Guide to Source Material for Anti-Racist Activists and Thinkers

Robeson's international achievements as a singer and actor in starring roles on stage and screen made him the most celebrated black American of his day, but his outspoken criticism of racism in the United States, his strong support of African independence, and his fascination with the Soviet Union placed him under the debilitating scrutiny of McCarthyism. Blacklisted, his famed voice silenced, Here I Stand offered a bold answer to his accusers. It remains today a defiant challenge to the prevailing fear and racism that continues to characterize American society. (This book was originally published in 1958, this is a reprint.)

Drawing on a vast archive of family papers and interviews with friends and relatives as well as FBI files, Martin Duberman charts the heroic and tragic course of Robeson's life: from his early days as the son of a former slave to his rise to unprecedented international acclaim as a stage actor and singer, and from his political awakening to his downfall as a victim of McCarthyism and the efforts of the U.S. government to destroy him. Paul Robeson is the result of years of research and interviews and paints a portrait worthy of its incredible subject and his improbable story.

In this work Paul Robeson Jr. traces the dramatic arc of his father's rise to fame, painting a definitive picture of Paul Robeson's formative years. His father was an escaped slave; his mother, a descendent of freedmen; and his wife, the brilliant and ambitious Eslanda Cardozo Goode. With a law degree from Columbia University; a professional football career; title roles in Eugene O'Neill's plays and in Shakespeare's Othello; and a concert career in America and Europe, Robeson dominated his era. This unprecedented biography reveals the depth of Robeson's cultural scholarship, explores the contradictions he bridged in his personal and political life, and describes his emergence as a symbol of the anticolonial and antifascist struggles. It includes many unpublished photographs and source materials from the private diaries and letters of Paul and Eslanda Robeson.

From his cavernous voice and unparalleled artistry to his fearless struggle for human rights, Paul Robeson was one of the twentieth century's greatest icons and polymaths. In Everything Man Shana L. Redmond traces Robeson's continuing cultural resonances in popular culture and politics. She follows his appearance throughout the twentieth century in the forms of sonic and visual vibration and holography; theater, art, and play; and the physical environment. Redmond thereby creates an imaginative cartography in which Robeson remains present and accountable to all those he inspired and defended. With her bold and unique theorization of antiphonal life, Redmond charts the possibility of continued communication, care, and collectivity with those who are dead but never gone.

The ideas of the world-renowned Black American are represented on the arts, civil rights, socialism, and other topics. The editor Philip Foner has arranged his selections chronologically, tracing from Robeson's early writings in college, his interviews in the 1920's and 30's, and into the second half of his life where he wrote columns (notably in his publication Freedom) and gave speeches for civil rights, unionizing, and anti-colonial causes.