If I started asking people, especially people born in the last several decades, who Paul Robeson is, I doubt I would find a lot of people who could tell me. Indeed, when I, while embarking on my Masters degree more than 15 years ago, took up more intense study of sports history, I didn't know anything about him going in. Yet, go back 60 or 70 years ago, and it's a very good likelihood that lots of people could tell you about Paul Robeson. Perhaps most prominently, Robeson was known to much of the U. S. public as an athlete and then as a singer and actor. By the early 1950s, though, much of that public--especially the white U. S. public--had developed a very negative view of Robeson based on association of him with work toward racial justice throughout the world, with communism, and with other political issues and institutions. Indeed, as I'm writing this, I know I'm not giving Robeson anywhere near his due, given that I don't have a lot of time today to compose this post, yet I wanted to get is posted. So, to read more on Robeson, check out here and here.
In the meantime, I want to post this today to note that today marks 35 years since Paul Robeson passed away. By the time of his death, he had fallen from prominence in U. S. culture, largely blacklisted for his political and social work. That blacklisting is why, though so many of us really should know about Robeson, so many of us don't. It's also a significant factor in why the reporters of news who like to mark 25th, 35th, 40th, and 50th anniversaries are much more inclined to tell us about the 25th anniversary of the establishment of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's inaugural address this past week, but not acknowledge the 35th anniversary of the passing of a U. S. American who, I would attest, deserves to be held with at least the same regard as King and even higher regard than Kennedy. Much of what Robeson said and did could have a lot to bear on contemporary political, economic, social, and cultural issues. With that in mind, on the 35th anniversary of his death, I encourage everyone today to learn a little or think a little about him and his legacy. I know I will being do so.
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There may have been some questionable incidents with native groups in his biography that take from his politics, but John C Fremont, the first antislavery pres candidate, and born in Jan, is often overlooked in American history. Fremont led the beginning of of Republican and Ohio dominance of politics for many years into the thirties.
Langston Hughes suppressed his communist poetry, regretting it's publication after communists proved dictatorial.
Robeson should not be judged only on Soviet communist communications.
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