The Peace Arch Concerts and Freedom Train and the Welsh Transatlantic Concerts
Paul Robeson
Folk Era Records
Send US$20 each to 705 South Washington St, Naperville, Illinois 60540, USA
Reviewed by Barry Healy
In 1925, a young black man in New York made US musical history by presenting a program of entirely African-American songs. He sang 16 songs, but the audience forced him to sing 16 encores before they would leave! This was the first performance of this folk wealth to be made without deference or apology.
By 1950, attitudes towards him had changed. An editorial carried by all 37 newspapers of the Hearst chain thundered: "It is an accident unfortunate for America that Paul Robeson was born here". Randolph Hearst, the Rupert Murdoch of his day, was supporting a McCarthyite campaign to drive Robeson out of public life.
For the next eight years, Robeson was hounded and victimised by every police agency of the US government, murderous fascist gangs and racists.
Born on April 9, 1898, in Princeton, New Jersey, of an ex-slave father and an active abolitionist mother, Robeson grew up surrounded by veterans of the anti-slavery movement. His father was minister of the Zion Church where the famous anti-slavery newspaper, the North Star, was printed.
Two years before his birth, the US Supreme Court ruled Jim Crow apartheid legal under the doctrine of "separate but equal". Blacks were segregated into separate hospitals, concert halls, public transport and thousands of other areas of life. They were driven out of professional work (even professional sport) into poorly paid manual labour.
At 17, Robeson won a scholarship to Rutgers University, one of the best in the USA. He was an outstanding debater, won awards for baseball, basketball and athletics and was twice named in the All-American football team, while combating racist violence (even from teammates) the whole time. He graduated as valedictorian.
When he began work as a lawyer, a white secretary refused to take dictation from him. So he left and devoted his life to fighting racism through theatre and music.
He performed concert tours worldwide and made 11 films. Yet there were still restaurants in the US that refused him entry. In 1930, he moved to London to escape this pervasive racism.
1934 was his political turning point. His experiences that year moved him from being a proud representative of African-American people to being a radical working-class internationalist.
He travelled to both Germany and the Soviet Union. In Germany, he witnessed the rise of Nazism. He later said of his visit to the USSR that it was "the first time I felt like a full human being".
"From an early age", Robeson recalled in later life, "I had come to accept and follow a certain protective tactic of Negro life in America, and I did not fully break with the pattern until many years later. Even while demonstrating that he is really an equal (and, strangely, the proof must be superior performance!) the Negro must never appear to be challenging white superiority."
After his political radicalisation in the Soviet Union, Robeson chose to challenge white supremacy no matter what the personal cost, and the cost was extremely high.
He sang at venues that working-class people could afford and selected acting roles that gave positive portrayals of African-Americans and workers. He sang for the Spanish republicans fighting fascist Franco and denounced Hitler's anti-Semitism.
During this period, while making the film Proud Valley among the mining communities of Wales, Robeson formed a lifelong bond with the Welsh miners, commemorated on Freedom Train and the Welsh Transatlantic Concert. Their working conditions reminded him of the lives of his relatives in the North Carolina tobacco plantations and the West Virginia coalfields.
Returning home in 1939, he hit the headlines with a nationwide broadcast entitled "Ballad for Americans", which highlighted African-American songs. He used that success as a platform to travel the country campaigning against fascism.
During World War II, Robeson toured tirelessly, supporting the war effort. He coupled his support with demands that the USA become a nation worth fighting for by ending racism.
While the government publicly accepted his pro-war efforts, the FBI quietly added his name to the "DetCon List" (if the US was invaded, he was to be confined to a concentration camp with other radicals).
After the war, his radicalism gathered momentum; every year brought more campaigning and worse reaction. In 1946, he led a delegation to see President Harry Truman to demand federal laws against the lynching of blacks and an education campaign against racism. Truman, dependent on the support of redneck southern Democrats, refused to act.
The next year, Robeson criticised a government-supported commemorative project called the Freedom Train, which was to transport the original Declaration of Independence around all the states for public exhibition — but not unsegregated exhibition. Black poet Langston Hughes wrote a bitter poem, "Freedom Train", which is the first track on the CD of that name.
Right-wing reaction to Robeson became fiercer. His management began to get requests that Robeson cut the politics out of his performances. Robeson refused. Yet his success was still phenomenal; in 1947, he earned $100,000, which made him one of the top 10 concert artists in the world. That counted little to Robeson. In January 1948, he dropped all paid performing for two years to concentrate on political campaigning.
In the late '40s, right-wingers seized on reported comments of Robeson's at a World Peace Conference that US blacks would not support a US war against the Soviet Union. The fierce media and government response instigated fascist attacks on two Robeson concerts in Peekskill, New York. Trade union security guards saved his life, while police passively watched.
When the US entered the Korean War in 1950, Robeson's passport was illegally revoked by the State Department, and the authorities set about destroying his career. Concert promoters who booked him were threatened; police photographed people attending his performances and recorded their car licence plates. By 1952, his income had plummeted to $6000.
Against this background in 1952, the Mine, Mill and Smelters Union of British Columbia, Canada, invited Robeson to sing to 3000 people in Vancouver. At the time, US citizens could travel to Canada without a passport, but not Robeson. He was stopped by a presidential executive order.
The union's response was to organise the Peace Park concerts in 1952 and 1953. Peace Park straddles the border between British Columbia and Washington state. Robeson sang from the back of a truck parked one foot from the border, and 40,000 people flocked to hear him!
The union issued recordings of the first two concerts to its members. These virtually lost performances make up Folk Era's The Peace Arch Concerts CD. Despite the scratchy sound, this is Robeson at the height of his powers, his deep baritone seemingly coming out of the earth itself, his passion for freedom undiminished and his artistry enhanced by oppression.
As usual, there are spirituals which anticipate the arrival of liberation theology ("Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel", "Go Down Moses" and "Jacob's Ladder"), the labour anthem "Joe Hill" and Robeson's signature song, "Ol' Man River". Jerome Kern wrote the song for Robeson but, characteristically, Robeson changed the despondent final lyrics "I'm tired of living but scared of dying" to "I won't stop fighting until I'm dying".
In 1953, 1956 and 1957, the south Wales miners invited Robeson to their annual Eisteddfod. He was not able to circumvent the government travel ban until the laying of a transatlantic telephone cable.
The Welsh Transatlantic Concert is a moving listening experience. There is an extraordinary intimacy as Robeson speaks and sings for his beloved Welsh comrades.
The highlight is a rendition of "All Men are Brothers", set to a theme from Beethoven's 9th Symphony, which sums up Robeson's passion and hope for humanity. "March beside me, oh my brother", he sings. "All for one and one for all."
The Treorchy Male Voice Choir responds to him with a beautiful performance of "Y Deln Aur" (The Golden Harp) before the entire 5000 audience reaches across the Atlantic with "We'll Keep a Welcome in the Hillside".
Robeson regained his passport in 1958 and toured again. He was the first artist to perform at the Sydney Opera House, singing to the construction workers there in 1969. He died in 1976.
A Paul Robeson centennial committee in the US is trying to get a commemorative stamp issued this year to celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth. Robeson certainly deserves it; whether the US deserves it is another question.
These two CDS are wonderful, significant historical records of working class internationalism. More than that, they capture the example of Robeson's life. Let our memorial to him be a world purged of racism and oppression, where, as Robeson said: "People everywhere shall sing the songs of peace and brotherhood, the songs of human triumph."
There is a Paul Robeson web page at <http://www.pobox.com/~robeson/>.