Paul Robeson Jr. Refutes Misrepresentation

New World Review rejects his rebuttal

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Reaganism,” which appeared in the July-August issue of New W orld Re- view , misrepresents the substance of the issues it discusses and makes a wholly unsubstantiated attempt to discredit those who do not share its author’s narrow and superficial view of Paul Robeson.

Most importantly, the article fails to understand Paul Robeson’s most sig- nificant challenge to the United States “Establishment” — his dramatic 1949 appearance at the Paris Peace Confer- ence and the aftermath of that appear- ance.

Near the beginning of the article, Rosenberg says: “What better way to resuscitate old lies than to question the integrity and distort the opinions of the great peace champion Paul Robeson . . . Unsubstantiated allega- tions of his awareness of persecution of Soviet Jewish writers after World War II, and, by implication, his gutless refusal to speak out, find their way into print, even as Paul Robeson, Jr. replaces the authorized biogra- pher, Black writer and close Robeson friend Lloyd Brown, with historian Martin Duberman. . . . ”

I revealed my father’s awareness of the persecution of Soviet Jewish writ- ers after World War II in two articles titled: “How My Father Last Met

["How M y Father Last M et Itzik Feffer ’ hy Paul Robeson Jr ., the text o f his address delivered Aug. 12, 1981 at a New York M emorial M eeting to the M artyred Soviet Yiddish W riters, was published in our N ov., 1981 is- sue. A n attem pt by Lloyd Brown, who had fo r m any years been trying to write a biography o f Paul Robeson, to discredit the witness brought by Paul Robeson Jr. was effectively answered in our F eb ., 1982 issue in “The Record — Paul Robeson Jr. Refutes Lloyd B row n .”

[Another attack was launched in the July-A ug., 1982 issue o f the bi- m onthly New World Review, which published an article by its assistant- editor, Daniel Rosenberg, “Paul Robeson in the Age o f Reaganism .” Paul Robeson Jr. subm itted his refuta- tion on Nov. 14. On Dec. 21 New World Review refused to prin t it. Similarly New World Review had re- fu se d to p rin t a reply by A. B. Magil when he answered an article by Josh- ua K unitz denying the existence o f anti-Sem itism in the USSR. W e then published M agils reply in our May, 1979 issue (and reprinted it in our pam phlet, The Soviet Jewish Situa- tion: A Progressive View, available fo r $1 postpaid.) Paul Robeson Jr ., re- fu se d the right to reply by the New World Review, then sub7nitted to us the article tha t follows. — Ed. ]

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launching an aggressive atomic war against the Soviet Union, he knowing- ly risked his life when he made that statement. Paul told me that after he refused to back away from it, a State Departm ent emissary warned him that unless he did so the C.I.A. or F.B.I. might well see to it that he had an “unfortunate accident.” I believe that only wide support from Black communities all over the country, including much of the Black press, en- abled Paul to stay alive.

Rosenberg misses this central point en-tirely, although on the second page of his article he quotes from the very same statement which I quoted above. By quoting only the end of the statement and detaching the quote from its original context, Rosenberg has obscured Paul Robeson’s original purpose and distorted the meaning of his statement.

In addition, Rosenberg’s descrip- tion of Lloyd Brown as Paul Robeson’s “authorized biographer” is factually incorrect and highly misleading.

The Robeson biography Lloyd Brown has been working on for more than 1 1 years was never an authorized biography. With the manuscript eight years overdue, and after Brown’s fail- ure to commit himself to a specific deadline, the publisher (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.) finally canceled Brown’s contract. I signed an Agreement with Martin Duberman more than five years after the Agreement made by Brown with my father’s attorney for access to the Robeson papers had been term inated by that same attor- ney, and more than two years after Brown himself acknowledged that he had not fulfilled his obligations to the publisher and to the Robeson family.

Rosenberg’s article then resorts to selective omission to distort remarks made by Morris U. Schappes in the Feb., 1982 issue of J e w i s h C u r r e n t s :

Itzik Feffer, 1949” and “Paul Robe- son, Jr. Refutes Lloyd Brown,” which appeared in the Nov., 1981 and Feb., 1982 issues of J e w i s h C u r r e n t s .

Rosenberg ignored the fact that in the first of these articles I described how my father spoke out, indirectly but powerfully, at a major public con- cert in the U .S.S.R . immediately after his meeting with Feffer.

Although Rosenberg quoted from other material which appeared in the same issue of J e w i s h C u r r e n t s that carried my second article, he ignored the fact that in my article I gave a compelling reason for my father’s fail- ure to speak out publicly in the United States about his 1949 meeting with Feffer.

I wrote: “He believed passionately that U.S. imperialism was the greatest enemy of progressive mankind. . . . three days after his return from Moscow (he said): “‘At the Paris Peace Conference I said it was unthinkable that the Negro people of America or elsewhere in the world could be drawn into war with the Soviet Union. I repeat it with hundred-fold empha- sis. THEY WILL NOT. . . .

“‘To fulfill our responsibilities as Americans, we must unite, especially we Negro people. We must know our strength. We are the decisive force. That’s why they terrorize us. That’s why they fear us. And if we unite in all our might, this world can fast be changed. . . .

“‘We do not want to die in vain any more on foreign battle fifelds for Wall Street and the greedy supporters of domestic fascism. If we must die, let it be in Mississippi or Georgia!’

“In such a context, Paul would not consider making a public criticism of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union.”

Because Paul Robeson correctly un- derstood in 1949 that there was an im- mediate danger that the United States would begin World War III by

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This attempt to draw a sinister par- allel between the 1951 State Depart- ment document and my selection of Martin Duberman as my father’s biog- rapher is ridiculous, because it was I who discovered that document and publicized it nation-wide. Moreover, I have made my manuscript “With Malice Toward One — The Secret War Against Paul Robeson,’’ which extensively documents my father’s persecution by the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and the State Department for over 25 years, available to Duberman as a vi- tal part of the material on which his biography of my father will be based.

Rosenberg then arbitrarily manipu-lates quotes from Martin Duberman’s book The Uncompleted Past (Dutton, N.Y., 1971, paperback) in such a way that Duberman’s original meaning is reversed. Rosenberg claims that “ . . . Duberman comes well equipped to do a real ‘job’ on Paul Robeson and his ‘complex personality.’ For Duberman believes the whole world is absurd: ‘The ugly, the empty, the irrational, the brutal, the apathetic — these are the dominant themes of contemporary theater. And they may well be the dominant themes of contemporary life. Perhaps today’s playwrights, whose personal lives, we are told, have been so melancholy, overdo the importance of these themes, con- fusing their own sorrows with the world’s decline. But if the modern playwright has overdrawn the disintegrative aspects of modern life, it is not by much, judging from what we see around us’ (The Uncompleted Past, p . 28).”

Duberman wrote the following words immediately before the quote chosen by Rosenberg: “. . . there are grounds for believing that the thea- ter’s present range is badly in need of amplification. The current mode of dramatic writing has been variously

“‘It is regrettable,’ J e w i s h C u r r e n t s

editor Morris Schappes wrote, ‘that Paul Robeson still maintained his si- lence. . . . For his life’s work in the struggle against fascism, racism and anti-Semitism, we admire, love, even venerate Paul Robeson, but we don’t idolize him .’ For Robeson is ‘a giant of a m a n , not a brown god — a man ca- pable of error in political judgement, like the rest of us mortals. Idolatry is a false light on the road to social prog- ress and democratic socialism. . . . ”

W hat Rosenberg omitted immedi- ately after the words, “but we don’t idolize him ,” reads: “And it is idolatry to deny the truth of what his son at last has told about the meeting with Feffer. The truth is not defamation, as Brown would have it. Posthumous sanctification and idolization are de- famatory. . . . ”

Immediately after the last words quoted by Rosenberg, Schappes con- tinued: “What is at stake in this vitu- peration of Paul Robeson Jr. by Brown and his advisor Aptheker is more than the veracity of a report of what Paul Robeson knew in 1949 or 1957 or at his death. The issue is anti- Semitism in the Soviet Union as it is spread today by Kichko, Ivanov, Bolshakov, Begun, Bakanov, Kor- neyev, Modzhorian and others. And here Brown and Aptheker, and the party of which Aptheker is a leader, are still covering up the truth. . . . ”

Rosenberg goes on to hint at a con- spiracy: “How best to smear Robeson and invigorate the Big Lie was a prob- lem for U.S. policy-makers years ago as well. Formerly classified State De- partm ent document 511.45 K 21/1-951 (Jan. 9, 1951) recommended a propaganda campaign in African countries to defame him. . . . In light of the foregoing, it is essential to ex- amine the credentials of the biogra- pher newly appointed by Paul Robe- son Jr., Martin Duberman . . . ”

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perform on Paul Robeson’s life. . . . Responding to Styron’s Black critics, Duberman sees Turner as a ‘patholog- ical’ figure, a ‘religious fanatic of terri- fying, perhaps psychotic, propor- tions.’ . . .”

On pages 220 and 219 of The Uncompleted Past we find that Duberman, far from expressing such a view, teas criticizing those who de- picted N at Turner tha t way :

“The chief. . . source on Nat Turn- er is the 2 0 -odd page ‘confessions’ taken down when he was in jail by a white racist lawyer. . . . the Black es- sayists should have been the first to remind us . . . that Turner’s confes- sions were filtered through the eyes and words of a white man and are therefore automatically suspect. Since, to the contrary, most of the es- sayists believe the original confessions are Absolute Truth and that every ac- count that deviates from them par- takes of malignant intent, it is surpris- ing that they did not chastise Styron more severely for underplaying the one character trait of Turner’s that emerges most clearly from those con- fessions — that he was a religious fa- natic of terrifying, perhaps psychotic, proportions. . . . they see Turner not as a human being, but as an epic force, a figure immune to the usual range of error, compassion and desire.. . . the figure they present for emula- tion is frighteningly one-dimensional, even pathological. . . .”Moreover, Dubermanys opinion o f Styron’s characterization of Nat Turn- er was highly critical. On page 214 of The Uncompleted Past he wrote: “Yet Styron’s success as an historian is inti- mately related . . . to the one major defect of the Confessions, a defect so serious as to compromise its success as a novel. I refer to the characterization of Nat Turner himself, the story’s nar- rator and central figure. Though the

(C ontinued on page 30)

called the theater of the absurd, the theater of revolt, the theater of de- spair. . . .”

At the beginning of the very next paragraph after the one from which Rosenberg quoted, Duberman con- tinued: “It is possible to suggest . . . that [our theater’s] intent as well is too restricted. There is no inherent rea- son why drama need be limited to describing what is; it could also be- come concerned with what might be. One function of the theater should ob- viously be to reflect the actuality of life, but another might be to change it. Instead, by presenting man largely as brute, child or fool, the current theater fortifies and perpetuates those qualities. . . . Theater audiences see little to counteract the view that self- deception, hysteria and savagery are synonyms for human nature. . . .”

Thus by removing a piece of Duberman’s essay from its immediate context, Rosenberg has falsely as- cribed to Duberman the very opin- ions which Duberman criticized!

Rosenberg repeats this strategy of distortion throughout his article. Only a paragraph later we are told that: “In his work Duberman has always been obsessed with ‘personality,’ pseudo- psychologizing his subject. He wishes historians would focus more on ‘the personality strivings which underlie behavior’ (Uncompleted Past, p . 45).”

Duberman actually said something considerably different on p. 45: “ . . . What historians can do, I believe, is describe past behavior, the external world of action. What they can do far less well is explain the personality strivings which underlie behavior; these are, indeed, largely closed to historical investigation. . . . ”

Further on, Rosenberg falsely states that “Duberman’s defense . . . of William Styron’s Confessions o f Nat Turner . . . serves as an advance warning of the plastic surgery he will

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tiny of man to survive, and we will survive. Amen.

Kathy comes forward. He holds the cake. It was baked in a chipped, old wash bowl. It doesn’t look like a cake. But as he goes around, breaking off small pieces and handing one to ever- ybody, Kathy is giving us the finest cake we ever had. Because Kathy, this little Jew, Aaron Wiesel, with his shining, tear-washed eyes, in all his manhood, represents to us all our mothers, sisters, daughters and wives. ■

Robeson . . .(Continued fro m page 25)

book’s secondary characters are vivid and believable, Nat is neither. Aside from his encounters with Margaret, in which we do get the sense of a partic- ular man involved in a particular situ- ation, Nat never comes alive as an in- dividual. He speaks his lines well, but we sense a ventriloquist near at hand.’’

Space does not permit a discussion of Rosenberg’s many additional crude distortions, but the omissions, innu- endos, half-truths and falsifications which permeate his article expose it to be a shameful example of irresponsi- ble journalism. Rosenberg’s shrill tone and his broad hint that Martin Duberman and I are conspirators in an “organized, well-oiled anti- Robeson campaign’’ are reminiscent of the hysteria and paranoia during the times of the witchhunts against “enemies of the people. ’’ In my opin- ion, Mr. Rosenberg has done serious damage to the credibility and integri- ty of New W orld Review. ■

tas. He puts a sheet around his shoul- ders like a prayer shawl. Kathy takes out two candles. We can’t believe it! They are real candles! He lights them and they burn. Between the candles stands Joe, his cap pushed back in his hair, the shawl on his shoulders. Ev- erything is so quiet. The silent night in this little Ukrainian village sudden- ly lights up with melodies thousands of years old. Joe’s voice is more beau- tiful than ever. The crystal clear sil- very sound awakens our sorrow and our eternal pain. Tears roll down bearded faces.

“ Sh’ma yisroel, adonoy elohenu,adonoy echod .” Hear O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One. The prayer flies on the wings of the song, as it was sung five thousand years ago. And for five thousand years Jews have borne punishment and hardships and never doubted or denied Him. “O venu 7nalkenu.” Forgive us. Who else suffered so much? Will this pun- ishment ever come to an end?

Joe stands between the two candles with their flickering lights. He looks so tall as he sings, and his songs fly be- yond the walls of our quarters, be- yond the stars, taking us back to our homes, back to our families. We are not just a bunch of hungry, tortured Jews in labor camps anymore. We are all sons of Abraham and Jacob, the men who built the pyramids of Egypt for the pharaohs, the marble temples of foreign gods, fought against Roman legions and died on the hills of Massada. We are the men who built the first temple, witnessed the Ten Commandments, wandered in the sun-baked desert for forty years, searching for God and the Promised Land. We are the men who were scat- tered all over the world, beaten, seg- regated and punished, raped and mas- sacred, beaten but never defeated. We are the men who carried the des­

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