Paul Robeson: Giving Back Stature Stolen in Red Scare
It was long ago, the end of summer in 1949. She was 13. But for Joan Landzberg, the memories will never go away.
Not that Aug. 27, when a scheduled concert by the singer Paul Robeson was canceled after a terrifying attack by dozens of men swinging clubs and folding chairs, making bonfires out of sheet music. Not the night of Sept. 4, when she left the rescheduled concert lying flat on the bed of a pickup, other frightened children lying on top of her, as mobs threw bricks and rocks. These events became infamous as the Peekskill Riots.
It was long ago, so long that community and religious groups in town caused nary a stir when they put together plans for a concert to be held Friday, 60 years later. The impetus for the concert, which includes jazz greats like Randy Weston and Roy Haynes and others, was not to remember the riots (which people remind you didn’t happen in Peekskill but nearby in the town of Cortlandt) but to celebrate Mr. Robeson’s life...
... Mr. Robeson’s story is out there, not forgotten but dimly remembered, particularly by the young. Born in 1898, the son of a slave who became a minister, he was the third black student admitted to Rutgers University. He became the dominant college football player of his time, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, was class valedictorian and earned a law degree from Columbia University.
He almost single-handedly legitimized black spirituals and folk music as an art form and became perhaps the world’s most famous concert singer as well as a renowned actor. His performance in “Othello,” on Broadway in 1943, was one of the most celebrated of his time. He was befriended by Jawaharlal Nehru, Noel Coward, Sergei Eisenstein, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and Emma Goldman.
\He became a pioneering and uncompromising human rights advocate. He spoke out against segregation decades before the civil rights movement began, and was a fierce opponent of colonialism when that was barely an issue.
He also became an enthusiastic, unflagging admirer of the Soviet Union, something he never renounced or backed away from, even in the face of Stalin’s atrocities. He embraced socialism, not capitalism, as the future. He was blacklisted, had his passport revoked, and, in many ways, was written out of the history books. It was those ties, no doubt exacerbated by his race, that brought on the mobs and soon the cancellations of dozens of concerts elsewhere and the destruction of his career...
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Not that Aug. 27, when a scheduled concert by the singer Paul Robeson was canceled after a terrifying attack by dozens of men swinging clubs and folding chairs, making bonfires out of sheet music. Not the night of Sept. 4, when she left the rescheduled concert lying flat on the bed of a pickup, other frightened children lying on top of her, as mobs threw bricks and rocks. These events became infamous as the Peekskill Riots.
It was long ago, so long that community and religious groups in town caused nary a stir when they put together plans for a concert to be held Friday, 60 years later. The impetus for the concert, which includes jazz greats like Randy Weston and Roy Haynes and others, was not to remember the riots (which people remind you didn’t happen in Peekskill but nearby in the town of Cortlandt) but to celebrate Mr. Robeson’s life...
... Mr. Robeson’s story is out there, not forgotten but dimly remembered, particularly by the young. Born in 1898, the son of a slave who became a minister, he was the third black student admitted to Rutgers University. He became the dominant college football player of his time, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, was class valedictorian and earned a law degree from Columbia University.
He almost single-handedly legitimized black spirituals and folk music as an art form and became perhaps the world’s most famous concert singer as well as a renowned actor. His performance in “Othello,” on Broadway in 1943, was one of the most celebrated of his time. He was befriended by Jawaharlal Nehru, Noel Coward, Sergei Eisenstein, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and Emma Goldman.
\He became a pioneering and uncompromising human rights advocate. He spoke out against segregation decades before the civil rights movement began, and was a fierce opponent of colonialism when that was barely an issue.
He also became an enthusiastic, unflagging admirer of the Soviet Union, something he never renounced or backed away from, even in the face of Stalin’s atrocities. He embraced socialism, not capitalism, as the future. He was blacklisted, had his passport revoked, and, in many ways, was written out of the history books. It was those ties, no doubt exacerbated by his race, that brought on the mobs and soon the cancellations of dozens of concerts elsewhere and the destruction of his career...