“Robeson felt the African heritage, with its concern for the inner life and for community values, had much to recommend it. He could not accept ‘wealth and luxury as the ultimate goal of human activity.’”
– pg. 201, PAUL ROBESON, by Martin Bauml Duberman, Ballantine Books, 1989.
“ … Marcus Garvey’s monthly magazine, THE BLACK MAN, denounced him (Robeson) for using ‘his genius to appear in pictures and plays that tend to dishonour, mimic, discredit and abuse the cultural attainments of the Black Race.”
– pg. 203, ibid.
I’ve been reading the biography of a man named Paul Robeson (written by Martin Bauml Duberman in 1989) over the last few weeks. I’d heard about Mr. Robeson since I became a young man, but I’d never gotten to know about him in any detailed way. There is so much to learn, man, so much to learn. Whenever something like this happens, when I discover a brother like Mr. Paul, I feel so sorry I’d never gotten to know him before. After that, of course, I feel the urge to share with you what I’ve discovered. So, here goes.
Paul Robeson was a giant of an African American, a giant both in size and talent – an incredible athlete, impressive scholar, a world famous singer, and the first great black actor in talking movies after fabulous success on the stage. Robeson was born in 1898, so he would have been 20 years of age and attending Rutgers University in New Jersey at the time when World War I (1914-1918) ended.
The event which would affect Robeson’s life in a fundamental way and eventually cause him to become a target of American government and societal persecution, was the Russian Revolution of 1917. Because of his extraordinary singing and acting talents, Paul Robeson was a black man who was traveled extensively, and he thus became a world citizen. He visited the Soviet Union as early as 1934, and he became an admirer of the Russian Revolution, primarily because he believed the Russians were making more serious efforts towards the achievement of a society and a world free of racial discrimination, than were the Americans.
The 1920’s in the United States of America were a time of spectacular energy. It was the decade when the Mafia rose to power because of the passage of Prohibition legislation. It was the decade of Babe Ruth. It was the decade when Marcus Garvey rose to fame and power in Harlem, and then was brought down by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. It was the decade when the stock market crash (October 1929) and the Great Depression broke up American party time and brought millions of Americans to their financial knees.
This was also a time when black Americans were being lynched with impunity by mobs and the Ku Klux Klan in the South, when black Americans were denied the right to vote and experienced Jim Crow segregation in schools, public transportation, entertainment facilities, hotels, restaurants and so on. Paul Robeson was a black American who generally received special treatment. Many white women, for example, desired him and pursued him. But racism was entrenched in the United States, and Robeson traveled throughout the nation to perform. So Paul Robeson experienced incidents which embittered him, and then radicalized him.
In Germany, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came to power in 1933. They began a genocidal campaign against Jews, then provoked World War II in 1939. Again, this was a time when the Jewish people were not as powerful as they are today. (The state of Israel was not established until 1948.) The Ku Klux Klan which targeted so-called Negroes for persecution, violence and lynching, felt similar venom towards Jews. So during the 1920’s and 1930’s, there were reasons for common cause between Negroes and Jews. I’m trying to give you a sense, based on what I have read, of the type of world in which Paul Robeson lived.
Robeson, moreover, was moving in an artistic world (New York City, London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow) which is traditionally known for being liberal where issues like race and sexuality are concerned. Robeson and Marcus Garvey were feeling the same love for their African people, and their fight was really the same fight – for black justice, equality and dignity, but Garvey and Robeson lived different lives and believed in different approaches. The overpowering reality was, nevertheless, that J. Edgar Hoover targeted both of them, and ruined both of them – Garvey and Robeson.
When my generation of Belizeans went to school here in the 1950’s and 1960’s, we were not taught a word about Antonio Soberanis. I challenge all those I went to school with and who have shunned my road of rebellion, to tell me how they can continue to support an educational system that willfully mis-educates our children. How can you be an educated Belizean if you do not know about Antonio Soberanis in 1934 or 1935? Dammit, if you don’t know what happened right here in our yard just the other day, you’re just an educated zombie. And if you know, and you don’t do anything to correct the bullsh—, then you’re just a Tom, Tom, the piper’s son. A real fool.
Power to the people.