Paul Robeson finally getting his due

PRINCETON BOROUGH - When the U.S. Postal Service launched its "Black Heritage Series" of stamps in 1978 to recognize prominent black people, Paul Robeson Jr. was certain his famous father was bound to make the list.

Now, 27 years after the elder Robeson died, the Postal Service will launch a stamp tomorrow in his honor during a ceremony at Princeton University.

It's a tribute Robeson admirers say is both well-deserved and long overdue for the trailblazing and sometimes controversial man, whose birthplace and boyhood home at 110 Witherspoon St. is just a few blocks from the university.

"He was really a forerunner of Martin Luther King's activities," said Anthony Secondo, president of the historical society in Enfield, Conn., where Robeson lived in the 1940s and early 1950s.

"He was extremely talented," said Secondo, adding that he used to deliver the newspaper to the Robesons when they lived in Enfield. "As far as people of his ethnic background, he was tops, really."

Robeson, an All-American football player who graduated from Rutgers College and Columbia Law School, subsequently gained international renown as a singer and actor during the 1920s.

The youngest of five children born to a minister who escaped slavery at age 15, Robeson parlayed his stage and screen fame into social activism, championing racial equality and workers' rights.

But his outspoken political beliefs, association with the Communist Party and admiration for the Soviet Union drew scorn from the U.S. government.

As a result, Robeson was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955, was blacklisted on Broadway and had his passport revoked for eight years at the height of the anti-Communist McCarthy Era.

"You were either an anti-Communist and denounced them or you were branded as a Communist. There was no other choice, period," Robeson Jr. said. "He rejected that in principle. Therefore, he paid the price."

He speculates that his father's Communist sympathies even figured in the Postal Service's decision to scuttle a proposal to issue a Paul Robeson stamp in 1998, which would have coincided with the centennial anniversary of the elder Robeson's birth.

"The centennial was sort of his official beginning of his return to the mainstream," Robeson Jr. said in a telephone interview from his New York City home last week. "I think the stamp represents a recognition of that.

"The idea (for a Paul Robeson stamp) has been out there since the Black Heritage Series began," he said.

"If you named 10 black historical figures from the beginning of the Republic, my father would have had to be one of them," he said. "I've always felt that it was an inevitable occurrence since they began the series."

Still, Robeson Jr. was hard-pressed to criticize the Postal Service for waiting until this year to issue the stamp, which will be the 27th in the Black Heritage Series.

Postal Service spokeswoman Frances Frazier said she doesn't know why the Robeson stamp wasn't issued sooner than this year but noted the Postal Service receives thousands of stamp proposals annually.

"Most stamps take three or four years before they materialize because we have so many proposals," Frazier said.

"It would have been nice for it to happen (in 1998 or sooner) but I think it just has taken this amount of time for the process to play itself out," Robeson Jr. said.

"The timing has been excellent because the U.S. Postal Service has done, to my mind, a magnificent job with this stamp - its design, the process surrounding its release," Robeson Jr. said.

The stamp, designed by Richard Sheaff of Scottsdale, Ariz., is a detail of a photograph of Robeson taken around 1943 by an unknown photographer.

An inscription by Robeson in the lower left corner of the print suggests Montreal-based photographers Annette and Basil Zarov took the original shot, according to the Postal Service.

"I am very gratified," Robeson Jr. said. "To say the least, the family and I are very pleased."

Donald Moore, who has a framed photo of Paul Robeson hanging from a wall in his West Windsor home, said he, too, is gratified the stamp will be a reality tomorrow.

Moore said he and the Robeson family have been close since Robeson was a boy, when Moore's late aunt, Christine Moore Howell, and Robeson struck up a childhood friendship in Princeton.

The families grew so close that Moore remembers regular dinners and weekend visits by Robeson to his aunt's New Brunswick house where Donald Moore grew up under her care, he said.

"He was so down to earth," Moore said. "When we were together, I don't remember him ever talking about politics. He talked about the theater, his singing."

"Everything seems to come a little late for Paul," he said. "But people are beginning to recognize that this is a great human being."

Tomorrow, the stamps will be available for purchase only at the main Princeton Post Office at 213 Carnegie Center in West Windsor and at the Palmer Square Post Office in downtown Princeton. They will go on sale nationwide Wednesday.

The official ceremony for the stamp's release is planned for 10 a.m. tomorrow in Princeton University's Alexander Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

From April, 1998:

Paul Robeson doesn’t deserve a postage stamp

Area Congressman Bobby Rush (D-2nd) chose April Fool’s Day to introduce a concurrent resolution asking the U.S. Postal Service to honor Paul Robeson with a stamp. If that were to ever happen, the joke would be on the majority of citizens not familiar with the life of Mr. Robeson.

Perhaps I shouldn’t complain – too much. Certainly the Honorable Rush, who used to busy himself with a leadership role in that fraternal organization known as the Black Panthers, could be up to much more mischief than just trying to catch the attention of the Postal Service.

Mr. Rush’s resolution notes that Paul Robeson “graduated from Rutgers University in 1919, with letters in basketball, baseball, discus, shot put, football, and javelin, and, more importantly, was a member of both the Phi Beta Kappa and Cap and Skull honor societies at Rutgers University.” He then “graduated from Columbia Law School in 1923, but found the legal profession so resistant to African-American lawyers that he embarked on a career in the theater and arts which brought him world renown.”

All that is generally agreed on. But then Mr. Rush’s resolution claims Paul Robeson “became an advocate for the rights of African-Americans and other oppressed people, and in so doing sacrificed his career as a world-renowned actor and singer.”

That part of the Robeson story is subject to interpretation. More importantly, Congressman Rush has ignored the salient point that, if Paul Robeson weren’t a Communist, he did a spectacular impression of being one. Some in the media portray Robeson as a victim of that great old standby, McCarthyism. According to an article in Sunday’s Tribune, Robeson’s “leftist sympathies made him one of the country’s most despised figures during the McCarthy era.” This inaccuracy has been repeated so many times it’s assumed a credibility it doesn’t merit. In 1976, when Mr. Robeson died, Time wrote that he’d been “condemned at home in the McCarthy era.” I’ve explained this more than once, but let’s give it one more try: Joe McCarthy didn’t launch his anti-Communist crusade until 1950. All the stuff that transpired before, such as the Hollywood 10, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings, and even Paul Robeson’s declining popularity, had nothing to do with that dastardly Republican senator.

Mr. Robeson’s troubles started well before 1950. In 1943 he spoke of the “great power of the Russian people – a power born of unity, of legally enforced equality, of opportunity for all the millions within its borders, regardless of race, creed, nationality or sex.” Obviously the world of Joseph Stalin, a man who murdered 30 to 40 million people, was OK because he was an Equal Opportunity butcher. The admiration was mutual and a few years later Paul Robeson was awarded a Peace Prize from Stalin. In 1946 Robeson appeared before HUAC and denied he was a Communist. The following year he took the Fifth Amendment when asked if he were a Red. Maybe he just didn’t recollect.

Robeson’s sympathy – if not downright enthusiasm - for Communism led to an understandable decline in his popularity. In 1947, a scheduled appearance was cancelled in Peoria when the mayor refused to let Robeson perform in city hall. A month after that in Albany, New York, Robeson was denied permission to hold a concert in a high school auditorium.

Long active in the World Peace Council and other Communist front organizations, Robeson had his passport cancelled in 1950 by Dean Acheson’s State Department when the entertainer refused to sign an affidavit stating he wasn’t a Communist. Increasingly unpopular in the U.S., Robeson had come to depend on his overseas’ engagements. His annual income, which had been over $100,00 in 1947, dropped to $3,000.

Paul Robeson did sacrifice a successful career, but not, as Bobby Rush would have us believe, to “became an advocate for the rights of African-Americans and other oppressed people.” No, Robeson sacrificed his career to Communism. People’s Weekly World is a publication of the Communist Party, U.S.A. In an article appearing earlier this month, Paul Robeson is described as a “Marxist-Leninist.” These folks should certainly know. A few sentences later, it’s explained that, “As a Communist, Robeson knew the working class was the locomotive of history.”

Congressman Rush will without a doubt be shocked, shocked, to know that People’s Daily World likes his idea of putting Paul Robeson on a stamp: “We call upon the entire people’s movement to raise a deafening cry that will ring through every protest and demonstration, through every motion of progressive humanity saying, ‘Honor Robeson.’ We demand it!”

With friends like that, who needs enemies?

Michael M. Bates: My Side of the Swamp

The problem with Robeson isn't that he "hated America" or that he "was branded a Communist". In fact, the man was a Communist, pure and simple, and he might well have loved America as much as any man in history.

The big problem was he loved Joseph Stalin more!

The leftwing extremists who decide these things probably believe they've pacified the masses by balancing a stamp honoring a pro-Stalinist with one that honored Trotsky's girlfriend Frida Kahlo (http://www.fbuch.com/fridakahlo.htm). Note that it was Stalin who arranged for Trotsky's murder.

It's really surprising that Dennis Hastert hasn't yet done something about the composition of the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee.

With the correct membership there is no doubt that American stamps could honor African-Americans who were never groveled at the feet of one of history's all-time mass murderers, or Mexican-Americans who actually lived in America and had contributed something to the world other than a bit of sex with major Communists of her day.

Somebody who knows Dennis ought to give him a call and see why he's been so supportive of these Communist themed stamps.

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