In August 1972, the front page of the New York Times arts section published a story titled, Time to Break the Silence on Paul Robeson? The legendary bass-baritone spent the first half of the 20th century as one of the greatest talents the US had ever produced, and its second, both in life and in death as an outcast, the greatest casualty of the second Red Scare period to which today\u2019s current attacks on liberal and progressive politics draw comparison.<\/p>\n
This week marks 50 years since Robeson\u2019s death and the silence remains. His erasure from the lineage over the decades shows that what Robeson\u2019s political opponents did not take from him, the years have most certainly. Robeson\u2019s decoupling from the story of African American culture has been so complete that in the half-century since his death, even generations of Black Americans have never heard of him.<\/p>\n
His talent was prodigious. Robeson integrated Broadway in 1943, the first Black man to play Othello in the United States. Previous productions of Shakespeare\u2019s jealous Moor casted white actors in blackface, and Robeson\u2019s Othello run of 296 performances remains a Broadway record for a Shakespeare production. A two-time All-American at Rutgers, he was one of the greatest college football players in history. He graduated from Columbia Law, and, before becoming world renowned as a concert singer, stage and Hollywood actor, Robeson even played defensive end for two years in the National Football League. The Robeson legacy spawned a staggering list of Black stage performers, from Lena Horne to Harry Belafonte, James Earl Jones, Andre Braugher, Keith David and Denzel Washington. At his peak, Paul Robeson was the most famous Black American in the world.<\/p>\n
Paul Robeson addressing the World Conference of Partisans of Peace in Paris in 1949. Photograph: Everett\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n
And yet for his refusal to denounce the Soviet Union as cold war tensions increased, Robeson was isolated by both the white mainstream and by the respectable pillars of the Black establishment \u2013 the NAACP, the Urban League and many leading Black political and cultural voices who feared being branded communist by the rising conservative tide. Out of what he called a sense of responsibility to prove that Black Americans were loyal Americans, Jackie Robinson, the Brooklyn Dodgers star who two years earlier integrated the all-white major leagues, was hailed as a national hero in 1949 for testifying against him to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Following Robinson\u2019s testimony, two bloody riots protesting against Robeson\u2019s appearance at concerts in Peekskill, New York, and the combined pressure of national opinion and the federal government effectively ended Robeson\u2019s iconic standing. Robeson\u2019s name was removed from record books and historical texts, even those from Rutgers, the alma mater he had made famous. Referring to him as \u201cthe most dangerous man in America\u201d, the state department refused to issue Robeson a passport for nearly a decade until the supreme court ruled refusing a citizen the right to travel because of one\u2019s political beliefs to be unconstitutional.<\/p>\n
Robinson\u2019s testimony and its effect on Robeson conjures parallels to today\u2019s violent politics, where the citizenship of many Americans is being questioned and threatened. Disillusioned Black Americans debate whether the re-election of Donald Trump, his subsequent assault on diversity initiatives \u2013 which last spring included the removal of a tribute to Jackie Robinson\u2019s military service as part of its elimination of DEI content (until outraged public backlash forced a reversal of the decision) \u2013 and the racist rhetoric from Trump and members of his administration is evidence enough to disengage, especially as another byproduct of today\u2019s reality is an intensified period of hostility toward teaching Black history and literature in public schools. Just as many progressives and liberals at the time implored Robinson not to testify against Robeson, this current moment of darkening politics, so goes the argument, is not our fight.<\/p>\n
Robinson would never escape his part of Robeson\u2019s downfall \u2013 and would experience his own sense of betrayal. Years later, during the height of the Vietnam war, the 4 July 1969 edition of The Times published a front-page story of Americans living in a different time of division and returned to Robinson, a solidified American hero, for his thoughts. By that time, Jackie Robinson had been embittered \u2013 by the lack of continued racial progress in baseball, by the hardening Republican party whose hostility toward civil rights had jarred and ultimately ended his loyalty to it, the \u201clove it or leave it\u201d inflexibility that had once in part informed his younger self to testify against Robeson two decades earlier. The headline read, Flag on July 4: Thrill to Some, Threat to others. The reporter, Jon Nordheimer, chose Robinson, the army veteran, to bat leadoff. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t fly the flag on Fourth of July or any other day,\u201d said Jackie Robinson, the former baseball star. \u201cWhen I see a car with a flag pasted on it, I figure the guy behind the wheel isn\u2019t my friend.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paul Robeson in 1958. Photograph: Keystone Features\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Those who stood by Robeson saw no need for rediscovery because their belief in him had never waned. The Tallest Tree in the Forest. The Great Forerunner. Citizen of the World. He had provided the shade for those with his commitment and values, and in return, he received their protection, gratitude and veneration. Along with many others in remembrance of Robeson, one letter to the editor, in particular, appeared as an indictment of society and the individuals who only now, too late, understood the true scope of Robeson, and, as Jackie Robinson would describe it when recalling his own part in Robeson\u2019s downfall, \u201cAmerica\u2019s destructiveness\u201d.<\/p>\n
As one letter to the editor would say following Robeson\u2019s death: \u201cHe wasn\u2019t mentioned in history books, like Nathan Hale. He wasn\u2019t mentioned on football game broadcasts, like Red Grange. He wasn\u2019t mentioned in dramatic reviews, like Barrymore. He wasn\u2019t mentioned by opera critics, like Caruso. The man who was never mentioned despite the fact that he truly excelled not in one of the above fields, but in all of them. Now that the fires that raged in him cool and he is put lifeless into the ground, we mention and accept the fact that he lived. Now, safely silenced, he is suddenly mentioned as a \u2018great American\u2019 and newspapers write editorials about him and soon halls of fame and history books will doubtless find a place for him and we can pat ourselves on our bicentennial backs for living in a country where even the dissident can be a hero, once he is dead.\u201d<\/p>\n
The isolation of Robeson recalls the near-disappearance of another Black icon. While considered an enemy to the white establishment for virtually his entire public life and the first quarter century of his death, a new generation of Black artists, led by Spike Lee, reclaimed Malcolm X for Black people, where he remains protected and reverential, present and timeless. A half-century in death, Paul Robeson, The Tallest Tree in the Forest, still awaits his reappraisal.<\/p>\n