Today is the 39th Anniversary of the passing of Paul Robeson, an amazing cultural figure who was an artist, athlete, a trained lawyer, a human rights activist, and a citizen of the world. At a time when American Culture had carved out limited spaces for black Americans in which to flourish and grow, Robeson was a pathfinder. As fascism reared its head around the world, Robeson stood as an ardent anti-fascist. He became an outspoken Socialist visiting what he called the Peoples Democracies - the Soviet Union, China, and other lands. Robeson had a distinct vision which was also Anti-Capitalist. After a speech delivered at the Paris Peace Conference in 1949 in which he stated: “It is unthinkable that American Negros would go to war on behalf of those who have oppressed us for generations against the Soviet Union which in one generation has lifted our people to full human dignity.” Robeson as a result of this statement was smeared, vilified, and marginalized from American Life. Concert venues closed. Riots broke it in Northern Cities in protest of his singing. Jobs were no longer available. Though an internationally acclaimed actor and concert artist, Fascist forces in the United States seized his passport restricting him from travel and making him a prisoner in his own land for his political opinion. In a 1958 interview he stated: I do not believe that a few people should control the wealth of any land, that it should be a collective ownership in the interests of all....If we were free in the South tomorrow, to carry our weight, to vote, and do everything --would 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..... Robeson and Dubois in a just world may well have been able to make the case for Reparations. Dubois was a Sociologist who had studied the race problem and written on it with the insight of the social Scientist but also with the lyricism of the Poet. Paul Robeson was a gifted orator whose legal training and theatrical background might well added just the element of drama to present a powerful case the halls of the Supreme Court or to make testimony before the US Congress as he was asked to do to defend his Americanism. It is ironic that Obama emerges in America only after Civil Rights have been made inimical to security. It is almost as if Blacks must pay tribute to Fascism now in order to function at the highest levels at all. The lesson of Robesons life is whether such access is worth the Price of the Soul and it is a soul-destroying process to thrive in a society which violates routinely the Civil Rights of others and has built a status quo and Socialist Purges. It is a shameful history. Paul Robesons life is really about the lost opportunities which racial hatred and animosity cast upon any society. It is also about the fear and conformity which gripped and still grips much of our community when vocal protest and sacrifice is needed most. This is a persistent and pernicious problem which plagues us up to this very moment. It is fitting to pause today on the 39th anniversary of this remarkable figure, just one generation removed from American Slavery, who reached the highest levels of that society only to be destroyed by a civilization unable to accept the fullness of his humanity. Robeson asserted his own humanity and he did not shed it in order to accommodate a society which repudiated him as a man. This was his only and greatest crime. It was also their greatest crime to demand cultural genocide as a condition of success and continues to be among their greatest crimes until this cause is done. It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul. Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars. It is the cause. ----Shakespeare, Othello, Act 5, Scene 2. https://youtube/watch?v=BUki-v-NvoE
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 15:25:50 +0000
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