Our Ancestors Were Messy - Paul and Eslanda Robeson: For the Rights of People. For the Rights of Workers. (Part 2)

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

Essie & Paul’s passions lead them to the front lines of the fight to defeat fascism. Starring Jason Reynolds Support this independent production and access bonus content at https://ourancestorsweremessy.supercast.com Stay in touch at [e-mail] Follow the show on Instagram at @ourancestorsweremessy Follow the show on TikTok at @ourancestorsweremessy Learn more about the show at https://ourancestorsweremessy.com Listen on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@OurAncestorsWereMessy  SELECT SOURCES Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson by Barbara Ransby The Undiscovered Paul Robeson: An Artist's Journey 1898-1939 by Paul Robeson, Jr. The Undiscovered Paul Robeson: Quest for Freedom 1939-1976 by Paul Robeson, Jr. Here I Stand by Paul Robeson History of America in Ten Strikes by Erik Loomis Haymarket Book Talk with Barbara Ransby: Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson  The History of Camp Wo-Chi-Ca The Peekskill Riots Revealed the Racism and Antisemitism Hidden Beneath the Surface of the Anti-Communist Movement by Matthew Schuerman

How are we doing on sound? Are we doing the right things? Cardoza, right? But then he graduated from Cardoza. Marvin Gay, see? Oh. That's what I thought. Oh, and then he went to Cardoza. Yeah, that's what I think, because my auntie went to Cardoza.

She was like, I would just go to Marlowe. This is part two of the two-part story of Paul and Aslonda Ropesson. If you haven't listened to part one, I really think you should. On Our Ancestors Were Messy. She's like, no, no, no, no, I think you're a generational talent. I see something here. What an incredible example of love and support. They say they're going to avoid politics for right now,

but someday they will visit Africa and the Soviet Union. Yelan lost her nerve. It would be too risky an experiment to give up all her friends and her stupid social life to marry Paul. As these two were dealing with all their drama, the world around them was changing. Coming up, the Robesons take three trips. It's a couple's getaway,

two, do you want to guess? No. And return home, transformed. These people are doing nothing other than trying their best to imagine a space where people who are experiencing some of the things

might be free and they're being punished. This episode stars 24 MacArthur Fellow and New York Times bestselling author of young adult novels and poetry Jason Reynolds. I'd have been like, my mama already told y'all what it is. Don't make me say it.

And your host, Nicole Hill. Look at the way we act. Always. Live in front of a studio audience from a living room in Washington, D.C. This is Our Ancestors Were Messy, a show about our ancestors and all their drama. Okay, so we're back in the 60s, 1965, to be exact. So this is one year after Polly Robeson met with that ex-CIA agent at the House. party. Now he's in a room at Beth Israel Hospital in New York City with his mom, Essie Robeson,

and she's dying. A steady stream of friends, family, and colleagues are visiting and calling, dignitaries, heads of state and civil rights activists from around the world, send flowers and heartfelt letters paying their respects. In the movie version of this scene, Polly is in a corner and he's being distant. He's watching everybody carefully avoid. any mention of his father. They all have an idea about why he can't be here with Essie during her final days, but no one has all the facts. And Polly can't help but blame Essie for that.

A couple weeks after she enters the hospital, Essie Robeson passes away at the age of 69. Polly arranges for her to be cremated, and then he has a private ceremony that he, his wife, and his two kids attend. her community is disappointed that they didn't get to give her a bigger send-off. After the service, Polly goes up to Philly to see his dad and tell him about the funeral. Paul seems to have his faculties about him this day, but he's silent when he hears the news. Later, Polly sets about sorting through his mother's things, and he discovers that she has saved,

with unbelievable and meticulous detail, over 30,000 letters. diaries, interviews, writings, speeches, photographs, newsclippings, and more from her and Paul's lives together. Polly is in shock and he's grateful. Because this, along with the files from the FBI, CIA, State Department, and that clinic in London, could help him finally understand what happened to his family. By then, Polly had to know that the Robeson's fates were sealed after they took. these three trips. This is Act 3,

How We Came to Fear the Robesons. So now we're in 1934. It's a year after Essie and Paul had remixed their vows. They seem to be doing well. They're going to start a movie together. Paul sees that Essie is in school, and he's like, let me do that too. So he enrolls in London University,

where he studies African history and culture. In the movie, he and Essie are hanging out on the floor, comparing notes after class. talking about maybe moving his films toward a more explicit politic. And then Paul gets this invite to go to Russia and meet with the director about a movie on the Haitian Revolution. And they're like, you know what, let's do it. We've been curious about Russia since way back in the day. Let's go. Let's meet this guy.

The Robesins arrive in Moscow at Christmastime and receive the red carpet treatment. It's all the best this. It's a state of the art. That Paul performs Negro spirituals for huge crowds. have to picture this. He is the son of a slave singing the plantation songs of his parents to the children of serfs whose parents had their own versions of plantation songs and similar struggles. So they're listening and they're vibing and then he sings the songs again, but in Russian because he's fluent. Now they adore him. Our ancestors love Moscow, but they need to be sure that black folks are actually being treated well there,

that this is not just special treatment for them. So they meet up with Marion Anderson, the renowned opera singer. She happens to be in town performing. And they meet with black college students studying there. They meet with some friends from Harlem. They meet up with Essie's older brothers who moved to the Soviet Union to, one, to inspect buses, and the other to wrestle in the Russian circus. Langston Hughes had been there, same with the boys.

They all said the same thing. In the USSR, black people are treated like human beings, and it feels amazing. And while that is true of their experience, there is a lot that people are not telling the Robesons. After the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Lennon falls ill, and against his dying wish, Joseph Stalin secedes him and rules as a dictator over the USSR. Stalin begins the great purge.

He rounds up everyone he perceives to be an enemy, tries them in show trials, and then exiles or executes them. In just three years, nearly a million people are exiled or sent to gulags, and an estimated 750,000 people are executed. Then, Stalin Institute's economic reforms meant to get the USSR caught up with the rest of

of the world. These policies lead to famine and the death of millions, largely in non-Russian parts of the USSR, like Ukraine. America just started recognizing the USSR as a country, but they do not trust them. Paul and Essie, though, they're all in. They don't make that Haitian revolution movie, but they do enroll Polly in the fourth grade in Russia. And then Essie's mom, they move her there to care for him because getting to Russia was a lifelong dream. of her. So she's very into this. And so is Polly. He goes to school with Stalin's daughter, and he says his classmates are really nice, and he learns Russian from them very quickly. Paul tells the press how relieved he is that his son no longer had to deal with the racism that he'd been facing in 1930s U.S. schools. And with that, Paul becomes one of the world's

most famous supporters of the USSR. Polly will later learn that the CIA opened a file on his dad. A few years after Russia, Paul makes a movie called Sanders of the River. And he was trying to call out colonialism in Africa, but it's a disaster. The black press is like, Paul, did you mean to make a menstrual show? He's like, oh, my God, I'm so embarrassed. He like runs away to London. Essie is like, okay, let me actually go to Africa, both for my studies and so that we can not keep making movies like this.

So she travels from South Africa to Uganda, and she brings Polly with her. And while he plays, Essie interviews African women. Now, Black American history is still so young at this point. So you have to imagine that these African women are telling Essie generations and generations' worth of stories and legends that she's never heard. In fact, she's only really heard the opposite of all that they're telling her. And so learning this truth about African people, she said it fills her with pride at knowing that this is where she comes from.

And she starts writing it all down. These women are mainly maids and cooks and nannies for their colonizers. And so Essie is talking to them and she's like, you know, it's wild because they want your labor for as close to free as possible. And they want to treat you like second-class citizens, just like black Americans. in Russian serfs and Welsh minors and on and on and on. So she writes this article being like, attention to everyone. Paul and I have traveled essentially Earth at this point, and everywhere we go we see the same thing,

which is workers of every race being exploited. And I think that we need to come together across nationality and gender and race and class and culture and stand up to our real enemy, which is capitalism. She sends these reflections to the press, and the crowd goes wild. Suddenly, the name on everybody's lips is Essie Robeson. She steps away from Paul's world to be a writer and an international speaker on pan-Africanism, communism, and women's and civil rights. She'd finally found her outlet. Pauly will later learn that the FBI opened a file on his mom.

What are you thinking right now? just at the FBI and the CIA and the State Department and all just thinking about all the people who's had files opened up on them or for having an imagination right these people are doing nothing other than imagining a better version of the life in which they've been with the life that has been foisted upon them you know what I mean and trying their best to imagine a space where people who who are experiencing similar things might be free and they're being punished or at least being sort of investigated due to said imagination. You know, it's just it's interesting to think about. It's a year after Africa.

Paul has nailed it with his latest film, Jericho. So dignified. It's not racist. He permanently changes the lyrics to Old Man River to take out the N-word and all that racist dialects stuff and that's the version that we know today. Then he pitches the third and final trip in this fateful series. It's a couple's getaway to

Do you want to guess? No. Is you going to say something wild? Does anyone want to guess? Not you. Jamaica? Aruba? Q?

Well, they just came from Russia. It's going to be something wild. Like, the moon. Going to Mars. Okay, it's not that wild. It's the front lines of the Spanish Civil War. Oh, wow. Here's the deal with that war.

So you have to like try really hard to imagine this. So there's a group of millionaires and billionaires, and they funded a takedown of a liberal democracy to replace it with a fascist dictatorship. Try to imagine that, okay? It's the past. It's not today. So that's what the Civil War is about, and the celebrities and everyday citizens and other countries are worried because now fascism has spread from Italy to Germany to Spain. Essie is worried too, but she's also like, Paul, you're an artist and I'm a writer, so I'm not sure what difference we can make. but Paul believes that it matters that they are there, so they go.

They meet with black and white Americans who'd volunteered to fight fascism in the war. I was like, look at these black poses. Look at the way we act. Always. It is what it is. I love it. They meet with Spanish soldiers. Paul sings to them all in English, and they love it,

and then he sings again in Spanish, and they're undone. America's official stance in the conflict and the rise of fascism in Europe was one of neutrality. Paul releases the following in one of his most enduring quotes. This is you. Every artist, every scientist, every writer must decide now where he stands. He has no alternative. There are no impartial observers.

The artist must elect to fight for, freedom or for slavery. I had no alternative. He commits fully to a life of activism. So we know about his messy past, of course. What are your feelings on separating the art from the artists or their lives from who they are? Like obviously today, if he was like, I want to take this stand. I think the internet and a lot of people would be like, okay, but what about all that stuff you did before? How do you think that that should factor into his activism? I think it would depend on what the artist's life was. I think we, I think it's easy. We tries to figure out,

uh, tweetable ways to have conversations like how do you separate the art from the artist. It would depend. It's contextual, right? If I'm looking at sort of Paul Robeson's life, uh, the ups and the downs, the goods and the bads,

I'm not sure if Paul Robeson is a man I throw away. Mm-hmm. Right. I think he's a man that, that is not above reproach and is a man that deserves critique, but he's also a person that deserves, that deserves his humanity to be highlighted as well as the part of it

that is honoring the humanity of others right so I can so I can acknowledge his humanity as in his shortcomings and I can also acknowledge his ability to shine light on the humanity of others which he had which he did do right right but also we got to honor his wife

it's like Frederick Douglass we're honoring Frederick Douglass we ought to honor his first wife did all that work Paulie will later learn that British intelligence opened a file on his parents. From the 1930s and into the 50s, while Paul continues to be an A-List international superstar, an Essie, a sought-after writer and speaker,

the two devote themselves to fighting racism, colonialism, and class oppression. Their movement is as much about civil rights as it is about the global effort to defeat fascism. The struggle of the Negro people, or of any people cannot be by itself. That is a human struggle. And so I was attracted then to met many members of the Labour 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. Paul leads an organization called the American Crusade Against Lynching. He recruits Albert Einstein and other prominent people of all races, to back legislation to end mob violence and lynchings and prevent KKK members from joining Congress. He receives the NAACP's highest honors. Paul decides to stop starring in Hollywood films because of their racist depictions of black people,

which ultimately leads to the end of his film career. He devotes more time to joining labor strikes and civil rights protests across America and around the world. His presence attracts press, which gives organizers a larger platform to voice their demands. The Europeans don't officially join the Communist Party,

but they passionately supported in its defense of civil and labor rights. Once Polly leaves for college, Essie hits the road speaking full-time on behalf of liberation and labor movements across America and around the world with a special focus on Africa. Essie meets with and interviews

emerging leaders of the day, including Guameng Ruma and Mahatma Gandhi. She is invited to the first ever convening of the United Nations. She says, quote, I am willing and eager to surrender as much of my personal sovereignty as is necessary. In order to secure as much freedom as possible, not only for myself, but for all members of society. Paul and Essie joined W.B. DeBoys Council on African Affairs, the most influential Black American organization advocating on behalf of the colonized peoples of Africa. What stands out to you about the priorities of this civil rights movement, of this era of the civil rights movement? Of their era? Yeah, their era.

Number one, that it was global, right? I think we tend to think about civil rights in this particular country as something that's in the, of, that's within a vacuum. I think right now we're seeing when we think about Palestine, we think about Sudan. We're seeing sort of the global effects of civil rights again in this particular moment. And we're seeing the fallout and all the things that, that, you know, that comes with that. But I think in their generation, it's incredible to, I think sometimes we forget that a lot of our ancestors are moving around the world, that they were citizens of the world.

Right. Right. Right. It's hard to imagine because the way that sort of black history has been sort of taught to us is that everybody was locked, right? Everyone is sort of landlocked or home locked or city locked or ghetto locked or whatever. And it's like, yeah, but there were a lot of them, especially those who had risen to whatever the next sort of echelon, quote unquote, social echelon was, they were citizens of the world. And it mattered because then they were able to take,

to think about civil rights as a global phenomenon or as a global effort, right? Our ancestors were messy is an independent production. which means that there's no studio financing this. It's just me, my team, and the household. Their $7 monthly gifts cover the costs of research trips and sound design in this episode. If you aren't already a member, I'd love to invite you to join the household, where you'll have access to director's commentary for each episode, outtakes, exclusive interviews, and, for this one,

a conversation between my guests and I about this history, and how we hope it lives on. You can visit our Ancesters Were Messy. Dot supercast.com to make a monthly or one-time gift. The link is also in the show notes. The Robesons are called extremists by some, and they're told to leave America all the time if they have so many problems with the country.

But they're like, we're Americans, our parents built this country, we're going to stay and we're going to help America realize her promise. This is always their position. The couple's activism keeps them close intellectually. But romantically, Paul is dating a lot of his younger co-stars. Essie has flings, some sound hot. She calls monogamy like a childish expectation in a marriage.

But in her diary, she does sound disappointed by their status. But they're never in the gossip columns again, which is good because the black community seems thrilled to see leadership of the movement pass. From Frederick Douglass to Booker T. Washington to W.B. to Boys to Paul. I think it's interesting to think about partnership. And to think about what people find partnership in and what the glue is. And I think we'd like to believe in romance and we like to believe in, you know, happily other afters and all the things that are oftentimes sort of shoved down our throats through popular culture. But there is something to be said about people who started as lovers created a commitment.

However that commitment shook out, however, whatever they decided. it was and then figuring out what the glue was and leaning into the glue, especially knowing that it had that it may have had a bigger effect outside of their household. Yeah. And so when we talk about art and artists and like how we critique these people, human beings deserve grace. And we should also take our hats off to people who make certain choices. There are conversations around happiness that one could have, of course, was Essie happy,

was, was Paul happy, right? Like those are, you know, arguably important conversations that one could have. But I don't think that they have to come in lieu of the fact that these people made an effort and a choice. Yeah. Because they understood that it was bigger than even their marriage. It's 1948. Paul is in his 40s. They're both in their 40s.

And it's the U.S. presidential election that year. He is campaigning for the Progressive Party, which is America's third party. their candidate is Henry Wallace. He'd been called an extremist and been pushed out of the Democratic Party for his wild beliefs, which were, and into Jim Crow, equal employment opportunities for women,

national health insurance, disability benefits, crazy things like that. But Paul is like, how can I help? In 1948, after a summer spent risking his life campaigning for Wallace in the deep south, Paul visits a group of kids at a summer camp in New Jersey called Wochika,

which stands for the Workers' Children's Camp. It's for the children of Communist Party and Union members. So black and white kids go to this camp, they hike, they put on plays, and they also organize themselves into little unions, and they learn arts and crafts from, like, all the stars of the Harlem Renaissance. The KKK and other vigilante groups harassed the leadership of the camp for years until they succeed in shutting it down. But before that, it's like this active camp.

Our mutual friend, sound designer, John DeLore, he was at a goodwill in New York, and he found these tapes labeled Paul Ropeson. He bought them. He cleaned them up as best he could and realized that they were recordings from Paul's 1948 visit. We contacted his official archive and they don't think that they have these tapes. So he's going to donate them to him.

Although we should talk about that. But right after you confirmed, he called me. He was like, Nicole, you're never going to believe what's on these tapes. And so I was like, well, I have to change this all around so that I can play these tapes for you. Definitely. So this is him. He's talking to a group of, I think, their first. fourth and fifth graders, he's going to, like, do a little speech, and then he's going to sing the

battle hymn of the Republic, which is like a classic patriotic American like fight song, but he remixes it for this event that's coming up called the People's March. So now, live from Campo Chica, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Paul Robson. I would just like to add one other word that this is a time of struggle. It can remain in your as you grow up, a time still of great struggle. so that you have to carry on for your children. And remember that we are struggling for the great majority of the peoples in the world, and that we have to fight against people who are very powerful.

People whom it seems are pretty hard to bring down from those top places, but they can be brought down. If you remain unified, remain firm in the things that you learn in a place like Wochika, I myself have great faith and great courage in you. And I come here every year, as I say, not only to sing to you, but to go away with inspiration and to go away with courage

and to go away knowing that if you have that belief in me, if you have that kind of faith, I can never get tired, I can never fail to carry on the struggle for a decent way. He's a blowing all across this mighty land, and it sings of peace. progress and prosperity at hand with security and plenty for the people to command for the people's marches on glory glory hall in of massachusetts out into the golden gate henry wallace leads his army against destruction fear and hate we americans will save the precious land that we create For the people's marches on

Glorily, glory, It's from the city All the nation's voice has roared, Down the rivers, cross the prairies, Like a tall and it has poured, We will march with Gideon's army, We will fight with Gideon's sword, For the people's marches on.

It's incredible the way that part Robeson was able to address fourth and fifth graders. I think sometimes we act like our young people can't handle complex topics, complex discussions, some of the weight of the world, some of the expectation of a future full of fairness. Right? And I think his ability to speak to them like people and that as children is something that I think about probably every single day of my own life. based on the work that I do. So it was powerful to hear something like that.

I'm glad I got to play it for you. Paulie will learn later that the State Department opened a file on his parents. In 1949, Paul joins a peace conference in Paris where he gives a speech. In the speech, he says, like basically, black and white workers built America. We want to share in its wealth. We're not interested in a war with the USSR. The press falsely reports Paul saying, black people would help the Soviet Union in a war against America as revenge for slavery and

Jim Crow. This goes viral. Every paper covers it. Public sentiment turns on Paul. The Chicago Defender publishes an article with the headline, Paul Robeson, is he a man or a Soviet mouse? So Essie is like in Mexico when all this happens and she's like, oh my God, she gets out of her typewriter. She's like, everybody. You know us.

We've been in this for 20 years at this point, 20, 30 years. years, we understand that tensions are high, but you know that we are doing everything that we're doing to help America realize its promise. And the public is like, oh, well, yeah, that's kind of a good point. And then Polly marries a white girl. And the public is like, boo, you guys are communist. We hate you. Essie goes back to a typewriter. And she writes, da-da-da. Oh, yeah, I declare war on all of our enemies. And then she just, like, writes this article being going off on everybody. She's like, you booed my son. I'm coming for you. I'm coming for you. I'm coming for you. She's just like, I'm still a fan. This is what I'm talking about. Yelonne would never.

All right. It's the 50s. The Robesons are now in their 50s. The U.S. and the Soviet Union are in a Cold War. And the Red Scare is in full effect. Labor unions, international allegiances, and especially communism are red flags. Paul and Essie don't back off of any of these things. Evidence of human rights abuses in the USSR become undeniable, but the Robesons refused to denounce the Soviet Union. We don't know why. They just won't do. They won't denounce it. You could speculate that her brothers are there and maybe she's worried for their safety. He tells Polly at one point that sacrifices have to be made for a greater good. He believes that the Soviet Union is working towards this worker anti-racist utopia.

But from the public's perspective, he won't back down. Paul stages a benefit concert in Peakskill, New York. A violent mob of veterans and young white men chanting kill the commie and racist slurs descend on the event. They attack attendees with minimal police intervention and over 100 people are injured. The mob makes an effigy of Paul and then they lynch it. He has to be physically.

restrained from fighting them. In the movie version of this, we're going to cut away from all that violence, though, to a quiet cottage a few miles away. Here, a woman and her six-year-old daughter are sharing a slice of birthday cake. This is 47-year-old Louise Thompson. This is like 20 years after she was secretary to Langston Hughes and Zora Neil Hurstim. And I don't know if it's coming also from this place of, like, Louise being a card-carrying communist and thinking everybody's equal in this.

Louise had been hired to handle Paul's performance. calendar. So she's hanging out with her kid. All of a sudden, all these people start rushing into the cottage and they tell her what happened at the show. She's like, absolutely not. She and the rest of Paul's team restaged the event for two weeks later, and they get 2,000 labor union and communist party members to come out to peak skill and form a human shield around the venue and Paul. Paul then leads the concerts 20,000 attendees in singing Negro spirituals and protest songs. So it is massive news. The riots get way more press than the restaged event, but the restaged event is everything.

The State Department demands that Paul and Essie sign loyalty oaths disavowing communism. They refuse. Their passports are revoked and a campaign of government harassment begins against them. So you're Pauli. What are your conversations like with your parents at this point? They're in their 50s and they're taking on the United States of America. I'm proud of my parents. if I'm me and they're my parents these are the people who raised me I know who my parents are

like if these are folks who raised me then I know what I know what their constitutions are so I know that they're willing to go down I know that they're willing to like I know that right and I think and I recognize if they did what I believe they did

when raising me then I'm aware of the consequences of this kind of life right right the king children or his wife was aware of what was possible. I think I would have been sad and it would have been anxiety-inducing. But I also know that it would have been

a waste of my time, a futile endeavor to try to convince them otherwise. Yeah. Right? If them, you're parents? Then you go ahead and you sign up for what it is. Would you have anything you would want to say to the public?

The same thing that SE already said. Y'all know who we are. We've held the line for a long, long time. time, right? And even when one of us has stepped out of bounds, the other one was there to pull us back, right? We hold each other accountable. We've been each other's mirrors for 30 years, and that mirror has only reflected the best, right? The best of what it is that we expect of ourselves and this country. Yeah. Right. Like, that's it. I would have said what she's already been saying and what she had been saying. So, I mean, you know, you got a good mama like that. Your mama going,

she already said everything. I'd have been like, my mama already told you all what it is. Don't make me, don't make me say it. Make me say it twice. You know what I mean? All right. So this is Act 4 How He Came to Forget the Robesons. In 1956, they're called to D.C. to face Joseph McCarthy

in the House Un-American Activities Committee. They're going with hopes of getting their passports back. Essie's question by Joseph McCarthy and his little protege Roy Cohn, who is the mentor to the current president. They want to know why she's so, obsessed with Africa. If she's like an American than why she love it there so much. As he's like,

why is everybody on this committee wipe? McCarthy's like, because we are who the American people voted for. Are you a communist? And she says, well, you know, Jim Crow is making it very hard for a lot of the American people to vote down south. Maybe if they could, we wouldn't all be here wasting our time.

So that's her position. During, oh yeah, I love this article, Mrs. Robes improves too much for Senator McCarthy. And she was. So during Paul's hearings, He's asked if he's a communist, why he loves Stalin so much, why he keeps criticizing America, even though he's rich and famous. His contempt for the committee is hilarious.

You should absolutely read the transcripts. James Earl Jones does a reading, and he's just like, I'm so bored. Why am I here? He reminds him that he's literally a lawyer. If you'll recall, that's where all this started. Plus, he's an orator, and he's a genius. And they're like, obviously we forgot that. Otherwise, we wouldn't have invited all these reporters in here.

And it's so funny. He's like, why are you saying that? Like, where do you need me, boys? He's just, like, posing for the reporters he does not care. They ask him over and over again if he's a communist, and he says the following. I'm not being tried for whether I am a communist. I'm being tried for fighting for the rights of my people to be full citizens in this country, and they are not.

They are not in Mississippi, and they are not in Alabama. That is why I am here today. You want to shut up every Negro who has the courage to stand up and fight for the rights of his people, for the rights of workers. If you can believe it, after these testimonies, they do not get their passports back. I can't believe it. I know, I know. After the hearings, the Robesons are declared anti-American communists.

And from there, Paul is blacklisted and banned from concert venues, the radio, television, and movie screens. S.E. speaking invites disappear. Paul's name is removed from awards and records. His pro-football career is essentially erased. And newspapers go so far as to destroy archival material. mentions him. Friends turn on the Robesons, the NAACP denounces them. Black churches and unions around the world send their support, but it's not enough to make up for so much lost income. Paul and Essie sell their home and move in with Polly, and they watch as Paul is slowly erased from public

memory. In 1958, after eight years, the Supreme Court rules that the state can't take your passport over your politics and the Robesons get theirs back. Then, against Pauley's wishes, they relocate to London. Esse returns to the speaker circuit and Paul stages an international comeback. They both go way too hard. They're checking themselves in and out of clinics for exhaustion a few times. It's just a lot for 60-year-olds. Then Essie is diagnosed with cancer and Polly is like y'all have to come back home. Paul kind of wants to because he needs help caring for Essie and also because they're seeing MLK and Malcolm X and all the young people start to build on the new Negro civil rights movement. They're adding boycotts and sit-ins as he loves that. Paul really likes how

how internationally focused Malcolm X is. He thinks that's amazing. And then, and this is me guessing, but Debbie B. Du Bois gives a speech around this time and he says, quote, Paul is without a doubt the best known American on earth. Only in his native land is he without honor or rights. Paul is watching his activism, his life erased from the record in real time, and he's furious about it. He gives statements he should not give doubling down on his support for the USSR. He sounds like burnt out and really hurt. So when this question of coming home, of going back home comes up, he's like, Essie, you know, maybe we should go. Essie gets really upset. And she like puts her foot down in a way that both Pauley and Paul say they'd never seen before. And she's like,

Paul, the U.S. is going to kill you. We cannot ever go back home. So the couple decide to stay in London, and Polly is upset by this decision. So now it's 1961. Paul is in Moscow. He gets a call. By now he knows that the United States is tapping his phone and following him everywhere, so he has a friend to answer it. It's Fidel Castro. He's inviting him to visit Cuba. And Paul, he does not want the U.S. like, he knows they're listening, so he's just like, no, thank you, no thank you, no thank you. Hang up, hang up, hang up. The invite, unbeknownst to Paul and Fidel is for the week of the Bay of Pigs invasion.

So later, Paul is entertaining in his hotel room and some uninvited guests arrive. The next morning, Essie, who is back in London, gets a call telling her that Paul is in the hospital. So she calls Polly, she tells him, you need to get to Moscow, so he gets on a plane. She rushes to Paul's side

and is told that at some point during or after this party, Paul went into his bathroom and slid his wrists. He was discovered and brought to the hospital experiencing some kind of a mental breakdown with severe hallucinations and extreme paranoia. The doctors treat him with mild tranquilizers that seems to help. Polly arrives in Moscow, he checks on his dad, then he grabs a meal,

he suddenly begins experiencing some kind of a mental breakdown with severe hallucinations and extreme paranoia. After a week, Polly recovers, but Paul does not. Polly pleads with his mom to come back to the U.S., but Essie, believes that they're safer overseas, and Polly is angry about this decision. For the next two years, Paul is not himself. At times he seems fine, and at other times he's dangerously depressed and completely disoriented.

Polly's looking for solutions back in the U.S. Essie's doing the same in London while also managing her cancer. And then Paul's London doctors suggest that Essie check him into a clinic called the Priory to receive special treatment. Essie agrees. So in Letters Home, she tells everyone, we're fine, it's fine, we're doing great, but after a few months,

she finally lets it slip that she's worried about Paul's treatment plan. So Polly rushes to London, and he's horrified. At the clinic, Paul has been subjected to near daily debilitating electroconvulsive therapy and a cocktail of powerful drugs. His father is a shell of himself.

So he and Essie get Paul out of that clinic and into another one in Germany. And when they get there, the doctors are so shocked by Paul's condition. They tell Essie and Polly that they will do what they can, but Paul will never be the same. And what's left of him has to be quietly conserved. Some historians say that maybe he had a mental break. Others wonder if he had bipolar disorder and it appeared in his 60s. They don't like Polly's theory because he can't produce enough evidence for it, but I'm going to tell you it anyway.

Polly spends 20 years trying to access his father's medical records from the Priory, and when he finally gets declassified files from the U.S. government, he says that he finds compelling evidence that the CIA and British intelligence may have conspired to administer LSD and ECT therapy as part of the covert CIA mind control and chemical interrogation research program known as M.K. Ultra. Of Paul, Koretta Scott King will later say, he was buried alive even before my husband for tapping. the same wiles of latent militancy.

I'm obviously a little more toward the Pauley side where it's like they definitely was poised. I think they poisoned them. If you know anything about bipolar, usually it comes around 27, between 27 and 35, right? 60? You go and see you're going to you went your whole life and they know you was bipolar? That's not the way it works usually, right? And for his son to get sick too. Yeah. Come on, man. We know what it is. Like I just, I didn't know. know that part and I think that part kind of has me a little emotional and a bit rattled just because I mean, I mean, I, because there's anger there for me. Yeah.

Essie agrees to move back to the U.S. and right before she passes, she helps to organize a gala for Paul. All the black stars of the day turn out to celebrate him. Nora Holt reports live from the event and calls Paul a towering mountain of strength who'd suffered for his people. Paul is well enough to sing for them and thank them for them. their love, and the night means the world to Essie. She would want you all to know because she documented it in such meticulous and unbelievable detail that everything she did was born out of a lifetime's worth of love for Paul.

Paul lives the next 11 years with his sister, largely in isolation, and then he passes away in 1976 at the age of 77. By then, lots of the activism of the new Negroes had been erased from public memory, along with Paul, who'd become one of those names that you'd, You know, you know, but you can't really remember why. However, there were those who refuse to forget. James Baldwin, Jackie Robinson, James Earl Jones, and especially Sidney Potier and Harry Belafonte,

talked proudly about his influence on their lives and their work and their activism. They host tributes. They try to get movies made. They give interviews and speeches about Paul and his legacy for the rest of their lives. I said, Jim, Paul, you have given so much. You could have been anything you wanted to do. Was it worth it? He said absolutely.

Polly becomes an author, a historian, and an archivist. He establishes the Paul Robeson archive containing over 50,000 artifacts, including much of his mother's collection, which is housed here at Howard University. The Paul Robson Foundation is going to develop a series of educational programs that will preserve and extend my father's legacy. For a long time, Essie's part in this story was completely overlooked. But in 2013, the first biography on Essie was published, and in it her work as a talent manager, activist, anthropologists, and archivists are finally brought into focus.

He turned to a new book that looks at Eslander Robson, known by her friends as Essie. Both Essie and Paul lived to see the beginning of the end of colonialism in Africa, when Ghana became the first African nation to gain independence in 1957, and they lived to see the legal defeat of Jim Crow with the past. passage of the civil rights and then the voting rights acts in 1964 and 65. There's so much more that happened, but for now, that is the story of how we came to know, love, fear, forget, and now remember the revolutionary ropesuits. I know you have a very early flight, so I'll just ask you, just high level.

What are your thoughts? I think that the biggest misconception of this country is that I think it is, I think it, It doesn't actually understand what love is because to love a thing is to be, is to be able to critique it. To love a thing is to want more of it, right, to hold it to account, you know, and I think in this country, we look at patriotism as the opposite of that, as blind faith. Right. And a thing that has never actually given us reason to be blindly faithful to it.

I think Paul and his family loved America. they could not they could not be here though um because america doesn't understand what love actually looks like which is critique honesty right i have to be able to look my brother in the face and say that you did me wrong if i love him yeah i want more for you i deserve better and you deserve better you can be better if i love him right and i think that's all they were trying to do their entire lives you know And yeah, it's just it's profound to think I did not know anything about Essie, which I'm grateful to know now, which by the way is also a whole other thing about this particular culture in our history. The women are always, you know, I've worked, I've done lots of work in the space. And what I realize over the course of history over my readings of many, many, many things is that black women have almost always been on the right side.

Like if you look historically We can go I mean all the way back You think about the famous ones like a Harriet Subman Or or you know Addaby Wells and Fannieux And Fannieux aditya You gotta be well saying like how y'all Y'all trust what they're saying about black men

And she knew that it wasn't true And did the extra work of journalism To prove it to be We can go on and on and on and on and on And I think Essie is just another one of these figures that we now all can add to our our, you know, sort of our quiver of arrows as another black woman on the right side, 99% of the time, right?

And I think, and so that matters to me. And then lastly, I did not know how his life ended, right? I'm not surprised. It's not like surprise. I'm not like, I'm not like gobsmacked by it. Right. Because it happened so often. But it is another one of those moments of just anger and like, God, these people weren't,

These people were being killed. Yeah. For being great. And that's kind of where I'm at with it. This episode was written, research, produced and performed by me, Nicole Hill. Thank you to the generational talent that is Jason Reynolds. You can find major sources for the show in the show notes, but I also want to specifically call out Barbara Ransby's incredible biography on Aslanda called

Aslonda, colon, the large and uncombubes, conventional life of Mrs. Paul Robeson. A link to that is in the show notes, along with a talk that she gave that I just thought was so great. Thank you to my A-Team. That's executive producer Adriana Ambris, sound designer, sound animator,

Kyle Murdoch, story producer, Martina Abraham Zilunga, research producer and voice talent, Yoki Ayansen with show art by Asselika Smith. Thank you to Nate Wong, our host, with the most soundproof home ever. All the audio people came in and started like touching the walls, he's like, what is happening, Nicole?

Thank you for not throwing us out. Thank you to the team of audio wizards that made sure that the mics were set up just so. That's Thomas Liu with help from Afim Shapiro and John DeLore. And speaking of John DeLore, thank you for rummaging around in Goodwill's and finding tapes labeled Paul Robson and cleaning them up with your audio brilliance and then sharing them with me and all of us, actually. Thank you to all of us. my absolutely brilliant, incredible, beautiful guests who came out that evening in November and brought your friends. Thank you to my mom and sister for letting me commandeer the holidays

to play you rough cuts of these episodes. Thank you. To my best friend Cassandra Seppa for making me the most delicious steak I've ever had after that show. You're a legend. You should be on top chef. Thank you to all of my voice talent listed in order, Chioki Ayansen, Esther de Rothschild, Van Haca, Helena de Groote, Robin Hill, Bernard Ache-Pung, Jenna Murdoch, Civil Murdoch, Isabelle Cadenas Canyon, Ronald Young Jr., Stella Murdoch, Les Cete Mejote, Bernadette Grosjohn, and Adriana Ambris. To support us, become a donor and join the household at our AncestorsWemessi.com, and so learn more about the show, visit Our AncestorsWere Messy.com.

Before I go, I'll just say this. I'm a storyteller, a historian, and an archivist, in part because of quotes like this from Martin Luther King, Jr. We are not makers of history. We're made by history.