You're Dead to Me - Paul Robeson

Episode Date: October 15, 2021

Greg Jenner, comedian Desiree Burch and Prof Shana L. Redmond from Columbia University discuss the astonishing life and legacy of Paul Robeson: the epitome of the American Renaissance man. Famous for his unparalleled bass-baritone voice and relentless struggle for civil rights, Robeson was an exceptional athlete, actor, singer, scholar and civil rights activist who the American government persecuted during the McCarthy era.Research: William Clayton Script: Emma Nagouse and Greg Jenner Project manager: Siefe Miyo Edit producer: Cornelius Mendez

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. All day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, a BBC Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author, broadcaster and chief nerd on the funny kids show Horrible Histories. Today we are taking the showboat back to the 20th century to get to know the American activist, actor, scholar and booming bass baritone Paul Robeson. And to help me do that I am joined by two very special guests. In History Corner she's a professor of English and comparative literature at the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University in New York City. She specialises in the intersection between music and politics, and you may have seen her in the accompanying documentary series for Forrest

Whittaker's TV drama, Godfather of Harlem. She's the author of several books, including Everything Man, The Form and Function of Paul Robeson. It's Professor Shana L. Redmond. Welcome, Shana. Thank you so much for having me. And in Comedy Corner, she's a returning hero of You're Dead to Me and one of our very best podcast pals. She's a comedian, storyteller, actor and writer. She's the host of the Netflix game show Flinch. She's been on Live at the Apollo, Mash Report, Mock the Week, Have Got News for You, all the telly. And even most recently, Taskmaster. Brilliant.

It's the delightful Desiree Birch. Welcome back, Desiree. Oh, my God. so good to be back. I'm so excited. I get to hang out with all of the history people. I like blending in and being like, that's right, I'm intellectual too, guys. It's the best job. It's that I get to learn about the most wonderful,

aside from P.T. Barnum, people from your podcast while knowing nothing when I show up and I just get to go, wow. And it's amazing. Shauna, I cannot wait to learn more about Paul Robeson, because what I do know is phenomenal. So what do you know? This is where I have a go at guessing what listeners might know about today's subject. And I think you probably know the name Paul Robeson, but maybe not the full life. And if the name Paul Robeson is music to your ears, then you probably know him as the sensational singing voice behind Showboat's iconic song, Old Man River. Paul Robeson even has a

building named after him at SOAS University in London. But we never got that promised movie that Steve McQueen had hoped to make. So there are probably some gaps in all of our knowledge when it comes to the rest of his life. In which case, what else do we need to know about this astonishing Renaissance man who was once hailed as the voice of America? Let's find out. Shana, he's born in 1898. So what was his family situation in terms of his parents? Where was he born? His parents were Louisa Busta Robeson and William Drew Robeson. William was a pastor and Paul was born in Princeton, New Jersey. His father had been formally enslaved. And it was a huge formative element of how Paul saw himself in the world. saw himself in the world. And also for the fact that his mother, Louisa, passed away when he was very, very young at the age of five. So his father was really central both for that fact, for the fact of his voice, his oratory, which was incredibly influential for Paul throughout his career. And also for the example that he modeled for him. Paul was the youngest of five surviving children.

And so he had a lot of time one-on-one with his father. And he went to an integrated school in Somerville. How do you think he does at school, Desiree? I mean, I want to say that he's an exemplary student just because of his upbringing. He's so intelligent. He also was raised by a pastor exclusively, who was a single parent at this point, which means like, I don't think he would have had an option to be bad at school, even if he was the baby of the family. You're spot on. I mean, he is literally brilliant at everything. He's the jock, he's the nerd, he's the popular kid, he's the teacher's pet.

He is not only attempting proficiency, but excellence at everything that he does. So he's studying Latin. He's playing all of the sports. He was a three-letter athlete. He's top of his class. He is in the debate club, the oratory club. He's participating in statewide competitions in debate. Wait, I have so many questions already. Sorry. Okay. Because I was a nerd, but I was a normal nerd. I'm not very good at throwing as anyone who watched me on Taskmaster will know. So I don't know exactly what a three letter athlete means. I guess that means that he got like a class letter in three different sports. Yes, exactly. He played a sport in every season. He played basketball, he played baseball and football. And he also ran track.

Of course, of course. Of course he did. While speaking Latin. Can't wait to see where this kid goes. So Paul Robeson excels at school. And I'm assuming when he gets to college, he is not going to be doing the Animal House style pranks. He's not going to be wearing a toga and running around. going to be doing the Animal House style pranks. He's not going to be wearing a toga and running around. He took it very, very seriously. He continued to play all of the sports. He continued to study Latin. And he excelled so significantly at football that he was eventually named an

All-American and gained a number of nicknames on the field, including the Giant, including Roby of Rutgers, and went on to be valedictorian of his class from Rutgers University in 1919. Oh, my God. This guy's king of the world. He not only played four years there, but then went on to Columbia Law School after he left Rutgers. While in Columbia, he also was playing professional football with the early stages of the NFL. When is he going to do that? Like, that's like he's playing pro football. Like, so he's just like, does that during the football season? And then does his law degree the rest of the year? Yeah, that's just his day job.

What do you think those locker room conversations were like where it's all these guys are like, yeah, we just like pounded them. They're like quoting Shakespeare and talking about law in Latin. Everyone's like, what? Right. Quoting legal precedent while they're snapping towels. I can't imagine. He has faced racism on the football pitch. He's not been allowed to get changed in the locker rooms with the other players. Is he the only black person on the football pitch. He's not been allowed to get changed in the locker rooms with the other players. Is he the only Black person on the football team? First of all, record scratch. How is that happening? It's happening because Black students are not being admitted to Rutgers University. He was one of three Black students on the entire campus. So when it was like an integrated university, that means three people. Means we've let one in. That's integration. And of course, it meant that he was meeting all

types of antagonisms from the other players on his team, right, who were actively trying to injure him so that he could not play. He couldn't travel and play in certain parts of the country. So he's the giant. He's six foot two. He's 190 pounds. He's a very good looking man. His classmates predicted he would be governor of New Jersey and the leader of the African-American race in America. So, I mean, they've got high hopes for him. And yet, Shana, he does graduate as a lawyer. And yet very quickly, that career doesn't work out for him. Even if he was hired, he was often sequestered in quarters with the janitorial staff or being offered to go start his own firms. He recognized that he just was always going to be hitting his head on the ceiling in this profession.

He's a lawyer and they're like, can you work from the janitor's closet? And then presumably what? Like shout with your really amazing voice from out in the hallway into the courtroom where we won't allow black people? This is the conundrum, right? But on a happier note, there is love in his life.

It's a slightly charming meet cute for meeting his wife. Desiree, do you want to have a guess how he ends up meeting her? Sort of charming. They didn't meet in the segregated janitor's closet, did they? No, he gets injured quite badly. He gets rushed to hospital. His surgeon introduces him to a lab tech and that's their first great meet.

Is it also slightly awkward because the surgeon was like, hey, I know someone you might like. And it was the only other black person that the surgeon knew. Because that's how many of a black folk got set up on a date. It's like, you would totally love my friend. He's the black guy at your office, right? Okay, but still you'd love him. And so she's called Eslana Cardozo-Good, also known as Essie. Do you want to just quickly talk us through her family history? So Essie was from a mixed race family back in the generations, hailing from the Jewish background as well as an African-descended background. Her family were relatively well-to-do. She was a scientist who was very clear,

very methodical, very analytical in distinction to Paul's more artistic, humanistic vision. So they made a really interesting pair. But she'd wanted to go to med school. But by the sound of it, she decides that she's going to support Paul in his career because he's now changing direction, Shana. The law has rejected him because of his race. And so this is where we get him starting to dabble in theatre and performance with a voice like that. I guess people were saying, you should be on the stage. So is Essie pushing him towards the stage? Is she directing him in that direction? Well, once she has a sense of his talent, absolutely. She becomes the driving force. So he starts to team up with various of the struggling artists in Harlem, the Negro theater ensemble, as well as more interracial bohemian

artists and folks who might bankroll these productions. It's because he can't whistle, actually, that people heard his voice on stage for the first time. So he was playing a character in a production called Voodoo. The character was supposed to whistle. He can't whistle. And so the director said, well, just sing, just sing. And he sang and supposedly, right, all the heavens opened up and the Paul Robeson we now know and adore was born. And once he made that entrance on stage as a singer, this is how people began to know him. And he moved quickly onto the concert stage and became a really formative figure amongst the Black artist elite in Harlem in the 1920s. I just imagine the day after they got married,

and she's just like, who is that singing? And is that my man singing in the 1920s. I just imagine the day after they got married and she's just like, who is that singing? Is that my man singing in the shower? Oh my gosh. Right. Rattling the entire apartment. Paul Robeson is collaborating early on with the filmmaker Oscar Michaud, who we mentioned in our Harlem Renaissance episode. He stars in a Broadway production of Emperor Jones. He also gets his first horrible scandal and backlash in 1924. He's playing a husband to a white woman in Eugene O'Neill's play All God's Children Got Wings. And he kisses her on the hand on stage. And that's all it takes for enormous racist backlash in the newspapers, which is obviously both very, very scary, but also very dangerous for an African-American man to be seen kissing a white woman in the 1920s. And so soon after, Essie and Paul go to England,

perhaps because of the backlash. Going to the UK in the mid-1920s as an African-American couple, Shana, are they welcomed or is it a new type of outsider suspicion? I think it's a slightly different outsider position. So they go in 1927 because Paul takes on the role of Joe in Showboat, the musical, as it's being staged in London. While there, he begins to build all of these relationships. Again, interracial arts figures and philanthropists. He starts to develop relationships with Lawrence Brown, who becomes his accompanist for most of his career, so that they're setting up regional tours for the two of them. But they have such a good time of it that Paul recognizes that this might be the place where they live the rest of their lives. He writes this in his autobiography,

Here I Stand. And it's not because there's a complete absence of racism, but there are people who are fighting it in public, in print, all of these ways that he's seeing community building around him, including the communities that are being built amongst African migrants to London who are working on the docks, who are working in other port cities of the UK. And because he sees that vibrancy there, he understands that there's a place for him and an opportunity to grow. And so they have quite a good time of it meeting famous people like Gertrude Stein and later on Emma Goldman and all of these people who become really formative, not only to assisting in their rise in publicity, but also assisting in their political thought as well.

He's meeting all these people with connections, Hemingway and James Joyce and so on. But let's listen to a song because our listeners so far haven't heard Paul Robeson sing. This is a clip from the iconic movie, Showboat. I get weary and sick of trying. I'm tired of living and scared of dying. But old Man River, he just keeps rolling along. It's rolling along.

Wow. It's really stirring. Obviously, the recording adds something to it, just the distance of time between then and now. Just hearing that song and the words in that and where that could have come from, it makes me think of Sam Cooke's song, A Change Is Gonna Come, which seems like it has a lot of similar references to, you know, can't live, can't die kind of thing. Don't know where I'm going. Like, you know, and things kind of keep moving and going with the sort of changes of history and just sort of having to bend, which everyone who lives does, but some people have to do a lot more than others. So there's just something so haunting about it, even though it's sung with a smile, you know, it's a show. Powerful in a haunting kind of way to me.

Shana, you're a trained vocalist. What is it about Robeson's voice that is so powerful? It's the tone of his voice. It's so full. It's so lush. It's also the incredible diction, which is allowing both for us to understand what he's saying, but it's not academic. There's still something really warm, the grain of his voice, right? Which actually makes him feel very close to us, very proximate. Even if we're listening to a recording, even if it's almost now a century old, that feel is though we're right there with him. And I think he was able to bring that presence to all of his performances because he sung what he believed. And Old Man River is a song that is famously amended over the course of his career. He

changes the lyrics in order to better suit his politics and suit the demands of the communities who are requesting this song. And so the way that he's able to make every song his, whether it's in English, Yiddish, Chinese, Welsh, all of these songs become his just for the simple fact of the intimacy that he's able to generate through the warmth of his voice. Here we have a tall, athletic, handsome, intelligent, accomplished, brilliant man with a phenomenal voice. So it is no surprise he is a hit with the ladies. So far, we've heard that he's fairly saintly, but actually he's not saintly when it comes to staying faithful to his wife, S.C. Eslana. He does have numerous affairs with actresses and

intellectuals, Peggy Ashcroft, Nina Mae McKinney, Yolanda Jackson. So how does Eslana react to these? How does the marriage weather this storm? Because this is a painful thing, isn't it? I mean, later on, she writes about this in a book in 1930 and outs him a little bit in public, the pain that he's caused her. She did not sign up to be with someone who would, at a certain point, very publicly be in relationship with other women outside of their marriage. So it's something that she really struggles with at the beginning of their career. And certainly also once Paul Jr. comes into the world, It's something that she struggles with as a mother, as well as a wife. It's a difficult relationship to manage being both his manager and his wife.

I didn't know that. She's managing him. Oh, God, this is a mess. She quite often was seen by him as solely the former, as his manager, right, who handles the business for him. And he's doing these shows or filming on set and is gone for weeks at a time, right? And so these love affairs often with his co-stars would happen. And again, this is public information. So at that point, you know, there was a moment in their marriage where they agreed to live separate lives, that they were going to remain married, but they would each pursue their own lusts and desires and relationships. And as Londa did that as well, she also continued to pursue her own education, becoming a really

needed anthropologist who went on tours of the Congo and other parts of Africa and Latin America, did significant journalistic work, and later was often present in places where Paul could not be due to his political restriction. She shows up in all of these amazing ways and becomes her own person, both with him and in spite of him. Yeah, it does sound like Aslana got her own back. He is the Paul Robeson who isn't going to throw themselves. And you kind of were like, why wouldn't he take them up on that? But at the same time, I wouldn't leave. I'm like, I'm not leaving because like, whatever. I got you first. I got your kid. We're doing this career situation. So like,

let's make this work. And I love that they have this very early 20th century open relationship before anybody was talking. You know what? Black people start everything. Let's mark that. Yeah. I'm glad that she took that opportunity to finish her life and her goals as well. Yeah, marriage does survive. A relationship is ongoing, even if it is slightly different. There's this radical honesty that they're trying to hold themselves to, even if it's messy. And I think that becomes part of the integrity that they both model. So we know that Paul Robeson is a lover of the ladies. He's a lover of the arts. He's also a lover of languages. Obviously, he's a Latin scholar. How many other languages do you think

he's picked up, Desiree, through his life? Because he's a singer, I'm guessing probably around 20 different languages, at least in terms of music and functional use of. If he's singing in Mandarin, I'm going to shit my pants. He's got at least 10 down that he's studying formally, and then presumably he's picking up others through song, through poetry. I mean, the list is German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Hungarian, Turkish, Swedish, Yiddish, Russian, English, Latin, and then a bit of everything else. But he's not just picking them up. He studies them. He's a hard study, isn't he? He loves the book learning. Yes, he very much was a linguist. He would sit down in study, and this was his investment while at SOAS,

is building his indexical ability to touch people in real ways by speaking their languages and learning of their cultures. Harry Belafonte tells a story of having been Robeson's disciple, and Robeson apparently told him at one point, get them to sing your songs and they'll want to know who you are. And so he would learn the songs of these other cultures because he legitimately wanted to know who they were and wanted them to know him in kind. See, this is why ladies were throwing themselves at him. Do you know what I mean? Like you see a guy sitting there like, oh, I'm trying to study this language so I can communicate something. And she's like, you have to have sex with me now.

The language that he first most famously fell in love with is Russian. And that's through Slavonic music, through folk music. And that later on will take us into Russia. But just in terms of his Hollywood career, I mean, obviously Showboat is an iconic movie. But he has some really unfortunate negative run-ins with Hollywood studios. The famous one, is it Sanders of the River, Shana? Is that the film? Yes. It's about Africa. It's about Nigeria. He thinks he's agreed to do one thing,

and then when the film comes out, it's horrifically racist, and he's really furious about it. He was, again, based on his time in London, deeply committed to thinking through and raging against colonialism. Robeson signs on to play the lead character in Sanders of the River, where he plays an African leader. And you have these Europeans who are coming to this village and Robeson is their intermediary. And he thinks the film is going to be the opportunity to show audiences some truth of African culture. He enjoys playing the role for what he believes it to be. And by the time the film is released, he sees that it has been edited in such a way that they are meant to look backwards and ignorant and inferior to the colonizing forces of the Europeans. And he is publicly antagonistic to the film and says that people should not see it, that it is an abomination, that it was not what he signed up to participate in, that so many hours of footage of the African landscape had been cut from the film. And so he, in this moment, is really taking a hard stand against a film he's been in. And this is something that he does multiply over the course of his film

career. Yeah, he's the reason why that clause exists in everybody's contracts now that says that you can't talk shit about the thing that you just did, no matter what happens to it. Because Hollywood's like, look, we're gonna screw you over. Please stop getting in our way. Right. And we have carte blanche in doing that. Your labor belongs to us, your representation belongs to us. And he refused. I'm not your puppet. And so he tries to buy back copies of the film so that it can't be seen, it can't be distributed. That's only a pre-digital age where he can like, oh, I'll buy back every canister of film this was printed onto. That's baller. It's true. It's hard to track down JPEG files.

Yeah. One day the nanobots will be able to do it. Jeff Bezos will come with a drone in your window and say, give that illegal torrent back. In 1934, Paul and Essie are invited by the famous Russian film director, Sergei Eisenstein, the inventor of montage. He invites them out to visit the Soviet Union. And they're talking about making a movie together about Toussaint L'Ouverture, the Haitian revolutionary who we did a podcast on. They're given a guided tour of Moscow. They're shown all the sites and they fall in love with Russia, don't they, Shana? He also feels a strong sense that this USSR is a political utopia. He understands this as a worker's paradise. The workers are championed and are in positions of authority and decision making was really huge for him.

And it's in part through that class lens that he also recognizes that as a Black person, he can find a significant degree of freedom there, that he feels as though he can move about the streets, he can meet with influential people, but he can also walk into a factory and have an experience of commonality, of camaraderie. All of that mattered tremendously to him. He comes to fall in love with Russia and it becomes a location of refuge, of solidarity for the entire rest of his life. Paul and Essie have a really interesting time in Russia. They put their son into a Russian school for two years. They really commit. And listeners might be thinking, well, hang on, this is Stalin's Russia, right?

Oh my God, he's the big, bad, evil villain. But in the early 1930s, purges hadn't happened yet. And there are many left-wing intellectuals around the world who are full of hope for what could be possible. The next major internationalist thing in Paul's life is not Russia, but rather Spain and the Spanish Civil War. How does he react to this outbreak of violence and the risk of fascism in Europe? He sees this as tremendously significant. He's in Europe continuing to perform his concerts, and he sees the Civil War breakout in Spain, that there is the threat of fascism. So he begins to rally and organize with various communities in the UK as well as in Spain in fighting against what he sees is the possibility of fascism growing and spreading throughout Europe. He very famously performs and speaks in London, but he also goes to the front lines of the war itself. He and Essie

go to Spain. They're dropped literally in the middle of the battle and Paul sings. His granddaughter, Susan Robeson, has written a children's book called Grandpa Stops a War. And it's about this very moment in 1938, where he sings on the front lines and everyone lays down arms in order to listen to him sing. This story has put everybody else's story about their grandpa and what they did to shame. I mean, no shade on your grandpa. I know he fought in the war, but he had a gun. Paul Robinson was literally like, I think you'll find that they'll listen. And they just went out there while they're firing and just started singing. They were like, oh, yeah, he's right.

We are going to stop fighting and listen to this man. Like, that's crazy. And it's this insane moment of believing that the arts, that music in particular, could actually halt hostilities. And clearly these people believed it for a moment, at least, because they did stop and they did listen. Well, if Paul Robeson, you would, wouldn't you? Yeah. But you couldn't have just dropped George Clooney in Afghanistan and everyone's like, oh, wait, cease fire. No. And there was no way. He's like, I'll make a film about it, but from Malibu.

This, I think, in some ways is indicative of Paul Robeson as an idealist. He's so committed to the idea of peace, but he's a little bit naive because the fascists win the Spanish Civil War, the fascists win in Germany, the world is engulfed in the Second World War, and the 40s, of course, are an existential struggle. So what are the 1940s like for him as a performer, as a political voice? This is the high tide of his fame and he leaves Europe. He returns to the States. He films the film version of Show Boat. He sings Ballad for Americans, which is one of the songs that he's most known for. This was a song that he sung on CBS radio, which was composed by Paul Latouche, who was a famous Works Progress Administration composer who did many of the pieces around class struggle. Then he writes this piece about the glorious diversity of the United States, and they tap

Paul specifically to sing this song. Hundreds of thousands of people listen to the original broadcast. It goes on to be a best-selling record. It also ends up becoming, in 1940, the song played at the conventions of both the Republican Party and the Communist Party USA. Never happened before or since. Exactly. And so you see the way it's pulling on all of these different audiences, but also the communists obviously have already taken up with Robeson and are very enamored by him. And he enamored of them as well. And so the 1940s, then he's here shooting films and doing concerts. He also takes to the stage

in a fantastic way, beginning the longest run ever of a show on Broadway playing Othello. Ira Aldridge was the only other Black actor to have ever played Othello. And so he's breaking the color bar, but also bringing himself into some potential contention as his co-star as a white woman. And the intimacy that they develop on stage, off stage, another leading love. And so he's still negotiating all of these firsts, but still meeting with the same old racism, but now in the context of a global war. Okay, this man is like, maybe naive at times, but fearless at all times. And Othello, he literally has to like kiss and murder a white woman every single night. And then he goes home with her. There's something so

expansive about the fearlessness of the man considering being Black in America and then all over the rest of the world that is just so awe-inspiring of just like, yep, no, I'm going to do it. And it's going to run on Broadway for ages, like longer than Cats and Phantom. That's something to surpass Cats. Yeah. Not one butthole is featured in this. No, I was going to say, surpassing Cats the movie is easy. Surpassing Cats the musical, harder.

The Othello performance, it's 296 performances in a row. Astonishing stamina. Paul Robeson, the voice of America, he has sung this ballad that is played across the States. It's on the radio. 160,000 people go and see him play in a park in Chicago. And yet when he stays in a hotel in LA, the proviso is he's allowed to use the hotel, but he cannot eat in their restaurant. He has to eat all his dinners in his room. So racism still pervading. And then there are more problems coming his way, because then he gets, it's misquoted the word here, Shana, I mean, in the late 40s, after the World War II has ended, obviously the USSR is now the bad guy. And he gives a speech in which he is claimed to have said that no black person should ever fight for America. So can you talk us through that speech and the backlash? Yes. So in 1947, he makes a very conscious decision to step away from the art world in order to dedicate his services almost exclusively to people's organizations and people's movements.

And the peace movement becomes one of those major political fronts on which he participates. It's labor, it's decolonization, and it's peace. And it's in 1949, he makes a speech in Paris, in which he argues that to make war on the rest of the world when Black people are still being treated as second-class citizens makes no sense to him. Do not call on Black Americans to fight for this democracy when we do not receive those rights at home. And he does mention Russia specifically because this is the moment at which we recognize it's all gone to hell, that Russia now is public enemy number one. And he still is having this enduring, affectionate relationship with Russia, even as he's calling his own types of quiet questions about what's happening there.

And the press goes wild in response to this speech, arguing him as a traitor, as someone who has basically encouraged Black people to engage in mutiny against the United States, right? And this is the moment of McCarthyism on the rise. Sedition has become a buzzword where people are being tried by the federal government. Are you loyal enough? recording contracts, whose tour is cancelled, who loses his passport and can no longer travel. And this is a man who loves travel, right? So that's particularly devastating for him. There's also potentially an assassination attempt. His trade union bodyguards apprehend men with high-powered rifles when he's giving a speech. We're not talking here about, you know, he's a bit controversial. There might be people trying to kill him. Absolutely. And this is happening most iconically at the Peekskill concerts. And this is, again, him going to the local level. He's giving up Carnegie Hall. Paul Robeson performs for the Civil Rights Congress in Peekskill, New York, and it takes two efforts in order for him to actually make it to the stage. The first concert is canceled due to violence,

both from anti-communists as well as the regional Ku Klux Klan, who take pride in having shut down the concert. The second concert, he is protected by a wall of union workers and servicemen who volunteer themselves as human shields to ensure that he's not assassinated during the concert. First of all, I can see when they like turn on him, just the headlines screaming things like uppity, really great sounding black man has the nerve to speak common sense. really great sounding black man has the nerve to speak common sense because like literally all black people have done in american history is fight alongside americans in wars and then not get the same rights afforded to white americans over and over again and here he has the audacity to be like we're not going to do that again and they're like how very dare you also i don't understand the taking away his passport because usually the response to Black people when they talk about America is, if you don't like it, why don't you go F off to, you know, where you came from? So surely they should have just been like, here's another passport. Goodbye. bait him, but also cut him off from many other global movements that were funding him, that were seeking him out as a counsellor and advocate. To cut off his international audience meant

that they were breaking him, but they were also attempting to stop his message. Robeson's international reputation is quite different to his American reputation, because in 1950, he wins an international peace Prize. He shares it with Pablo Picasso. In 1952, he wins the Stalin Peace Prize, which is probably not very helpful for his reputation, actually. Thinking about it, that's one of those ones you want to turn down maybe just to keep the heat off. The Stalin Peace Prize!

People are saying he's a communist. He's never a member of the party, we don't think. But when we talk about the House Un-American Activities Committee... I mean, it just sounds like what it is vomitous right yeah yeah this is the moment really where he is called forth to give testimony to prove his loyalty to america and to find out whether he is a red under the bed so to speak we'd love to play you what he said in his own voice but we don't have that we're going to play you james l jones reading it later, another actor with an equally beautiful voice.

Why do you not stay in Russia? Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country. And I'm going to stay here and have a part of it just like you, and no fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear? You are here because you are promoting the communist cause. I am here because I am opposing the neo-fascist cause, which I see arising in these committees. Jensen could be sitting

here and Frederick Douglass could be sitting here. Now what prejudice are you talking about? You were graduated from Rutgers, you were graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. I remember seeing you play football at Lehigh. There was no prejudice against you. Just a moment. This is something I challenge very deeply, that the success of a few Negroes Desiree, what do you make of the performance there by James Earl Jones? I mean, it's an incredible performance. I think when I heard it on the meme, I thought it was Paul Robeson. And then I heard it this time and I was like, oh, that's definitely Darth Vader. I don't know what I was thinking.

So I think it's excellent, especially because he's got to have that same contention that Paul would have had with whoever he's acting that out with. Obviously, it's read by an actor, but those are the words. All of the feelings, everything that's being said is right on. You can feel the words behind the teeth of the people who are questioning him that can't say what they want to say in a court of law. And he's like, I'm a lawyer, son. We can do this all day. I'm going to get my point across. And what it feels like is like he walks onto that battlefield, but like all of segregationist America is on the other side of that. And he's like, they're going to listen to my voice. And in a way they will, but they will always be a pack of

dogs biting back at that. There's a lot of conflict stirred up in my body where I'm just kind of like, I want to scream, punch and vomit at the same time, because this is the original sin of America that's being played out in this courtroom in which people are being asked to affirm their loyalty to a nation of immigrants that was like based on some ideas that we have neglected to ever actually uphold. Anyway, I'm real mad. That's how I feel. The cross-examiner pivoted to the Stalin question. And in the 50s, Stalin now is a proper bad guy. It is a state regime with violence, brutality, persecutions, disappearances. The difficult question for historians, for those who oppose Paul and those who supported him, is where did he stand on Stalin and Stalinism and communism? Was he in too deep? Was he too romantically attached to Russia?

I don't think he was romantic, certainly not at this point, about what Russia was. He knew people who had been disappeared. He knew that the workers' paradise that they were promised had long fallen away. And now it was a very different situation where people were very, very vulnerable. And the fact that he was not publicly outspoken in response to those has caused a lot of concern for people, people who adore him. What the record tells me is one, that he was an organizer and to out Russia whole cloth would have been to compromise the project of socialism. And he always identified himself as a democratic socialist, and he did not want to undermine that project and recognize that even with his villainy, he could still do so

as Paul Robeson, whom the world adored still. So he was very cautious about how he spoke of Russia, but certainly also was making all of these curatorial moves that suggested that he understood very much what was happening there. So for example, continuing to sing in Yiddish. People in Russia would have noticed these things in his performance practices in that period. So it's not naivety, it is political caution. And strategy, yes. It was Wales where Paul Robeson made some very good friends and still to this day is much beloved. How has that relationship developed, Shana? And can you tell us about the Let Paul Robeson Sing campaign?

In the 1930s, he has a very intimate relationship with the South Wales Miners Union. He sings with them and for them on multiple occasions. In 1939, he shoots the film Proud Valley in Wales, where he plays an itinerant Black American worker who happens somehow to be in Wales and finds these workers who are singing because minors would have their own choirs that would be competitive and there would be nationalist steadfights, these choral competitions. And in the film, he hears them singing and joins them from the street and they all run to the window to see who is this voice, who owns this voice, who's singing with us.

And they're shocked to see that it's a Black man. He begins working in the mines, is beloved amongst them, loses his life in the struggle for their union whilst on strike. And this ends up being his favorite film of his entire film career is Proud Valley. And so this relationship continues well into the 1950s, this moment where he can't travel, but is being beckoned every single year. The Welsh miners, as well as organizations around the world are sending letters to him and say, please come. Every year he has to decline because of the struggle over his passport, which is not resolved until 1958. But in 1957, in the course of this Let Paul Robeson Sing campaign, which is widespread across Europe, but really takes root in the UK, where people are

organizing, rallying, signing petitions, calling on the U.S. federal government to return his passport. He has a transatlantic concert with the South Wales Miners' Union in which he sings over the telephone to them in the Grand Pavilion in Porthcawl, and they sing back to him. And the president of the Welsh Miners' Union writes back to him and says, it's as if you were there with us. The technology that has just recently been used for transatlantic phone calls has now made possible this concert in which Paul Robeson almost holographically appears. Oh, my God. He did the first Zoom gig before there were one. Right. Exactly. Podcasting over Zoom is hard enough, but doing a

concert over Zoom in 1957 is pretty challenging. So let's listen to a little clip from that performance. the belly of the whale and the hebrew children from the fiery furnace and why not every man did my lord deliver daniel deliver daniel deliver daniel As one of our Welsh songs puts it, and we dedicate it to you, we'll keep a welcome in the hillsides. We'll keep a welcome in the vales. This land of ours will still be singing when you come back again to Wales. He sounds like he's more in the room than the entire choir. Like, that's incredible.

Like, just the fact that that happened. So he does get his passport back in 1958. And his first point of call, of course, is back to england where he had spent so much time in the 20s he visits the house of lords he has dinner with nye bevan he sings at saint paul's cathedral he's the first secular artist ever to do so he stars in the 100th anniversary of stratford upon aven's performances of othello and when he's there he actually stayed with an elderly english lady called mrs whitfield who was apparently very unpolitical and rather Tory and posh, but they got on like a house on fire and became great buddies. And that's the kind of movie I want to see. Never mind bad boys too.

I want to see Paul Robeson and Mrs. Whitfield making jam. And then he's off jet setting around New Zealand, Australia. He befriends Aboriginals, athletes, celebrities, superstars, workers. He's the friend of everyone. But Shana, this is where the story takes a sad change of pace. And actually, there's been sad points throughout, of course. Now we're talking about a much older man. He's in his early 60s and he's very unwell, not just in a physical sense, but in a mental health sense. Obviously, we can't diagnose from afar, but people have suggested bipolar disorder or manic depression. Here, I need to use a trigger warning, really. We're now going to talk about self-harm. In 1961, he is staying in Russia, again in Moscow, and he has severe hallucinations and psychological distress and self-harms himself very seriously

in a life-threatening way. And his son, Paul Robeson Jr., has suggested this was the CIA or possibly the MKUltra program. Obviously, we don't know that, but he is very poorly and then has some really quite horrible traumatic treatments to try and improve him. And they're really extreme, even for the 1960s, aren't they, Shana? They're devastating, in fact. He was obviously suffering from a lifetime of racism. He suffered quite dramatically for the almost decade in which he lost his passport in the 1950s. He tries to come back to some sense of himself, to return to those tours and those intimacies with communities around the world. But much of his poor health is catching up with him. Again, yes, psychological concerns as well as failing health for Essie. And it's all

taking a dramatic toll on him. And the treatments did not help. There was excessive use of electroshock and other mechanisms that at the time they thought would help, but even for the times were too much. And he never really recovered from those treatments or from the constant surveillance. And a lot of his friends, Shana, he had distanced on purpose to protect them because he was a dangerous person to be friends with. Particularly during the 1950s, he knew to stay away from other Black entertainers. He knew to stay away from certain community organizers, even those who were desperate to see him, to solicit his advice or friendship. And he knew these things and so made really hard decisions about with whom he would spend time. And so in the 1960s, he retires, very much instigated by Eslanda's passing in the middle 1960s from cancer.

He retires quietly to Philadelphia, where he lives with his sister Marion for the last decade of his life. And he passes away there in her care in 1976. The Nuance Window! Now it's time for The Nuance Window, where Desiree and I sit back while our expert, Professor Shana, talks for two uninterrupted minutes about what we need to hear. Professor Shana, without much further ado, can we have the nuance window, please? My argument and belief in researching Paul Robeson is that he's not gone anywhere, that he is still with us, that he still matters to people because people still fight in his name. They still sing his songs. And I want to just read

a passage from someone who very much identified himself as a student of Paul Robeson, which was the great actor and activist Ozzie Davis, who said this about Paul Robeson. A hero to all, gigantic and available. And as with all heroes, the gift was one way. Paul gave and gave. We took and took and took. All of us, black folks, white folks, communists, liberals, artists, politicians, race leaders, labor leaders, we raided him. To us, he was an inexhaustible bounty from heaven. And we went to him as beggars go, never bothering to

put anything back, fighting the world and each other for our inalienable right to consume Paul Robeson and consume him, we did. And this piece to me is both angry with regret, but also fond with so many memories of everything that this person was and put back into the world. Someone who was fearless, someone who lived with integrity, who argued in the early 1950s, even as he was under radical state surveillance and detention, he said, I will not allow anyone to move me from my firm convictions, not even one thousandth of an inch. This was a person who predates Colin Kaepernick in standing up for what they believe, who predates all of the people with whom these generations, my generation even,

hold in such high political esteem. This is someone who made it possible for the rest of the world to struggle in meaningful, conscientious ways. And so I want us to remember him, not as he ended his life, but as he truly lived his life, which was in song, in concert with people all over the world, and with tremendous, tremendous power and integrity. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Shana, for doing all of this research with your life and your career. I feel forever changed by knowing everything we've talked about, and I just feel blessed to have been in the room.

So what do you know now? Time now for our quiz. So far, Desiree, you have a perfect score. You are class valedictorian on this podcast. I don't want to brick it on Paul Robeson. There's so much. There's so much. Okay, so here we go.

Question one. In which decade was Paul Robeson born? Oh, he was born at the end of the 1800s. So 1890s? Yeah, 1898, absolutely. Question two. Paul Robeson excelled academically and athletically. Rutgers University named two of his extracurricular activities.

All of them. He was in debate, oratory, all of the sports that we play in America. Yeah, exactly that. Question three. What was the name of Paul Robeson's wife? Essie. Good, but it's Esslina. What was it? Esslina? I forget it, but it's Essie. Eslanda Cardoso. Good. Question three. What was the name of Paul Robeson's wife? Essie. Good. But it's Eslina. I forget it, but it's Essie.

Eslanda Cardoso. Good. Question four. What iconic song did Robeson famously perform in Showboat? Oh, Old Man River. Yes. Question five. Concerned with the rise of fascism, Robeson sang on the front lines of which war? Oh, the Spanish Civil War. It was. Question six. When Robeson was denied the right to travel, he performed over the telephone to which overseas singing group? Dang it.

The Welsh people in the church. The Welsh mining singers. Yes. Yes. Correct. Question seven. Robeson was interrogated about his relationship with communism by which notorious political committee?

Oh, the House Un-American Activities Committee. The HUAC. Absolutely. Question eight. Robeson broke Broadway records for the longest consecutive run by playing which Shakespearean protagonist? The one he should be playing and a bunch of white people shouldn't be playing, Othello. It is Othello. Question nine.

In 1950, whilst denied the right to travel, Robeson shared what award with Pablo Picasso? Oh, don't let me brick it on this. I mean, it's the Peace Prize. It was a Peace Prize. I think the Stalin Peace Prize threw me for such a loop that I forgot the actual fact I cared about. And question 10, what did he do when it came to the making of a Hollywood movie where they re-edited the footage to be racist as hell? He gave them a little two-finger salute and said, this movie sucks and I will tell people publicly not to watch it and try to buy back all the copies of it so they can't watch it. Absolutely. Again, your perfect score. 10 out of 10, Desiree Birch. Well done.

Even with the Welsh mining singers in the church. The quiz machine continues unabated. Phenomenal, Desiree. Congratulations. Well, you've had a wonderful teacher in Professor Shana. Listeners, if you're desperate for more Desiree, then you can obviously listen to all her various episodes before, including the Josephine Baker one, which is one of our faves. And remember, if you've had a laugh, if you've learned some stuff, please share the podcast with your friends, leave a review online, make sure to subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds so you never miss an episode. All that's left for me to say is a huge thank you again to our guests in History Corner, Professor Shana L. Redman from Columbia University

Thank you, Shana Thank you so much And in Comedy Corner, the incomparable quiz master, Desiree Birch Thank you, Desiree Absolutely, my pleasure, thank you so much And to you, lovely listener, join me next time As we take our showboat down a different historical river With two different passengers

But for now, I'm off to go and get some singing lessons. Bye! You're Dead to Me was a production by The Athletic for BBC Radio 4. The research was by William Clayton and the script was by Emin the Goose and me. The project manager was Saifah Mio and the producer was Cornelius Mendes. This is Add to Playlist,

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