It is 75 years to the day since Paul Robeson sang at the Davis Theatre in front of an audience of 3,000, including several secret service ‘spooks’.
JERRY FITZPATRICK takes up the story of the Black American activist and his secret affair with Croydon’s ‘national treasure’
Socialist singer: the 1941 photographic portrait of Paul Robeson by Yousuf Karsh
Paul Robeson’s 1949 four-month tour of Britain was a triumphant one. Twice he packed out the Albert Hall. He performed before 10,000 at the Harringay Arena. He hob-nobbed with socialists in exile from Britain’s African colonies and left-wing Labour MPs.
Croydon’s wonderful Davis Theatre was on his itinerary. It was the largest cinema and theatre in England when it opened in 1928, with a capacity of more than 4,000 (Davis House on the High Street occupies its site today, after the theatre was demolished in 1959. The site is now being flogged off by the council to provide yet more high-rise flats).
So it was that on March 4 1949, Robeson came to our town to sing. He was the best-known and most-celebrated African-American of the day. The venue was sold out. And why were the spooks there, the secret service agents who followed him throughout his tour, as now-released MI5 files show?
Robeson was a man of great academic ability who spoke many languages. A superlative American footballer. A great actor, on stage and screen. The possessor of a rich and resonant bass-baritone voice which was one of the 20th century’s greatest treasures.
But he was also a highly controversial figure, a dedicated socialist whose activism was inspirational to so many workers and peoples in struggle across the world that, in 1949 with the Cold War at its height, he was considered a grave threat to America and the west.
‘To fall in love with what she feared to look on!’: Robeson on stage with Peggy Ashcroft in 1930. Off-stage they became lovers
Born in New Jersey in 1898, the grandson of an escaped slave and the son of a preacher, Robeson was an academic prodigy. At that time in America, working class students, and particularly those of colour, had almost no chance of going to university.
So in 1915 when Robeson won a scholarship to Rutgers University, he was the only black student. He faced down racist bigotry and bullying. He excelled both in the classroom and on the sports field. His oratory in the debating chamber was awesome. When the United States joined the World War, the young Robeson attacked a political system which could permit black Americans to die for their country while subjecting them to the grossest discrimination in life.
Aspiring to a legal career, Robeson graduated from Columbia Law School in 1923. Despairing of the institutionalised racism which characterised the legal profession, and already well-known for his acting and singing skills, he embarked on a career in the performing arts.
A meteoric rise to fame followed which in 1928 saw him cast in the role of Joe in the London production of Kern and Hammerstein’s Show Boat, a role he reprised in the 1936 film. Robeson became indelibly linked with the show-stopper song Ol’ Man River. The original Hammerstein lyric created a negative racial stereotype, including the use of the N word. For his concert performances, Robeson rewrote the words so that the character has an affirmative persona, and these are the words we are most likely to hear today.
In 1930, Robeson was cast as Othello in a production at the Savoy Theatre in London. Today it seems an obvious choice. After all, Shakespeare’s Moor of Venice is black, and his precarious social and public position is central to the play.
In 1930, the casting was sensational. Robeson was only the second person of colour ever to play the role. His one predecessor had been Ira Aldridge in 1825, whose performance was generally viewed through a racist distorting lens.
Playing Desdemona to Robeson’s Othello was a young Croydon actress, Peggy Ashcroft. Ashcroft and Robeson were to have a secret relationship for more than a year.
Both were married. But that was not the only reason the relationship remained secret. Inter-racial relationships would have utterly scandalised Britain and America at that time. In America, 30 out of 48 states enforced laws against inter-racial sex. In some states a black man might be lynched for it.
Public opinion was only a little less illiberal in Britain. But Ashcroft said of Robeson: “How could one not fall in love in such a situation with such a man?”
His interest in cultural history developed. In a 1934 essay, Robeson wrote: “In my music, my plays, my films, I want to carry always this central idea: to be African.”
Robeson now learned Swahili and learned songs in 20 other languages so that he could perform them in the language of the culture in which they had been written. He became reluctant to sing the classical repertoire, preferring what he called “the eternal music of common humanity”, most notably African American spirituals.
But even with his talent, Robeson was marginalised because of his race. Almost none of the films in which he appeared were worthy of his abilities. He esteemed only one: The Proud Valley, in which he plays an American seaman who comes to live in a Welsh mining community.
Man of the people: Robeson met with exiled African leaders in London in 1949
The grinding poverty he saw in the Depression era and the rise of the far-right threat further politicised Robeson. Domiciled in Britain during this period, he marched with unemployed miners and gave his concert fees to provide support for destitute working families.
He saw Fascism at first-hand in Berlin and abhorred it. He met Stalin in Moscow, and spoke positively about Soviet communism. From then, he was firmly on the radar of the FBI.
In 1937, Robeson co-founded the Council of African Affairs and played an active role as chair. Its main objective was anti-colonialist and to support struggles for national liberation. In 1944, it drafted a programme for Africa’s postwar liberation and advancement. The movement involved or influenced many who were to were to become political leaders of post-colonial Africa.
Robeson had moved back to America in 1940. In 1946, he had sufficient political clout to be granted a face-to-face meeting with President Harry Truman. After the notorious Moore’s Ford lynchings of four African Americans in Georgia that July, Robeson warned the President that if he did not enact legislation to end lynching, “the Negroes will defend themselves”. Truman immediately terminated the meeting and stated that the time was not right to propose such a measure. Robeson publicly called upon all Americans to demand that Congress pass civil rights legislation, and he founded the American Crusade Against Lynching organisation.
Immediately before Robeson’s 1949 British tour, the FBI had caused promoters to cancel all 86 engagements on his American tour. Upon Robeson’s return to Britain, he issued the following statement: “I’ll go back to their cities to sing for the people whom I love, for the Negro and white workers whose freedom will ensure my freedom. I’ll help, together with many other progressive artists, whenever I can get the time from freedom’s struggle, to show how culture can be brought back to the people.
“We created it in the first place, and it’s about time it came back to us.”
Robeson detested the commodification of culture.
He often performed free to show solidarity with strikers. When a performance was sold out, he would come out on the street before the start to sing for those who had been unable to get a ticket. A friend recalled to me that after a concert on his 1960 British tour, Robeson went back to an activist’s house in Greenwich, sat down on the carpet and sang Deep River to her group of Young Socialists, a truly inspiring moment.
Spies like us: some of the spy files kept by MI5 on Robeson, that have only recently been released by the National Archive
In 1950, the US government withdrew Robeson’s passport. When Robeson met with State Department officials and asked why he had been denied a passport, he was told that “his frequent criticism of the treatment of blacks in the United States should not be aired in foreign countries”. In current terminology, he had been cancelled at home. And now he could not perform abroad either.
He did not back down from his ideological convictions. At the peak of the McCarthyism witch-hunts, in 1956 Robeson appeared before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, where he was asked why he didn’t go to live in Russia.
He gave a memorable response: “Because my father was a slave, and my people died here to build this country, and I am going to stay here and have a part of it just like you. And no Fascist-minded people will drive me from it.”
Using a new transatlantic telephone cable connection, in 1957 he was able to sing to 1,000 people at St Pancras Town Hall (tickets sold out within an hour) and later that year to 5,000 people gathered at the Welsh Miners’ Eisteddfod.
Robeson got his passport back in 1958 after a Supreme Court hearing which ruled 5-4 in his favour. His 1960 tour of Britain was to be his last. By now he was 62, and his physical and mental health had been broken by the stresses of the previous decade. Many in the burgeoning civil rights movement wanted his participation, and of course he endorsed and welcomed their work. But the price was that he should disavow his previous support for the Soviet Union, and that he would not do.
Film star: Robeson rarely got the roles his talents deserved
He lived his last years in seclusion, dying in 1975. His body lay in state in Harlem. Among his pall-bearers was the singer and actor, Harry Belafonte, like Robeson a lifelong socialist and internationalist.
That he not only admired Stalin but continued to be an apologist for Stalinism even after the tyrant’s crimes had been fully exposed seriously besmirches Robeson’s legacy. Many on the political left made the same error. Their opposition to Fascism, colonialism and the inequalities of power and wealth in capitalist society led them to idealise a monstrous regime. But it is much easier for us to pass judgement looking back.
Robeson used his exceptional talents with immense generosity and humanity.
His great voice was a weapon which gave confidence to those struggling for justice. He was as loved and admired by those in the same proportion as he was feared and hated by the political establishment.
Pygmy politicians and shallow celebrities come and go. You may revere or detest Robeson, but he was one who etched a deep mark.
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Great, great story about an icon. But are you implying that Robeson only hob-nobbed with left-wing MPs? He may have been a proud socialist but my impression is that many MPs wanted to meet him – he was a star after all.
In the full photo, you can just see Tom Driberg. Whether he was left-wing, right-footed or whatever was a matter of contention back in the day.
Palace need a good right-footed left wing. Pity Tom is no longer with us.
Super article!
If you think the likes of Ian Fleming or any of the Cambridge Five lived exciting lives think again! In an article published last week it was revealed that the spy Bill Fairclough (MI6 codename JJ aka Edward Burlington) who was unceremoniously refused an Oxford University scholarship survived 50+ known near death experiences including over two dozen “attempted murders for want of a better expression”.
You can find the article dated 7 August 2023 in the News Section of TheBurlingtonFiles website (which is refreshingly advert free). The reason he survived may well have been down to his being protected by Pemberton’s People in MI6 as explained in another fascinating article dated 31 October 2022. It was for real. It is mind-boggling as is that website which is as beguiling as an espionage museum in its own right. No wonder Bill Fairclough’s first novel Beyond Enkription is mandatory reading in some countries’ espionage or intelligence induction programs.
Who said anything about exciting? This was Slow Horses work: note what he said, who he met, where he went.
Detailed observations. In our “free” society.
Ira Aldridge was the first black actor to play Othello, and I belive Robeson was the second but I may be wrong. Ira’s daughter Amanda was Robeson’s vocal coach, she had performed works of Samuel Coleridge Taylor at the Crystal Palace in her youth and later presented the gold earrings worn by her father as Othello to Robeson when he took on the role. Ira and Amanda lived at 5 Hamlet Road, SE19. Ira is honoured with a plaque at Shakespeare’s memorial theatre in Stratford Upon Avon, and a blue plaque on the house in Hamlet Road. He died in Poland on tour when Amanda was still an infant. Amanda is buried at Streatham Park cemetery.
Thank you Rockman. The Aldridges were an amazing family. The lives of father and daughter spanned 149 years of enormous social and political change.