The career of Paul Robeson, in both life and death, is an inspiring story of antiracist struggle and revolutionary communist class-consciousness and fightback: his life remains a model for the entire international working class. It’s also a story that makes crystal clear the racist hypocrisy of the U.S. ruling class, and the treachery of the bourgeois Black misleaders. They attempted to appropriate his memory after his death—while during his life, did everything they could to repress and tarnish him.

Scholar, athlete, singer, actor, antiracist, communist
Robeson won an academic scholarship to Rutgers University in 1915. He was only the third Black person ever to have attended Rutgers, and one of only two Black youth at Rutgers during his entire four years on campus. At college he was both an academic and athletic leader, making Phi Beta Kappa (an academic honorary society), as well as being an All-American football player, and starring in several other sports. And even though Robeson had a beautiful and powerful singing voice, he was barred from the Rutgers Glee Club because of racism at the school's social functions.

Robeson developed a career as a concert singing artist. He had appeared in a singing role in the Broadway musical, “Show Boat” in 1928, and would repeat the role in a film version seven years later. But he was cast in a racist stereotype, and Robeson hoped that through concerts he could side-step the racist pressures involved in dramatic productions and films.

Throughout this period his political consciousness was being developed in the Communist Party. Their influence began to give him the insight that racism was not an isolated phenomenon, but was an intrinsic and necessary part of capitalism, and would never be defeated until the capitalist system itself was destroyed.

‘In Soviet Union, I am not a Negro, but a human being’
Robeson’s trips to the then-communist-led Soviet Union in 1934 and 1936 had an enormous effect on him, where he stated for the first time in his life, he felt like a human being, walking in full human dignity. During the Spanish Civil War, moved by the energy, selflessness, and antiracist struggle, he appeared at rallies and concerts to raise money. He also visited Spain to give concerts for the communist-led International Brigades fighting the Spanish, German, and Italian fascists, including a performance on the front lines.

Robeson also supported the anti-lynching efforts of the militant National Negro Congress. Being outside the control of the bourgeois leadership of the NAACP and the Urban League, Robeson became a loathed target of bourgeois Black misleaders, especially the NAACP.

During World War II, Robeson crisscrossed the U.S. appearing at rallies, concerts and other causes in support of the anti-fascist war effort. He drew enormous crowds, raising enthusiasm and hundreds of thousands of dollars from Black and white working class audiences.

Unapologetic amidst capitalist attacks, liberal betrayal
In 1943, he appeared in another very successful production of Othello on Broadway. He was at the peak of his popularity as an antiracist, an actor, a singer, and a fighter against fascism. By 1943, J. Edgar Hoover, head of the F.B.I., already had him tagged for “preventive detention” in the event of some “crisis.”

The end of World War II saw a great increase in racist lynchings throughout the U.S. South, and a rise in racist oppression in the rest of the country. Robeson connected sharpening racist attacks with U.S. imperialism in the post-World War II Cold War era. In April 1949, he attended a Paris meeting of the World
Partisans of Peace, where he attacked imperialist plans for a new war against the Soviet Union and the emerging communist-led China. As anticommunism ran rampant, he was denounced by the entire Black bourgeois misleadership—Walter  White, Roy Wilkins, Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph, et al., the AFL, and bosses in the entertainment industry.

Peekskill: kkkops and racists riot
The bosses’ hatred of Robeson culminated in a fascist attack which succeeded in breaking up a scheduled concert where Robeson was to sing near Peekskill, NY on Saturday, August 27, 1949. The concert was rescheduled for Sunday, September 4. Several thousand guards of Black and white workers and veterans, communists, and supporters protected Robeson and the 20,000 concert-goers, while Robeson sang in the face of rifles aimed at him (Duberman, Paul Robeson 1988).

After the concert, state troopers forced departing vehicles with families with small children to pass through a gauntlet of rock-throwing fascists. One hundred and fifty concertgoers were injured but overall, the day remained a victory for Robeson and the antiracists, showing that determination, organization, and courage could defeat racism even in the face of brutal attacks.

Blacklisted, interrogated for being a communist
In the aftermath, Robeson was blacklisted. Bookings in the U.S. disappeared, and the government revoked his passport in 1950, thus depriving him of the ability to tour abroad. Nevertheless, during this period, he remained politically active, singing and marching to support the Rosenbergs as they were sentenced to death by the U.S. government for fighting against capitalism, speaking at May Day rallies, appearing at benefit concerts for the Labor Youth League and the World Youth Festivals, speaking out against racism and imperialism.

In 1956, he was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), where he was an unrelentingly hostile witness. Throughout this entire period the bourgeois Black misleaders didn't lift a finger to support him. This exposes how Black nationalism is a pro-ruling class idea and a dead end for Black workers.

With the restoration of his passport and the upsurge in the Black civil-rights movement in the late 1950s, Robeson's career saw a mild resurgence. He was able to tour both in the U.S. and abroad until illness overtook him in the mid-1960s. He died on January 23 in 1976.

After his death, the bourgeoisie, both Black and white, engaged in a hypocritical orgy of adulation, naming schools, college centers, and libraries after a man they hated, despised, and feared. All the while hiding and distorting what he really stood for: multiracial unity and a world run by and for working people—a communist world.

A person's life is a process and there was only one Paul Robeson. He was a communist, he belonged to the international working class and the international communist movement. He was a militant supporter of both.