2-07-08, 9:27 am

In an address to the annual convention of the National Negro Labor Council (NNLC) in 1950, Paul Robeson advocated the unity of working people of all races both to defeat the racist power and strike a blow against the purveyors of corporate greed – two categories which too often easily overlapped. Of African Americans, specifically, he urged focused militancy and action. Of white workers, Robeson called for joining in “the ranks of labor the fight for full equality.” To the delegates who gathered that warm June day, Robeson, the actor, the athlete, the singer, offered a program of rooting out white supremacy and building the power of the whole working class.

But Robeson’s words were not those of an observer of movements, an artist with an intellectual’s approach to the class struggle, or a leader promising his people that he will do his best to see their interests looked after. Yes, he was an artist, but his voice belonged to the people. As he told the NNLC delegates, “I am proud as an artist to be one who comes from hearty Negro working people,” and, he added, “I know that you can call on me at any time – South, North, East or West – all my energy is at your call.”

This was certainly the case in Detroit. The autoworkers at the Ford Motor Company had been fighting for a decent wage and recognition of the right to organize for more than a decade by the time the US entered World War II. The men whom Henry Ford had hired to manage his company and keep it non-union had successfully used racism to split the workers and keep them fighting each other, said retired African American autoworker Dave Moore, a participant in the the organizing drive, in an interview for Political Affairs.

A race-based, two-tier wage system, discriminatory hiring practices and segregated transportation in and around the plant drove the workers apart. According to Moore, most African Americans at Ford (approximately 15 percent of the workforce) worked in the Dearborn Rouge Plant’s foundry. “The foundry was the hellhole of the Rouge Plant. Silicosis, tuberculosis. You could burn up in the furnace. You had no protection whatsoever. Health hazards were the order of the day,” Moore recalled.

At the time, many union organizers neglected African American workers, preferring to appeal to white workers. Moore said, “Unions had always frowned upon Black folks. The unions at that time were mostly craft unions. There were no industrial unions at the time. They didn’t care much for people who worked in plants, the packinghouses, the auto industry, the coal miners, the steel mills. They didn’t give a damn about those people.”

After losing a strike vote in 1939, however, Moore stated, organizers knew they need to convince the African American workers at Ford to join and support the union. But how to do it? A new approach was needed: union meetings were desegregated; a main demand put forward by the union was to end the two-tier wage system; and Black workers would hold high-ranking positions in the union itself. At one point, white union leaders met with African American workers and local ministers like Rev. Charles Hill of Hartford Avenue Baptist Church and Rev. Solomon Ross of Shiloh Baptist Church to find ways to build inter-racial unity. Black workers like Coleman Young, future mayor of Detroit and George Crockett, future member of Congress from Detroit, were also present.

To build support, some of the African American leaders suggested bringing a pro-union African American celebrity to town. One person suggested famed singer Marian Anderson. Rev. Hill, according to Moore, said, “Marian Anderson is a well-known individual, but is on tour in Europe. But I have in mind an individual I think will draw a crowd.” Paul Robeson. “There’s only one person known in the Negro community here in Detroit more than Marian Anderson,” recalled Moore, “and that was Paul Robeson. Rev. Hill said, ‘If you bring him here, I’m pretty sure that the UAW-CIO would win.’“ Robeson came several times during that organizing drive, singing and speaking in the churches, in local theaters and auditoriums, drawing huge crowds. His involvement culminated in a performance at Cadillac Square in Detroit, reportedly attracting more than 100,000 people, just prior to the successful union vote at Ford.

Robeson returned time and again to Detroit, promoting war bonds for the anti-fascist war, union drives, and civil rights rallies. Robeson’s love for Detroit and the warmth of feeling Detroiters have had for him has been celebrated in numerous ways. Auditoriums, theaters, and schools have been named for him. His birthday is celebrated with large events, city council resolutions, but much of this has been confined to the African American community and portions of the left.

So the recent opening of an exhibition and related events celebrating his life at the time of his 110th birthday is not earth-shattering, but certainly a welcome remembrance of a man who is beloved by his community but largely forgotten by American society.

The struggle to erase Robeson from the collective memory, says James L. Wheeler, a Detroit resident and the owner of the collection being exhibited at Detroit’s Swords in Plowshares Peace Center and Gallery, began in the early Cold War period of McCarthyite repression. And it tied directly to white supremacist attacks on an African American who spoke out for change, the unity of all people, and about the basic causes of racism, poverty, exploitation, war, and fear in capitalist America.

Gesturing to a large photo of Robeson’s speaking at the Paris Peace Conference in 1949, Wheeler said it was one of his favorite items in the collection. In the photo, Robeson is stretching his powerful hands and arms forward and is calling for an end to war. This proved controversial for the great artist called for the non-participation of African Americans and working people in wars led by the US against countries who posed no threat but whose governments may have seemed threatening corporate interests. The cold warriors of the time saw this as near treasonous. Additionally, Robeson’s denunciation of war took place at the same time when secret military plans labeled “Project Broiler” were being drawn up to devise a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union.

“He did not feel that African Americans should fight in wars when we were being colonized here even in America,” Wheeler said. Heated reactions by the US government to Robeson’s antiwar efforts led to staged riots by white supremacist groups. Right-wingers shouting racist and and anti-Communist slogans beat concert-goers at a 1949 concert in Peekskill, New York. His passport was revoked the following year.

Son and biographer, Paul Robeson Jr. (The Undiscovered Paul Robeson), told one interviewer that in the early and mid-1940s, The American literary magazine declared his father to be “America’s Number One Negro.” However, by the time the impact of Robeson’s declaration against war hit home in 1949, he had become “America’s sort of enemy-number-one.”

“The Paris Peace Conference was the turning point,” Wheeler stated. “As long as everything was kept within the borders of the United States, it was fine. But when you crossed the waters, and you start talking about things in other countries, it leads to assassination.”

Robeson’s supporters refused to dump him. The same year of the controversial Paris speech, Robeson spoke at Detroit’s Forest Club as part of a National Negro Labor Council event. In addition to the city’s top African American church and political dignitaries, 10,000 Detroit city residents gathered in the streets outside the Forest Club to catch a glimpse of him.

That same year, a second concert in Peekskill was put together. About 25,000 people, mostly African American, attended. But this time some 4,000 members of the Fur and Leather Workers Union, mostly white, provided security, with a ring of about 2,000 workers around the concert area. But the racist mob was undeterred. According to reports, rioters sought to “lynch” Robeson, while others claimed to be finishing the job Hitler had started.

The government’s campaign to silence Robeson “in turn led them to burying him alive in terms of not allowing him to travel or to perform,” Wheeler added. Recording companies stopped selling his records; publishers wouldn’t accept his manuscript. His salary collapsed from around $100,000 per year to about $3,000.

After suing unsuccessfully to have his passport returned, Robeson was hauled before the House Un-American Committee in 1956 to confess to his political affiliations and to name names. At the committee hearing, ostensibly convened for other purposes, the members began to harass and harangue Robeson about his alleged membership in the Communist Party USA. Robeson pled the Fifth Amendment, saying how he voted along with his political opinions were none of their business.

He then turned the tables on his interrogators. “To whom am I talking?” Robeson queried the chair. “You are speaking to the Chairman of this Committee,” responded the staunchly anti-immigrant Pennsylvania Democrat. Rep. Francis E. Walter, a banker and corporate lawyer, was best known for co-authoring the McCarran-Walter Act which established racial quotas for immigration barring Asians, Africans and Latin Americans in favor of Europeans and targeted Communists.

“The Pennsylvania Walter?” Robeson continued. “That is right,” came the gruff reply.

“Representative of the steelworkers?” “That is right.”

“Of the coal-mining workers and not United States Steel, by any chance? A great patriot,” Robeson pressed on. “That is right.”

“You are the author of all of the bills that are going to keep all kinds of decent people out of the country.” “No, only your kind,” Walter smirked.

“Colored people like myself,” Robeson put in, “from the West Indies and all kinds. And just the Teutonic Anglo-Saxon stock that you would let come in.”

“We are trying to make it easier to get rid of your kind, too,” Walter injected before demanding the conversation return to Robeson’s questioning.

Still, in this period of public repression and immense personal pressure, Wheeler stated, the Black churches in Detroit welcomed Robeson. Churches like Hartford Avenue Baptist Church and Shiloh Baptist Church welcomed him with open arms. In addition to being important activist and civil rights organizing centers in Detroit, these were the very churches at which he had spoken almost a decade earlier about the unity of the working class and the need for broad support for the organizing struggle. “They did not succumb to the threats of the government in terms of shutting them down and taking their licenses,” Wheeler said.

Robeson, for his part, refused to be silent. Wheeler’s collection documents Robeson’s 1953 effort to start his own publishing and recording company, Othello, which published his lone book, Here I Stand, and also a number of his recordings. Wheeler boasts thousands of the old record albums by great African American singers and musicians in his personal collection, but his copies of Robeson’s records are special.

Wheeler said that Robeson wouldn’t be silent today, despite these experiences. “I think the stand he would take today, is the same stand he took all of his life,” Wheeler said. Wheeler likened Robeson to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, citing their courage in the political positions they took and the intense government and media scrutiny of their affairs.

Wheeler hinted that despite some progress won as a result of the civil rights struggles of the mid-20th century, Robeson would probably be forced to talk about some of the same things he fought for during his life. “He’d probably still be singing and talking about some of the things that have gone backward in society,” he said.

There are some things that haven’t changed at all, however, Wheeler added. “I don’t think McCarthyism hasn’t really died. It’s really more treacherous today and more threatening today. It’s so subtle and so unseen and so technologically perpetuated against the people.”

As part of the exhibit, Wheeler convinced the gallery staff to hold a special evening for Detroit residents who knew Robeson to speak about their memories of him. Many are in their 80s and 90s, including Dave Moore, who was also blacklisted and expelled from his position in the leadership of UAW Local 600 for supposed ties to the Communist Party USA.

Despite their ages, Wheeler said, they have good memories and recollections, and he was determined to have their voices heard as well. “I want to inform people that there were thousands of people treated like Paul Robeson. Their story should be told too,” he concluded.

Though Robeson is no longer with us, his message – that African Americans must struggle for freedom and equality and that white workers, and all workers of all nationalities and ethnic backgrounds should join with them and expose and expel racism – still rings true. Robeson’s life reminds us that the struggle for democracy and equality against racism is an intimate part of our class struggle. It requires overcoming historical divides among peoples with a concrete program for change. Robeson’s life also reminds us of needed courage to stand up to the vicious racism embedded into the anti-Communism of the far right.

--Reach Joel Wendland at