OCT-NOV 97 - HOME

A POSTAGE STAMP FOR PAUL ROBESON

According to Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, a meticu-lous scholar who was also the founder of Pan-Africanism, Paul Robeson was the best-known individual in the world in the years immediately following World War II. That's easy to understand. Europe, North America, and the Soviet Union knew of Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Mao-and Robeson, the most famous singer of any kind of that day. But Africa, China, India, Latin America were illiterate and lacked radio. Yet enormous popular movements had developed for independence both from the pre-war colonialists and the Japanese imperialism that had taken over the entire Pacific west of Hawaii and most of east and South Asia. Their leaders, from Ho Chi-Minh to Nkrumah, had been educated in Europe and knew Robeson, in most cases personally. He knew 20 languages, and sang people's songs of struggle in their own tongues. They had his 78 rpm records, and played them over loudspeakers at rallies to inspire their people.

Robeson was very much more than a singer. He was the first Black to be allowed to play Othello in nearly a century, first in England and much later in the United States. He was only the third African-American to be named a football All-American. He put his body on the line for his beliefs, singing for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the front lines of the Spanish Civil War. He rejected the income that performances in the South would have won him because he would not accept segregation of his audiences. Finally, he lost 95% of his earnings in a single year, 1949 to 1950, being dropped by concert management and recording companies because of his outspoken opposition to the Cold War.

I had the honor of being one of the tiny handful who was able to dent that blacklist a little by converting the final rally of my 1950 campaign for Congress against the Korean War into a Robeson concert-no speeches.

Robeson was also a strategic thinker. The chapter, "The Power of Negro Action," from his book of 1958, Here I Stand, called for precisely the kind of independent militant mass activity launched two years later with the lunch-counter sit-ins.

A movement is afoot to have a postage stamp issued in Robeson's honor next year, the centenary of his birth. The rule of thumb is that 10,000 messages are needed to impress those who make that decision. One writes to Dr. Virginia Noelke, Citizens' Advisory Stamp Committee, 475 L'Enfant Plaza, S.W., Rm. 4474, Washington, D.C., 20260.

OCT-NOV 97 -- N.C.Xpress -- Archives -- Electrons to the Editor