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</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5><b>Paul Robeson, born
April 9th, 1898. Happy Birthday Paul!<br><br>
</b></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>The Freedom
Archives has a unique collection of Paul Robeson recordings, including
music, speeches, and interviews. To celebrate his birthday, these
quotations and comments of interest:<br><br>
"The artist must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I have
made my choice, I had no alternative."<br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4> </font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>"As
an artist I come to sing, but as a citizen, I will always speak for
peace, and no one can silence me in this."<br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4> </font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=1 color="#6388DB"><x-tab> </x-tab><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>In 1950, again called
before the HUAC, Paul Robeson proudly confronted his interrogators and
was cited for contempt for shouting at them, "You are the real
un-Americans and you should be ashamed of yourselves."<br><br>
<br>
In 1956, Paul Robeson was called to testify before the HUAC testimony
1956: (as quoted in The Whole World in His Hands</b>, p. 205.)<br><br>
<br>
</font><font face="Century Schoolbook, New Century Schoolbook" size=3>MR.
ROBESON: I stand here struggling for the rights of my people to be full
citizens in this country and they are not. They are not in Mississippi
and they are not ... in Washington ... You want to shut up every Negro
who has the courage to stand up and fight for the rights of his people
... That is why I am here today...<br><br>
<br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>MR. SCHERER: Why do you
not stay in Russia?<br><br>
<br>
</font><font face="Century Schoolbook, New Century Schoolbook" size=3>MR.
ROBESON: Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this
country and I am going to stay here and have a part of it just like you.
And no fascist- minded people will drive me from it. Is that
clear?<br><br>
<br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>Below are excerpts from
Black Renaissance</i> Volume 2, Number 1<br><br>
The full article by Amiri Baraka is available at:<br>
<a href="http://iupjournals.org/blackren/brn2-1.html" eudora="autourl">http://iupjournals.org/blackren/brn2-1.html</a><br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5>Paul Robeson and the
Theater</b></font><font size=3> (four short excerpts of
interest)<br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>Contrary to negro
nationalists immune to investigation, Robeson was one of the deepest
theoreticians on the place of Black national consciousness in art and
politics. He understood that the imitation of the oppressor aesthetic had
less to do with Art than with ideological and political submission and,
more generally, that the Afro-American people could only find their
artistic or political voice by understanding and utilizing their own
broad social and emotional experience. But the purpose of this was to
communicate and broaden human solidarity, not to exclude or create some
metaphysical relationship to the other peoples of the world. However, he
also constantly explained that the abandoning of the cultural and
political expression of Afro-American life could only bring a destructive
alienation and soul-withering submission to the oppressor's will. In
this, he is similar to Du Bois (the "double consciousness"),
and also of course to modern African revolutionaries like Amilcar Cabral
of Guinea-Bissau (see "Return to the Source"), and Langston
Hughes's "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain."<br><br>
Song of Freedom</i> (1936) was one of Robeson's best film appearances. He
plays a Black dock worker whose singing attracts opera producers. Again,
he has a revelatory connection to Africa. Even his name, Zing, conjures
Nzinga, the heroic Queen of Ngola who resisted colonialism. Robeson said
of this film, "I wanted to disillusion the world of the idea that
the Negro is either a stupid fellow or, as the Hollywood superfilms show
him, a superstitious witch doctor under the spell of witch doctors."
He thought it was "the first film to give a true picture of many
aspects of the life of the colored man in the west. Hitherto, on the
screen, he has been caricatured or presented as a comedy character. This
film shows him as a real man." Twenty years later, Kwame Nkrumah,
about to become Prime Minister of the first postcolonial African state,
modern Ghana, celebrated Robeson for this film.<br><br>
Proud Valley</i> (1939) was made in Wales. Having refused major roles in
Hollywood films for two years, Robeson agreed to appear in an independent
film made in Wales about Welsh coal miners. This film is my own personal
favorite. Not only does it completely avoid the loathsome denigration of
Black people that Hollywood still persists in and still denies, it casts
Paul as a heroic figure in complete unity with white working men. He
plays David Goliath, who is at the center of this film, and who
magnetizes the struggling Welsh miners with his magnificent songs, learns
their heritage, and even helps them organize a movement for better
working conditions. Goliath dies in the mines, sacrificing his life in a
deeply heroic and moving scene, to save his fellow miners. The film is
clearly the most successfully wrought and emotionally satisfying of all
Robeson's films. It is a greater film than most American films made. The
solidarity of a Black worker struggling alongside white miners against
the repressive mine owners was a genuinely revolutionary aspect of the
film.<br><br>
A 1946 meeting with President Truman at which Robeson urged Truman to
oppose lynching (some 15 known lynchings took place that year alone and
were registered in the presentation to the United Nations by Du Bois,
William Patterson, and others called "We Charge Genocide")
turned into virulent hostility and confrontation. Reporters at one point
besieged Robeson with questions like "Are you a communist?"
Robeson told them of his general pro-socialist views but told them as
well they had no business asking. To another question, Robeson answered
that he "would not turn the other cheek" if attacked, but
instead would "tear (his assailant's) head off, before he could hit
me on the other." The most shocking statement of Robeson's to Truman
was that "if the government did not do something about lynching,
Negroes would!" Truman, no slouch as an intellectual, said "it
sounded like a threat" (Paul Robeson Speaks</i>, 175).<br><br>
<br><br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>A rare photo (attached)
with (l to r) Henry A. Wallace (who ran for President on Progressive
Party ticket); Albert Einstein; Frank Kingdon (radio commentator), and
Paul<b> Robeson</b>. Credit: UPI/CORBIS-BETTMANN.<br><br>
<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#FF0000">The Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br>
(415) 863-9977<br>
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