Paul Robeson (146 page)

28.
Hoover to SAC, Honolulu, March 18, 1948, FBI Main 100-12304-103; SAC, Honolulu, to Hoover, June 2, 1948, FBI Main 100-12304-? (illegible); interview with Earl Robinson, Aug. 17, 1986. According to another FBI report (FBI Main 100-12304-126), on arriving in Honolulu, Robeson “was greeted by a number of prominent local Communists” and at a press conference prior to his departure on March 21, 1948, remarked that “he was a real Socialist, a ‘strong Wallace man,' but one who goes beyond Wallace's thinking on progressive capitalism.'” One of fifteen concerts Robeson gave was at a leper colony: he sang tirelessly to the audience, later telling Jean Seroity, a Progressive Party stalwart whom he saw soon after returning from the tour, “That was the most inspiring audience I ever had” (interview with Jean Seroity [PR, Jr., participating], May 3, 1982). On labor unrest in the islands during the years immediately preceding Robeson's tour, see Charles H. Wright,
Robeson: Labor's Forgotten Champion
(Balamp Publishing, 1975), pp. 49–55. According to Wright, the widows of the murdered labor leaders Jesus Mendenez and Manuel Joven each received checks for $1,250 from the territorial ILWU as a result of proceeds from Robeson's tour.

29.
Excerpts from Charles P. Howard's diary are printed in MacDougall,
Gideon's Army
, pp. 672–76.

30.
Ibid., pp. 410–12.

31.
The full transcript of Robeson's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee is in RA. The remaining quotations in this section are from the transcript, unless otherwise cited.

32.
The Pittsburgh
Courier
reported that, after Robeson gave his testimony, there was some talk on the Senate Judiciary Committee of citing him for contempt—an action not taken, primarily out of concern about alienating the black vote in the upcoming presidential election.
Afro-American
, June 10, 1948; Springfield (Massachusetts)
Union
, June 1, 1948; FBI New York 100-25857-493 (pickets at White House); Pittsburgh,
Courier
, June 12, 1948 (“impressive”);
Time
, June 14, 1948.

33.
Granger as quoted in Mac Dougall,
Gideon's Army
, p. 655.

34.
Interview with Doxey Wilkerson (PR, Jr., participating), Dec. 3, 1983.

35.
I've pieced together this account of the struggle within the CAA from a large collection of documents in RA and elsewhere—too many to cite in full. As the account proceeds, I will specifically cite only the most important documents.

36.
Du Bois to Yergan (same letter went to PR), March 5, 1948; two letters from Hunton to Council members, both dated March 7, 1948; Yergan to Council members, March 13, 1948—all in RA; Hunton to E. Franklin Frazier, March 19, 1948, MSRC: Frazier.

37.
The minutes of the March 25 meeting are in RA;
The New York Times
, April 6, 1948; New York
Herald Tribune
, April 6, 7, 1948; Dean Albertson interview with William Jay Schieffelin, 1949, for Oral History Project: CU (“unfair”). Dorothy Hunton, wife of Alphaeus Hunton, has written disparagingly of Yergan's “non-collective, one man rule” at the Council (Dorothy Hunton,
Alphaeus Hunton: The Unsung Valiant
, privately printed, 1986). In 1951 Hunton was jailed for six months for contempt of court for refusing to turn over the records of the Civil Rights Bail Fund. John Hammond, who was a member of the CAA in 1948, has told me that he, Judge Hubert Delany, and Thomas Russell Jones (then on the legal staff of the Civil Rights Congress, later to be a judge in Brooklyn) constituted a committee to look into the charges of financial misappropriation against Yergan. Hammond and Delany concluded that Yergan “was sloppy but he was not guilty of any malfeasance,” but to their surprise Tom Jones, “on orders from the Party,” filed a minority report accusing Yergan of malfeasance (interview with Hammond, Aug. 8, 1985).

38.
Robeson's statement to the press is in RA.

39.
The telegram of protest from PR to Yergan, dated April 15, 1948, is in RA; ER's letter to her fellow Council members, dated April 8, with a subsequent version—little changed—dated April 17, is also in RA. Robeson sought and got a private meeting with E. Franklin Frazier to relay “certain important bits of information.” Frazier voted with Robeson and remained on the Council (PR to Frazier, April 3, 1948; Frazier to PR, April 6, 1948, MSRC: Frazier). Robeson, on behalf of the executive board, sent out a letter to the Council members, dated April 15, 1948, in which he asked that the meeting Yergan had called for April 21 be postponed for a few days, since he had an engagement in Philadelphia within two hours of the scheduled meeting time and since he had previously asked Yergan to consult him before fixing on a date. Yergan refused to postpone (PR to council members, April 15, 1948, RA).

40.
Press release dated April 21, 1948; letter from PR to all Council members, April 26, 1948, RA.

41.
Minutes of the Sept. 17, 1948, meeting and PR's press release of Sept. 28, 1948, are in RA, as well as a letter sent to “friends” of the Council on Oct. 7, 1948, declaring, “The long disruption of the Council's work is at an end.” Essie was among the litigants; she brought suit against Yergan for the return of various African art objects and mss. that she had lent the Council for exhibition (Thomas Russell Jones to ER, April 27, 1948; ER to Yergan, April 28, 1948, RA).

42.
An FBI report advised that Robeson had had a series of conferences with Mrs. Bethune. He supposedly “requested that Mrs. Bethune divorce herself from the Yergan faction,” promising that if she did he would sing a series of benefits for Bethune-Cookman College—and if she refused he “would fight her as he is fighting Yergan.” Internal evidence suggests (but does not prove) that the FBI informant was Yergan himself (FBI New York 100-25857-467A, June 11, 1948). Mrs. Bethune also resigned from the Civil Rights Congress; in response to her resignation, Patterson wrote her in reproach, dismayed at how many were being “intimidated” by fear of the Attorney General's reprisals, and added, provocatively, that in earlier periods of our history some women, “like Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth,” had preferred to confront their enemies and had “spat upon them” (Bethune to Patterson, Sept. 14, 1948; Patterson to Bethune, Sept. 15, 1948, NYPL/Schm: CRC). Robeson's brother Rev. Ben Robeson was among the new members on the reconstituted Council (minutes of the Council's Feb. 9, 1949, meeting, RA). Du Bois was elected vice-chairman and moved his office to the council at 23 West 26th St. Additional information on the CAA can be found in Lynch,
Black American Radicals
. It is likely that at least some of the enigmas of Max Yergan's life and the role he played on the CAA will be more fully resolved by the materials in MSRC: Yergan; these papers are currently closed to scholars.

43.
U.S. News & World Report
, May 1, 1953 (Yergan article); PR column in
Freedom
, May 1953 (response to Yergan; also Dr. Z. K. Matthews's response in
Freedom
, June 1953, and CAA press release, May 12, 1953). For a harsh evaluation of Yergan's entire career (“All his life he merely sought gold for himself”), see Ben Davis, Jr.,
Communist Councilman from Harlem
(International, 1969), pp. 199–203. For Yergan's career in the sixties, see the summary in Carl T. Rowan,
The Evening Star
, Feb. 23, 1966. Joe Louis provided some unexpected outside support for Robeson. Appearing with him at a “Tribute to Negro Veterans” held at Uline Arena, in Washington, D.C., on June 26, Joe Louis issued a statement praising PR as “my friend and a great fighter for the Negro people.… There are some people who don't like the way Paul Robeson fights for my people. Well, I say to that that Paul is fighting for what all of us want, and that's freedom to be a man.… We're with you, Paul, in the fight to the end” (
Daily Worker
, June 29, 1948). The June 26 Uline program, containing a strong printed statement condemning both Truman and Congress, is in RA.

44.
The letter and statement, dated July 28, 1948, are in U.Mass.: Du Bois; the press release, dated Aug. 23, 1948, listing the signatories, is in RA.

45.
For a discussion of the widespread protest against Du Bois's firing in the black community, see Home,
Black and Red
, pp. 105–111.

46.
The text of Robeson's speech and the typescript of the Oct. 29 broadcast are in RA.

CHAPTER
17
THE PARIS SPEECH AND AFTER
(1949)

1.
The characterization of the
National Guardian
as “Stalinist” was made in a 1949 report of the California Committee on Un-American Activities (FBI Main 100-12304-408). The
Guardian
first appeared on the stands in Oct. 1948, edited by James Aronson and Cedric Belfrage. Their eloquent book,
Something to Guard
(Columbia University Press, 1978), recounts the central role their newspaper played in political life during the next two decades. FBI Main 100-12304-112; Jamaica
Times
, Nov. 13, 1948;
Sunday Gleaner
, Nov. 21, 1948;
National Guardian
, Nov. 15 (reaction), Dec. 20 (“fresh air”), 1948; Dec. 6, 1948; ANP press release, CHS: Barnett (Kingston); Adele Glasgow to Marilyn Alexander, Aug. 25, 1953 (Little Carib), Adele Glasgow to PR, Aug. 26, 1953 (“hero worship”), NYPL/Schm: PR; George B. Murphy, Jr., to Carl Murphy, n.d., MSRC: Murphy, for a crowd estimate of seventy-two thousand. Many years later, on the occasion of Robeson's seventy-fifth birthday, Prime Minister Michael Manley of Jamaica issued a statement recalling how his 1948 visit “filled our hearts with pride” (statement in RA).

2.
Liberator
(organ of Civil Rights Congress), March 1949 (Trenton Six);
Life
, Dec. 6, 20, 1948; FBI Main 100-12304-? (illegible); the New York office responded with a fifteen-page report (FBI Main 100-12304-126). A War Department memo to the FBI (FBI New York 100-25857-506, Nov. 12, 1948) refers to Robeson, without qualification, as the “well known Communist leader.” Bob Rockmore, far more conservative politically than Robeson, took the occasion of Levi Jackson's election to write Larry Brown that if so conservative a school as Yale could manage to elect a black football captain, he was willing to be hopeful about the “American species of democratic process” (Rockmore note on a letter from Clara Rockmore to LB, Nov. 23, 1948, NYPL/Schm: Brown).

3.
National Guardian
, Jan. 24, 1948. At another meeting on behalf of the Trenton Six, held in Trenton itself, Robeson said, “I know what's been done to these boys could have been done to my own boy” (
National Guardian
, Feb. 7, 1949).

4.
FBI Main 100-12304-126. George W. Crockett, Ben Davis, Jr.'s lawyer, has said, “Paul Robeson gave definition to the meaning of friendship.… I met frequently with Ben Davis to prepare our defense, and in several of those meetings Paul was there” (Crockett speech as printed in
World Magazine
, 1973).

5.
Telegram, dated Jan. 29, 1949, U.Mass.: Du Bois; Michael R. Belknap,
Cold War Political Justice: The Smith Act, the Communist Party, and American Civil Liberties
(Greenwood Press, 1977), ch. 3. Belknap (p. 78) points out that the jury finally chosen in March contained seven women and three blacks. Robeson joined in a further protest of the jury selection process at a rally at St. Nicholas Arena on Feb. 3, 1949 (FBI New York 100-25857-534).

6.
Robeson described these events in a talk at the People's Songs Conference in New York City on Aug. 13, 1949 (RA).

7.
LB to ER, March 4, 24, 1949, RA. The importance of Desmond Buckle's role in helping to manage PR's affairs on tour is confirmed in Stockwell (of Harold Fielding agency) to LB, May 31, 1949, NYPL/Schm: Brown, and in Buckle to Patterson, March 21, 1949, NYPL/Schm: CRC. Robeson of course had his detractors, political objections merging into artistic ones. One of Larry Brown's friends wrote of the Albert Hall concert, “I was able to take in my stride Paul's haughty take-it-and-like-it attitude with his Soviet music and the other esoteric pieces that he sings to please himself. I still think he has more charm in his little finger than
most other men I've ever known, but I greatly miss the old, gentle, ‘genial giant' aura that surrounded Paul in the old days” (Jannett Hamlyn to LB, May 28, 1949, NYPL/Schm: Brown). Another correspondent, a Dr. Millard (apparently a West Indian physician), attacked Robeson more angrily, pronouncing a meeting called to protest the Trenton Six case in which Paul had participated in England a “failure” because he had not explained the case to the audience, instead “making himself a buffoon. He sang ‘Water Boy' like a 3rd rate comedian and I am just a bit tired of Negroes who seek sympathy, pity and tolerance from whites by referring to the fact that their fathers or grandfathers were slaves.… I am no longer interested in him. Moreover he prefers the company of whites and his courtesies are reserved only for whites” (Millard to LB, July 3, 1949, NYPL/Schm: Brown).

8.
PR to Helen Rosen, n.d. (March-April 1949), courtesy of Rosen.

9.
Multiple interviews with Helen Rosen;
The Autobiography of Samuel Rosen
(Knopf, 1973). Henry Wallace was among those who commented on Helen's being the driving political force (Dean Albertson interview with Wallace, 1950–51, Oral History, Columbia University).

10.
The quotes are from three of PR's 1949 letters from Europe to Freda Diamond and are courtesy of Diamond.

11.
Ben Davis, Jr., to Blackman, Oct. 6, 1949, courtesy of Blackman via PR, Jr. Blackman told PR, Jr., that Paul, Sr., had helped him out financially (interview, Sept. 89, 1982, transcript PR, Jr.).

12.
Daily Worker
, March 31, 1949;
Leader Magazine
, March 12, 1949;
Inkululeko
(English-language weekly, London), April 9, 1949; Valentine Elliott in the June-August 1949 issue of
Makerere
, published at Makerere College in British East Africa; Manchester
Guardian
, April 21, 1949. For more on U.S.relations with South Africa, see Thomas J. Noer,
Black Liberation: The United States and White Rule in Africa, 1948–1968
(University of Missouri Press, 1985), especially ch. 2 for the contrast between Roosevelt and Truman. Desmond Buckle, in an article in
New Africa
, vol. 8, no. 4 (April 1949), reported on another of PR's political appearances: a Speech at Friends' House in which he blasted Premier Malan of South Africa, predicted this would be his last tour for some time (“This is no time to go about the world singing pretty songs. I want to use my voice like tonight with you”), sang the “Song of the Warsaw Ghetto,” and recited Langston Hughes's “Freedom Train.” Robeson also found time—as George Padmore reported favorably in his column in the Chicago
Defender
(May 7, 1949)—“to give encouragement to the Colored Theatre Group founded by the West Indian baritone, Edric Connor, of Trinidad” and to pay “generous tribute to … [the] promising West Indian musicians and actors” he had found everywhere in his recent tour of the Caribbean. (For more on Robeson and Edric Connor, see note 16, p. 725; note 48, p. 750.) Robeson was also invited to the wedding of Nehru's niece (and that of Nan Pandit's daughter), Chandralekha Pandit, to Ashok Mehta on April 14 (the invitation is in RA).