Paul Robeson 1898-1976

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"That 1

the rock

on which I stand’

~ Excerpts from a tribute to Paul Robe- Son, by Robert Kenny, to the Central Committee Meeting of the Communist Party of Canada, January 24, 25, 1976.

We have lost recently one. of the great figures of the international work- Ing class movement in the person of Paul Robeson. I want to briefly sketch for yOu today some of the salient facts

Mm his career. In dealing with Paul Robeson, we are dealing with a pro-

foundly integrated person.

Robeson had a profound rejection of € racism of the United States which Be felt most deeply and ‘fought passion- } ately all his life. He also believed that } Music should be refreshed by bringing } into it the songs of the people. He reached into the heritage of his own People and took the spirituals of the

ack community and he gave them a New content .. .

He felt deeply committed to social action. The Great Depression of 1929 “nlivened his political sensibilities. ‘en the struggle broke out in Spain ¢ visited the battalions of the Interna- ‘onal Brigade and sang for them .. .

He regarded the event that took | Place in October 1917 in the Soviet J Union as unquestionably the most.deci- | Sive experience in the history-of Man. He believed the October Revolution } Was a great objective fact in the social | “story of man and throughout his career ) Was deeply and profoundly attached to the Soviet people. Paul Robeson did not Teject his native land — the. United ) States of America. He did not simply / €mbrace the Soviet Union as another » hation-state. He embraced it isa new | ©Ommunity with a new set of ideas. | to uring the war, many people listened ° What he had to say about the Soviet ) ¥Mon with great attention. In 1943, : fe received a Doctorate in Humane } (Stters from Morehouse University. In din address, the president said: “Your |} ~ "sing is a declaration of faith .. .

You are truly the people’s artist. In ‘Yur search for freedom, you experi- Bo a common bond between the suf- | “Ing and oppressed of the world —

that folk music is universal and that people are much alike everywhere . . = When the Un-American Committee was established Paul Robeson was challenged by them and brought be- fore them. There is no man who fought more passionately, fought more ardent- ly, with greater singleness of mind than Paul Robeson. We in Canada are deeply attached to the memory that he left.

The meeting then heard a recorded speech by Paul Robeson in 1953 at the Peace Arch between British Columbia and Washington when Robeson, banned from travelling abroad, his passport lifted, was invited by the Mine Mill and Smelter Workers union to a tremen- dous concert on the Canada-U.S. border, Paul said:

I want to thank you for your very great kindness in coming here today. It means much to us in America, much to Americans struggling for peace in the Nortwest.

Some of the finest people in the world, under pressure today, are facing jail, facing hostile courts, for a ‘simple fact of struggling for peace, struggling for a decent America where all of us who helped build that land can live in decency and in goodwill.

As for myself, as I said last year, I remain the same Paul that you have known throughout these many years. The same Pauli, but time has made it so that everyone, I included, fight harder today to preserve the basic liberties guaranteed to us Americans by our Constitution.. If. this were not so, I would be with you in Vancouver. -I ‘would be travelling all over the Canada that I cherish so deeply .. .

I remember speaking to the British actor’s association years -ago when some were asking whether or not ‘we are workers, and I told them: we who labor in the arts, we who are singers, we who are actors, we who are artists, must remember that we come from the people! P

In America today it’s very difficult to

get a theatre or a hall to sing in. In the’

cities today, the wrath of all the pow-

“would keep mankind

ers-that-be descends on one poor minister who wants to give me his church; or descends upon the people who rent the hall. They are told by all the forces in America — the strongest business forces, that the banks will no longer honor their mortgages — every- thing, to keep just one person from appearing in concert.

I know what it means. They don’t want to hear people speak for peace. And today we fight in America, on the eve of the truce in Korea, for the.am- nesty of those leaders so they can come back and lead the people! : ~ So I can’t act or sing in my ‘own country. The British actors, however, have invited me-to return to play Othello. And at the end of their invita- tion was a very important phrase: ““We would welcome him to this land. . .”

At the same time I have received an invitation that couldn’t mean more to

_me. It was from the miners in Wales.

Wales is where I first understood the struggle of whites and Negroes to- gether. I went down into the coal mines of the Rhonda Valley, went down into the mines with the workers, lived among them, later did a picture, as you know, called Proud Valley — and. I became so close that in Wales today, as I feel here, they feel me a part of that land.

So it’s important that we are gather- ed here today. Not-only myself, but so many others — artists, scientists, trade union leaders — are prevented from leaving this country to attend peace meetings, scientific gatherings all over the earth. You must understand that they will hear about this today.

And why did they take my passport? They said that, no matter what my political beliefs, what my standing may be among my own people in America, that for’many years out of my own lips, I have been struggling for the independence of the colonial peoples of Africa! And that is “meddling in the foreign affairs of the United States.” Now that’s just too bad because I’m going to have to continue to meddle!

But I say to you: I’m proud of the America in which I was born. My father was a slave raised in North Carolina. I have many friends all over the earth, and rightly so! Other Americans can chose their Francos if they want to. Other Americans can chose the refuse of nazi fascism. They can wander around the earth picking those who

slavery.

I choose to stretch out my hand across the oceans to brave peoples of many lands. — across the border to Latin America to Neruda in Chile, to the brave people of Cuba and Mexico, across the oceans to the lands of Asia — and I stretch my hands to the people

in perpetual -

of the new China as they build a new life for 500 million people.

And.I say as an American, as Jeffer- son in his time stretched his hands across to the heroes of the French Re- volution of 1789, I stretch my hands across the continents to shake the hand of the Soviet people and to the new People’s Democracies! That is my right as an American!

I speak as one whose roots are in the soil of my land. I speak as one whose fathers and mothers toiled in cotton, toiled in tobacco, toiled in indigo—toiled to help create the wealth upon which the great land of the United States. was built. The great primary wealth came from the blood and from the suffering of my forefathers.

And I say, as I have said many times, that I have a right to speak out — on their blood, on what they contributed to that land — and what I have contri- buted to that land as best I can!

But I say right here, that because of their struggle, I will go around the world, but I’m telling you now that a good piece of that American earth belongs to me and to my children and to my grandchildren! There’s a lot of America that belongs to me and to my people. And we have struggled too long to ever give it up.

My people are determined in Ame- rica to be not second class citizens — to be full citizens to be first class citizens. And that is the rock upon which I stand.

From that rock I reach out across the world to my forefathers in Africa, to Canada, all around the world. Be- cause I know there is one humanity, that there is no basic difference of race or color, no basic difference of culture, but that all human beings can live in friendship and in peace.

I know it from experience. I have seen the people, I have learned their languages, I sing their songs and I go about America and wherever.I may go speaking of simple things — it seems so simple — that all people should live in full human dignity and in friendship.

But somewhere the enemy has al- ways been around to try and push back the great mass of the people. We know that. But I said long ago that I. was going to give up my life, to spend my day-to-day struggle among the masses - of* the people, in this park, on the picket lines, wherever I could help the people’s struggle. I shall never apolo- gize for that. I shall continue to fight as I see the truth.

And I tell you here that I shall con- tinue the fight for peace no matter how difficult. And I want everyone within range of my voice to hear, official or otherwise, that there is no force on earth that’ will make me go backward one-thousandth part of one little inch!

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JANUARY 30, 1976—Page 9

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