chapter 26

nobody knows my sorrow

—“Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen”

As Robeson was walking down the street in Harlem, a well-wisher stopped to say hello and asked, “Paul, were you born in Russia?” Robeson laughed. The question reflected public belief that anyone “who fights for peace…for friendship with the Soviet Union, for labor’s rights and for full equality for Negroes now, cannot be a ‘real’ American.” Robeson decided to share his feelings about world affairs in “Here’s My Story,” a column in the monthly journal Freedom that he helped start. He began by writing about his father’s “slave origin,” and the family’s poverty when his father lost his ministry.

In recounting his struggles and achievements, Robeson wrote, “I refuse to let my personal success, as part of a fraction of one per cent of the Negro people, to explain away the injustices to fourteen million of my people; because with all the energy at my command, I fight for the right of the Negro people and other oppressed labor-driven Americans to have decent homes, decent jobs, and the dignity that belongs to every human being!” His words sparked greater hostility and intensified Hoover’s harassment. Would he ever regain his passport and be free to travel and earn a living as an international performer?

Shunned by all concert agencies, Robeson remained undaunted, and instead appeared at cultural events, civil rights meetings, and peace rallies. In Chicago, in 1951, he sang at a huge peace conference and spoke about civil liberties. Robeson warned that jailing communist opponents of American policies posed a threat to the First Amendment of the Constitution, which protected freedom of speech. After the conference, Charlie Parker, the jazz musician, approached him and said, “I just wanted to shake your hand. You’re a great man.”

In January 1952, Robeson was scheduled to give a concert in Vancouver, British Columbia. He had been invited by the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers of British Columbia. A three-car caravan drove Robeson from Seattle, Washington, to Blaine, at the border. Americans didn’t need passports to cross in and out of Canada. But the State Department knew about the concert and arranged to prevent Robeson from leaving the United States. Immigration officials stopped him at the border and he returned to Seattle.

The miners were indignant and hatched a plan with Robeson. They hooked up a long-distance telephone connection relayed to the public-address system. The next day, Robeson sat a desk in a Seattle union office and performed. The two thousand miners in Vancouver heard him sing “Joe Hill.” Robeson gave a speech saying that the American government was keeping him in “a sort of domestic house arrest.” The miners responded by asking him to come back in May and give an “across-the-border” concert at the Peace Arch, a monument on the border between Canada and the United States. Robeson accepted.

On May 18, 1952, on the United States’ side of the border, Robeson climbed onto the rear of a flatbed truck, where Larry Brown sat at an upright piano. Five thousand people gathered on the American side of the park, and thirty thousand Canadians assembled on the other side. FBI agents were there too, and filmed and photographed the event while the Border Patrol took down license plate numbers of the Americans’ cars. Photographers also took pictures of Robeson grinning and waving his hand at the international boundary marker. He was determined to be heard.

Ignoring the FBI, Robeson spoke into the public-address system, which carried his voice across the border. “I can’t tell you how moved I am at this moment,” he said. “It seems nothing can keep me from my beloved friends in Canada. You have known me through many years. I am the same Paul, fighting a little harder because the times call for harder struggles.” He opened the program by singing “Every Time I Feel the Spirit,” with Brown joining in. Then, “Joe Hill.” Robeson introduced “No More Auction Block for Me” by saying that it “comes from the very depths of the struggle of my people in America.” He told how the spiritual was often heard at the A.M.E. Zion Church where his father and then his brother served as ministers.

No more driver’s lash for me

No more, no more

No more driver’s lash for me

Many thousands gone.

The sponsors of the Peace Arch Concert invited him back the following year, but all of his other concert dates were cancelled except at black churches throughout the country. At the Hartford Avenue Baptist Church in Detroit, in 1952, he told the congregation, “What would my father say to me if he were alive? He would say, ‘It’s hard, son. But don’t forget I was born in slavery. And your people were not able to do anything as free people for a long time…. So you stand your ground…. Just keep your courage and keep your heart.’ ”

Robeson did just that. Although his income had dropped drastically, he still earned money from the sales of his recordings overseas. His legal battles to win back his passport were expensive. Essie was forced to sell the house in Enfield. For a while, she stayed with her son and daughter-in-law, and then she moved into a residential hotel. Although she and Robeson were still married, they had lived separately for a long time. Essie continued to travel, lecture, and publish articles as a scholar and activist. Robeson stayed with various friends, then spent a year with his brother Ben at the A.M.E. Zion Church parsonage in Harlem. Ben converted one of his studies into a bedroom for his brother, and installed a seven-foot bed and a spinet piano. “Paul felt safe there,” wrote Paul Jr.

Robeson performs at a Christmas party at Rev. Mother Lena M. Stokes’s Church in Harlem. The photographer’s son, Ken Davidoff, leans closer to listen. Ken’s grandmother did charity work for the church.

In December, the Soviet Union announced that it was awarding Robeson its International Stalin Prize for Strengthening Peace Among Peoples, established in honor of Stalin’s seventieth birthday, and presented to citizens of any country for outstanding service in “the struggle against war.” The award came with a gold medal and $25,000 ($227,766 in 2018 dollars). The State Department still retained Robeson’s passport and wouldn’t permit him to receive the award. Instead, the award was presented to him the following year at Harlem’s Hotel Theresa before three hundred guests. Robeson accepted the award “in the name of the American fighters for peace.”

Essie’s ties with the Soviet Union also brought her under scrutiny. Because of her pro-Soviet statements in her book, African Journey, Senator McCarthy’s Senate investigating committee summoned her to appear on July 7, 1953. The committee counsel, Roy M. Cohn, began the questioning by asking, “You are Mrs. Paul Robeson, is that correct?” Essie replied, “Yes, and very proud of it too.”

When asked if she was a member of the Communist Party, she refused to answer, citing the Fifth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Senator McCarthy said that the Fifteenth Amendment dealt only with her right to vote as an American citizen. Essie replied, “I don’t quite understand your statement that we are all American citizens…I am a second-class citizen now, as a Negro.” She stated that many southern black people were denied the right to vote because of unjust laws and customs enforced by white people.

A member of the committee said that Essie’s refusal to answer meant that there was “a good chance” that she was a communist, because she believed that “race has not had a fair deal in the United States.” Essie said, “The reason I refuse to answer the question is because…my opinions are my private personal affair.” Responding to a question about her husband’s political activities, she shot back, “Why don’t you ask him?”

Paul Jr. was suspected too. Because of his name, he could not find work as an engineer, so he used his Russian language skills to translate scientific journals. In late 1953, Paul Jr., Robeson, and his friend Lloyd Brown formed a record company, Othello Recording Corporation. Paul Jr. served as president and producer. They recorded three albums, including one that featured Robeson singing church hymns. No commercial distributors would market the albums, and no radio stations would play them, so they sold the records using mail order and through black churches.

Paul Jr. set up an informal system so that they could record Robeson’s songs in various venues, like friends’ living rooms, on short notice. Expert engineers gave their services. Since Lawrence Brown felt he could no longer cope with the problems involved in performing with Robeson, he made only selective appearances. Alan Booth, a talented pianist, also performed with him. Paul Jr. picked out the final takes with his father. Sometimes, Robeson altered the lyrics to emphasize his views. In “Jacob’s Ladder,” “soldiers of the cross” became “soldiers of the fight.” These recording sessions temporarily lifted Robeson’s spirits and distracted him from his passport battle.

Offers for him to give concerts kept coming in from England, Russia, Canada, Israel, and Mexico. A theater in London wanted him to do a run of Othello. Without a passport, though, he couldn’t travel. In Harlem, a group of fellow artists held a “Salute to Paul Robeson” and supported his right to regain his passport. In England, a Paul Robeson Committee was formed and launched a “Let Robeson Sing” campaign. Students at City College of New York, and Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, invited him to sing and speak. High school students in New York City gathered to hear him talk about his fight, and they signed a petition demanding that his passport be returned. Robeson expressed delight at the overflow crowds. He saw “the stirrings of new life” among these young people.

Nonetheless, the State Department rejected his application to regain his passport. Robeson was not the only one striving to make changes at this time. Lawyer Thurgood Marshall was fighting in the courts to challenge the “separate but equal” doctrine to end school segregation in the United States. In 1952, Marshall and his team argued their case before the Supreme Court and presented their arguments again in 1953. At last in 1954 they won. The landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education banned segregation in public schools.

Robeson heard the great news and felt inspired. To him, the ruling was a “magnificent stride forward,” yet he warned black people everywhere to “fight to see that it is enforced.” Sure enough, many Southern states refused to accept the Supreme Court’s decision and did not desegregate their schools. A year later, Marshall and his lawyers had to return to the Supreme Court and outline a plan for implementing the Court’s ruling. The civil rights campaign was spreading throughout the South and gathering strength.

At a left-wing meeting in Union Square, New York, on May 2, 1954, Robeson sings before addressing the audience.

From left to right: Attorney George E. C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall, and James Nabrit on the steps of the Supreme Court Building, congratulating each other on the Brown v. Board of Education decision. May 17, 1954.

In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white person and move to the back of a bus. She was arrested, and thousands gathered to protest. Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the new minister at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, spoke and became president of the Montgomery Improvement Association to launch and oversee a bus boycott.

Robeson cheered silently from the sidelines. He didn’t want to jeopardize the burgeoning civil rights movement due to the govern-ment’s labeling of him as a subversive. He also had few outlets for singing or speaking to express support. He considered himself a “forerunner” of the movement rather than a “participant.”

His own long battle continued into the summer of 1955. Robeson had grown optimistic when the State Department said he could travel to Canada. However, when he went to Washington, DC, in August for a hearing in the US District Court, the government’s attorney argued that Robeson was “one of the most dangerous men in the world” and a threat to the security of the United States. Robeson refused to sign an affidavit stating that he was not a communist, saying that it was unconstitutional. He would not sign a document other Americans were not asked to sign.

Robeson remained “a prisoner in his native land.” The unrelenting hatred and hostility directed at him wore him down physically and emotionally. In October 1955, he underwent surgery for a prostate condition and stayed in the hospital for three weeks. Essie also suffered serious health problems and needed a mastectomy to combat breast cancer. When they both began recovering, they decided to buy a Harlem brownstone at 16 Jumel Terrace and live together again.

By May 1956, Robeson showed more signs of strain. Usually upbeat and vigorous, he became weak and deeply depressed. He stayed in his suite of rooms in the brownstone, seeing no one but his family, and refused to consult a psychiatrist. “Suddenly everything changed,” wrote Paul Jr.

On May 22, word came from Washington that Robeson had been subpoenaed to testify at a hearing of the House Un-American Activities Committee. His doctors advised him not to go, begging him to stay home. They wanted to request a postponement for medical reasons. The House Committee granted a delay until June 12. The doctors still felt that Robeson was not well enough to appear and wanted to request a postponement. Robeson insisted on making the trip. He had been threatened all his life and had never backed down. He wouldn’t start now.