Paul Robeson : world citizen

Government program by the Pacifica programme service and radio are all I have in the studio with me. Paul Robeson. Who needs no introduction and Harold Winkler who is president of Pacifica Foundation which operates KPFA as most of you know Mr. Robson has been known and loved as an artist all over the world for many years but he has also I believe attracted considerable and worldwide attention in his role as a world citizen and as a person who was very deeply concerned about the society in which he lived. I wonder Mr. Robson if we could kick off by asking. When did you first become involved in any political aspects of May I first say how how happy I am and privileged to be with you here and how deeply I thank this station for its kindness throughout the years.

I've been on two or three others this time but always have been you know I've had a welcome here so I want to thank you. I would say as I indicated in a recent book which is now out it will be on the stands pretty soon. Here I stand. Story Of My Life as I tell it not too autobiographical. It began when I was a little boy in Princeton New Jersey. Strange to say I would technically this is the shaping of my views. A negro boy born in Princeton New Jersey in a college town where the students mainly came from the Deep South. You know Princeton Princeton Harvard and Yale was the sort of the Southern University of the North where you know that or not. And so I grew up in Jersey in a rather southern atmosphere. And so and my father was a minister and I was shaped against that background. Technically I entered the sort of the rain in the United States fighting for social justice for my people in a concert when I was in a concert in St. Louis in 1970 in the Post-Dispatch where I was singing

at the keyboard of Tory and one of the big auditoriums there and the NAACP asked me in St. Louis at that time to come on a picket line because the group people could not even sit in the theater which was just across the street. And so I grabbed the banner and lo and behold I saw water used in coming down the street he was in the play so water walked out and joined a picket line too. And a few nights later when I was doing the concert I said that I could not quite resolve the contradiction between singing to an audience in St. Louis where there was no segregation of course but but also the same people had not. To my mind were not fighting to see that I do good sit in the theater it's been corrected since. And so I said that I was giving up my career technically for the moment to enter the realm of the day to day struggle of the Negro people especially. And this was your first political and as you know that was within this context this is very important given that on text my first actual. To come back to your question was in London in

1933. It isn't very well known which I clarify in the book that I want to play Shubert in London in one thousand twenty eight. Jerry Curran was with me and Oscar Hammerstein and we had a great success. And then I did concerts in one thousand twenty eight. And I became domiciled and lived in England. Domiciled paid my taxes there from nineteen twenty eight until 1940 and the war began. Does this mean Mr. Robson that you spent most of your time in England during this period meant that I came back now and then for concerts I was here in Oakland many times but I went back and spent most of my time in Great Britain. It's quite a trip. I was there 1930 played Othello. So again this is extremely important at that time I said for the public to see that I felt I would explain it today in this light. We understand why many of my people have come to Oakland to the vicinity from Mississippi and from the south. There have been migrations in the California understand today from everywhere. But for many years as you know

many of my people have left the South because the conditions in the north were better. I felt the pressure so much in one thousand twenty eight that instead of stopping in New York I just want to end that crime did you feel no pressure there in I felt raise no sand. I thought No way. Nowhere near the pressure now that does not mean that you haven't the background of the English colonies and so forth. Yes I want pressure but. But I say it's the difference between right here now and say let's say the Mississipi of Mr. Eastman you understand yet this is quite different to America's quite different the great differences. So I found in England that much more of a difference that I thought I found Canada that way when I was playing Othello some years ago when we got to Toronto the cast said to me after a week we're told why you so different. The play is much deeper you seem to be freer. It is quite true. It's quite true. I mean a country where where there is no this is not a question I'm going to theatre on a stage with many other white actors.

This is not a problem here. So obviously I feel at this moment where I don't know I don't feel the pressures that one would feel in the Deep South all the time but it would interest you to know when I've put it that I and I feel any negro if he were honest would have to say that even in our democracy as a present that he is never any one second unconscious of the fact. That he is a black American or a colored American he can never be unconscious of it in any part of the United States. Mr. Robson have you been back to England since the last war. Oh yes I was back in 49. The point I want to get at is that when I was in England last year I became aware of the large number of West Indian troops who are now about London and I heard rather nasty overtones and write talks with some Englishmen that frighten me. No question about a change that might take place in England. No I again if you want to go further into it nothing could be worse than South Africa. And I'm only saying I put these things down. What is most important is that at the height having

lived many years out and enjoying the certainly the height of success in Great Britain that I decided I must come back to my own country to struggle in this and to make the sacrifices that I have. That's the most important thing in this regard. And I am here now I understand you spell it out again for me. You left England because England is not as attractive. I mean how did you feel you have a greater mission in the United States. Don't get in that there are many places in the world where Personally it would be much easier to live than in the United States. For an American Negro in other words your commitment is definitely to what you feel you can do in this country and Langston Hughes in a in a in a in a book discussion before the book club in New York just a while ago pointed out that every important negro novelist Richard Wright but many others that the great 95 percent of them live in Paris or somewhere else in the world. Why. Because the pressure is personally a much simpler and yet in the foreword of your book that I have

before him a you quote Frederick Douglas as saying a man is worked on by what he works on. That's right. He may carve out his circumstances but his circumstances will carve him out as well. Is this part of the reason why you feel that you must be back in the United States. I made the decision some years ago. I say strictly that I spring the century from here like you through the other day about the Indians in North Carolina. If you recall that was in Robeson County. Yes I noticed that in the item. Now this is a very interesting thing which I point out in my book and which explains a good deal too of how I feel. Now I was born on the edge of Robeson County and my father is a rope's and was a real person because he was a slave. My own father a slave of the Scottish groups and who still control Robeson County in North Carolina. So my so I approach these problems from a very close point and support. I have a home and my people are tobacco workers and sharecroppers today that on plantations in that

county. But a part of that soil belongs to me. That's that's my root. These are my roots in this country. On the other hand also I felt that so somewhere the contributions that I had could make some contribution from my background travelling about the world. However I never expected I'm quite willing to say that I would be restricted from traveling. Yes but tell me Mr. Robson Why is your commitment to the political scene then largely as a result of your feeling about your own people are our own people. Let's put it here or did it have other overtones I said firstly fiction is First it starts as an American immigrants did my own people. The other great change is very constant in my mind I was in the Welsh valley. And the Welsh people sing very much like we do in the Negro people. Yes I've heard many of our songs beautiful songs and I was one of the few outsiders who who has sung at a Welsh estate for their national festival which is gone

as a time of the Druids and I went down in the mines with the workers and they explained to me that pole you may be successful here in England. But your people suffer like ours. We are poor people and you belong to us. You don't belong to the big weeks here in this country. And so I did today feel as much at home in the Welsh valley as I would in my own negro section in any city the United States and I just did a broadcast by translating cable to the Welsh valley a few weeks ago and he was the first understanding that the struggle of the Negro people or any people cannot be by itself that is the human struggle. And so I was attracted then to many members the Labor Party and my politics embraced also the common struggle of all oppressed peoples including especially the working masses specifically the laboring people of all the world. And that was that difference my philosophies. Joining one of we are working people laboring people the Negro people and there is a unity between our struggle and those of white workers in the South I've had

white workers shake my hand and say Paul we're fighting for the same thing. And so this defines my attitude toward socialism and toward many other things in the world. I do not believe that a few people should control the wealth. Any land that it should be a collective ownership interest. Is that a democratic socialism or I would have to be a democratic socialism there are many ways however to to struggle toward democracy as I see that in a place like China for example today the Soviet Union many other places. Or take our own problems of Negroes. If we were free in the south tomorrow. To carry our weight to vote into everything we do we now look around and try to find the ten billionaires among our people would we attempt to build them up or would we try to answer the needs of the great millions of our people. And so I see other ways of life socialism as trying to solve the problems of millions and tens of millions of peoples at once in a way instead of the cons instead of we would start from the individual to the masses they start from the

masses this way know their two ways and their difficulties each way. I have made the decision to join in a collective struggle and the reason that my personal sacrifices mean very little in the struggle in one way when you see the children of Little Rock which is what is not giving if you can search me if you can make some other contribution. It's in that context so nothing is perfect in the world we're going toward it from different angles. I feel it was a great burden of proof on every society as well. Today when I was going to ropes and some years ago I was talking to a French member of the Communist Party and in the course of our discussion he said to me you Mr. Winkler a Jeffersonian Democrat. You can afford it in your rich land but in my land and in other lands we must give up our freedom to certain men in order to achieve freedom for our children in the

future. This is an act of faith for me he said. Giving up my freedom no. Do you find yourself sympathetic with. I don't think that I would put it quite differently. Nor do I think that's any part of any socialist philosophy or conscious force as far as I know. That we struck it during the during the war under Roosevelt for example. We had to give up many privileges they're practically telling us we have to do that again. I mean in any sort of war economy in England or England for example they have not eaten eggs almost for years and years because of certain pressures. And it seems to me in the socialist lands of Soviet Union China in many places that that's quite true. It's one thing to say today that they don't have as shining apparel as we do but they have made tremendous scientific progress. And within a one generation so to speak within 40 years have become one of the most powerful countries in the world but they've done it by great sacrifices and

not by mine. They feel that the country in one sense the man in the street may not in every sense belong to him but he feels it's much more his than say I do in Charleston South Carolina one American Southern American leader explain to me that I was in the state of our great plantations I said Are you sure about that. I don't feel that my plantations but in one sense of the people associate Lancefield the country does belong to them in a real sense. Now they are they are as far as the basic concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat and so forth and. I would say to again bring it back to our own history. There was as we know a dictatorship of the north over the South in the days following the Civil War. When that dictatorship was removed the colored people reverted practically into a kind of servitude. I could have conceived of of a dictatorship of the South for quite a longer period. My

point quite frankly to this is yes there is. In your book Mr OSen here I stand that you have a chapter entitled The Power of Negro action. What are some of the specific acts what you recommand and perhaps in the order of priority. Well I say any in any integral if you would say that nobody this is rather startling to many of my friends. Nobody would be startled say were taking the vote. The power of battalion action or police action in Detroit or Catholic Action in New York and so forth I mean that the vote would be a block and the power of the Negro vote in the north in certain states. This is one very important aspect very clear. A kind of we have tremendous economic power in this in this land the day. There should be tremendous support of Negro business of Negro banks and so forth loan associations and so on. But the prime thing is that I'm convinced that

taking this last illustration of you know as have you not found that as Negro bankers become richer or that they grow away from your people. No I don't I don't they remain hard tell you they really grow Actually there's no way for as I said before for any American to grow however wealthy however famous to be anything at this period of our history at some point an American Negro. If you're saying I can see there's nobody you can find out from a racial standpoint Robeson but from the political standpoint socialism which you were discussing a few moments ago. Surely a negro capitalist if he had the opportunity he would undoubtedly behave. According to the lights of his own he has to but he has but I know many of the most wealthy and they are often I feel that they don't help as much as they should. But he's forever conscious his children suffer the same things as a poor immigrant children. And at some point he finds a way to to help.

It's up to different people but that it's been always busy L.A.X. still when I but I'm really not what I'm trying to say is that is that somewhere for our own dignity I see that is Africa would you understand Ghana today unifying as with its own sort of you know national strength is that clear. Yes I feel in America strange to say especially the self that that even with all the goodwill of white liberals in the country that is very important for the Negro people to know what they want. And to unify to do it often in a very simple case fighting segregation. One group of Negroes can be drawn aside because of political pressure or other pressures. We should unify too. We should unify. Yes I think there's got to be a unity in order to integrate. That's what I feel and I feel that we are not we just can't integrate as individuals. Yes but isn't the example of Liberia for example a sorry example. I think.

IT'S GONNA WEAR us because before that's a very simple Firestone has taken care of that. It has been exploited to its hilt by first a robber if you don't know the facts. Yes really still remains then and they can and so has Donna Rachel's always done it I don't know racial unity question. It remains an economic question and it's fundamental you know I think that you are not on the set of people Ghana has a unity of its own nation. Same as Chinese or Indians very close to India. It is just they have a culture and a history that has its own national characteristics. But what will prevent Ghana from becoming another Liberia. That's really well from Liberia today is completely controlled by Firestone not by Africans but I but I but I feel that increment is going to control the economy of government and at some time be strong enough to say to the European I do you sit here and acknowledge that we run our own country like Nehru or else you go. But I don't see the day when Liberia can tell Firestone to do that. Well they're quite different quite different. Liberia is a complete vassal state of

American capital finance kept that question. They have nothing to say nothing whatsoever. What is your reaction to the passive resistance as practiced in Montgomery. We're very I think there was a magnificent movement and nobody can I say there's nothing as far as the general thing of a nonviolent solution to the problem this is. There could be no other solution within our. Within the frame of things today. I mean this is a very important contribution. Nobody could think of a violent solution unless niggas lest somebody want to do dude asked somebody to be destroyed. I mean that would be absurd. On the other hand within that framework I think that the Negro people have to be extremely militant. And dicks and demand a little more than they are demanding today. And to do a little more not to do dilute to do something. To do other things as well as pray. Let me put it as well as pray. Do you think there's been a change in the attitude of the Negro churches. Tired militant

political and economic action. MR. I think there has because it's history you know take that with Douglas. I belong to the M.E. Zion church. There is one in this area and Douglas was a part of the church Harriet Tubman who formed the Underground Railroad was called the Moses of our people they sang Go Down Moses when she came into the south to free the slaves and Harriet Tubman. And we have a tradition of tremendous consistent speaking out. You know who are right. It's like in the whole sort of struggle I mean by militant thinking people know that you that you want to be free like anybody else. And I think the churches however a lot of the. Responsibility still rests upon our churches because that's where so many of our people go. Tremendous influence to Mr. Ropes and do you think your artistry as a singer and actor have suffered because of your involvement in political action I profited.

They have not I feel that they have profited they've only suffered when they've suffered by the fact that because of my political views which I said you did not expect in a democracy that I've been prevented from exercising like that. However I have kept singing all through the years you know I may be able to test it pretty soon I just made a recording the other day for Vanguard which they felt was a period to any records I have ever made. My voice is still in fine shape I've been in the area and as far as Othello I've worked on it I feel I've just been invited to play it at Stratford on Avon and Shakespeare's Shakespeare moral theory England in this very same pair of cliches to play a part of Gower. And I would certainly do Othello at some point in London and I feel I would give a better performance. I feel that in every and I have got a lot of things here which will be able to get to in my music. Comparing the folk music of the world I would say that my interest in my art has deepened. I just know when in the last years and I become into the music of the part of many folk things the unity of the folk music of the world which has sprung from my political conviction that all people should be unified. I have seen.

It expressed in their music and I do a program which of all the songs of all the peoples in the world suggesting that we are all one human family. It all comes of it. So I feel that basically that it has deepened my mind. On the other hand I have never separated my work as an artist from my work as a human being. I have always put it even more strongly that to me my art is always a weapon. It's got to be good art. Othello was a weapon in racial relations. Or at least showing that we can do some things to played football. My father explained to me that while a fellow hit me I couldn't hit him back because they'd say we were bad and savage. So I had to stand to be knocked all around. I had to do well in my studies. So I've never been able to divorce one thing from the other. And luckily I don't sing the kind of songs that made you here and you get high or whatever it is the high B-flat and the high this and I that I sing songs that express very much the emotions of different peoples. The Welsh the

Scotch the negro Chinese Russian so well. What is the present state of play on this passport business you were talking about your British invitations. Yeah how are you going to get there. Well luckily I think at this point the basic case is before the Supreme Court is the case of Rockwell Kent contending that the which you hold all the cases revolve around that when the State Department put in its administrative necessities that one sign a noncommunist affidavit whether or not he is was also for that this is a violation of constitutional rights. Just it wasn't just any any American now has to sign this this particular. Proposal and this is before the Supreme Court and in its present temper it seems to me that the court might easily decide. And this is what your eagerness to do you refuse to sign such a document completely. If this is a complete invention. Did you murder your wife yesterday if

you know the day before you. Are you a Republican I or Democrat does know but my political opinions are my own business. This is a complete complete and I say we have the background of the of the reversal in the Smith Act cases all over this country so somebody was framed I would say. So it shows that all of that to my mind is a complete hoax from somewhere. In other words you're hoping that on the basis of some of the current court decisions that you may get your passport in time to get it or I have now been invited to sing on April 6 in a national television broadcast maybe I could get special permission to go in there and because of my background in England there is almost a national almost demand from England or request that I be allowed to come in April and even before the summer. And also I take some Optum optimistic point of view from the fact that where no passports are needed. After restricting me for many years even in that area this was had to be lifted because the courts

would certainly I think I've ruled that this was completely illegal. Once I was stopped from going to Hawaii or Puerto Rico which parts of the United States so I can now go anywhere in this hemisphere. It's not dangerous as long as you stick to the Western Hemisphere. I'm just saying so I'm just saying what the court is looking at this. How can the State Department argue that if I leave the country this is extremely dangerous that you get up in court to follow and if I left it was going to be a catastrophe and what would happen the next morning immediately got on the plane. But I can now be in Brazil I could be in the West Indies I can be in Canada I can be anywhere in this hemisphere. Why can't I be in London doesn't make any sense to me. So I am optimistic that I may get my best. Mr. O'Reilly if we may change yes I'd like to go. What could I however ask you some questions along another line for a moment I have three small children of my own and I'm very much interested in the problems of children with relation to these larger problems of a man standing up for certain things. Have your children moved around the world with you.

In the course of your travels I just had one boy do you have one just one boy and he as you know traveled around by the time he was about to travel with me everywhere and lived in England and went to school for a part of his youth in the Soviet Union speaks Russian very well and he is now in this country with the Cornell and he has two beautiful grandchildren. And he is very happy his was a mixed marriage in one sense he married a very wonderful Jewish girl Roumanian Jewish background and they're extremely happy to have two children are liberating all the problems older. And they are very happy and get along very well in Harlem where they live in the Negro community. They are both may I say to use a much abused term progressive young America. And he's an electronics engineer and a very fine acoustical engineer. We've done some work together and she teaches in the school teaches

children. Their two children schools which he teaches in young children school. And they're very happy and my wife is an accredited correspondent at the United Nations and does a lot of work for different publications throughout the world. So we keep pretty busy. And but I am very happy to get to the core of being back at my singing and to say that however I have talked this afternoon that I have great faith and I wouldn't be here if I did not have great faith in her that somewhere we will realize the Democrat the Democratic potentials of our life of our of our society. And I deeply believe that fight for peace I feel we've got to live with many other kinds of systems and other beliefs in the world. We've been able to do it through many generations and centuries and we could find peace in the destruction and and a little faster in understanding the problems of oppressed peoples wherever they may be. But very happy to be back in the area to sing In fact I come back here you know some of the Negro churches the

Third Baptist in. In San Francisco and I sang in Oakland and I sang in Sacramento and Stockton and I've been back at my career now for quite some time mainly in the Negro churches. Has this been a change. I was not aware that you had had been singing in the Negro chit chatted up until recently where I was unable to sing anywhere else but was able to get the auditoriums on the other hand we have a great tradition and a great life all of us Marian Anderson. We all began in the churches and my brother is pastor of a very large church in New York and every Sunday afternoon you may go there and hear any of the top negro artists in the whole concert feel or feel anybody. We always go back to the churches. And so it's been a very fine way to walk into a church full of 2000 people and say Well polls here this morning and sisters to see how he sounds. He comes out very well why why why for. But I really have begun and been practicing and my whole I mean I have come back into the swing of things in this area and I want to say that that I go

so far as to say in this period that some people have said no but I have found the Pacific coast especially the Bay Area vastly different. I found a very different feeling from some other sections of the United States. Other people have felt this many outside people come to the United Nations gatherings feel that you are a little more non-historical that you have a little evidently deeper belief in our democratic faith. And I I felt that I think that so much so that I may even come out to sit around for quite awhile and go away thinking. But hey when they say yeah I hear you saying in the near future. Well if you're going to get me I hope on Sunday afternoon February 9th at the Okamoto theater would be very important the first time I've had the public auditorium in the area for quite some time. It's sponsored by a committee of Negro life and honoring Negro History Week which you know has been honored now for some time and Mr. William Duncan Allen very gifted pianist who was accompanying me and who is chairman of the

Bach Festival in the Berkeley area is playing many compositions of the leading negro composers. It's an afternoon of music and poetry I'm reciting some Shakespeare and some grand poetry from the group of poets and singing as I say music that ranges through all the folk music of the world and those composers like Bartok ski and divorce Rock who have used the folk idiom in their in their in their extended in more complex works. It sounds as if there will be a delightful laughter when upset and we are very grateful to you for coming along to KPFA. I'm grateful to you. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Epstein.