chapter 18

i must keep fighting until i’m dying

—“Ol’ Man River” (as modified by Paul Robeson)

While Robeson was filming in Cairo, he followed the rising threat of fascism in Spain. The Spanish Civil War had started in July 1936. The Nationalists, led by General Francisco Franco, had rebelled against the democratically elected Republican government. Franco, with military support from Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, had taken control of the country. His ultimate goal was to be a dictator with unlimited power.

When Robeson returned to London after filming Jericho, he gave concerts and speeches to help Spain’s Loyalists, who were fighting Franco. Robeson dedicated himself to what he described as the world’s “greatest cause.” He had found his political voice. Lowering his voice and speaking intensely, he warned about the dangers of fascism when others seemed to be ignoring the threat, or oblivious to it. Only the Soviet Union supported the Spanish Republic. “The cause of Spain is not only the concern of the Spanish people,” he said. “We, as a people [Negroes], can no longer be indifferent to international events.” To Robeson and many liberals, in Europe as well as the United States, the Spanish Civil War embodied a struggle between good and evil: democracy versus fascism.

April 26, 1937, was a market day in the Basque town of Guernica. People came from neighboring villages to buy and sell vegetables, chickens, and cattle. For three hours that day, the German air force, acting under orders from General Franco, bombed the town. People fled in panic. Hundreds were slaughtered.

Robeson responded to the Guernica massacre by singing and speaking at a huge rally for Spanish relief at London’s Royal Albert Hall. “Fascism is no respecter of persons,” Robeson said at the rally. “The blood-soaked streets of Guernica, that beautiful peaceful village nestled in the Basque hills, are proof of that…. The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative.” His rousing speech was broadcast worldwide and immediately raised money. Volunteers from fifty-two countries had joined International Brigades to fight with the Loyalists. The American volunteers, known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, included many black men. Robeson also donated to help the families of black Americans fighting in Spain.

Robeson told Essie that he wanted to go to Spain and sing for the Loyalist troops. She asked why he would want to risk his life, his voice, in a war zone. He answered, “This is our fight, my fight. If fascism wins…the African, the Negro, the Jew go right to the bottom of the ladder.” Essie decided to go with him. At first, the U.S. Department of State would not grant them visas, but finally, the Spanish embassy sent them “safe-conduct orders.”

On Sunday, January 23, 1938, they arrived in Barcelona and learned that apartment buildings, schools, and hospitals had been hit in an air raid that morning. Journalists and photographers surrounded Robeson and took photos and notes. When asked why he had come to Spain, he said, “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.”

A Spanish official provided Robeson and Essie with a car, an escort, and a driver, and they took off for Benicassim, a summer resort turned military base. Soldiers crowded the road, and one of them, a young black man, recognized Robeson and couldn’t believe his eyes that the actor and singer was there. Robeson jumped out of the car and shook his hand. The soldier, one of the volunteers in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, was from Harlem and had been fighting in Spain for eleven months.

General Francisco Franco in army uniform

A woman and child run for shelter in Spain as an air-raid alarm sounds.

At an army hospital in Tarazona, Robeson sang outdoors without any accompaniment. “We then went thru the wards,” recalled Essie, “Paul singing to the patients as we went…. All of them asked for Ol’ Man River.” Robeson had changed the closing lyrics to express his ideals:

I gets weary and sick of trying

I’m tired of living and scared of dying

were changed to

But I keep laughing instead of crying

I must keep fighting until I’m dying.

That night, they drove to Albacete, the headquarters of the International Brigade, volunteer soldiers from great Britain, Canada, and the United States. In the morning, at their training camp, fifteen hundred soldiers crowded into a church to hear Robeson sing, with no accompaniment. The men shouted requests for “Ol’ Man River,” “Water Boy,” “Lonesome Road,” and even the “Canoe Song” from the movie Sanders of the River. Robeson signed autographs, and Essie took messages to give to the solders’ families.

Everywhere Robeson went, the troops recognized him. They had seen his movies, read about him, and heard his records; they were astounded he was actually there. A sergeant in the medical corps recalled that Robeson “lit up” the place. He was so “alive and vivid” that he was “like a magnet drawing you…in.” After Robeson sang and talked with the men, they felt they had been with an old friend.

Robeson and Essie drove to Madrid for their next stop. The city had been bombed daily since 1936, and people were taking bets on “which windows would be broken by the raiding planes.” The Robesons stayed at the Palace hotel, a mile and a half from the front line at Teruel. They could hear artillery and machine-gun fire, and the first two floors of the hotel served as a hospital. From an observation tower, they saw trenches with government troops on one side and fascist rebels on the other. When a shell whizzed overhead and struck a building nearby, they took shelter in a staff room. A lieutenant and soldiers serenaded them with flamenco songs, and Robeson in turn sang first a Mexican folk song, “Encantadora Maria,” in Spanish, and then spirituals. That night, Robeson broadcast from Madrid Central Radio Station and was heard throughout Spain as well as in England and America.

Robeson surveys the wreckage in Madrid after the fascists bombed the city’s apartment buildings.

A day later, he sang to the Loyalist troops on the battlefield at Teruel, ensuring that loudspeakers were set up so the fascist rebels were forced to hear him too. Essie took photos of the Loyalist soldiers sitting at Robeson’s feet, smiling and cheering. For one day, the war stopped as he sang the new lyrics of “Ol’ Man River.”

Robeson sings to the Loyalist troops at Teruel, Spain, 1938. The fascist rebels could also hear him through loudspeakers.

On January 29, he went to the barracks where the wounded were recuperating. A motion picture crew filmed him from every angle as he sang “Joshua,” “Singin’ with a Sword in My Hand,” and “Fatherland,” the rousing Soviet national anthem. He sang “Fatherland” in Russian, English, and Spanish. Soldiers propped themselves up in bed to listen and “went wild with joy.”

When Robeson returned to London, he said that his trip to Spain had been “a turning point” in his life. “To me Spain is another homeland,” he said, “because the people of this country are opposed to racial and class distinctions.” In a note to himself, he wrote: “This is OUR STRUGGLE, and if we allow Republican Spain to suffer needlessly, we will ourselves suffer as deeply.” Robeson realized that fascism had to be defeated in Spain or else it would spread worldwide.