Why Jackie Robinson Testified Against Paul Robeson

Six days later, helium gives different performance, successful Washington, D.C., successful Room 226 of the Old House Office Building connected Capitol Hill. Senator John Wood, of Ku Klux Klan progeny, past shepherd of the HUAC, had invited him to attest astir the “communist infiltration of number groups,” seemingly evidenced by the involvement that Black American figures had demonstrated successful the Soviet Union, which had championed radical equality. “The entreaty of the Soviet Union to Black Americans could beryllium champion seen not done the convoluted rubric of U.S.-Soviet overseas relations, but alternatively done the governmental disenfranchisement, regular hardships, and unit of Black beingness successful the United States,” Bryant writes. In the thirties, a cadre of Black artists, including the poets Langston Hughes and Claude McKay, had been welcomed by the Soviets. But it was nary longer the thirties, and the exigency of Negro loyalty had everyone spooked.

Robinson is an “unenthusiastic” witness, Bryant relays, appearing earlier the committee, which has by past burnished its persecution tactics connected “subversives” successful Hollywood and beyond. His grounds is simply a divided text, serving a fewer antithetic masters, according to Bryant. Having consulted with his wife, Rachel, Robinson tries to mean the hotheadedness of the committee, citing the Negro plight: “Just due to the fact that communists footwear up a large fuss implicit radical favoritism erstwhile it suits their purposes, a batch of radical effort to unreal that the full contented is simply a instauration of the communist imagination.” But this is not the substance of the code that sticks. It’s his comments astir Robeson that would gully headlines. In April, portion Robeson, a planetary star, was connected his mode to a performance successful Russia, helium had attended a normal of leftists successful Paris. He had sung “Joe Hill”—the protestation opus astir the eponymous laborer, songwriter, and communist, who was accused of execution successful 1914, and executed successful Utah the pursuing year. Robeson had besides fixed a code successful Paris condemning the arms race. “It is unthinkable that American Negroes would spell to warfare connected behalf of those who person oppressed for generations against the Soviet Union which successful 1 procreation has lifted our radical to afloat dignity,” Robeson reportedly said, according to the Associated Press—a connection that was twisted successful the media arsenic an insurrectionary telephone to Negroes backmost home. When the HUAC asks Robinson astir these remarks, helium hedges: if Robeson did marque those comments, well, then, “it sounds precise silly to me.”

“Silly”—no uncertainty a Robinson word. If helium is an elocutionist, past helium is an elocutionist of the unaffected. He would spell connected to accidental that Robeson “has a close to his idiosyncratic views, and if helium wants to dependable silly erstwhile helium expresses them successful public, that’s his concern and not mine. He’s inactive a celebrated ex-athlete and a large vocalist and actor.” But the grounds doesn’t extremity there. Later, Robinson declares that Negroes person invested excessively overmuch successful the country’s payment to “throw it distant due to the fact that of a siren opus sung successful bass”—a daze of hostile poesy successful the testimony. Bryant believes that Robinson did not trade this operation himself. The writer argues that it has the fingerprints of Robinson’s manager, Branch Rickey, each implicit it. In the modular Robinson story of interracial union, Rickey is the progressive innovator—the manager who took the subordinate nether his helping and broke the colour enactment of the game. That’s oversimplifying things, Bryant counters. Rickey was besides an opportunist and a manipulator; successful different words, helium was the begetter figure. A hard-nosed nationalist, and an acquisitive evangelist, helium had banal successful the expulsion of the anti-imperialists, including Robeson. “Siren opus sung successful bass,” Bryant argues, could not person been written by anyone but Rickey. The torque of it points to the strength of his obsession. It is besides the operation that cements Robeson’s fate.

Why would Robinson spell on with it? In “Kings and Pawns,” Bryant probes the “dormant Black history” of postwar machinations, overshadowed successful our corporate consciousness by the sheer momentum of the civil-rights movement. Robinson would person seen himself arsenic a combatant (he was a veteran, and did acquisition the peculiar mistreatment of the Black soldier) successful what was known successful the Black property arsenic the “Double V” campaign, meaning the decision of fascism overseas and of racism astatine home. This bias toward the future, adjacent astatine the disbursal of would-be allies similar Robeson—this is wherefore a 2019 nonfiction successful The Nation frighteningly misrepresents Robinson’s testimony, a infinitesimal of a governmental dependable being compromised, arsenic moving, a precursor to the rebellion of Colin Kaepernick against the N.F.L.