The Life of Paul Robeson by David K. Wright

Author:David K. Wright [Wright, David K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780766061590
Publisher: Enslow Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2014-03-11T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

UNDER SCRUTINY

The United States entered World War II on December 8, 1941, the day after Japanese planes attacked the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands. Most Americans had been less concerned with Japan and Asia than with Germany and Europe. The Soviet Union would begin to push the German Army back toward Berlin late in 1942.

While the United States and the Soviet Union were now on the same side in the war, many Americans distrusted the Communist nation. Among the most suspicious was FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. He did not care for Americans who said positive things about the Soviets. Hoover decided that Paul Robeson must be a member of the Communist Party. Robeson neither admitted nor denied party membership. For years Hoover had the entertainer and his acquaintances followed and spied upon, in public and in private.

The agents’ work was cut out for them. Robeson never did become a member of the Communist Party, though he had visited and praised the Soviet Union before the start of World War II. The whole situation today seems laughable: As Robeson participated in public, patriotic rallies that included Americans of all political persuasions, FBI agents wrote down every word he spoke or sang.

Agents also planted electronic listening devices, or “bugs,” in apartments and hotel rooms wherever Robeson visited or was staying. Despite the lack of solid evidence, the FBI file on the singer-actor grew thicker and thicker. Hoover saw Robeson as dangerous, deciding to lock him up if martial law ever were declared in the country.1 Ironically, Robeson’s patriotic activities allowed him to get to know Franklin D. Roosevelt’s wife, Eleanor, and several of the president’s closest friends and advisors. They might have been shocked by anyone who would label the entertainer a Communist.

Robeson and the few Communists active in the United States split on at least one crucial point. The Communists often told black people not to participate in the war, that they were being used by the capitalist system. In contrast, Robeson urged his fellow African Americans to do everything they could to win the war. He did so because he realized that a victory for fascism would mean the kind of treatment of blacks that Jews and others were facing in concentration camps.

As it turned out, America greatly needed the help of its African-American citizens during the war. In Detroit, for example, where the war meant making weapons instead of automobiles, African Americans helped build aircraft at the Ford Motor Company’s Willow Run plant. They also signed on at aircraft plants up and down the West Coast and in industrial states such as Ohio, where the production of shells, tools, Jeeps, and more were helping the war effort. Though they were indeed the last to be hired—and would be the first to be fired at war’s end—many blacks were able to purchase decent housing and lead middle-class lives.

The military was a thorny problem for blacks. All United States forces would remain segregated until several years after the end of the war.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.