Read Online Paul Robeson by Martin Duberman - Free Book Online

Preface
    In 1919, when Paul Robeson graduated from Rutgers as valedictorian, the “class prophecy” suggested that by 1940 he would be governor of New Jersey and “the leader of the colored race in America.” When 1940 came around, that prophecy had not been entirely realized but—except for the governorship of New Jersey, for which Robeson had no ambition—continued to seem entirely plausible. By then he had added to his undergraduate laurels as scholar and All-American football player, international acclaim as concert artist, stage actor, recording and film star.
    Although many white and almost all black Americans in 1940 shared a high estimate of Robeson’s accomplishment, their views of what it meant failed to coincide in some important ways. To the white world in general, Robeson seemed a magnetic, civilized, and gifted man who had relied on talent rather than belligerence to “rise above his circumstances.” Whites vaguely recognized in 1940 that he was beginning to emerge as a passionate defender of the underclasses, yet the lack of stridency and self-pity in his manner allowed them to persist in the comfortable illusion that his career proved the way was indeed open to those with sufficient pluck and aptitude, regardless of race—that the “system” worked.
    Those whites who knew Robeson personally (and he had many white friends) recognized, more than the white world at large did, that his charismatic charm, his grace and generosity, real enough, were hardly a complete accounting of his personality. They had experienced his stubborn reserve, had seen his carefully controlled anger erupt, knew the limits of his gregariousness. By 1940, they also had become aware of his deepening political passion. They had heard him talk with a gravity dramaticallydifferent from the unemphatic ease of his usual public self-presentation about the importance of preserving African culture from the corrupting influence of the West. They knew of his deep dismay over the destruction of Republican Spain, his mounting commitment to what he viewed as the anticolonial and egalitarian impulses of the Soviet Union, his mounting anger at the blind ethnocentrism of Europe’s privileged classes in their continuing exploitation of colonial peoples.
    Black Americans had watched Robeson work his way through the white world with an ease that seemed remarkable—and in moments of optimism provided a ray of hope. Here he was in 1940, son of an ex-slave, risen to be a highly regarded interpreter not only of spirituals but also of the plays of America’s foremost white playwright, Eugene O’Neill. He had already starred, as well, in a London production of Othello with Peggy Ashcroft and Sybil Thorndike, had sold out concert halls throughout Europe, had been a leading box-office draw in half a dozen films, and had, most recently, been the man chosen to sing on a nationwide radio broadcast—to immense acclaim—the stirring, patriotic “Ballad for Americans.” With seemingly equal ease, Robeson had moved beyond artistic recognition to social acceptance—at least in sophisticated white circles in England, where he and his family had resided for much of the thirties.
    True, the black actor Ira Aldridge had been hailed for his talent before Robeson, just as the singer Roland Hayes had also filled concert halls. But Robeson had combined both their gifts, had added an outstanding career in athletics, a degree in law, a scholar’s ability to summon up wide-ranging points of reference, and a linguist’s ability to communicate in several languages. And beyond all these accomplishments, and perhaps more inspiring than any of them to the “ordinary” black American, was Robeson’s deepening commitment to improving the lot of people of color around the world. Here was an important black artist who viewed his gifts and his worldly success not as ends in themselves, but as