Paul Robeson (43 page)

For Paul himself, it was the Uzbek Opera that provided the special thrill. The two performances he and Essie saw were (in Essie's words) “vivid and vital, and a striking cross between Chinese, Arab and African—the whole with a definite and instantly recognizable African rhythm.…” Paul saw in the Uzbek Opera the fruit and confirmation of the success of Soviet policy toward its national minorities. As he put it, the Uzbeks, “a rather dark Mongolian people of Southern Asia who had enjoyed a brief period of glory under the famous Khans” and had then become “an oppressed and subject people,” were, under socialism, being encouraged to preserve their cultural identity even while being welcomed on equal terms into the fellowship of Russian citizenry. He rejoiced to find leaders of the Soviet state in attendance at the opening-night performance; they were lending the weight of their presence, as he saw it, to the recent promulgation of Article 123 of the Soviet Constitution, which had declared as “irrevocable law” the equality of all citizens of the U.S.S.R., “irrespective of their nationality or race, in all fields of economic, state, cultural, social, and political life.”
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To Robeson, Article 123 was “an expression of democracy, broader in scope and loftier in principle than ever before expressed.” It stood in sharp contrast to the official policies and unofficial practices that characterized the rest of the contemporary world, where doctrines of “the inferiority of my people are propagated even in the highest schools of learning.” The Uzbeks, unlike blacks in America, were not being counseled “to suffer endless misery silently, comforted by the knowledge that by ‘divine decree' they are the ‘hewers of wood and the drawers of water.'” They were not being told that their language and culture were “either dead or too primitive to develop” and had to give way before the “superior” utility of alien forms. In its treatment of the Uzbeks and other national minorities, the Soviet Union, Robeson believed, had uniquely placed itself in opposition to cultural tyranny and racial oppression—an achievement, to him, that “shines with special brilliance.”

It stood in particular contrast, he felt, to what was currently happening in Spain. In that sundered country, beset by civil war, Franco's fascist forces of reaction were mobilizing to destroy the Republican government and to keep the Spanish people, “poor, landless and disfranchised,” from claiming the right to control their own destiny. Robeson saw the mounting conflict as crucial in “the world-wide fight of the forces of democracy against reaction,” and he called upon people of color everywhere to participate
in the Spanish struggle “against the new slavery”—“it is to their eternal glory that Negroes from America, Africa and the West Indies are to be found fighting in Spain today on the side of the republican forces, for democracy and against those forces of reaction which seek to land us back to a new age of darkness.”

To demonstrate his own commitment to the Republican cause, Robeson interrupted his holiday at the Soviet health resort of Kislovodsk to fly back to London for a mass rally in aid of the Basque refugee children at the Albert Hall on June 24, 1937. He had originally intended to broadcast his remarks from Moscow, but as soon as he learned that the Albert Hall management might not allow the broadcast to be heard (with a simultaneous threat from Germany that it would jam the relay), he rushed back to London to appear personally. The group of sponsors included W. H. Auden, E. M. Forster, Sean O'Casey, H. G. Wells, and Virginia Woolf, and the meeting was a huge success, as judged by the overflow crowd and by the number of contributions that poured onto the platform table. Robeson not only sang but also spoke, and the newspapers described his speech as the most striking of the evening. His words were impassioned:

Like every true artist, I have longed to see my talent contributing in an unmistakably clear manner to the cause of humanity. I feel that tonight I am doing so.… Every artist, every scientist, every writer must decide
now
where he stands. He has no alternative. There is no standing above the conflict on Olympian heights. There are no impartial observers.… The battle front is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear. The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative. The history of this era is characterized by the degradation of my people. Despoiled of their lands, their culture destroyed, they are in every country save one [the USSR], denied equal protection of the law, and deprived of their rightful place in the respect of their fellows. Not through blind faith or coercion, but conscious of my course, I take my place with you. I stand with you in unalterable support of the government of Spain, duly and regularly chosen by its lawful sons and daughters.… May your meeting … rally every black man to the side of Republican Spain.… The liberation of Spain from the oppression of fascist reactionaries is not a private matter of the Spaniards, but the common cause of all advanced and progressive humanity.
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Returning from his Russian holiday in August, Robeson broadened his political activity. He spoke out in opposition to Japanese aggression against China and appeared at benefits for the
Daily Worker
and the Friends
of the Soviet Union. In the fall of 1937, he told the British press that he could not “portray the life nor express the living interests, hopes and aspirations of the struggling people from whence I come” in “commercial films and in the ‘decadent'” West End theater and would instead do his next performance at Unity, the “workers' theater.” He elaborated further to an interviewer from the
Daily Worker:

This is not a bolt out of the blue.… Films eventually brought the whole thing to a head.… I thought I could do something for the Negro race in the films; show the truth about them and about other people too. I used to do my part and go away feeling satisfied. Thought everything was O.K. Well, it wasn't. Things were twisted and changed—distorted.… That made me think things out. It made me more conscious politically.… Joining Unity Theatre means identifying myself with the working-class. And it gives me the chance to act in plays that say something I want to say about things that must be emphasized.

Stafford Cripps, the leading socialist politician, sent Robeson “my most sincere congratulations upon the action that you have taken. It is a splendid gesture of solidarity with the workers and I know how deeply it will be appreciated throughout the country.” Just as Cripps's letter marked the beginning of a friendship, Robeson's increasing public advocacy marked his full emergence as a political spokesman.
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The escalating civil war in Spain now became Robeson's primary concern. In the month of December alone, he made four appearances in behalf of the Republic. He participated in the Third Spanish Concert at the Scala Theater; made a broadcast appeal for the Loyalists (receiving over four hundred letters in response); sang at a concert sponsored by the Left Book Club (which had been founded in 1936 by Victor Gollancz, John Strachey, and Harold Laski and quickly burgeoned into a real political force) in support of the International Brigadists fighting on the Republican side in Spain; and appeared on the stage of a huge rally in the Albert Hall to raise funds for victims of the war (it met on the same night that government troops, by the glare of searchlights, attacked Franco's forces at Teruel). The Albert Hall rally was an emotional high point. Clement Attlee, leader of the Opposition, spoke out forcefully against the betrayal of Spain by the so-called democracies of the West, whose governments, he argued, were in fact devoted to protecting class interests. Ellen Wilkinson, the member of Parliament who had recently been in Spain with Attlee and had shared in the attacks made on him in Parliament for his “partisan” trip, made a moving appeal for funds and succeeded in raising three thousand pounds. And Herbert Morrison further aroused the crowd by urging the Labour Party in Britain to work against the “treacherous and vacillating”
Chamberlain government then in power. But it was Robeson's appearance, according to newspaper accounts, that created a furor of enthusiasm. He galvanized the rally when he sang “Strike the cold shackles from my leg”; and when he altered the lyrics in “Ol' Man River” from “I'm tired of livin' and scared of dyin'” to “I must keep fightin' until I'm dyin',” the hall went wild.
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CHAPTER 11

The Spanish Civil War and Emergent Politics

(1938–1939)

“I want to go to Spain,” Paul announced early in December 1937. Essie, who thought of herself as the adventurous member of the family, afraid only of cats, demurred. “I am essentially a practical person,” she wrote, “and I thought: Paul is doing some very good work for Spain, here in England … singing at important meetings … speaking and writing quite frankly, and enthusiastically, about his great interest in the struggle.… Why need he go into the war area, into danger, perhaps risk his life, his voice?” She fought the idea but it soon became clear that Paul was determined to go whether she accompanied him or not. He tried to clarify for her the importance of the trip. “This is our fight, my fight,” he told her (in Essie's paraphrase). She decided to accompany him.
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Initially the U.S. Department of State denied them a visa, but, “after a lot of worrying and cabling,” it was issued. The Spanish Embassy sent them two “safe-conduct” orders, Paul spent the afternoon of January 21 recording songs from
Porgy and Bess
at Abbey Road, and that night they caught the ferry train for Paris, accompanied by Charlotte Haldane, wife of the left-wing scientist J. B. S. Haldane. The Robeson party arrived at the Spanish border on January 23. A government army lieutenant drove them across the frontier, where they were “greeted by everyone, with a smile of welcome, and ‘Salud!', with the raised, clenched fist.” From there a militiaman took them in a car directly to Barcelona.
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On arriving at the Majestic Hotel, they were met by the press. The Afro-Cuban writer Nicolás Guillén found Robeson “blockaded by a crowd of people hanging on his most insignificant gestures. Robeson pays attention to everyone, smiling. He poses repeatedly for photographers, answers
the most diverse questions without tiring.… When he talks, he talks passionately, his enormous hands contracted and palms turned up, an invariable gesture of his when talking.… His solid personality projects great attractiveness, and his body moves with the elasticity of an athlete.” Asked by Guillén why he had come to Spain, Robeson replied, “It is dishonorable to put yourself on a plane above the masses, without marching at their side, participating in their anxieties and sorrows, since we artists owe everything to the masses, from our formation to our well-being; and it is not only as an artist that I love the cause of democracy in Spain, but also as a Black. I belong to an oppressed race, discriminated against, one that could not live if fascism triumphed in the world.” As militant and as Marxist as the Guillén interview makes Robeson sound, for contrast there is the Manchester
Guardian
account, which quotes Robeson as saying, in moderate terms far more reminiscent of his earlier formulations, “In the democracies the Negro has to struggle against prejudices, but not against an actual crushing law. He finds opportunity if he has the initiative to seek for it and the courage to fight for it.” Very likely Robeson did alternately sound a militant and a moderate note, accurately reflecting some lingering ambivalence which would very shortly solidify in the direction of militance.
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After the interviews, the Robeson party was taken to see the effects of an air raid that had taken place that very morning—residential apartments, schools, and even hospitals bombed by Franco's planes. It was a point in the war where Republican hopes were alive but fading. The Loyalist offensive against Teruel would culminate in success on January 8, 1938, but the Franco forces would retake the city on February 22, form a government, and by spring reach the border of Catalonia (on March 9, Hitler would occupy Austria). Faced with the “absolute savagery” of the bombings of Barcelona, Robeson told the press that he could not “understand how the democracies of Britain, France and America can stand by inactive.”
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In that first evening, Robert Minor and his wife, Lydia Gibson, visited. Minor was a singular figure—a Communist from Texas, a talented cartoonist, he had been active in the early thirties in the League of Struggle for Negro Rights and would later be the Party's Southern representative. Essie thought Minor “the warmest, most human, delightful man—Imagine a Texas man really understanding Negroes. But he did and could.” Minor told them that Earl Browder, the Communist Party/USA general secretary, might be in Barcelona when they got back at the end of their trip. They went to bed that night carefully arranging dressing gowns, slippers, and torches for a quick escape in case the warning sirens went off.
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For their tour, a seven-passenger Buick was put at their disposal and an army captain, Fernando Castillo, was assigned to them as escort and guide, along with a driver. The Robesons warmed immediately to Castillo. He had studied in London, spoke English fluently, and, Essie wrote, had
“a delightful sense of humor”—“our dignified military captain, and our dignified, serious Paul, became two, mischievous, small boys. There are stories, and jokes, to which Charlotte and I contribute occasionally. Paul sings softly, by the fire, and our captain hums with him.” On the long drive to Benicasim, Castillo told them that his father, a physician, had been an elected member of the assembly that had drawn up the Spanish Republican Constitution of 1931, and had been killed by the fascists in 1936. Five of his brothers were fighting at the front.
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