By Martin Halpern
February 11, 2026 martinhalpern.substack.com
Fifty years ago today, February 11, 1976, my comrades and I held a “Tribute to Paul Robeson: Actor, Singer, Fighter for Black Freedom, Peace and the Rights of Labor.” The program was held at the William Monroe Trotter House on the University of Michigan campus. The sponsors were the Marxist Forum and the Young Workers Liberation League. The speaker was Charles Wright, Doctor of Medicine, playwright, Founder and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Afro-American Museum of Detroit, and author of the pioneering work, Robeson: Labor’s Forgotten Champion (1975).
The idea of organizing a Robeson tribute occurred to me when I read Wright’s book. I had written a seminar paper on the 1941 strike by the United Auto Workers (UAW) at the Ford Motor Company and was working on my dissertation on the UAW in the cold war era. Wright’s work included a fine account of Robeson’s support not only for the UAW but for public workers and workers in the longshore, tobacco, and maritime industries and on sugar plantations in Hawaii.
The venue for our tribute, the William Monroe Trotter House, had been established as a center for Black students, one of the demands of the successful 1970 Black Action Movement strike in which I had participated. Standing at the corner of Washtenaw Avenue and S. University Street, the building was a beautiful mansion built for Kappa Sigma Alpha fraternity in 1924 at the cost of $125,000. We met in a large and comfortable room appropriate for the occasion. The gathering was deeply moved by Wright’s presentation, a slide show, and Robeson recordings.
We had been planning the event for some time when news of Robeson’s death on January 23, 1976, reached the public. Obituaries in major national publications brought attention to our meeting. On the day of our gathering the local newspaper, the Ann Arbor News publicized the event and included personal tributes from Jerry Hoag, “dean of Ann Arbor theater managers” and Dr. Eva Jessye, “the city’s distinguished lady of song.” The Eva Jessye Choir had performed with Robeson on “All God’s Children” in 1940 on the CBS network.
The story in the Michigan Daily, the student paper, about our meeting quoted Wright: “even his worst enemies couldn’t say he didn’t have integrity. He was an extremely sincere individual who only wanted to change Democracy and the United States for the better.” In their personal accounts of their interactions with Robeson, both Jessye and Hoag emphasized his warmth and his interest in and caring for all people. He was a “humanitarian, always had time for the ‘little people,’” Jessye said, “and was wonderful to work with.”
Paul Robeson’s Family Background
Robeson was born in Princeton, New Jersey in 1898. His father, William Drew Robeson, had escaped slavery with a brother via the Underground Railroad in 1860 and worked as a laborer for the Union Army during the Civil War. At Lincoln College (later university) he earned two degrees and met Maria Louisa Bustill. They married in 1878 and had seven children; Paul was the youngest.
Paul’s father was a pastor for twenty years at Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church in Princeton and his mother was a schoolteacher. Losing his position at the Princeton church because of his activism, Robeson’s father worked odd jobs for a time and eventually regained a pulpit at African Methodist Episcopal churches in other New Jersey communities. His mother died due to an accident when Paul was six.
Robeson’s Accomplishments
His parents’ emphasis on education combined with Robeson’s many gifts and steadiness led to his winning a scholarship to Rutgers College. He lettered in four sports, was an all-American football player, and was class valedictorian. He graduated from Columbia Law School but practiced law only briefly because of the discrimination he faced at the law firm he joined.
While at Columbia, Robeson met and married Eslanda Cardoza Goode, who was working at the Columbia Medical Center as a chemist. They remained partners until her death in 1965.
A renowned singer, Robeson also was a famous stage and film actor, a linguist, author, professional football player, and an activist. Paul and Eslanda, who managed her husband’s career, traveled to the Loyalist front lines in Spain where Paul sang. In London, Paul and Eslanda met Africans, some of whom became leaders of their countries. The West African Student Union made them honorary members. While in London, he met Lawrence Brown, who encouraged him to sing African American spirituals and became his accompanist for more than three decades.
Robeson spoke out regularly and worked tirelessly for civil rights, labor rights, the independence of colonies in Africa and Asia, and against fascism. He wrote a regular newspaper column and was a leader of the Council on African Affairs, the National Negro Congress, and other progressive groups.
Eslanda Goode Robeson’s Family and Accomplishments
Born in 1895 in Washington, D.C., Eslanda Cardozo Goode’s family background included a father who was a clerk in the War Department and a grandfather who was an official in South Carolina during Reconstruction. After earning her degree in chemistry from Columbia University, she headed a department at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. She was an actress, an anthropologist, an activist, and an author. Her books include Paul Robeson: Negro (1930), African Journey (1945), and American Argument (1949) with Pearl Buck. She worked for civil rights, women’s rights, and the independence of colonial countries in Africa and Asia.
The Ballad of Americans
A few months after the Robesons returned from almost a decade abroad, on November 5,1939, Paul Robeson performed the Ballad of Americans on the CBS network. The song was written by Earl Robinson and John Latouche. Appearing on Norman Corwin’s variety show, Pursuit of Happiness, Robeson was accompanied by the amateur People’s Chorus and sang before an audience of six hundred. The studio audience applauded for nearly fifteen minutes and there was an immense response from radio listeners. The CBS switchboard was tied up for two hours with phone calls of thanks and numerous letters followed.
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Robeson and Earl Robinson preparing for Ballad of Americans broadcast.
Robeson performed Ballad for Americans before many labor union and progressive organizations and a record album sold well. Bing Crosby made a record of the song, too, and the song was performed at the Republican and Communist Party conventions in 1940. It was Robeson’s version that was particularly powerful. The song recounts episodes in U.S. history from the American revolution on when liberty was at stake and “nobody who was anybody believed it.” The chorus repeatedly asks Robeson, “Hey, who are you?” to which he first hints that he is Black America but eventually replies, “America!” The song emphasizes unity of all ethnic and racial groups, and completes the revolutionary vision of liberty and equality for all.
Cold War Repression and Resistance
The ending of the World War II alliance of the United States with the Soviet Union and the onset of the cold war led to the eruption of anti-communism at home. Two key episodes in 1947 were the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act and the House Un-American Activities Committee’s investigation of Hollywood writers and directors. The inclusion of a non-Communist affidavit provision in Taft-Hartley threatened left-wing unions’ access to the National Labor Relations Board. The Hollywood witnesses’ refusal to testify based on their First Amendment rights led to their imprisonment as they received no aid from the Supreme Court. Blacklisting took place in the film industry and across most other employment spheres.
Robeson joined with other left-wing figures in supporting the Progressive Party campaign of Henry Wallace in 1948. The failure of the campaign to secure a significant vote led to the isolation of the left. Paul Robeson was beloved by millions of people in the United States and throughout the world. Because he stood up to those who hated communism and the Soviet Union during the early years of the cold war, the powers that be waged an unrelenting campaign of denunciation and pressure against him.
Peekskill Riots
Given Robeson’s prominence, it’s not surprising that the biggest and most extreme attack on the left came at a Robeson concert. Robeson had sung at concerts in Peekskill, a Hudson Valley community forty miles north of New York City, prior to the cold war. His 1949 appearance was sponsored by the Harlem chapter of the Civil Rights Congress, which the U.S. Attorney General had recently been cited as a subversive organization. The local newspaper, veterans’ groups, and the Junior Chamber of Commerce mobilized to oppose the concert. Roads were blocked, and those who managed to get to the concert site were assaulted. No concert took place.
At a protest meeting in Harlem, Robeson vowed to return to Peekskill. Twenty-five thousand attended the September 4, 1949, concert, which went off as scheduled. Left-wing trade unionists had prepared for the event and provided effective protection to Robeson and to the attendees. However, violent anti-communist groups mobilized, too, and threw rocks and stones at buses and cars as concertgoers drove south to the city, causing hundreds of injuries. Police joined in the attacks on concert goers. As motorists took alternative routes to escape the attackers, the riot extended over a ten-mile area. A stone through the windshield of Robeson’s car hit Irving Potash, a leader of the Fur and Leather Workers Union, and caused him to lose sight in one eye.
The state district attorney, investigating at the behest of Governor Thomas Dewey, claimed that Robeson’s supporters “provoked the violence.” Peekskill was neither the first nor the last violent attack on left-wing working-class partisans, but it meant that efforts to organize left-wing gatherings would have to contend with the threat of violence for years to come.
One non-left-wing voice critical of the violence was that of Eleanor Roosevelt. She commented that “it seems to me quite disgraceful to allow this kind of lawlessness.” At the same time, she emphasized that she disagreed with Robeson’s ideas and was “particularly sorry to hear that one of the buses and a number of cars which were manhandled . . . were cars that were returning from the Hyde Park Memorial Library and held no people who had been to the Robeson concert.” She also repeated the usual argument that the attackers were just giving “the Communists good material for propaganda.”
Robeson was “unbowed,” Gerald Horne comments and “took off on a whirlwind tour, designed to rally support against the dangerous ultra-right pestilence.” On September 30, 1949, seventeen thousand were present to hear Robeson at a program honoring the 70th anniversary of the California Eagle, a progressive African American newspaper. But in other places, venues were cancelled and the “scent of violence . . . was a deterrent to his making public appearances.”[1]
Robeson’s response to right-wing and state-supported violence at Peekskill included testifying as a witness for the defense of the leaders of the Communist Party accused of violating the Smith Act. Robeson served as co-chair of the National Non-Partisan Committee to Defend the Rights of the Twelve Communist Leaders. Two weeks after the second Peekskill riot, he testified as a defense witness in the Smith Act trial. Robeson knew all the defendants. Attorney George Crockett sought to have Robeson testify about having heard Communist leaders speak many times but never heard any advocacy of the overthrow of the U.S. government by force and violence. The charge against them was conspiracy to advocate such ideas. The judge disallowed such testimony and would not allow Crockett to ask Robeson if he had appeared on a platform with Eleanor Roosevelt.[2]
Robeson and Freedom Newspaper
In 1950, a group of African American left-wing activists, most of them Communists, worked with Robeson to establish Freedom, a weekly newspaper based in Harlem. Several of the key figures – Esther Jackson, Edward Strong, and Louis Burnham, had been active in the Southern Negro Youth Congress, a Communist-led group that had folded in 1949 despite its significant organizing successes. Also participating were Communist historian Herbert Aptheker, activists from the newly founded National Negro Labor Council, and artists Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis and Harry Belafonte from the Committee for the Negro Arts.
Freedom featured a column by Robeson on its front page, coverage of civil rights, labor unions, struggles for peace and the independence of the colonial countries, the Black church, and sports. The paper publicized Robeson’s activities and his struggle to regain his passport, which the State Department revoked in 1950. There were also cartoons and letters to the editor. The first issue of Freedom appeared in November 1950, fewer than five months after the start of the Korean War. The anti-Communist hysteria evident at Peekskill reached new heights during the war.
Despite the intensification of anti-communism, the late 1940s and early 1950s was also a period of civil rights advances with the integration of baseball and of the military. The major white-owned newspapers hired more African American reporters and gave greater coverage of the African American community. The circulation of major Black newspapers declined. Facing anti-communist hostility and financial difficulties, Freedom folded in 1955.
The Robesons Defy Congressional Committees
The climate of anti-communist hysteria could not have been greater when Eslanda Robeson was called before Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Senate subcommittee in 1953; the Rosenbergs had been executed just two weeks prior to her appearance. She refused to answer questions about whether she was a member of the Communist Party citing both the Fifth and Fifteenth amendments. She declared, “As a Negro and a second class citizen I have been fighting against racial discrimination all my life.” She told the all-white Senate sub-committee: “I know a lot about the force and violence used against my people in this country.”[3]
Paul was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1956. In response to his legal effort to regain his passport, revoked by the State Department in 1950, the government insisted in 1954 that he sign a non-Communist affidavit in 1954. He refused to do so. When HUAC asked if he were a member of the Communist Party, his stance was defiant: “What do you mean by the Communist Party? As far as I know it is a legal party like the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Do you mean a party of people who have sacrificed for my people, and for all Americans and workers, so that they can live in dignity? Do you mean that party?”
When Robeson invoked the Fifth Amendment, committee chair Francis E. Walter (Democrat of Pennsylvania) wouldn’t let it go and insisted he explain how answering the question of CP membership might incriminate him. In reply, Robeson praised Communists throughout the world: “Gentlemen, in the first place, wherever I have been in the world, Scandinavia, England, and many places, the first to die in the struggle against Fascism were the Communists and I laid many wreaths upon graves of Communists.”
Robeson also spoke passionately about his family’s deep American roots and the African American freedom struggle:
“I am being tried for fighting for the rights of my people, who are still second-class citizens in this United States of America. My mother was born in your state, Mr. Walter, and my mother was a Quaker, and my ancestors in the time of Washington baked bread for George Washington’s troops when they crossed the Delaware, and my own father was a slave.
“I stand here struggling 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 Montgomery, Alabama. And they are not in Washington. They are nowhere, and 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, and I have been on many a picket line for the steelworkers too. And that is why I am here today. . . .”
Robeson finally regained his passport in 1958 due to a Supreme Court decision. Three years later, Freedomways magazine was founded.
The Founding of Freedomways
Freedomways was founded in 1961 by Esther Jackson and several other veterans of the SNYC who had been involved in establishing Freedom. Also participating were W.E.B. DuBois and Shirley Graham DuBois. Jackson served as managing editor with John Henrik Clarke and Jack O’Dell as associate editors. Many leading Harlem writers appeared in the pages of the magazine including Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, and Kenneth B. Clark. The magazine was closely associated with the civil rights movement and continued Freedom’s emphasis on internationalism. The opening reception for the magazine included a speech by Congo’s Ambassador to the United Nations.
Closely associated with the radical Black Arts movement, Freedomways included poems, stories, and works of art. Freedomways represented continuity with the popular front of the 1930s and 1940s as it advocated broad coalitions, Black radicalism, peace, and anti-imperialism. The magazine closed in 1985.
Freedomways and Robeson
In April 1965, Freedomways held a salute to Robeson. Both Robeson and his wife Eslanda were present. The actor Ossie Davis was the emcee for the occasion. Freedomways published three of the speeches from that evening in its summer issue including Robeson’s “It’s Good to be Back,” and “Paul Robeson: Inspirer of Youth,” by John Lewis, then National Chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
“In many ways,” Lewis declared, “we in SNCC are Robeson’s spiritual children. We, too, have rejected gradualism and moderation. We, too, have called for nationwide protests and massive organizing of ordinary people. We, too, have met African leaders, and we, too, have made enemies of some of our erstwhile supporters. . . . We, too, have been accused of being radicals, and of ‘Communist influence’ and for the same reasons as Robeson. Such accusations are inevitable when you speak out independent and radically.”
In his address to the gathering, Robeson emphasized the importance of the arts, especially music. He expressed appreciation for the songs that were included in the program, songs that “inspire, encourage, sustain, and unite the thousands of participants.” He mentioned such signature songs as Climbing Jacob’s Ladder and Go Down, Moses and closed with the first stanza of the Song of the Warsaw Ghetto:
“Never say that you have reached the very end,
When leaden skies a bitter future may portend;
For sure the hour for which we yearn will yet arrive,
And our marching step will thunder: we survive!”
Robeson’s participation in Freedomways’ 1965 “Welcome Home” program was his last public appearance. Six years later, Freedomways devoted its first 1971 issue to “Robeson: The Great Forerunner.” The issue included poems by Nikki Giovanni and Gwendolyn Brooks and tributes by Jomo Kenyatta, Jawaharlal Nehru, Margaret Burroughs, Dick Gregory, Alice Childress, Shirley Graham DuBois, Willliam L. Patterson, and George Murphy, Jr. There were essays by Lloyd Brown, J.H. O’Dell, Paul Robeson, Jr., Sterling Stuckey on Robeson and culture, and Harry Edwards on Robeson and sports. The volume includedselections from Robeson’s writings and speeches and a comprehensive Robeson bibliography by Ernest Kaiser.
My Connections to Robeson and Freedomways
I’ve felt a strong connection to Robeson since my childhood. We had several Paul Robeson records in our house and our parents always spoke highly of him. The violent assault on Robeson and concert goers at Peekskill, New York, in 1949 shook my parents. On one occasion, our parents were out and my older brother Ron was playing a Robeson record loud enough so that it could be heard in the courtyard of our Brooklyn apartment. Our mom rushed upstairs and told him to stop playing the record. Our parents knew and got along with their neighbors, but this was a scary time for those who were in or close to the Communist Party.
As a leader of a left-wing union, my dad was subject to a congressional subpoena. He went into hiding for a few days and so was never served. My dad had come to the United States as a child and was aware that the authorities were revoking the citizenship of some accused Communists and then deporting them. He was acting to avoid that fate.
Our parents kept their Robeson records. I continued to listen to Robeson records from our family collection long after I left home and bought new ones. Among my favorite albums were the 1942 “Songs of Free Men,” the “Peace Arch Concerts” that Robeson performed at the border between the United States and Canada in 1952 and 1953 when his right to travel outside the country was taken away, and the 1958 “Robeson Live at Carnegie Hall” album when he regained the right to travel. The concerts at the border were attended by audiences of about 30,000 and the Carnegie Hall concert was sold out.
When I was a student at City College of New York (CCNY) and began studying Marxism, Robeson loomed large. I was a regular reader of Freedomways so I learned a lot about Robeson from the magazine. One of my most memorable experiences during my time at CCNY was attending the February 23, 1968, Freedomways celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of W.E.B. DuBois.
I’d been reading DuBois since I was a high school student and took the Long Island Railroad and the subway to Brooklyn College to read Black Reconstruction at the Brooklyn College Library. Dr. John Hope Franklin, my brother’s history professor, had put the book on reserve.
As I later wrote in an essay published in Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s keynote speech “Honoring Dr. DuBois” stunned me. I’d long admired Dr. King. The first demonstration that I organized when I was a student at Cornell University was a march in sympathy with Dr. King and the Selma to Montgomery voting rights campaigners. I commented:
“King reminded the audience that Du Bois was a Communist, named other leading cultural figures who were Communists and stated, ‘We have to end our insane paranoia about communism.’ For a mainstream figure of substantial influence to add to the critique of the anti-communist rationale of U.S. policy in Vietnam an attempt to tear down the wall against Communist participation in the body politic built up in the early days of the cold war represented the most radical challenge to the politics of the status quo imaginable.”
Twenty months after the Carnegie Hall celebration, I invited Jack O’Dell, the Freedomways associate managing editor, to the University of Michigan to speak. As the New Mobilization Committee to End the Vietnam War shut down the campus for the October 15, 1969, Moratorium, I wanted to ensure students were exposed to radical ideas. O’Dell was part of a panel on workers and the war. He emphasized the impact of the war on African Americans. The other speakers were Victor Perlo, chair of the Economics Commission of the Communist Party, who spoke on the economics of the war, and Duane Frankie, a member of UAW Local 600, who emphasized the need to “find the left.” Among other speakers that day were Coleman Young, future Detroit mayor, then a state senator, and previously a leader of the National Negro Labor Council, which Robeson strongly supported.
Robeson’s Funeral
Paul Robeson’s funeral took place on January 27, 1976, in the Mother A.M.E. Zion Church in Harlem. The service opened with one of Robeson’s favorite hymns, “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder” and closed with a recording of Robeson singing “Deep River.” Among those giving tributes were Lloyd L. Brown, who had worked with Robeson on Freedom and on Robeson’s book, Here I Stand, and Paul Robeson, Jr. Among the pall bearers were playwright Douglas Turner Ward, Harry Belefonte, and Steve Nelson, national commander of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Over 5,000 attended the funeral, with many standing in the rain. He was interred at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.
In his eulogy, according to Charlayne Hunter’s New York Times story, Bishop J. Clinton Hoggard paraphrased Robeson:
“Don’t mourn for me, but live for freedom’s cause during this Bicentennial of America and say to any and all who may urge you to leave America that: ‘Because our ancestors were slaves, and our people died to build this country, we are going to stay right here and have a part of it, just like you.”
“And no Fascist‐minded people will drive us from it. Is that clear?”
Robeson’s example and courage are worth remembering during this time of rising resistance to fascism.
SOURCES:
Ballad of an American: A Graphic Biography of Paul Robeson by (artist) Sharon Rudhal. Edited by Paul Buhle and Lawrence Ware. (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2020.
Barg, Lisa, “Paul Robeson’s Ballad for Americans: Race and the Cultural Politics of ‘People’s Music,” Journal of the Society for American Music, 2 (2008). 27-70.
Buck, Pearl S., and Eslanda Goode Robeson. 1949. American Argument. New York: John Day Co.
Halpern, Martin, “Honoring Dr. Du Bois: Martin Luther King’s Most Radical Speech,” Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 39 (2015), 33-82.
Haviland, Sara Rzeszutek, James and Esther Cooper Jackson : Love and Courage in the Black Freedom Movement (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2015).
Horne, Gerald, Paul Robeson: The Artist as Revolutionary (London: Pluto Press, 2016).
Lamphere, Lawrence, “Paul Robeson, Freedom Newspaper, and the Black Press,” (PhD dissertation, Boston College, May 2003).
Paul Robeson House and Museum, Princeton New Jersey, “SHINING A LIGHT ON ESLANDA GOODE ROBESON.”
Ransby, Barbara, Eslanda; The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2022).
Robeson, Eslanda Goode. 1945. African Journey: With 64 Pages of Illustrations. New York: John Day Company.
Robeson, Paul, Here I Stand (Boston, Beacon Press, 1958, 1971, 1988)
Robeson, Susan, The Whole World in His Hands : A Pictorial Biography of Paul Robeson (New York: Carol Pub. Group., 1981)
Rocksborough-Smith, Ian, Bearing the Seeds of Struggle: Freedomways Magazine, Black Leftists, and Continuities in the Freedom Movement (MA thesis, Simon Fraser University, 2005).
Wright, Charles H., Robeson: Labor’s Forgotten Champion (Detroit: Baamp Publishing,1975)
Notes
[1]. Gerald Horne, Paul Robeson: Artist as Revolutionary (London: Pluto Press, 2016), 124-25.
[2]. Russell Porter, “Robeson Testifies for Eleven Communists,” New York Times, September 21, 1949, p. 18.
[3]. Barbara Ransby, Eslanda;the Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2022), 223-24.
