—By NAT LOW

\ Coie isithe story of an angry

man. *:

No. it didn’t start with the
fascist mob attack at Peeks-
kill, New York, although that
would have been reason enough.

It started when a child was
born with a dark skin and be-
Cause of this skin was treated
ag sub-human, And in the
United States, that ‘land of the
free and home of the brave,”
this man never was free. nor
did he ever feel at home,

It is upon this fact that Paul
Robeson’s monumental anger
feeds—-an anger shared by 15
Million of his brother and sister
Negroes in the United States
who have known and suffered
the hideous lash of ‘‘white sup-
remacy” oppressjon.

In order to fully understand
the angry man of today it is
necessary to go into the past,

because the story begins a long, -

long time ago.
©

It is the historic year of 1860
and a tall, gaunt man named
Abraham Lincoln has been elect-
ed president of the United
States.

A 15 year old slave, whose
father had been brought from
Africa in chains, has just es-
caped from a plantation in Mar-
tin Gounty, North Carolina. He
has taken upon himself the name
of his former master, William
Drew Robeson, and now begins
the grim, terrible trek to the
North with the aid of the Un-
derground Railroad.

After long, bitter weeks of

travel by night, he arrives in
Pennsylvania, where he sets to
work on a farm. In subsequent
years: he returns to his former
plantation three times, on each

Occasion defying immediate
death, to bring his deeply be-
loved mother money he _ has

earned as a freedman. Bach
time he again escapes via the
Underground Railroad,

The years pass swiftly and
this once-illiterate ex-slave en-
ters, and graduates from, Lin-
coln University near Philadel-
phia. Now the boy has grown
into a  powerfully-built man
with an awe;rinspiring voice and
a dream of.freedom for all. his
people. A deeply religigus man.

che turns to God for, direction, .

and toward the end of the 19th,
century he becomes minister
of Witherspoon Presbyterian
Church, which still stands today
in princeton, New Jersey.

This man is the father
Paul Robeson,

The genesis of Paul Robeson
does not end here. On the ma-
ternal side it winds back through
almost all of U.S. history.

General George Washington’s
embattled army at Valley Forge
is huddled around small camp-
fires in the. unrelenting cold.
Men are hungry and weary and
tense. for “these are the times
that try men’s souls.” But then,
from out of the darkness, comes
a cheerful, friendly voice: “Come
and get it, boys.” They gather
around a Negro baker who
hands them hot bread, impart-
ing gracious words of hope and
cheer to the ‘‘Winter Soldiers.”

This man, Cyrus Bustill, was
born a slave in New Jersey but
had been allowed to purchase his
freedom and had been taught
the baker’s trade. Later, learn-
ing to read and write on his

of

tes

own, he became one of the lead-
ers of the Negro people in the
North, and in 1737 helped found
the ‘Free Africa Society,” the
first beneficial society organized
by Negro people in the U.S.
Cyrus Bustill, who traced his
ancestry directly to a powertul
Indian tribe, was a man of great
intellect and leadership ability,
and is mentioned by name im
the Autobiography of Benjamin
Franklin, From this man came
many. generations of highly cul-
tured scholars and school teach-
one of whom was a great
named Maria
Louisa Bustill, porn in Phila-
delphia on November 8, 1853.

This woman is the mother of
Pau] Robeson.

ers,
granddaughter

In the year 1878, William
Drew. Robeson married Maria

Louisa Bustill in philadelphia.
Louisa Robeson pore her hus-
band: eight children, the last
coming. in Princeton, N.J., on
April 9, 1898, when ‘she was 45
and her husband 5b years of age.

The child was a boy and was
named Paul Robeson.

This, then, iS how he came.-to

be.

‘phe child Robeson was a well-

~ adjusted, happy youngster who

immediately pecame the favorite
of the family and of his father’s
eongregation, He romped along
the streets of Princeton, his long
legs eating up the yards, while
his father preathed the gospel
of human protherhood.

The elder Robeson poured all
pis great love into this younger
child, and there grew up be-
tween father and son a union
and common understanding
which lasted to the very
day of the elder Robeson’s
death in 1918, This affinity
became even greater follow-
ing the. sudden, tragic death
of Paul’s mother, who burned
to death in 1904 when, sickly
and almost blind, she packed in-
to a stove and her clothes caught

fire.

SRS

Paul Robeson was hailed by Broadway critics as
‘Othello of the twentieth century.”

most interested

“the greatest

4

“My father had the greatest
speaking voice I have ever
heard,’ Robeson says today.
“Tt was a deep, sonorous basso,
so melodic and refined as to
take the breath away. When I
was only four he was already
preparing me for public speak-
ing. It was he who instilled in
me the desire to seek the truth,
to search and fight for human
equality and freedom. It is to
this wonderful man that I owe
almost everything.”

It didn’t take long for the
young Robeson to establish him-
self aS a scholar, but his dad
was a’ stickler and would take
nothing but the best. Thus,
one day when Paul came home
from. school with a report card
showing seven A’s and one B,
his father asked severely. “Son,
what’s. that B doing here?”

It was sports, though, that
Robeson at the
time. , The gangling boy now
stood well over six feet and
weighed close to 200 pounds.
He was swift, strong and agile,
and his high school athletic and
scholastic record was such that
he received a scholarship to
Rutgers University in 1915, be-
coming the third Negro ever to
enter the school,

His first great fame Was ach-
ieved here __ put with it also
came his first great anger. When
he tried out for the football
team, the first Negro ever to do
so, this is what happened: he
suffered a dislocated shoulder,
a broken nose, bruises and welts
all over. his body, and had all
the fingernails ripped off his
right hand. * :

‘All this, mind you,
practice session. Dismayed by
this initial head-on collision
with the ugliness and horror of
jimcrow, his first reaction was
a’ desire to quit school. But his
ever-understanding father urg-
ed him to fight it out.

Robeson did. And when he
tried out for the team again,
he got more of the-same treat-

in one

ment. This was about all the
17. year-old freshman could
stand. “I saw red,” he -says,

“ond broke through the line
heading for the first man I saw.
I lifted him above my head and
was about to crash him to pieces
upon the ground when through
the fog of my anger I heard the
voice of my coach, a fair and
good man, erying, ‘Robey,
Robey. stop, stop, you’re on the
varsity.’ Q I managed to
come to and suddenly realized
that I had been .accepted, that
J was one of the team. I never
forgot that incident because it
taught me that you can’t beat
jimcrow by running away from
it — only by standing your
gorund and fighting back. I’ve
been trying to do that all my
life since.”

From there he went on to
nationwide fame, and to this
very day his athletic feats re-
main unequalled. He was @ 12-
letter man (one of the handful
in U.S. collegiate history) win-
ning 4 Rs in football, 3 in base-
ball, 3 in basketball] and 2 in
track. In 1918 he became the
first Negro ever to be named to
Walter Camp’s famed ATl-Am-
erican football team, Camp de-
claring, ‘“‘There never was a
more serviceable end, both on
attack end defense, than Robe-
son, the 200 pound giant of
Rutgers.” His feats on the
gridiron are ‘legendary and to
this very day I meet athletes
and coaches who still speak of
him with awe. ,

Busy as he was with sports,
Robeson: did not neglect his
studies. He was captain of the
debating team, was elected to
Phi Beta Kappa, Was valedic-
torian of his graduating class,
and received among the high-
est grades ever recorded by a
Rutgers student.

He was the idol of the cam-
pus and was known throughout
the nation as the famed ‘“‘Robey
of Rutgers.” Of him, the direc-
tor of athletics at the university
writes: ‘‘Paul Robeson is regard-

ed as the greatest living ies

America football player. In the
opinion of most people, he, of
all All-Americans, has gdined
the greatest and most merited
‘fame since his graduation.”
e

Strangely enough,
never sang’ while in college. . It

Robeson —

wasn’t until years later that he |

discovered he possessed a voice
destined to thrill millions of peo-
ple on three continents.

Upon graduation from Rut-
gers, Robeson entered Columbia
Law School, where he became
a brilliant student. It was here.
incidentally, that he met and
married Eslanda Cardoza Goode,
There followed a brief career
as a lawyer which ended
when Robeson’ realized he
would be jimecrowed as a mem-
ber of the bar, limited only to
trivial cases in Harlem. :

At this important junction in
his life, Robeson turned to the
theatre, and it was a logical
choice. Possessing a wonderful
speaking voice, tramendous emo-
tional intensity and an impell-
ing personality, Robeson joined
New York’s Provincetown Play-
ers and became an immediate
star. He appeared in All God’s
Chillen Got Wings and a revival
of Emperor Jones, both smash

PACIFIC TRIBU

hits. ‘But after @ while the
limited supply of vehicles for
a Negro actor was used up and
Robeson again had to seek a new
field of expression.

It was then that he discover-
ed he could sing. This came ™
1925, when he was 27 years oid.
True, he had sung for gmat in
formal gatherings of friends,
but never on @ eoncert stage.
He‘ had never dreamed of be-
coming a singer. For one thing,
he couldn’t even read music, and
then again he didn’t have a clas-
sical repertoire.

But he did know hundreds of
Negro folk songs and spirituats
and blues and, as it later turned
out, that was more than enough.
His first public concert took
place on 8th Street in New
York’s Greenwich Village 08
Apri] 19, 1925. It was a tre-
mendous success and thus was
launched one of the most ¥€-

markable careers in the history .
of the concert stage.

It: was through the folk song
and the Negro spiritual that
Robeson first began to develop
a social consciousness. The songs
stirred deep feelings within him,
making him prouder still of his
Negro heritage, of the struggles
of his people. .The folk sQng
became, to him, a message .of
solidarity for all people. It. be-
came a weapon he brandishea
ag a means of bringing people
together, of fighting inequatity
and reaction, ¢ i.

Suecess followed success in
his concert career. and in the
late twenties he made the first
of many trips to Britain. a

He broke all records at
London’s historic Albert Han
and was hailed wherever he wert
in Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
He not only sang, but algo play-
ed his first Othello in London,
to the accompaniment of eritical
reviews which ran out of super-
latives in their first paragraphs.
&

There come a time in life for
many people when they stop to
take stock not only of them-
selves, but of the world around
them and their relationship tp
it.

That time came fer Robeson
in the years of the terrible world-
wide depression. Standing at
the very pinnacle of his fame
and renown, Robeson, neverthe-
less, was restless, Hunger and
despair were strangling the
“tree enterprise” world, and in
his own country he could not
walk the streets with dignity
and self-respect. Despite his
fame and greatness, his skio
was still black, and in the U $.
that meant coming into daily
contact with the vile system of
“white supremacy.”

But if it was bad for his, it
was worse for the plain, ordin-
ary Negro men and women who
were suffering the brunt of ttie
anguish and misery of hunger
ang unemployment and lyneh
terror. :

‘He sought after the reasons,
but made little progress. _
‘Then, one day in London’ in
1934, he spent the afternoon
with his dear friend Hewlitt

Johnson, the Dean of Canter

bury. The Dean told him of the
wondrous. experiment taking
place in the vast land known
as the Soviet Union, saying,
“There is nothing more fundg-
mental about Christianity han
the one brotherhood of man. AU

that I hear about Russia gr DS

and inspires me. It is majestic

in range. practical in detail,
scientific in form, Christian in

spirit. Russia would seem to
have embarked on a task never

yet attempted by any modern |
It is a plan

or ancient state.
well worth studying.”

Six days later Paul Robesor

was in the Soviet Union!
“How can I describe my feel

ings,’ he says, ‘upon entering |

Concluded on page ii

NE — MAY 16, 1952 — PAGE Pt

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