A fighter for Black liberation,
revolution and socialism

Paul Robeson was born in 1898. His father had been born in slavery and had left the South by the time of his birth. Nevertheless, in youth he experienced the lacerating racism which faced African Americans everywhere in the US. By his teens he had become a determined enemy of oppression and a fighter for his people. Influenced by the Russian Revolution, he took up socialism and to his dying day in 1976 upheld it as the road to liberation for Black Americans and for all the world's peoples. His life was dedicated to the struggle and no hardship could batter him down, no bribe sway him from his course. His lifelong struggle helped set the stage for the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the modern Black Liberation Movement, which changed forever the face of this country. Today, there are still deep lessons to be learned from his life.

Athlete, Law Graduate, Artist

Paul Robeson sometimes seems superhuman, too good to be true. He grew up at a time when the theory of Black inferiority was the most sacred myth in U.S. society, enshrined in law, government, employment, schooling, scientific theory, and popular culture. And U.S. society was organized to make sure this was a self-fulfilling theory. Yet this tall, powerful young man became one of two Black students at Rutgers College. He won fourteen varsity letters in four sports and became the first African American chosen for the All-American Football team. And he excelled academically despite some deeply racist faculty and fellow students, winning entry to and graduating from Columbia Law School.

To top it off, Robeson went on to become an enormously talented actor and singer who broke down barriers to African American artists again and again. (In fact, it's both surprising and a bit of a relief to learn that, in spite of Robeson's talent and grasp of our culture, the great jazz musician Count Basie said after a failed recording session with him, "It's an honor to be working with Mr. Robeson, but the man certainly can't sing the blues.")

The mainstream media this year are full of centennial pieces celebrating Paul Robeson. It's much like the media hype about Malcolm X we lived through a few years back. This system is always ready to make saints of its enemies once they are dead, in the hope of burying their message. It serves their interests to paint Paul Robeson as a larger-than-life figure. Let's face it, all of us know we aren't super-heroes, so what have we to learn from a giant like Robeson?

The answer is plenty. Here we highlight three important lessons that you won't find in the Sunday newspaper tributes.

Standing with the People

First, Paul Robeson's life was one full of choices. For all the barriers which confronted him, his colossal talent and intellect could easily have let him live a most luxurious existence. He chose not to remain silent in the face of racist insults to make his way in the world. It was when a white secretary refused to take dictation from him that he turned away from the practice of law. Later, he chose to refuse film roles he thought were stereotyped or demeaning.

And most important, he chose to stand with his sisters and brothers and with all poor and working people. He spent his entire adult life as an active combatant against oppression and exploitation. For three decades, when there was a rally, a strike picket line, a fund-raising benefit for a worthy cause, Robeson was there. His mighty bass voice could have filled many more concert halls than it did, but he made a choice: he would not put his talent at the service of those who could pay him the most for it.

Courageous in Facing the Enemy

Second, the choices he made required more than simply that he sacrifice the good life, they demanded enormous courage of him. When the anti-communist witchhunts now known as McCarthyism singled him out in the early '50s, he stood up proudly for his beliefs, though it meant the destruction of his career, the confiscation of his passport, the likelihood of jail, and even threats of death. To congressmen who asked why he didn't live in the Soviet Union if he didn't like the system here, he growled in defiance. "My father was a slave and my people died to build this country and I'm going to stay right here and have a part of it, just like you. And no fascist-minded people like you will drive me from it. Is that clear?"

But his courage stemmed in part from the choice that he made to stand with the people, because they stood with him and gave him strength. In August 1949, an open-air Robeson concert was scheduled in Peekskill, N.Y. After the first few hundred concert-goers arrived, the site was attacked by a savage mob of white veterans and assorted thugs and racists, who had been whipped up by anti-Robeson articles in the local press. The cops and state police stood by and watched as dozens were injured in a battle that ebbed and flowed for several hours. Most people never made it to the grounds, including Paul Robeson.

Robeson insisted that the concert be rescheduled for Peekskill the very next week despite the death threats that poured in. He bravely took the stage and sang. Behind him was a tight semi-circle made up of fifteen members of the Fur & Leather Workers union, Black and white, who formed a human shield against threatened sniper fire.

Internationalist and Freedom Fighter

Third, the struggle of the African American people were always the starting point for Paul Robeson, and he came early on to see this movement as one strand in a web of struggle against national oppression and capitalism which reached across the globe. Anyone who attended one of his magnificent concerts heard this live. They were centered on songs that reflected the Black struggle from slavery days forward, songs like "Go Down Moses" and "This is the Hammer." But the program would also contain songs of the U.S. labor movement, like "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill," and peoples' tunes and anthems from around the world, from Mexican lullabies to the marching anthem of the China's Red Army, "Chee Lai."

It was this internationalist perspective that more than anything else made Robeson the target of capitalist rage, especially during the McCarthy era. He dared to say that African Americans had no interest in defending the Jim Crow system of the U.S. in what many saw as an inevitable war with the Soviet Union. Furthermore, he praised the USSR for its efforts against racism. Though he paid a terrible price for his brave stand, his argument helped create favorable conditions for the rising civil rights movement. It focused the attention of wiser strategists for U.S. imperialism on the way that the naked oppression of African Americans undercut the U.S. claim to be the world bastion of democracy. They saw that changes, preferably cosmetic changes to be sure, were essential if the U.S. were to have any influence among the masses in Africa, Asia and Latin America who were surging toward independence.

In his stand of defiance toward U.S. military adventures, Paul Robeson calls to mind another larger-than-life figure in the Black struggle, the heavyweight champ Muhammad Ali. At the height of the Vietnam War, Ali announced that he would not take part, declaring "No Vietcong ever called me 'Nigger.'" Like Robeson, Ali paid a heavy price for his principles; yet both were buoyed up in their trials by the deep affection and support of African Americans and freedom-loving people everywhere.

Paul Robeson was a giant of a human being, but his true greatness lies in the life he led--a life of standing with the people, speaking out and fighting in their interests and refusing to be bullied or bought by their enemies. And when we praise and remember him, we should also remember that these are things all of us can strive to emulate in our own lives.

African Peoples Commission
Freedom Road Socialist Organization
June 1998