Re Paul Robeson's life:

I've been rereading parts of my favorite biography of Paul Robeson, "Paul Robeson" by Martin Bauml Duberman. I recommend the book very highly to anyone who, like Raggytash, wants to learn more about Robeson. I was riveted again by the author's portrayal of Robeson and the times in which he lived.

Paul Robeson's relationship with Communism was complex. He was interrogated by HUAC and the State Dept. as to whether he was a member of the Communist Party, and he refused, with great eloquence and dignity, to give a yes or no response. Duberman wrote, "Robeson's political identification was primarily with the Soviet Union in its original revolutionary purity, and not with the secondary manifestation, the American Communist Party. On the most obvious level, he was never a member of the CPUSA...He had aligned himself with the Soviet Union by the late thirties because it was playing the most visible role in the liberation of American and colonial peoples of color... [He] worked hard to champion the interests and to ensure the survival of the Communist movement [for this reason]...[Robeson became] a prominent ally [and displayed] unswerving loyalty to the CPUSA...In 1951 he even offered to join the Party as a public gesture of solidarity, just before its leaders were jailed."

During his testimony before the House Unamerican Activities Committee, Robeson was asked why he had not remained in Russia, and he replied, "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." He was asked why he had sent his son to school in the Soviet Union, and he replied that the reason was to spare him from racial prejudice. One of the Congressmen asked, "What prejudice are you talking about? You were graduated from Rutgers." Robeson tried to explain that "the success of a few Negroes including myself or Jackie Robinson" did not make up for the fact that thousands of black families in the South had a yearly income of seven hundred dollars and lived in a kind of semislavery.

Towards the end of his life, Robeson suffered from paranoia and severe depression. While in the Soviet Union in the early sixties, he attempted suicide. For a while, he lived in mental hospitals in Moscow and then in London.

I found no allusion to a Sephardic Jewish background of Robeson's wife Effie, who was African American, in this book. However, Robeson's son Paul married a white American Jew. There were riots in the streets on the occasion of the wedding. Robeson, Sr. was supportive of the marriage and denounced the mobs for racism. For this, he was blasted as an "undesirable" American citizen in the Hearst newspapers nationwide and on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Robeson's dignity and courage in the face of extreme vilification and governmental abuse are almost beyond my comprehension.

Re Paul Robeson's music:

My favorite among Robeson's recordings is "Songs of Free Men and Spirituals," which dates back to the 1940s. One side of the record has spirituals and the other side, political songs. I have trouble telling the two genres apart because they're both about suffering and justice. I first learned some gospel songs from this record, including "Go Down Moses," "Balm in Gilead," and "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child." I listened to the latter over and over, crying, as part of my grieving when my parents died. The political song on this record that I find most moving is "Peat Bog Soldiers," a song of Jewish prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. At the last Getaway, I told Susan of DT that I found this song very depressing, and she told me that she found it uplifting. Since then, I've listened to it and thought about it again, and now I sense the faith and hope of the very last line, "Homeland, dear, you're mine at last."