This Day in History: 1898-04-09

Paul Robeson  American actor, director and political activist, is born on this day in 1898.  He was known especially for his 1933  role as “Emperor Jones,” a strong film that set off riots and lynchings in the American South.  Robeson was the first African- American movie star and the most visible activist against racism in the 1930s and ’40s.  He was hounded by the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s. When he refused to recant his public advocacy for the Soviet Union, he was blacklisted and the U.S. State Department withdrew his passport. He moved to Harlem and co-founded (with W. E. B. Du Bois) a periodical called Freedom, which was critical of US policies, from 1950 to 1955. Robeson’s right to travel was eventually restored as a result of the 1958 United States Supreme Court decision Kent v. Dulles.  Robeson could have moved permanently to the Soviet Union, given his affinity with its political ideology, but he did not, saying:  “Because my father was a slave and my people died to build  [the United States 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!” He retired in the early 1960s and died in 1976.