Paul Robeson - the 'Left's Tragic Hero'.

 

Paul Robeson

Paul Leroy Robeson was the son of a runaway slave who was born in 1898 in Princeton, New Jersey, in the U.S.A.  He was an accomplished athlete, singer, political activists, and a qualified lawyer who attended Rutgers university. He was the only African-American student at Rutgers in 1915. He spoke more than 20 languages fluently.

 In 1950, the State Department revoked his passport and his right to travel freely and earn a living abroad. The FBI also urged people to ban and boycott his concerts. His annual income fell from $150,000 to less than $3,000 because of the blacklist. Robeson's passport wasn't restored until 1958. When Robeson asked the State Department officials why he'd been denied a passport, he was told that "his frequent criticism of treatment of blacks in the United States should not be aired in foreign countries." He'd spoken out about the lynching of black people in the U.S. and had urged President Truman to introduce an anti-lynching law, but Truman, refused to do so, because it would have been unpopular with Southern voters.

 In 1946, Paul Robeson appeared before the Tenney Committee and had been asked if he'd ever been a member of the Communist Party. He replied that he might as well have been asked whether he was a registered Democrat or Republican because in the United States, the Communist Party, was equally legal. On this occasion, he said he was not a Communist. When he appeared before the ridiculously named, 'House Committee on Un-American Activities' in 1956, he refused to answer if he'd ever been a member of the Communist Party because he believed it was an interference with his democratic rights as an American citizen. He also pointed out that some people had gone to prison for not answering that question and he was prepared to follow them. He also reminded the Committee that the Communist Party was not illegal in the United States.

 It was never proved that Paul Robeson had been a member of the Communist Party of America under his own name or an assumed name. He did visit the Soviet Union in 1949 to give a concert on the 150th anniversary celebration of Alexander Pushkin. He asked to see the Russian Jewish poet, Itzik Feffer, who he knew. The Soviet authorities said he was holidaying in the Crimea. Despite being an NKVD informer, Feffer was in fact in prison, accused of treason. When they did meet, Robeson asked how he was, and Feffer drew a finger across his throat. He told Robeson, "They're going to kill us. When you return to America you must speak out and save us." He also told Robeson that Solomon Mikohels, who he also knew, had already been murdered. Both Feffer and Mikohels, had wanted to establish an autonomous region for Jews in the Crimea. They were both victims of Stalin's antisemitic purges. When Robeson returned to the U.S. he organised a letter in defence of Feffer. Robeson's letter delayed Feffer's death by three years.

 In 1952, Paul Robeson received the Stalin International Peace Prize which he accepted in New York. He praised the dictator, as a "humanitarian and a peacemaker." Paul Robeson was decent and principled man, a great singer, who was treated abominably by the Americans. As a black American, he fought against injustice and discrimination all his life, a champion of black liberation. Yet, because of his attachment to Stalinism and the Soviet Union, it led him to ignore the brutality of Joseph Stalin's regime. The mass arrests, executions, and the Gulag. He told the 'Daily Worker', the paper of the Communist Party of America, that anybody who lifts his hand against the Soviet Government ought to be shot. Yet, much later, Robeson had to use his connections to help his brother-in-law, accused of terrorist conspiracy, to escape from Moscow. Today, many see Paul Robeson as the "Left's Tragic Hero."