am damn sick and tired of these attacks; I am sick of their ignorance, their irresponsibility, and their malice and their cowardice.” In her invitation to PR to attend, Hellman wrote, “It will make me feel much better to have you there, and it will make everybody else feel better, too” (Hellman to PR, Sept. 29, 1941, RA). Hellman would have felt sicker still had she seen the FBI report characterizing the Biltmore dinner as in reality designed to raise funds “for the transportation of Communists to Mexico and other Latin-American countries,” branding participants Erskine Caldwell and Margaret Webster as “of course close to the Communist Party” and describing Benny Goodman as having “long been an ardent
Communist sympathizer” (report from San Antonio, Texas, dated March 16, 1942; the file number, FBI Main, is blurred but appears to be 100-12304-2).

52.
Chicago
Defender
, Feb. 21, 1942;
People's World
, March 5, 1942; Kansas City
Times
, Feb. 18, 1942 (“stronger feeling”). A month before the Kansas City episode, while traveling by train across New York State, Robeson found himself seated alone at a table in the crowded dining car because no whites were willing to sit next to a black man. The incident—hardly the first such that Robeson had experienced—may have helped to fuel his anger in Kansas City (Judith Green,
The Columbia Law Alumni Observer
, April-May 1982; David W. Meltzer to Judith Green, July 16, 1982, courtesy of Green).

53.
Albuquerque
Journal
, Feb. 18, 1942; Bluford to PR, Feb. 21, 1942, RA; Pittsburgh
Courier
, Feb. 28, 1942. Fred Schang, PR's agent at the Metropolitan Musical Bureau, which booked the tour, applauded Robeson's position and promised to redouble vigilance in the future when booking his concerts (Schang to PR, Feb. 18, 1942, RA). The following year PR canceled an appearance in Wilmington when he learned of discriminatory policies there against blacks; he had been reluctant to fill the engagement from the first after receiving a letter from the president of Wilmington Concerts Association that sought to “allay” his fears about segregation by assuring him, “There is not segregation because there are no negro members of our Association.… We have not discriminated against negroes becoming members of our Association since none applied for membership” (Harold W. Elley to PR, Dec. 28, 1942, RA). Robeson also, during a Robin Hood Dell concert in Philadelphia, refused to honor a request to sing “De Glory Road,” declaring it “an insult to the colored race” (
The Afro-American
, Aug. 1, 1942). Jacques Wolfe, the author of the ballad, wrote a letter to
Variety
(Aug. 12, 1942) protesting that he himself had played “Glory Road” for Robeson back in 1928 and Robeson had not only expressed approval of the song but had also recommended it to Schirmer's for publication. Wolfe expressed puzzlement as to why a song Robeson found acceptable in 1928 “now suddenly becomes ‘an insult to the entire Negro race.'” But it was no puzzle. Robeson's view of what was “acceptable” had undergone radical transformation in the intervening fourteen years.

54.
Yergan to PR, Feb. 18, 1942, RA; Yergan to PR, Feb. 10, 18, 1942, RA, are examples of Yergan's itemizing and suggesting a calendar of political events for PR to attend. In his new capacity as Robeson's political aide, Yergan tried to use the Kansas City incident as an opening to President Roosevelt. He telegraphed Roosevelt's secretary, Stephen T. Early, requesting “an immediate appointment to confer on the larger aspects of ‘Negroes and the War,'” including its international ramifications. Yergan subsequently sent a proposed agenda (as the President's office requested), using the occasion to plead as well for the release of Earl Browder, still confined in the Atlanta penitentiary. But the only response was a last-minute invitation to Robeson and Earl Robinson to sing Robinson's new
Roosevelt Cantata
at the White House, which Robeson's schedule prevented him from accepting. Yergan to PR, Feb. 18, 1942; PR to Watson, April 2, 1942; PR to FDR, April 2, 1942, RA; Earl Robinson to ER, April 5, 1942, RA.