The Guardian 15 March, 2006
Paul Robeson stamp release
In 1997, a year before the 100th anniversary of Paul Robeson’s birth, a campaign was launched in the US for a stamp commemorating his life. It took seven years of campaigning and nearly a quarter of a million signatures from across the USA before the stamp was finally issued. A stamp honouring Paul Robeson had been issued in the former German Democratic Republic in 1983, but never in America.
Doctor Margaret Burroughs founder of Chicago’s DuSable Museum of African-American History and a friend of Robeson, and Veterans for Peace activist LeRoy Wolins were two of the leading forces behind the campaign.
Despite 90,000 signatures in support of the stamp, the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee denied the request for a Paul Robeson postage stamp for 1998.
Mark Rogovin, a leader of the Chicago-based Paul Robeson 100th Birthday Committee, said, "We were never certain that we were going to have a success, but we always felt that whether we got the stamp or not, the campaign would have been worthwhile to do anyway since we introduced so many people — especially young people, at the grade school level, at the high school level, who had never heard of Robeson — to this great man."
"We decided to come up with a very simple petition urging the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee to issue a postage stamp in honour of Paul Robeson", said Rogovin. The petition was widely circulated during the 100th birthday celebrations. The DuSable Museum gathered tens of thousands of signatures as visitors would learn about Robeson and sign the petition.
The 37 cent stamp was issued as part of the US postal services Black Heritage series. Since 1975, each year a stamp has been issued in this series commemorating an outstanding Black American. Those who have previously received this honour include Harriet Tubman (1978), Martin Luther King (1979), Scott Joplin (1983), WEB Du Bois (1992), Malcolm X (1999), Langston Hughes (2002), Thurgood Marshall (2003), Marian Anderson (2005).
The stamp honouring Paul Robeson was unveiled at a special news conference on September 29, 2003, where former New York Mayor David Dinkins said, "we thought this day would never come. For years we got stamps for Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse and no Paul Robeson".
There was another anxious wait until it finally went on sale on January 20, 2004. The stamps are no longer available through the US Postal Service, only through private dealers.
Dinkins praised Robeson as a giant in the struggle for African-American equality and against racist oppression. "We all stand on the shoulders of Paul Robeson", he said.
Jarvis Tyner, executive vice-chair of the Communist Party USA, was at the unveiling. He told People’s Weekly World: "this is a great victory. The US Postal Service could not have honoured a greater American. Now, every school child will be told about Paul Robeson, the great fighter for equality and world peace, the great athlete, singer. He was a genius who gave his heart and soul to the people."
Robeson, he added, "embraced all the advanced ideas of the Communist Party USA, the need for socialist transformation of society, the need for unity of Black, Brown and White. He played an outstanding role in the defeat of McCarthyism."
Tyner was referring to Robeson’s scathing testimony during an appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee, in which he denounced law-makers who were covering up for lynchings and segregation in the South.
The witch-hunters had Robeson on the black list in an attempt to block him from singing in concerts or speaking. They revoked his passport to keep him from travelling abroad.
Fighter against racism
Robeson was born on April 9, 1898, in Princeton (NJ), the youngest of five children. His father was a runaway slave who went on to graduate from Lincoln University, and his mother came from an abolitionist Quaker family. He rose to prominence at a time when segregation was legal in the United States, when black people were lynched by racist mobs.
In 1915, he won a four-year academic scholarship to Rutgers College. Despite violence and racism from teammates, he won 15 varsity letters in sports and was twice named to the All-American football team. It wasn’t until 1995, 19 years after his death, that he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. He received the Phi Beta Kappa key (a special honour based on academic performance) in his junior year and graduated as valedictorian.
He studied law at Columbia Law School (1920-1923) and took a job with a law firm, but left when a White secretary refused to take dictation from him. He then turned to a career of acting and singing.
In 1924, Eugene O’Neill gave him the leading role of Jim in his new play All God’s Chillun Got Wings. O’Neill was highly impressed and shortly thereafter gave Robeson the title role of his play The Emperor Jones. In 1930 Robeson earned international acclaim for his role in Othello on a London stage. He also appeared in other plays including Porgy (1928) and Show Boat (1928), and 11 films, including Body and Soul (1924), Borderline (1929), Show Boat (1936), Song of Freedom (1937), Proud Valley (1939), and Tales of Manhattan (1942).
Robeson’s rendition of "Ol’ Man River" in Show Boat is an all-time classic of music-theatre.
He later changed some of the words of the song from the meek "I’m tired of livin’ and scared of dyin’" to a declaration of resistance, "I must keep fightin’ until I’m dyin’."
Paul Robeson had an amazingly beautiful, deep, bass-baritone voice and his renditions of slavery-era spirituals and songs of the labour and social movements are still widely appreciated. His records became popular all over the world, as he sang for peace and justice in 25 languages and travelled throughout the US, Europe, the Soviet Union, Asia, Africa and Australia.
In 1933, Robeson donated the proceeds of All God’s Chillun to Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler’s Germany. Then in 1938, he travelled to Spain and sang in hospitals and on the front lines to troops of the International Brigades fighting the fascists there.
Champion of the working people
During the 1940s, Robeson continued to perform and speak out against racism, in support of workers, and for peace. He spoke and sang at strike rallies, conferences, and labour festivals worldwide. As a passionate believer in international cooperation he worked tirelessly for friendship between the US and the USSR.
In 1946, he headed the American Crusade Against Lynching, challenging President Truman to support anti-lynching laws.
He was accused by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) of being a Communist Party supporter. While he was indeed an advocate of socialism, he considered HUAC to have opposed the freedom of expression of those who worked for international friendship among nations and peoples.
The accusation nearly ended his career. Sixty of his concerts were cancelled, and in 1949, two inter-racial outdoor concerts in Peekskill (NY) were attacked by racist mobs while state police stood by. Robeson responded, "I’m going to sing wherever the people want me to sing … and I won’t be frightened by crosses burning in Peekskill or anywhere else."
In 1950, the US revoked Robeson’s passport, leading to an eight-year battle to re-secure it and to travel again.
He was the first internationally renowned singer to perform at the Sydney Opera House — in 1960. He climbed onto the scaffolding and sang to the building workers during its construction. While in Australia he sang to thousands of other workers, including on the waterfront.
Among his friends were future African leader Jomo Kenyatta, India’s Nehru, labour historian Dr W E B Du Bois, anarchist Emma Goldman, and writers James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway.
In ill health, Paul Robeson retired from public life in 1963. He died on January 23, 1976, aged 77.
Stamp in honour of socialist
The issue of a stamp in the USA commemorating such a great man, a friend of the former Soviet Union and a socialist is made all the more significant in that it has occurred under the Bush administration.
The whole series in fact is under threat, as it runs against everything the Bush administration stands for.
The Robeson stamp is a black-and-white photo of Robeson with his name printed in scarlet. On the back Robeson is described as "incomparable artist and singer, human rights advocate, scholar and athlete, defender of Black freedom".
And Paul Robeson was all of those things, a model for today’s and tomorrow’s fighters for peace, justice and socialism.