The Flying Elephants Short Story Prize is now open for submissions!
The Flying Elephants Short Story Prize is meant to showcase the work of outstanding short story writers, published or emerging. Four winning short story writers will share a $5,000 USD cash prize. The online submissions deadline is Friday Nov. 30, 2012 11:59 p.m. ET. The winners will be announced in Winter 2013 and the winning short stories will be published in our inaugural issue here on this website.
The Flying Elephants Short Story Prize Guidelines-at-a-Glance
Short Story Length: No length restrictions, but longer manuscripts (8,000—10,000 words) or shorter manuscripts (less than 2,000 words) will have to be truly exceptional to be shortlisted.
Entry Fee: None.
Eligibility: Writers must 18-years of age or older, and short stories must be original and previously unpublished.
Contest Writing Theme:“And We Were Hungry. . . .”
Grand Prize Theme:“And We Were Hungry for Nature. . . .” (*Grand prize reserved for the story that connects the theme with nature or the natural world.)
Entry Instructions: A writer may submit only one story. Although simultaneous submissions are accepted, authors must immediately notify AndWeWereHungry if the piece is accepted elsewhere. An excerpt from a novel in progress must stand alone as a short story.
Deadline: Friday, November 30, 2012, 11:59 p.m. ET.
Prize: Total prize fund $5,000 USD. One writer will receive $2,000a, three writers will each receive $1,000 and 8 eight writers will be shortlisted. All will be published in our inaugural issue.
If you are ready to submit your short story, you can access our general submission guidelines and submit your work via our online submissions manager here.
The Time & Place Prize is a new international literary award established to provide the two things every writer requires . . .
the time and the place
to write.
Join us in France! The winner of The Time & Place Prize receives a month-long stay in an idyllic cottage nestled among the menhirs, myths and mists of Bretagne, France.
The Prize includes:
Round-trip airfare to and from Paris, France
plus ground transport to and from the cottage
Room & board for the month of July in a
private cottage in bucolic Brittany
The cottage is equipped with all the tools a
writer needs, including library, computer, internet access, a complete OED, etc.
Time and place to work on your ideas
The Time & Place PrizeAll literary genres considered. Winner(s) selected by independent, third party judges. Submissions limited to 5,000 words. A $25 submission fee will be charged.
The Award TimelineSubmissions for the 2012 Prize will be accepted through November 30, 2012. The short list will be posted by mid-February 2013. The winner will be announced on March 30, 2013. The winner will visit France for the month of July, 2013. Submissions for the 2013 Prize will be accepted beginning December 1, 2012.
Details: This competition is organised in aid of Lupus UK, a national charity helping people with the presently incurable immune system illness lupus. Lupus UK currently supports some 6,000 members through their Regional Groups and advise many others on the symptoms prior to diagnosis. The competition is for previously unpublished poems in English Language, on any subject, in any style, up to 50 lines long (excluding title). Poems entered must not have been posted to any website or blog, and must not be under consideration for publication, or accepted for publication elsewhere.
First Prize: £100.00 ($158.00)
Second Prize: £50.00 ($79.00)
Third Prize: £30.00 ($48.00)
High Commendation Prizes: 2 x £10.00 ($16.00)
Results & First Publication: Results will be announced in our News Blog on 5th January 2013.
Entry Fees: £3 ($5) per poem, £12 ($19) for 5 poems.
Donations to Charity: A third of net entry fees will go to Lupus UK
The Judge: Abegail Morley
Competition Administration: Eastern Light EPM International -organisers of Excel for Charity writing competitions series.
Enter Online or By Post
To Enter online
(1) Select the number of poems you wish to enter from the PayPal Drop-Down Menu below, click on pay now, and make the applicable payment securely. You will be given a Transaction ID or Receipt Number by PayPal. Make a note of this.
(2) Create a Cover Note titled LUPUS UK POETRY COMPETITION 2012 which should have the Title(s) of your poem(s), your Name, Pen Name (if applicable), Mailing Address, E-mail Address and Telephone Number. YOUR NAME OR ANY OTHER IDENTIFYING MARKS MUST NOT APPEAR ON ANY OF THE POETRY PAGES.
Make up a Cover Note with your name, postal address, e-mail address, telephone number, and the titles of your poems. YOUR NAME OR ANY OTHER IDENTIFYING MARKS MUST NOT APPEAR ON ANY OF THE POETRY PAGES.
Send your poems with your Cover Note or Entry Form and cheque/Postal Order in GB£ only in favour of EASTERN LIGHT EPM INTERNATIONAL to:
Excel for Charity Eastern Light EPM International Unit 136 113 - 115 George Lane London E18 1AB United Kingdom ____________________________________________________________ Terms & Conditions
1. You may enter as many poems as you want.
2. The decision of the judge is final, and no communication will be entered into.
3. The primary aims of this competition are to raise money for the charity and to honour the winning writers. The prize money is expected to be generated by the entry fees. In the event that there are too few entries to pay the prize money from the entry fees after a third has been earmarked for donation to the charity, we reserve the right to (a) elect to incur the expense of making up the prize money from our own funds, (b) reapportion the prize money in agreement with the winners. We have so far never done that. (c) refund all entry fees to the entrants by the methods they paid for their entries. (d) Extend the entry deadline to try and make up the numbers.
4. Poems will not be returned, please don't send your only copy.
5. Although the results of our competitions are usually published on our website, many entrants still write us expecting personal notifications of the results. If you would like to receive information on the results, judge's report, or news about our other competitions, please join our e-mail mailing list at http://easternlightepm.com/excelforcharity/mailing-list we will never disclose your e-mail address to any person or organisation outside Excel for Charity without your prior written consent.
6. Please note that US Dollar Prizes are approximated based on exchange rate on the day the competition was announced. If you win and wish to be paid in US$, the amount you will receive will be the GB£ Sterling equivalent on the day the prize is paid.
Tribute do Nina Simone Song : Images Nina Simone Dance and Choregraphy : Antoinette Gomis Video by Jaaryce - Ottoproduction Assistant: LIZ GOMIS Sign language / Langue des signes : Salé et Yasmine Shoot In Studio Ottoprod, Montreuil
Contact Antoinette Gomis : gomis.antoinette@yahoo.fr Contact Ottoproduction : jaaryce@gmail.comLyrics (Poem by Waring Cuney)She does not know Her beauty. She thinks her brown body, She thinks her brown body Has no glory. If she could dance Naked, Under palm trees And see her image and realize She would know Yes, she would know. But there are no palm trees In the street, No palm trees in the street And dishwater gives back no images.
Scottish poet and novelist Jackie Kay's birth mother is the Scot while her father's Nigerian, but she was adopted by a couple of Glaswegian communists "who threw the kind of parties where everybody ended up singing Cole Porter and Rabbie Burns songs." Above, she talks about the perceived contradiction of being black and Scottish and how her mother gets asked about her daughter's tan. Here she talks on BBC's Strand about her memoir Red Dust Road and finally meeting her birth parents. Bernardine Evaristo's review in the Independent retells Kay, also a lesbian and a single mom, meeting her "dad":
...The book opens with Kay, now in her forties, waiting for the Nigerian father she has never met to turn up at a hotel in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria. Yet as soon as he arrives he whisks her off to her room and spends two hours trying to convert her to Christianity amid much "clapping and foot-tapping and spinning and reciting and shouting to God Almighty". It turns out that her father, a born-again Christian and preacher, wants to cleanse her of his past sin. "I realise with fresh horror that Jonathan is seeing me as the sin, me as impure, me the bastard, illegitimate." With characteristic humour, Kay quips, "He's like a bad poet who doesn't know when to quit, reading one poem after another to a comatose audience".
But she does meet one of Johnathan's sons for a beer, finding with her half-brother the recognition she sought: "I could happily sniff his ears and lick his forehead." It's also interesting to note that on meeting her birth mother in '91, now "... a divorced Mormon with Alzheimer’s, clutching plastic bag," it struck her that "both her parents had become extremely religious – and both came to meet her holding carrier bags."
Jackie Kay burst onto the literary scene in 1991 with her much-praised first poetry collection The Adoption Papers, at the heart of which were poems about her adoption by white Scottish parents in 1961. Nearly 20 years later, her memoir Red Dust Road covers similar terrain, except that in the intervening years the mystery about her origins has been replaced with unforgettable scenes of her encounters with her birth parents.
The book opens with Kay, now in her forties, waiting for the Nigerian father she has never met to turn up at a hotel in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria. Yet as soon as he arrives he whisks her off to her room and spends two hours trying to convert her to Christianity amid much "clapping and foot-tapping and spinning and reciting and shouting to God Almighty". It turns out that her father, a born-again Christian and preacher, wants to cleanse her of his past sin. "I realise with fresh horror that Jonathan is seeing me as the sin, me as impure, me the bastard, illegitimate." With characteristic humour, Kay quips, "He's like a bad poet who doesn't know when to quit, reading one poem after another to a comatose audience".
Kay's encounters with her fragile Scottish birth mother, Elizabeth, are less theatrical but no less poignant. It transpires that she too is born-again, a Mormon, who believes "that adopted people cry out to be adopted while they are still in the womb". At their first awkward meeting her mother spends an hour talking about a neighbour's heart condition and Kay is unable to ask all the questions she's been harbouring for decades because "it seems ill-mannered... to drag Elizabeth back to a painful time in her past".
One of Kay's great skills as a writer is the way in which she explores the nebulous territory of the emotions. She never judges or oversimplifies, and displays no rage or rancour at birth parents who are secretive about their pasts and who want her to remain the secret she has always been.
While there is compassion for her birth parents, Kay writes with tremendous warmth, love and devotion for the adoptive parents who raised her. Active in the Communist Party, outspoken, principled, protective, Helen and John Kay come across as colourful characters who filled their home with party guests, songs and visitors from abroad. Kay is emphatic that this couple are her parents, in all but genetics. They stopped her from seeing herself as someone who was rejected as a child. Helen would tell her, "We chose you: you are special. Other people had to take what they got, but we chose you."
Red Dust Road is an incredibly brave endeavour. In her quest to know her birth parents Kay is not afraid to lay bare her vulnerabilities and dashed expectations. The book is filled with questions about inheritance and belonging: the child who wants to fit in but who is made to feel her racial difference by the society at large through both casual, caustic and institutional racism; the child who knows that "part of me came from Africa, part of me was foreign to myself". Yet the Africa that formed in her imagination was fed by the myths and stereotypes of colonial Britain. The adult tries to convince herself it shouldn't matter who her birth parents are because she has the wonderful parents who raised her – but she knows it does.
Kay excels at any literary genre she turns her hand to – poetry, fiction, drama and now memoir. Yet, like the best memoirs, this one is written with novelistic and poetic flair. Characters come alive with pitch-perfect speech, language is lyrically and imaginatively rendered, there is page-turning suspense. Even the structure defies expectation, criss-crossing the decades back and forth, from Kay's childhood voice through to middle-age.
Red Dust Road is a fantastic, probing and heart-warming read. It opens up the conversation around adoption beyond Kay's own personal narrative. She questions things many of us might take for granted: assumptions about love and family - and the right to know our parents.
Bernardine Evaristo's 'Lara' is published by Bloodaxe
On January 23, 1976, one of the greatest Americans of the twentieth century died a nearly forgotten man in self-imposed seclusion in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Over the last three decades or so, you rarely, if ever, hear his name mentioned in the popular media. Once every few years, you might hear someone on PBS or C-Span remember him fondly and explain as to why he was one of the more important figures of the past century. In many respects, he had as much moral authority as Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks; he was as politically active as Dick Gregory, Harry Belafonte, John Lewis, and Randall Robinson; and, as befits many men and women motivated by moral considerations, he conducted himself with great dignity. For much of his life, not surprisingly and not unlike many of his worthy successors, he was marginalized and shunned by the political establishment of his time -- until events validated their 'radical' beliefs and resurrected their reputations.
Throughout his life, few principled men of his caliber paid as high a price and for as long a period as he did for his political beliefs.
It has been alleged that I am part of some kind of international conspiracy. I am not and never have been involved in any international conspiracy or any other kind, and do not know anyone who is. It should be plain to everyone – and especially to Negroes – that if government officials had a shred of evidence to back up that charge, you can bet your last dollar that they would have tried to put me in their jail! But they have no such evidence and their charge is a lie... In 1946, at a legislative hearing in California, I testified under oath that I was not a member of the Communist Party. But since that I have refused to give testimony or sign affidavits to that fact. There is no mystery involved in this refusal... I have made it a matter of principle, as many others have done, to refuse to comply with any demands of legislative committees or departmental officials that infringes upon the Constitutional rights of all Americans.
What did this man do that propel so many to ignore his numerous contributions and conveniently forget the crucial role he played in our culture and politics? Or, a few others to remember him with deep reverence and respect? Who was this brilliant man? This article best summarizes the depth and breadth of his accomplishments
How many people do you know who are athletes? How about an athlete who has won 15 varsity letters in four different sports? An athlete who has also played professional football while at the same time being valedictorian at his university? Does this athlete also hold a law degree? How many scholar-athlete performers can you name? Concert artists who have sold out shows around the world and who can perform in more than 25 different languages? Does this scholar-athlete-performer also act in Shakespearean and Broadway plays and in movies? Can you identify a scholar-athlete-performer who is also an activist for civil and human rights? Someone who petitioned the president of the United States of America for an anti-lynching law, promoted African self-rule, helped victims of the Spanish civil war, fought for India's independence, and championed equality for all human beings? Did this scholar-athlete-performer-activist also have to endure terrorism, banned performances, racism, and discrimination throughout his career?
Paul Robeson was all these things and more. He was the son of a former slave, born and raised during a period of segregation, lynching, and open racism.
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I had been vaguely familiar with Robeson but first became fully aware of his accomplishments in some depth during an American/Cold War History seminar in undergrad school. One of the sections dealt with the famous 1948 Presidential Election. What caught my attention was not as much the dynamics of the Harry Truman-Tom Dewey race or the splintering of the Democratic Party by the defection of rightist Dixiecrats under Strom Thurmond but, rather, the leftist challenge to Truman's candidacy by the Progressive Party and former Vice President under FDR, Henry Wallace.
Candidates on the Progressive Party's ticket were the forerunners of today's thousands of elected black officials not only in the South but all over the country (Paul Robeson: The Great Forerunner, p. 118). In the years to come, the critical role played by Robeson in campaigning for Wallace in the then-segregated states of the Deep South laid the foundations for African-Americans to re-enter national politics for the first time since Reconstruction.
Personally, he found in the newly established Progressive party a legitimate political organization through which to channel his reformist energies. As did millions of citizens, he rallied behind the Progressive candidate in the presidential elections of 1948, former Vice-President Henry Wallace. He appeared in Wallace campaign films. Robeson seemed genuinely inspired when, in a campaign speech in Washington, D.C., he told an audience, "We have taken the offensive against fascism! We will take the power from their hands and through our representatives we will direct the future destiny of our nation."
The least of Robeson's postwar defeats was the dismal showing made by Wallace in the November elections. In a society now locked in a cold war with the Russian rival, Robeson's progressive politics were labeled "communistic" and "treasonable." He consistently suffered because of his outspoken political views. Speeches were abruptly canceled, concerts were called off, biographies of Robeson were banned from public libraries, and rioting often occurred during his appearances.
All that Paul Robeson stood for had enormous impact on American and global history. The combination of his art, intellect and humanity was rarely paralleled. The cruelties visited upon him by the power of the State stands as a great blemish on the pages of American history. But despite the attempt to wipe him from memory, he has endured and continues to influence. It speaks to our most strategic interests that African American children be instructed about the truth of his existence. Indeed it would be in the best interest of all Americans to know what this great patriot offered this nation.
-- Actor, singer, and political activist Harry Belafonte, April 9, 2008, on the occasion of Paul Robeson’s 110th Birthday.
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Robeson gave up pursuing a law career not long after graduating from Columbia Law School in 1923 when a white secretary in the Stotesbury and Milner law firm (where he worked) refused to take dictation from him. She told him, "I never take dictation from a nig##r." Ambivalent about his future prospects as a black lawyer, Robeson had experienced considerable success in a parallel career path. He had made quite a name for himself in films, on stage, and in radio. The world order had been transformed after World War I and great social and cultural changes were underway. The Harlem Renaissance gained worldwide recognition for black entertainers and opened up opportunities for them in other countries. In the 1920's, reviled in their own country, turned into outcasts, and treated worse than second class citizens in a segregated society, many black entertainers sought refuge in European countries to find acceptance abroad. Beginning in 1928, Robeson would spend over a decade living and performing not only in Great Britain but all over Europe. It was there that his popularity as an actor and singer grew by leaps and bounds.
Early on during his stay in London, several incidents happened which validated his decision to move abroad. In 1928, he became the first actor ever to be invited for lunch to the House of Commons by a group of Labour Party MP's. In 1929, however, he was refused service at the world-famous Savoy Grill. In protest, Robeson wrote this letter to the Manchester Guardian on October 23, 1929
I thought that there was little prejudice against blacks in London or none but an experience my wife and I had recently has made me change my mind and to wonder, unhappily, whether or not things may become almost as bad for us here as they are in America.
A few days ago a friend of mine invited my wife and myself to the Savoy grill room at midnight for a drink and a chat. On arriving the waiter, who knows me, informed me that he was sorry he could not allow me to enter the dining room. I was astonished and asked him why. I thought there must be some mistake. Both my wife and I had dined at the Savoy and in the grill room many times as guests.
I sent for the manager, who came and informed me that I could not enter the grill room because I was a negro, and the management did not permit negroes to enter the rooms any longer.
(A poster promoting Song of Freedom, a 1936 British film starring Paul Robeson, poster credit: Separate Cinema)
Later, it was discovered that the hotel management had acted only after receiving complaints from American tourists who had been visiting London at the time. Because of Robeson's letter to the Guardian and complaint to the then-British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDdonald (who condemned the incident), major hotels in London decided not to exclude blacks from among their patrons. In the late 1920's, when lynchings of black men were still taking place in the Southern United States, it is not unrealistic to assume that what took place in London could not have conceivably happened in Robeson's own country.
When Shakespeare's Othello opened in London in 1930 with Robeson as the first black actor in 65 years to play the title role, he received 20 curtain calls on opening night. Whatever concerns his race might have raised soon dissipated for his magnificent, sophisticated, and mesmerizing performances defied the prevailing negative stereotypical image of the "uncultured and uncivilized" black man.
Living abroad and traveling extensively, Robeson -- long interested in the issue of civil rights and workers rights -- came into his own as his political activism grew.
He was one of the top performers of his time, earning more money than many white entertainers. His concert career spanned the globe: Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Moscow, New York, and Nairobi.
Robeson's travels opened his awareness to the universality of human suffering and oppression. He began to use his rich bass voice to speak out for independence, freedom, and equality for all people. He believed that artists should use their talents and exposure to aid causes around the world. "The artist must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice," he said. This philosophy drove Robeson to Spain during the civil war, to Africa to promote self-determination, to India to aid in the independence movement, to London to fight for labor rights, and to the Soviet Union to promote anti-fascism. It was in the Soviet Union where he felt that people were treated equally. He could eat in any restaurant and walk through the front doors of hotels, but in his own country he faced discrimination and racism everywhere he went.
With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Robeson returned to the United States. Years later, he said, "I learned my militancy and my politics, from your Labor Movement here in Britain.... That was how I realized that the fight of my Negro people in America and the fight of oppressed workers everywhere was the same struggle." More importantly, living in England had solidified his commitment to the sufferings of the poor and oppressed. It was as if he had found his purpose in life.
Upon his return, Robeson's political activities grew on behalf of labor unions and many minority groups. Fervently anti-Fascist, he was also an initial opponent of American involvement in World War II but he supported the war effort with a great deal of enthusiasm once Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941. His acting and singing career blossomed and soon he was one of the most recognizable entertainers in the country. Robeson's demands for racial justice both at home and abroad also would gain him many enemies.
By the late 1940's, the domestic political environment was also about to dramatically change for Robeson with the onset of the Cold War, growing concerns about the perceived external and internal threats posed by Communism, and the beginning of the paranoid McCarthy Era during which loyalties of millions of Americans were openly questioned. A concert to benefit the Civil Rights Congress at Peekskill, New York in 1949 resulted in a riot and contributed significantly, if unfairly, in him becoming the target of militant ant-communists. Robeson was not injured during the riot that ensued
In 1949 Robeson embarked on a European tour and in doing so spoke out against the discrimination and injustices that blacks in American had to confront. His statements were distorted as they were dispatched back to the United States. Although Robeson got mixed responses from the black community, the backlash from whites culminated in riot before a scheduled concert in Peekskill, New York, on August 27, 1949; a demonstration by veteran organizations turned into a full-blown riot. Robeson was advised of this and returned to New York. He did agree to do a second concert on September 4 in Peekskill for the people who truly wanted to hear him. The concert did take place but afterwards a riot broke out which lasted into the night leaving over 140 persons seriously injured. With such violence surrounding Robeson's concerts, many groups and sponsors no longer supported him.
Union members and other Robeson supporters form a protective line
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Pete Seeger was to perform at the concert, along with several folk singers and musicians, before Robeson appeared. Seeger arrived early, at 11 a.m. The line of 2,500 union members was forming around the field like a human wall...
"It may sound silly now, but we were confident law and order would prevail," said Seeger in an interview. "I had been hit with eggs in North Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi, but this was New York State. "We heard about 150 people standing around the gate shout things like 'Go back to Russia! Kikes! Ni**er-lovers!' It was a typical KKK crowd, without bedsheets," Seeger said.
The police confiscated some baseball bats from the concert guards, and prevented a few clashes during the concert, which went on peacefully. Seeger sang folk songs, playing his banjo, and the program ranged through Mozart and Handel before Robeson came on... Seeger left the concert grounds with his wife and children, his wife's father and another couple. One of the concert guards told them to roll up their windows. A policeman in the road waved them south toward Peekskill. Around the corner was a man standing next to an immense pile of baseball-sized rocks. He took aim and hit the Seegers' car.
The stones came faster, and Seeger told everybody to get down. The windows smashed inward. A woman in the car was hit. Danny Seeger, 2, was huddled under the Jeep seat. He was covered with glass... South of Peekskill, the rock-throwing continued through Buchanan, Montrose and Croton along Route 9 as the smashed and dented cars and buses headed back to New York City.
(photo credit and excerpt from The Robeson Riots of 1949 by Steve Courtney of the Reporter Dispatch, White Plains, NY)
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Read more about this concert and riots that followed it in an excellent account of the events that took place that day - 'A Rough Sunday at Peekskill' by Roger M. Williams, American Heritage, April 1976.
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Many African-American witnesses subpoenaed to testify at the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) hearings in the 1950s were asked to denounce Paul Robeson in order to obtain future employment... In 1949, Robeson was the subject of controversy after newspapers reports of public statements that African Americans would not fight in "an imperialist war." In 1950, his passport was revoked. Several years later, Robeson refused to sign an affidavit stating that he was not a Communist and initiated an unsuccessful lawsuit. In the following testimony to a HUAC hearing, ostensibly convened to gain information regarding his passport suit, Robeson refused to answer questions concerning his political activities and lectured bigoted Committee members Gordon H. Scherer and Chairman Francis E.Walter about African-American history and civil rights. In 1958, the Supreme Court ruled that a citizen’s right to travel could not be taken away without due process and Robeson’ passport was returned.
Robeson was not a perfect human being. Though never a member of the Communist Party of the United States, his admiration of the Soviet Union was the direct cause of some of his troubles with rightist elements in this country. Such was the price paid by many political activists caught in the cross currents of Cold War politics. It is important to note that the J. Edgar Hoover-led FBI maintained a large dossier on him and his wife for over three decades starting in 1941 -- well before the Cold War had started and during the World War II years through 1945, a period during which the USSR was officially an ally of the United States. If you are familiar (as I am) with the leading American press publications -- and particularly leftist newspapers and magazines like PM, Daily Worker, and the New Leader -- of the 1941-1945 period, you know well that stories about the "heroism" of Soviet soldiers fighting the Nazi war machine were as common in that day as are escapades of Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan in today's newspapers.
Accused of being a Communist by his many critics and refusing to sign an affidavit to validate this charge, Robeson was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) on June 12, 1956. To say that he held ultra-nationalists members of this committee in low regard is to grossly understate the contempt he had for them. During his testimony, he was constantly badgered in the "America, love or or leave it" manner reminiscent of contentious debates a decade later during the Vietnam War.
Here are a few excerpts from his testimony before HUAC in exchanges with the Committee Chairman Francis Walter (D-PA), Congressman Gordon Scherer (R-OH), and HUAC Counsel Richard Arens, an aide to Senator Joe McCarthy (R-WI).
THE CHAIRMAN: Proceed...
Mr. ROBESON: Could I say that the reason that I am here today, you know, from the mouth of the State Department itself, is: I should not be allowed to travel because I have struggled for years for the independence of the colonial peoples of Africa. For many years I have so labored and I can say modestly that my name is very much honored all over Africa, in my struggles for their independence. That is the kind of independence like Sukarno got in Indonesia. Unless we are double-talking, then these efforts in the interest of Africa would be in the same context. The other reason that I am here today, again from the State Department and from the court record of the court of appeals, is that when I am abroad I speak out against the injustices against the Negro people of this land. I sent a message to the Bandung Conference and so forth. That is why I am here. This is the basis, and I am not being tried for whether I am a Communist, I am being tried for fighting for the rights of my people, who are still second-class citizens in this United States of America. My mother was born in your state, Mr. Walter, and my mother was a Quaker, and my ancestors in the time of Washington baked bread for George Washington’s troops when they crossed the Delaware, and my own father was a slave. I stand here struggling for the rights of my people to be full citizens in this country. And they are not. They are not in Mississippi. And they are not in Montgomery, Alabama. And they are not in Washington. They are nowhere, and that is why I am here today. You want to shut up every Negro who has the courage to stand up and fight for the rights of his people, for the rights of workers, and I have been on many a picket line for the steelworkers too. And that is why I am here today...
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Mr. ROBESON: In Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being. No color prejudice like in Mississippi, no color prejudice like in Washington. It was the first time I felt like a human being. Where I did not feel the pressure of color as I feel (it) in this Committee today.
Mr. SCHERER: Why do you not stay in Russia?
Mr. ROBESON: Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here, and have a part of it just like you. And no Fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear? I am for peace with the Soviet Union, and I am for peace with China, and I am not for peace or friendship with the Fascist Franco, and I am not for peace with Fascist Nazi Germans. I am for peace with decent people.
Mr. SCHERER: You are here because you are promoting the Communist cause.
Mr. ROBESON: I am here because I am opposing the neo-Fascist cause which I see arising in these committees. You are like the Alien (and) Sedition Act, and Jefferson could be sitting here, and Frederick Douglass could be sitting here, and Eugene Debs could be here.
THE CHAIRMAN: There was no prejudice against you. Why did you not send your son to Rutgers?
Mr. ROBESON: Just a moment. This is something that I challenge very deeply, and very sincerely: that the success of a few Negroes, including myself or Jackie Robinson can make up — and here is a study from Columbia University — for seven hundred dollars a year for thousands of Negro families in the South. My father was a slave, and I have cousins who are sharecroppers, and I do not see my success in terms of myself. That is the reason my own success has not meant what it should mean: I have sacrificed literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars for what I believe in...
:: ::
Mr. ARENS: Now I would invite your attention, if you please, to the Daily Worker of June 29, 1949, with reference to a get-together with you and Ben Davis. Do you know Ben Davis?...
Mr. ROBESON: I say that he is as patriotic an American as there can be, and you gentlemen belong with the Alien and Sedition Acts, and you are the nonpatriots, and you are the un-Americans, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
If you are largely unfamiliar with the early influences upon Robeson, watch this video -- Paul Robeson - Renaissance Man -- which summarizes details of his attraction to socialism after first meeting George Bernard Shaw during the decade he spent living in England from 1928-1939. While largely free of racism, British society was hardly a paradise for men of color. The video also explains the depths of independence struggles in Africa and the pernicious effects of imperialism that Robeson learned about from many future leaders. Interspersed with many clips of his movies and singing, you will hear remarks by Tony Benn, Harry Belafonte, Jr., and others of Robeson's perceptions about pre-World War II white liberalism and its many contradictions.
British Statesmen Lord
Palmerston once observed that nations do not have permanent allies or friends. They only have permanent interests. And as any student of international relations and history knows, once political "marriages of convenience" are over, the consequences are very unpredictable. Some societies adjust well to the divorce; others never quite recover from the shock. Individuals caught in this ever-changing dance of statecraft also have to learn to adjust to the cynical realism of world politics. In this one instance, it is fair to say that Robeson was a slow learner.
He was also, however, by anyone's fair and unbiased definition, a great American and one who dared to confront the societal injustices and political contradictions firmly entrenched in his own country's long traditions. Borrowing the title from Martin Luther's 1521 'Here I Stand' Speech before the Diet of Worms in Germany, he stood up to express his outrage in his autobiography published in Great Britain during an earlier infamous 'You-Are-With-Us-Or-Against-Us' Era when he had much to lose in terms of both fame and fortune. This is what gained him, as we say in today's parlance, "moral authority" and "political stature" -- even if just about everyone in the mainstream media failed to recognize it at the time
In one area the boycott achieved a near-total success: with one insignificant exception, no white commercial newspaper or magazine in the entire country so much as mentioned Robeson's book. Leading papers in the field of literary coverage, like The New York Times and the Herald-Tribune, not only did not review it; they refused even to include its name in their lists of "books out today."
:: ::
Today, Paul Robeson seems impossible. How could one man have accomplished so much, commanded such respect, be so large and legendary, even during his lifetime? It sounds reductive to attribute his success to genius, too easy to call him destined for greatness. Even if they might be true, such stories leave out the sheer will it must have taken for Robeson, son of a runaway slave, to find himself in so many ways, and even more to the point, to make himself known -- boldly, bravely, and magnificently.
How does Robeson compare to several other prominent African-Americans who followed him and are celebrated today for their ground-breaking achievements? Quite well, actually. If he had done nothing else except excel academically at Rutgers University and graduated from Columbia University Law School -- where future US Supreme Court Justice, William O. Douglas, was a classmate -- undoubtedly he would have had a very comfortable and successful life. Considering that he finished law school in 1923, this was quite an achievement in those days.
A decade before the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks (deservedly) emerged as the face of the modern civil rights movement -- one identified with fighting Jim Crow laws largely in the South -- Robeson had been an important participant in a long civil right struggle centered in New York City. Additionally, many historians credit him for sowing the seeds of the political movement to come during the 1948 Wallace Presidential Campaign. He had tirelessly championed the cause of poor and oppressed people not only in the United States but all over the world. If he was a beloved figure for Welsh coalminers in Great Britain, in Africa he had achieved near-mythical status for his anti-colonialist positions. (sketch credit: The City Project)
One example of his political activism: as this diary -- Labor Organizer Joe Hill: Executed This Day in 1915 -- first mentioned it a few years ago, you can listen to the Depression-era ballad, 'I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night' as sung by Robeson in this video. The scenes are from a 1998 protest in New York City against then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R-NY).
I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night, Alive as you and me. Says I "But Joe, you're ten years dead" "I never died" said he, "I never died" said he.
"In Salt Lake, Joe," says I to him, him standing by my bed, "They framed you on a murder charge," Says Joe, "But I ain't dead," Says Joe, "But I ain't dead."
From San Diego up to Maine, in every mine and mill, where working-men defend their rights, it's there you find Joe Hill, it's there you find Joe Hill!
:: ::
In the field of professional sports, decades before Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson, Bill Russell, and Jim Brown came to dominate their respective sports (boxing, baseball, basketball, and football), Robeson had been an All-American football player at Rutgers University and, following that, one who also played pro football. In the arts -- well before Singer Sammy Davis, Jr. and Actor Sidney Poitier became 'acceptable' to mainstream white audiences -- Robeson was a respected and accomplished stage/film actor and singer with numerous recordings, the most famous of which is perhaps this 1928 rendition of Ol' Man River.
And, yes, before anyone had ever heard the fiery speeches of Malcolm X and the morally courageous anti-war stands taken by Muhammad Ali in the 1960's, Robeson had carved a niche for himself not only as an anti-imperialist champion but, also, as a forceful advocate for economic and social justice.
It would, therefore, not be too much of a stretch to assert that in many different fields of endeavor, Robeson was an unique individual way ahead of his time.
:: ::
What accounted for his greatness and what were the reasons so many 'feared' him? As the 1999 PBS 'American Masters' program, Paul Robeson: Here I Stand, described it
Paul Robeson was the epitome of the 20th-century Renaissance man. He was an exceptional athlete, actor, singer, cultural scholar, author, and political activist. His talents made him a revered man of his time, yet his radical political beliefs all but erased him from popular history. Today, more than one hundred years after his birth, Robeson is just beginning to receive the credit he is due.
During the 1940s, Robeson's black nationalist and anti-colonialist activities brought him to the attention of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Despite his contributions as an entertainer to the Allied forces during World War II, Robeson was singled out as a major threat to American democracy. Every attempt was made to silence and discredit him, and in 1950 the persecution reached a climax when his passport was revoked. He could no longer travel abroad to perform, and his career was stifled. Of this time, Lloyd Brown, a writer and long-time colleague of Robeson, states: "Paul Robeson was the most persecuted, the most ostracized, the most condemned black man in America, then or ever."
:: ::
I have long admired Robeson for his staunch political convictions, principled stands, and perseverance when the odds were heavily stacked against him. That is the essence of political courage and greatness. But, in the "fierce urgency of now" and this obsessively politically correct era we live in, we tend to forget many like him who've come before us -- especially those unfairly tarred with accusations of unpatriotic behavior by shameless demagogues amongst our midst
To this day, Paul Robeson's many accomplishments remain obscured by the propaganda of those who tirelessly dogged him throughout his life. His role in the history of civil rights and as a spokesperson for the oppressed of other nations remains relatively unknown. In 1995, more than seventy-five years after graduating from Rutgers, his athletic achievements were finally recognized with his posthumous entry into the College Football Hall of Fame. Though a handful of movies and recordings are still available, they are a sad testament to one of the greatest Americans of the twentieth century. If we are to remember Paul Robeson for anything, it should be for the courage and the dignity with which he struggled for his own personal voice and for the rights of all people.
Note: if you've never watched 'Here I Stand' on PBS, learn more about the program. The above video shows his son Paul Robeson, Jr. discuss baseball great Jackie Robinson's testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee and what both his father (at the time) and Robinson really felt about this appearance many years later.
:: ::
While Robeson was winning one accolade after another, he continued to do what his enemies disliked: he never accepted his success at the expense of the suffering of his people. Personal success was not enough for him. He demanded success, liberation, freedom for all mankind... What happened to Robeson as a result of his Othello was a prelude to the terror he later met and the curtain of silence that had been drawn around him... This amazing man, this great intellect, this magnificent genius with his overwhelming love of humanity was a devastating challenge to a society built on hypocrisy, greed, and profit-making at the expense of common humanity. A curtain of silence had to brought down on him. He had to be kept off tv, maligned, and omitted from the history books. Perhaps if we begin to lift the curtain of silence surrounding the accomplishments of Paul Robeson, we may begin to walk down the road of nationhood and equality.
-- 'Time to Break the Silence Surrounding Paul Robeson?' by Loften Mitchell in Paul Robeson: The Great Forerunner by editors of Freedomways (pp. 69-71, 1998)
:: ::
Towards the end of Arthur Miller's classic play, Death of a Salesman, Linda Loman cries out with a memorable demand for respect for her deceased husband, Willy Loman
Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person. You called him crazy... no, a lot of people think he's lost his... balance...
How long can that go on? How long? You see what I'm sitting here and waiting for? And you tell me he has no character? The man who never worked a day but for your benefit? When does he get the medal for that?
The painful question implicit in Linda Loman's anguished cry for help is, at least to me, quite self-evident: what kind of a society do we live in, one that recognizes and acknowledges a man's contribution to his fellow human beings only after he has departed this earth and left us for good? And even then, we often fail to credit those whose shoulders we stand upon today. For, without their efforts and sacrifices, we wouldn't amount to much.
Indeed, not unlike Willy Loman, attention must be paid to Paul Robeson.
:: ::
A Note About the Diary Poll
In the aftermath of World War II, Americans reacted with dismay as relations between the United States and the Soviet Union deteriorated, the Russians imposed communist control over much of Eastern Europe, and China was on the verge of going communist. People worried that communists might try to subvert schools, labor unions, and other institutions. Government agencies and private groups began to look for evidence of subversive activity. In this climate of fear and suspicion, the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which Herb Block had opposed since its inception in the 1930s, became active. And in 1950, a young senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, seeking political gain, began a well-publicized campaign using smear tactics, bullying and innuendo to identify and purge communists and "fellow travelers" in government. Herb Block recognized the danger to civil liberties posed by such activities and warned of them in his work. He coined the phrase "McCarthyism" in his cartoon for March 29, 1950, naming the era just weeks after Senator McCarthy's spectacular pronouncement that he had in his hand a list of communists in the State Department. His accusations became headline news, vaulting him into the national political spotlight. For four years McCarthy attacked communism, while in his cartoons Herb Block relentlessly attacked his heavy-handed tactics. In June 1954, McCarthy was censured and in December condemned by the Senate.
Simply stated, the McCarthy Era was one of the most disgraceful periods in 20th century American history. An air of suspicion hung over ordinary citizens if they were suspected of not conforming to the government's interpretation of being a "good" American. Several millions people underwent investigation by federal authorities until Senator Joe McCarthy was censured by the United States Senate. He died a broken man a few years later.
"Guilty until found innocent" was often the approach used by investigators to tar many Americans with wild, unproven allegations of consorting with the enemy. Loyalties were questioned, reputations tarnished, careers destroyed, families uprooted, and lives ruined. Many notable Americans from the entertainment industry were put on lists which made their lives miserable
During the Cold War era, the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) interrogated more than 3,000 government officials, labor union leaders, teachers, journalists, entertainers, and others. They wanted to purge Communists, former Communists, and "fellow travelers" who refused to renounce their past and inform on associates from positions of influence within American society. Among the Committee’s targets were performers at events held in support of suspect organizations.
To understand the effects that the Committee On Un-American Activities (HUAC) had on American society, I would urge you to see this chillingdocumentary film made by Radical Films in 1962 by a private citizen challenging the government's heavy-handed and, often, illegal methods. It covers the history of HUAC investigations from 1932 onwards, including those of the Hollywood Ten and others put on lists like the [Red Channels List http://en.academic.ru/... ]. It also includes extensive 1960 footage of the San Francisco City hall police water hosing protesters.
The language used in this documentary will remind you of hateful, violent, and nationalistic rhetoric used by many on the political right in recent decades. Where do you think today's Teabaggers get their talking points from? It comes from decades of engaging in conspiracy theories and imagined threats to the "American way of life." This feeling of paranoia and victimization persists to this day amongst many conservatives.
If time permits, do watch the full video and remember to take the diary poll.
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Crossposted at Docudharma and The Stars Hollow Gazette. I first wrote an abbreviated version of this diary three years ago. I have rewritten and significantly expanded it. Adding many new images, I have also completely reformatted the diary.
Originally posted to JekyllnHyde on Sat Jan 22, 2011 at 07:42 PM PST.
“You Are the Un-Americans, and You Ought to be Ashamed of Yourselves”: Paul Robeson Appears Before HUAC
Many African-American witnesses subpoenaed to testify at the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) hearings in the 1950s were asked to denounce Paul Robeson (1888–1976) in order to obtain future employment. Robeson, an All-American football player and recipient of a Phi Beta Kappa key at Rutgers, received a law degree at Columbia. He became an internationally acclaimed concert performer and actor as well as a persuasive political speaker. In 1949, Robeson was the subject of controversy after newspapers reports of public statements that African Americans would not fight in “an imperialist war.” In 1950, his passport was revoked. Several years later, Robeson refused to sign an affidavit stating that he was not a Communist and initiated an unsuccessful lawsuit. In the following testimony to a HUAC hearing, ostensibly convened to gain information regarding his passport suit, Robeson refused to answer questions concerning his political activities and lectured bigoted Committee members Gordon H. Scherer and Chairman Francis E.Walter about African-American history and civil rights. In 1958, the Supreme Court ruled that a citizen’s right to travel could not be taken away without due process and Robeson’ passport was returned.
Testimony of Paul Robeson before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, June 12, 1956
THE CHAIRMAN: The Committee will be in order. This morning the Committee resumes its series of hearings on the vital issue of the use of American passports as travel documents in furtherance of the objectives of the Communist conspiracy. . . .
Mr. ARENS: Now, during the course of the process in which you were applying for this passport, in July of 1954, were you requested to submit a non-Communist affidavit?
Mr. ROBESON: We had a long discussion—with my counsel, who is in the room, Mr. [Leonard B.] Boudin—with the State Department, about just such an affidavit and I was very precise not only in the application but with the State Department, headed by Mr. Henderson and Mr. McLeod, that under no conditions would I think of signing any such affidavit, that it is a complete contradiction of the rights of American citizens.
Mr. ARENS: Did you comply with the requests?
Mr. ROBESON: I certainly did not and I will not.
Mr. ARENS: Are you now a member of the Communist Party?
Mr. ROBESON: Oh please, please, please.
Mr. SCHERER: Please answer, will you, Mr. Robeson?
Mr. ROBESON: What is the Communist Party? What do you mean by that?
Mr. SCHERER: I ask that you direct the witness to answer the question.
Mr. ROBESON: What do you mean by the Communist Party? As far as I know it is a legal party like the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Do you mean a party of people who have sacrificed for my people, and for all Americans and workers, that they can live in dignity? Do you mean that party?
Mr. ARENS: Are you now a member of the Communist Party?
Mr. ROBESON: Would you like to come to the ballot box when I vote and take out the ballot and see?
Mr. ARENS: Mr. Chairman, I respectfully suggest that the witness be ordered and directed to answer that question.
THE CHAIRMAN: You are directed to answer the question.
(The witness consulted with his counsel.)
Mr. ROBESON: I stand upon the Fifth Amendment of the American Constitution.
Mr. ARENS: Do you mean you invoke the Fifth Amendment?
Mr. ROBESON: I invoke the Fifth Amendment.
Mr. ARENS: Do you honestly apprehend that if you told this Committee truthfully—
Mr. ROBESON: I have no desire to consider anything. I invoke the Fifth Amendment, and it is none of your business what I would like to do, and I invoke the Fifth Amendment. And forget it.
THE CHAIRMAN: You are directed to answer that question.
MR, ROBESON: I invoke the Fifth Amendment, and so I am answering it, am I not?
Mr. ARENS: I respectfully suggest the witness be ordered and directed to answer the question as to whether or not he honestly apprehends, that if he gave us a truthful answer to this last principal question, he would be supplying information which might be used against him in a criminal proceeding.
(The witness consulted with his counsel.)
THE CHAIRMAN: You are directed to answer that question, Mr. Robeson.
Mr. ROBESON: Gentlemen, in the first place, wherever I have been in the world, Scandinavia, England, and many places, the first to die in the struggle against Fascism were the Communists and I laid many wreaths upon graves of Communists. It is not criminal, and the Fifth Amendment has nothing to do with criminality. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Warren, has been very clear on that in many speeches, that the Fifth Amendment does not have anything to do with the inference of criminality. I invoke the Fifth Amendment.
Mr. ARENS: Have you ever been known under the name of “John Thomas”?
Mr. ROBESON: Oh, please, does somebody here want—are you suggesting—do you want me to be put up for perjury some place? “John Thomas”! My name is Paul Robeson, and anything I have to say, or stand for, I have said in public all over the world, and that is why I am here today.
Mr. SCHERER: I ask that you direct the witness to answer the question. He is making a speech.
Mr. FRIEDMAN: Excuse me, Mr. Arens, may we have the photographers take their pictures, and then desist, because it is rather nerve-racking for them to be there.
THE CHAIRMAN: They will take the pictures.
Mr. ROBESON: I am used to it and I have been in moving pictures. Do you want me to pose for it good? Do you want me to smile? I cannot smile when I am talking to him.
Mr. ARENS: I put it to you as a fact, and ask you to affirm or deny the fact, that your Communist Party name was “John Thomas.”
Mr. ROBESON: I invoke the Fifth Amendment. This is really ridiculous.
Mr. ARENS: Now, tell this Committee whether or not you know Nathan Gregory Silvermaster.
Mr. SCHERER: Mr. Chairman, this is not a laughing matter.
Mr. ROBESON: It is a laughing matter to me, this is really complete nonsense.
Mr. ARENS: Have you ever known Nathan Gregory Silvermaster?
(The witness consulted with his counsel.)
Mr. ROBESON: I invoke the Fifth Amendment.
Mr. ARENS: Do you honestly apprehend that if you told whether you know Nathan Gregory Silvermaster you would be supplying information that could be used against you in a criminal proceeding?
Mr. ROBESON: I have not the slightest idea what you are talking about. I invoke the Fifth—
Mr. ARENS: I suggest, Mr. Chairman, that the witness be directed to answer that question.
THE CHAIRMAN: You are directed to answer the question.
Mr. ROBESON: I invoke the Fifth.
Mr. SCHERER: The witness talks very loud when he makes a speech, but when he invokes the Fifth Amendment I cannot hear him.
Mr. ROBESON: I invoked the Fifth Amendment very loudly. You know I am an actor, and I have medals for diction.
. . . .
Mr. ROBESON: Oh, gentlemen, I thought I was here about some passports.
Mr. ARENS: We will get into that in just a few moments.
Mr. ROBESON: This is complete nonsense.
. . . .
THE CHAIRMAN: This is legal. This is not only legal but usual. By a unanimous vote, this Committee has been instructed to perform this very distasteful task.
Mr. ROBESON: To whom am I talking?
THE CHAIRMAN: You are speaking to the Chairman of this Committee.
Mr. ROBESON: Mr. Walter?
THE CHAIRMAN: Yes.
Mr. ROBESON: The Pennsylvania Walter?
THE CHAIRMAN: That is right.
Mr. ROBESON: Representative of the steelworkers?
THE CHAIRMAN: That is right.
Mr. ROBESON: Of the coal-mining workers and not United States Steel, by any chance? A great patriot.
THE CHAIRMAN: That is right.
Mr. ROBESON: You are the author of all of the bills that are going to keep all kinds of decent people out of the country.
THE CHAIRMAN: No, only your kind.
Mr. ROBESON: Colored people like myself, from the West Indies and all kinds. And just the Teutonic Anglo-Saxon stock that you would let come in.
THE CHAIRMAN: We are trying to make it easier to get rid of your kind, too.
Mr. ROBESON: You do not want any colored people to come in?
THE CHAIRMAN: Proceed. . . .
Mr. ROBESON: Could I say that the reason that I am here today, you know, from the mouth of the State Department itself, is: I should not be allowed to travel because I have struggled for years for the independence of the colonial peoples of Africa. For many years I have so labored and I can say modestly that my name is very much honored all over Africa, in my struggles for their independence. That is the kind of independence like Sukarno got in Indonesia. Unless we are double-talking, then these efforts in the interest of Africa would be in the same context. The other reason that I am here today, again from the State Department and from the court record of the court of appeals, is that when I am abroad I speak out against the injustices against the Negro people of this land. I sent a message to the Bandung Conference and so forth. That is why I am here. This is the basis, and I am not being tried for whether I am a Communist, I am being tried for fighting for the rights of my people, who are still second-class citizens in this United States of America. My mother was born in your state, Mr. Walter, and my mother was a Quaker, and my ancestors in the time of Washington baked bread for George Washington’s troops when they crossed the Delaware, and my own father was a slave. I stand here struggling for the rights of my people to be full citizens in this country. And they are not. They are not in Mississippi. And they are not in Montgomery, Alabama. And they are not in Washington. They are nowhere, and that is why I am here today. You want to shut up every Negro who has the courage to stand up and fight for the rights of his people, for the rights of workers, and I have been on many a picket line for the steelworkers too. And that is why I am here today. . . .
Mr. ARENS: Did you make a trip to Europe in 1949 and to the Soviet Union?
Mr. ROBESON: Yes, I made a trip. To England. And I sang.
Mr. ARENS: Where did you go?
Mr. ROBESON: I went first to England, where I was with the Philadelphia Orchestra, one of two American groups which was invited to England. I did a long concert tour in England and Denmark and Sweden, and I also sang for the Soviet people, one of the finest musical audiences in the world. Will you read what the Porgy and Bess people said? They never heard such applause in their lives. One of the most musical peoples in the world, and the great composers and great musicians, very cultured people, and Tolstoy, and—
THE CHAIRMAN: We know all of that.
Mr. ROBESON: They have helped our culture and we can learn a lot.
Mr. ARENS: Did you go to Paris on that trip?
Mr. ROBESON: I went to Paris.
Mr. ARENS: And while you were in Paris, did you tell an audience there that the American Negro would never go to war against the Soviet government?
Mr. ROBESON: May I say that is slightly out of context? May I explain to you what I did say? I remember the speech very well, and the night before, in London, and do not take the newspaper, take me: I made the speech, gentlemen, Mr. So-and-So. It happened that the night before, in London, before I went to Paris . . . and will you please listen?
Mr. ARENS: We are listening.
Mr. ROBESON: Two thousand students from various parts of the colonial world, students who since then have become very important in their governments, in places like Indonesia and India, and in many parts of Africa, two thousand students asked me and Mr. [Dr. Y. M.] Dadoo, a leader of the Indian people in South Africa, when we addressed this conference, and remember I was speaking to a peace conference, they asked me and Mr. Dadoo to say there that they were struggling for peace, that they did not want war against anybody. Two thousand students who came from populations that would range to six or seven hundred million people.
Mr. KEARNEY: Do you know anybody who wants war?
Mr. ROBESON: They asked me to say in their name that they did not want war. That is what I said. No part of my speech made in Paris says fifteen million American Negroes would do anything. I said it was my feeling that the American people would struggle for peace, and that has since been underscored by the President of these United States. Now, in passing, I said—
Mr. KEARNEY: Do you know of any people who want war?
Mr. ROBESON: Listen to me. I said it was unthinkable to me that any people would take up arms, in the name of an Eastland, to go against anybody. Gentlemen, I still say that. This United States Government should go down to Mississippi and protect my people. That is what should happen.
THE CHAIRMAN: Did you say what was attributed to you?
Mr. ROBESON: I did not say it in that context.
Mr. ARENS: I lay before you a document containing an article, “I Am Looking for Full Freedom,” by Paul Robeson, in a publication called the Worker, dated July 3, 1949.
At the Paris 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.
Mr. ROBESON: Is that saying the Negro people would do anything? I said it is unthinkable. I did not say that there [in Paris]: I said that in the Worker.
Mr. ARENS:
I repeat it with hundredfold emphasis: they will not.
Did you say that?
Mr. ROBESON: I did not say that in Paris, I said that in America. And, gentlemen, they have not yet done so, and it is quite clear that no Americans, no people in the world probably, are going to war with the Soviet Union. So I was rather prophetic, was I not?
Mr. ARENS: On that trip to Europe, did you go to Stockholm?
Mr. ROBESON: I certainly did, and I understand that some people in the American Embassy tried to break up my concert. They were not successful.
Mr. ARENS: While you were in Stockholm, did you make a little speech?
Mr. ROBESON: I made all kinds of speeches, yes.
Mr. ARENS: Let me read you a quotation.
Mr. ROBESON: Let me listen.
Mr. ARENS: Do so, please.
Mr. ROBESON: I am a lawyer.
Mr. KEARNEY: It would be a revelation if you would listen to counsel.
Mr. ROBESON: In good company, I usually listen, but you know people wander around in such fancy places. Would you please let me read my statement at some point?
THE CHAIRMAN: We will consider your statement.
Mr. ARENS:
I do not hesitate one second to state clearly and unmistakably: I belong to the American resistance movement which fights against American imperialism, just as the resistance movement fought against Hitler.
Mr. ROBESON: Just like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman were underground railroaders, and fighting for our freedom, you bet your life.
THE CHAIRMAN: I am going to have to insist that you listen to these questions.
MR, ROBESON: I am listening.
Mr. ARENS:
If the American warmongers fancy that they could win America’s millions of Negroes for a war against those countries (i.e., the Soviet Union and the peoples‘ democracies) then they ought to understand that this will never be the case. Why should the Negroes ever fight against the only nations of the world where racial discrimination is prohibited, and where the people can live freely? Never! I can assure you, they will never fight against either the Soviet Union or the peoples’ democracies.
Did you make that statement?
Mr. ROBESON: I do not remember that. But what is perfectly clear today is that nine hundred million other colored people have told you that they will not. Four hundred million in India, and millions everywhere, have told you, precisely, that the colored people are not going to die for anybody: they are going to die for their independence. We are dealing not with fifteen million colored people, we are dealing with hundreds of millions.
Mr. KEARNEY: The witness has answered the question and he does not have to make a speech. . . .
Mr. ROBESON: In Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being. No color prejudice like in Mississippi, no color prejudice like in Washington. It was the first time I felt like a human being. Where I did not feel the pressure of color as I feel [it] in this Committee today.
Mr. SCHERER: Why do you not stay in Russia?
Mr. ROBESON: Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here, and have a part of it just like you. And no Fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear? I am for peace with the Soviet Union, and I am for peace with China, and I am not for peace or friendship with the Fascist Franco, and I am not for peace with Fascist Nazi Germans. I am for peace with decent people.
Mr. SCHERER: You are here because you are promoting the Communist cause.
Mr. ROBESON: I am here because I am opposing the neo-Fascist cause which I see arising in these committees. You are like the Alien [and] Sedition Act, and Jefferson could be sitting here, and Frederick Douglass could be sitting here, and Eugene Debs could be here.
. . . .
THE CHAIRMAN: Now, what prejudice are you talking about? You were graduated from Rutgers and you were graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. I remember seeing you play football at Lehigh.
Mr. ROBESON: We beat Lehigh.
THE CHAIRMAN: And we had a lot of trouble with you.
Mr. ROBESON: That is right. DeWysocki was playing in my team.
THE CHAIRMAN: There was no prejudice against you. Why did you not send your son to Rutgers?
Mr. ROBESON: Just a moment. This is something that I challenge very deeply, and very sincerely: that the success of a few Negroes, including myself or Jackie Robinson can make up—and here is a study from Columbia University—for seven hundred dollars a year for thousands of Negro families in the South. My father was a slave, and I have cousins who are sharecroppers, and I do not see my success in terms of myself. That is the reason my own success has not meant what it should mean: I have sacrificed literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars for what I believe in.
Mr. ARENS: While you were in Moscow, did you make a speech lauding Stalin?
Mr. ROBESON: I do not know.
Mr. ARENS: Did you say, in effect, that Stalin was a great man, and Stalin had done much for the Russian people, for all of the nations of the world, for all working people of the earth? Did you say something to that effect about Stalin when you were in Moscow?
Mr. ROBESON: I cannot remember.
Mr. ARENS: Do you have a recollection of praising Stalin?
Mr. ROBESON: I said a lot about Soviet people, fighting for the peoples of the earth.
Mr. ARENS: Did you praise Stalin?
Mr. ROBESON: I do not remember.
Mr. ARENS: Have you recently changed your mind about Stalin?
Mr. ROBESON: Whatever has happened to Stalin, gentlemen, is a question for the Soviet Union, and I would not argue with a representative of the people who, in building America, wasted sixty to a hundred million lives of my people, black people drawn from Africa on the plantations. You are responsible, and your forebears, for sixty million to one hundred million black people dying in the slave ships and on the plantations, and don’t ask me about anybody, please.
Mr. ARENS: I am glad you called our attention to that slave problem. While you were in Soviet Russia, did you ask them there to show you the slave labor camps?
THE CHAIRMAN: You have been so greatly interested in slaves, I should think that you would want to see that.
Mr. ROBESON: The slaves I see are still in a kind of semiserfdom. I am interested in the place I am, and in the country that can do something about it. As far as I know, about the slave camps, they were Fascist prisoners who had murdered millions of the Jewish people, and who would have wiped out millions of the Negro people, could they have gotten a hold of them. That is all I know about that.
Mr. ARENS: Tell us whether or not you have changed your opinion in the recent past about Stalin.
Mr. ROBESON: I have told you, mister, that I would not discuss anything with the people who have murdered sixty million of my people, and I will not discuss Stalin with you.
Mr. ARENS: You would not, of course, discuss with us the slave labor camps in Soviet Russia.
Mr. ROBESON: I will discuss Stalin when I may be among the Russian people some day, singing for them, I will discuss it there. It is their problem.
. . . .
Mr. ARENS: Now I would invite your attention, if you please, to the Daily Worker of June 29, 1949, with reference to a get-together with you and Ben Davis. Do you know Ben Davis?
Mr. ROBESON: One of my dearest friends, one of the finest Americans you can imagine, born of a fine family, who went to Amherst and was a great man.
THE CHAIRMAN: The answer is yes?
Mr. ROBESON: Nothing could make me prouder than to know him.
THE CHAIRMAN: That answers the question.
Mr. ARENS: Did I understand you to laud his patriotism?
Mr. ROBESON: I say that he is as patriotic an American as there can be, and you gentlemen belong with the Alien and Sedition Acts, and you are the nonpatriots, and you are the un-Americans, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
THE CHAIRMAN: Just a minute, the hearing is now adjourned.
Mr. ROBESON: I should think it would be.
THE CHAIRMAN: I have endured all of this that I can.
Mr. ROBESON: Can I read my statement?
THE CHAIRMAN: No, you cannot read it. The meeting is adjourned.
Mr. ROBESON: I think it should be, and you should adjourn this forever, that is what I would say. . . .
Source: Congress, House, Committee on Un-American Activities, Investigation of the Unauthorized Use of U.S. Passports, 84th Congress, Part 3, June 12, 1956; in Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from Hearings Before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1938–1968, Eric Bentley, ed. (New York: Viking Press, 1971), 770.
Nearly 40 years before George Clinton claimed his cosmic heritage and before Crass declared that if no-one else would release their anarchic noise then they'd just do it themselves, a pianist from Birmingham (or Saturn, depending on who you ask) named Herman Poole Blount (again, depending on who you ask) set out to redefine the possibilities of music on his own terms. Although there are many many origin stories out there for the great Sun Ra, here's the version of the story that wouldn't make for an awesome episode of the X-files.
Born in Alabama on May 22nd 1914, Blount studied piano from childhood. By his early teens he could sight-read music and was composing his own songs. He was a voracious learner and practiced constantly. He put his first band together in 1934 as the backing band for his biology teacher Ethel Harper's bid at a singing career. The band toured semi-successfully, and when Ethel Harper relocated to New York, Blount took over the band and renamed it the Sonny Blount Orchestra. They became a fixture in the Birmingham music scene, though Blount was mostly recognized for his skills as a sideman.
It was sometime during Blount's freshman (and only) year of college at the Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University that he had an epiphany that would define the rest of his career. He would recount the story many times throughout his career with little variation, but with complete sincerity:
I landed on a planet that I identified as Saturn … they teleported me and I was down on stage with them. They wanted to talk with me. They had one little antenna on each ear. A little antenna over each eye. They talked to me. They told me to stop because there was going to be great trouble in schools … the world was going into complete chaos … I would speak, and the world would listen.
The experience, whether literal or metaphorical (I may be a cynic but I still slept under a giant I WANT TO BELIEVE poster for most of my life) galvanized Blount. Finances forced him to drop out of school so he committed himself to music full-time. The Sunny Blount Orchestra became his full-time occupation, and his ability to transcribe popular songs by ear became the stuff of Birmingham legend. The band played exclusively for black audiences, and due to the segregated control of recording at the time were never recorded. Even the line-up is a matter of speculation; though from anecdotes about different musicians he played with in the early years, it is likely that the band had a similar free-flowing membership as his later legendary Arkestra.
When Blount's draft notification arrived in 1942, he attempted to avoid service as a conscientious objector, but was denied. His battle with the draft board raged on for a year and a half, with Blount declaring in court that if drafted he would use his training and weapons to kill the first high-ranking officer he could find (that would be the best defense against being drafted until Arlo Guthries “sing a 20 minute folk song until the problem goes away” solution). He was sent to serve in the Civilian Public Service in Pennsylvania, but ultimately classified 4-F due to a lifelong hernia. Blount's ordeal had alienated many of his friends and family, and after 2 years back in Birmingham isolated and frustrated, he dissolved the Orchestra and moved north to Chicago.
Chicago introduced Blount to bebop, a more free-form variant of jazz than the swing he had played in Birmingham, and to Afrocentric philosophy. Inspired by groups like the Black Hebrews, and other black nationalist literature, Blount began to view Western philosophy as having originated in Africa, with the knowledge of black (and specifically Egyptian) accomplishments suppressed by white Europeans. His increasing obsession with ancient Egypt synced with the burgeoning theory of Ancient Astronauts which posits that the ancient Egyptians were taught their inexplicably advanced technology from visiting aliens, alternately were themselves from another planet. He began going by Sun Ra (Ra being the Egyptian Sun God, which is the same as calling yourself Thor Lightning, which if any of you are looking for a name for your doom metal band, you're welcome.), and in 1952 legally changed his name to Le Sony'r Ra, claiming that Herman Poole Blount had never existed.
With the help of a Chicago teen named Alton Abraham, Sun Ra put together the first line-up of the Arkestra and cut their first album in 1956. Jazz by Sun Ra was followed closely by Super-Sonic Jazz which was the group's first release on Sun Ra and Abraham's own label El Saturn records. Founded in 1955, El Saturn was one of the first, and certainly most active artist-owned record labels. The band designed and even packaged the sleeves entirely themselves and often printed very short runs (sometimes as low as 20 copies) for sale at shows. They took out no advertising and instead relied on word of mouth and distribution in local stores. Although the first few records were recorded in professional recording studios, many albums like The Nubians of Plutonia were recorded in rehearsal on low quality tape. Since the Arkestra maintained a release schedule of approximately 2 full length studio albums per year into the 80s, the quality varies wildly from one release to another. As a result, the Arkestra records have a decidedly DIY sound, 20 years before it was a term, and 40 years before it was a cultivated aesthetic.
Like its line-up, and the quality of it's recordings, the band's sound varied wildly from one album to another. Musicians would flow in and out of the band, often sticking around for a few years before moving on. At its height, the Arkestra had 100 members, but tended to average around 20. Sun Ra was both a strict disciplinarian, and open to the creative whims of his musicians. He demanded regular daily rehearsal sessions, but allowed his musicians to bring their own unique styles to the band. As such, the band covered everything from traditional swing, to be-bop, to ragtime, to swing, and even experimented in electronic music.
In the early-60's with Other Planes of There and Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy, The Arkestra began playing with more abstract forms. They integrated free jazz ramblings, African rhythms, and bits of studio manipulation largely unheard of in jazz circles at that point. Instrumentation-wise, the closest comparison is Juan Garcia Esquivel's now iconic Space Age Bachelor Pad Music (also referred to as Exotica and Beautiful Music depending on how pretensions you are), but even Esquivel at his strangest was attempting to reinvent standard pop music. Sun Ra and his Arkestra had a more cosmic goal in mind.
I never wanted to be part of planet Earth, and I did everything not to be a part of it. I never wanted their money or their fame, and anything I do for this planet is because the Creator of the universe is making me do it. . .If I can get out of enlightening this planet, I'll do so with the greatest of pleasure, and let them stay in their darkness, cruelty, hatred, ignorance, and the other things they got in their houses of deceit.
By the late 60's, Sun Ra began to return to more traditional ideas of form and song structure while maintaining his experiments and general experimental bent. The landmark albums Atlantis and My Brother The Wind Vol. 1 were released in 1969 and 1970 respectively, and are generally cited as the purest synthesis of Sun Ra's aesthetic. They combined unusual instrumentation and arrangement, with a free spaced out form, a strong unique sense of melody, and virtuosic performance. The title track to Atlantis stands as one of Ra's greatest musical accomplishments. A 22 minute spaced out track that somehow evokes both deep personal yearning and the landscapes of distant planets.
It was around this time that Sun Ra also began experimenting with synthesizers. He purchased one of the first Moog synths in 1969, and used it to record the truly bizarre (almost dubstep-esque) album Space Probe in August 1969. The album was one of the first albums to make prominent use of one of Robert Moog's legendary synths (beaten to the punch by the Monkees two years earlier. No, seriously.) The possibilities of sound and technique generated by synthesizer inspired the nearly 60 year old Sun Ra. Heavily dividing the jazz community, he would make prominent use of synths for the rest of his career.
Through the 70's, the Arkestra continued their rigorous schedule of weekly performances, daily rehearsals, and constant album releases. Although their albums from that period are now nearly entirely out of print, their live shows from that era have become the stuff of legend. Incorporating Egyptian imagery, fire-breathers, dancers, and elaborate costumes, their concerts bewildered fans of traditional jazz, and hippies alike. When they became the house band for the notorious Squat Theatre in New York City in 1979, the Arkestra found an unlikely audience in New York's vibrant art-punk scene. Debbie Harrie, John Cale, Nico, and Thurston Moore were all avowed fans of the Arkestra and regulars at their shows.
The Arkestra continued performing regularly, though as Sun Ra's health declined, so did their constant outpouring of material. In contrast with their roughly 30 full length studio albums in the 70's, the Arkestra released only 8 in the 80's. They recorded 2 final albums in 1990 before Sun Ra suffered a stroke and had to retire from performing. He continued to compose and lead the band, but his health deteriorated rapidly. On May 30th, 1993 at 79 years old Sun Ra was sent back to Saturn.
The Arkestra's reach has been enormous. Although his career did not begin in earnest until his 40's, his innovations in sound and style have had reach far outside the jazz world. His singular and unique commitment to artistic expression as a means for black intellectual liberation went on to heavily influence George Clinton and the entire Afrofuturist movement. And his pre-punk devotion to DIY ethos has stood as a landmark to the punk and indie communities that when the mainstream musical establishment shuns you, it is still possible to achieve success on your own terms.
