[Fiji Hill]

He wasn't going to be recording racist stuff, no way.

If the Communist Party Line had shifted so as to support segregation, Robeson would have raced to the studio to record songs praising Jim Crow.

[pepsi_junkie]

He was a dedicated commie, no doubt. But that was in part because the commies preached racial equality and that's what Robeson cared about first and foremost. If they preached segregation he'd have had a real dilemma.

Anyway regarding the song, I'l put it this way: I went to Rutgers and Rutgers is ridiculously proud of their affiliation with Paul Robeson. There is 0% chance that anyone there will view him as a racist because he sang this song. Period. He was an activist, which is why they are proud of him. If it wasn't racist when he sang it, it isn't racist when Kate Smith covered it.

[Impala64ssa]

If the Communist Party Line had shifted so as to support segregation, Robeson would have raced to the studio to record songs praising Jim Crow.
The commies were segregationists at one time. I was a member of the Mailhandler's Union. To make a long story short this union has it's roots in what was called The Alliance, a union of Black RR mail clerks and baggage handlers that formed around 1913. The reasons they organized was not only top protect themselves from the eeevil Vanderbilts and other RR barons of the day but also because the White socialists at the forefront of the labor movement wanted nothing to do with them. They were every bit as racist and violent as the klan. It wasn't until decades later when they realized the untapped propaganda value of exploiting the, as it was called then, "Plight of the Negro".