War years brought Paul Robeson to Great Lakes

By Gregory Harutunian For Chronicle Media

 

What Paul Robeson saw, looking out from the stage: a segregated black and white audience. (Courtesy of the U.S. Navy/Mil.)

What Paul Robeson saw, looking out from the stage: a segregated black and white audience. (Courtesy of the U.S. Navy/Mil.)

IN CELEBRATION OF BLACK HISTORY MONTH

 

Paul Robeson was a hugely literate and talented man with an accomplished resume: attorney, athlete, theater and film actor, acclaimed singer with a deep “bass-baritone” voice, writer, linguist, and social activist.

However, his dalliances with leftist politics in support of labor groups, coupled with concerts in the Soviet Union, brought him scorn which effectively haunted his life.

His politics were informed by the racial tolerance and acceptance of African-Americans, and other races, throughout Europe and the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1940s, not evident in the United States. He noted, “The history of the capitalist era is characterized by the degradation of my people … denied equal protection under the law, and deprived of their rightful place in the respect of their fellows.”

“Blacks must understand their heritage as a means of forwarding unity … and real freedom.”

Great Lakes and Paul Robeson

The Great Lakes Naval Training Center, the “Quarterdeck of the Navy,” has a storied history. During the World War II years, it hosted a variety of amateur and professional performers, along with entertainment geared specifically for black servicemen such as Dorothy Donegan, Hazel Scott and Cab Calloway.

Robeson had a somewhat obscure initial encounter with the Navy. The independent Navy Midshipmen football team, based at Great Lakes, regularly played college powerhouses such as Knute Rockne’s Notre Dame squads, and also appeared in the 1919 and 1923 Rose Bowl games. At one point, a young man named George Halas was a team member.

 

During the 1918 season, Navy had traveled to Brooklyn’s Ebbetts Field for a contest with Rutgers College. With five minutes of the game elapsed, they were down two touchdowns, both scored on runs from the Rutgers’ running back … Paul Robeson.

By 1943, Robeson had become a celebrated entertainer and the war years led him to speak at community fundraisers, relief efforts, and bond rallies. That year, on July 16, where his schedule brought him to the Ross Auditorium at Great Lakes, where he looked out from the stage to see a divided audience of military personnel. Segregation was a fact of life, even on a military base.

The Great Lakes Bulletin provided this account: “Paul Robeson, noted baritone, sang for station sailors … after earlier making a tour of the Negro training camps. Mr. Robeson sang arias from Elijah and Boris Gudenov and three English folk songs, two Negro spirituals and a number of encores. He was accompanied at the piano by Lawrence Brown.

“Since arrangements for Mr. Robeson’s appearance here were completed at a late date, it was impossible to publish advance information on the concert.”

Chicago Defender newspaperman Sam Lacy rode with Robeson, from the Great Lakes engagement, back to Chicago, and conducted an interview. Lacy noted, “(It) left the impression that the present world struggle will not offer a solution to the Negro’s problem … nor that they hold a stake in the outcome of the war.”

Robeson’s actual statements were more vitriolic. “I am firmly convinced that today’s war will go a long way toward liquidating the differences that exist between the races, particularly those in this country. I am also aware that America cannot hope to be a great nation … unless she makes up her mind to do the right thing.

“The reason is the manner in which the war is being fought, with so many darker races aligned with the United Nations (it) makes for a more sympathetic understanding between the peoples who … have been at each other’s throats.”

After Great Lakes

That Robeson was a strong individual, unafraid to speak his mind, contributed to his later downward career spiral. After visiting Moscow, “agitator” and “communist sympathizer” were now attached to his name, as the hastening cold war brought government scrutiny, and violence.

In 1949, an angry mob attacked concertgoers halting a Peekskill, N.Y. outdoor recital. A week later, Robeson ringed by a security group of union members in re-staging the program. Newsreel cameras captured the aftermath, when a mob again attacked concertgoers, and New York state troopers idly stood by.

The U.S. State Department revoked his passport in 1949 and domestic concert bookings evaporated, as venue owners found themselves threatened with the prospect of violence. He found creative ways to circumvent the ban including a Trans-Atlantic telephone hook-up to sing for miners gathered in a Wales, England meeting hall.

 

Immigration officials halted his attempt to enter Canada to speak before the United Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers Union in 1952. Union organizers subsequently placed a flatbed truck within a one-foot distance of the international border at Blaine, Wash.’s Peace Arch Park. 40,000 people attended the event to hear Robeson sing, from the makeshift stage.

 

An infamous appearance before Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee in 1956 led to contempt charges, although no action was taken.

 

“I am here because I am opposing the neo-fascist cause which I see arising in these committees,” he said. “I have made it a matter of principle to refuse to comply with any demand that infringes upon the constitutional rights of all Americans.”

 

Robeson’s 60th birthday present was a restored passport from the U.S. Supreme Court, in 1958. Already past his prime, he moved to Europe where a revived career was diminished through failing health. He returned to the United States in 1963 and retired from public life, spending his remaining years in a small Philadelphia apartment, with his sister, in a declining state of physical and mental health suffering from arteriosclerosis and depression.

 

The 1973 “Salute to Paul Robeson,” marking his 75th birthday was held at Carnegie Hall. Though unable to attend, it lit a spark in sending the following message: “ … I want you to know that I am the same Paul, dedicated as ever to the worldwide cause of humanity for freedom, peace, and brotherhood … my heart is with the continuing struggle of my own people to achieve complete liberation from racist domination.

 

“And to gain for all black Americans and other minority groups, not only equal rights, but an equal share,” he said. “I salute the colonial liberation movements of Africa, Latin America, and Asia, which have gained new inspiration and understanding from the heroic example of the Vietnamese people, who once again turned back an imperialist aggressor.”

 

Robeson was seldom quiet on his views, until passing away in 1976.

 

 

 

— War years brought Paul Robeson to Great Lakes —