Paul Robeson and the Peekskill Riots

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying Back when
I was also on another podcast in addition to this
one called This Day in History Class, which is a

(00:23):
podcast that still exists, but I haven't been on it
in a couple of years because that was too much
work to do. I did an episode on The Peak
Skill Riots, and it has been on my list for
a longer episode over here since then because This Day
in History Class is like five to ten minutes long
per episode, and I thought it I wanted to have

(00:43):
a longer treatment of it. I bumped it up to
the top of my list when it came up in
our recent episode on Eugene Jacques Bullard. And so it
is today's episode of the show, and the Peak Skill
Riots surrounded a concert by singer and activist Paul Robeson,
So we're going to start with some background on him.
Paul Bustil Robeson, Sr. Was born in Princeton, New Jersey,

(01:06):
on April nine. He was the youngest of four children
born to William Drew Robeson and Maria Louisa Bustell. William
had been enslaved from birth and had become a minister
after liberating himself in eighteen sixty and Maria was a teacher. Sadly,
Maria died in a fire when Paul was only six.

(01:27):
Throughout his life, Robeson was a high achiever academically. He
earned the highest score in the state on a scholarship
exam to attend Rutgers University. Then he graduated from Rutgers
as valedictorian with honors that included Phi Beta Kappa and
membership in the Cap and Skull Honor Society. He played
multiple sports at the varsity level and was a two

(01:48):
time All American in football at Rutgers and then as
a performer. He was praised for his skills in both
acting and music, with a just beautiful voice that was
described in terms like magnificent and celestial. And he did
all this while faced with oppressive and sometimes violent racism.
He was the only black student in his class at

(02:11):
Rutgers when he started in nineteen fifteen, and he was
the university's first black student athlete. White football players physically
attacked him during tryouts, and at one point he was
pulled from a game when Washington and Lee University threatened
not to play if he was on the team. Robeson
stood up against this and other abuse, not only for

(02:33):
his own sake, but for that of others. In an
interview in nineteen forty four, he said of his time
at Rutgers quote, I wasn't just there on my own.
I was the representative of a lot of Negro boys
who wanted to play football and wanted to go to college,
and as their representative, I had to show that I
could take whatever was handed out. After graduating from Rutgers,

(02:55):
Robeson went on to Columbia University, where he earned a
law degree in nineteen but he found that because of
his race, he did not have a lot of opportunities
as a lawyer, so he focused on becoming an entertainer,
appearing on stage in New York and London and acting
in films. In five he also launched a career as
a singer, with a repertoire that came to focus on spirituals,

(03:18):
working songs and songs associated with the labor movement. His wife,
as Landa, was his manager. They had married in ninety one.
Robeson's career really flourished, both as an actor and as
a singer, and it was groundbreaking. For example, for decades,
the title role of Othello had been played by white

(03:39):
men in blackface, and in the US that was almost
unheard of for a black man to start in a
role opposite a white woman. But Robeson broke this color line,
appearing as Othello in London in nineteen thirty and on
Broadway in nineteen forty three. This Broadway production of Othello
ran for two d ninety six per four pans, which

(04:00):
set a record for Shakespeare on Broadway. By this point,
Robeson was also outspoken against both racism and fascism. Starting
in the nineteen thirties, he had become increasingly focused on
equal rights for racial and ethnic minorities and on workers
rights in economic equality. He saw both his performances and

(04:21):
his life as a way to support democracy and equality
and to oppose fascism, colonialism, exploitation, and war. He traveled
internationally as part of this, including making a trip to
the Soviet Union in nineteen thirty four, and there he
found an affinity with its workers and its peasant class,
and he also said he felt like this was the

(04:42):
first place he had ever been where he had been
treated like a full human being, rather than targeted and
vilified because of his race. After this visit, he had
started learning Russian and adding Russian songs to his repertoire.
He frequently talked about the huge difference and how he
was treated in the USSR as compared to how he

(05:05):
was treated in the US. This sympathy with the Soviet
Union had a major impact on his life and career
after World War Two, with the start of the Cold War.
At that point, it would have been seen as deeply
suspicious for any American to express these kinds of views,
but it was especially suspicious coming from a black man,

(05:25):
particularly a black man who was also outspoken on subjects
like racial and economic equality. In April of ninety nine,
Robeson was invited to perform at the Paris Peace Congress
also called the World Congress of the Peace Partisans. This
was a peace conference that had been established by the
Soviet Union. After his musical performance at the conference, he

(05:49):
spoke extemporaneously, and according to a French transcript, he said, quote,
we in America do not forget that it is on
the backs of the poor whites of your up and
on the backs of millions of black people. The wealth
of America has been acquired, and we are resolved that
it shall be distributed in an equitable manner among all

(06:11):
of our children. And we don't want any hysterical stupidity
about our participating in a war against anybody, no matter
whom we are determined to fight for peace. We do
not wish to fight the Soviet Union. However, before he
even started speaking, a different quote had already been filed

(06:32):
with the Associated Press. The AP reported Robeson is saying, quote,
it is unthinkable that American Negroes would go to war
on behalf of those who have oppressed us for generations
against one which in one generation has lifted our people
to full human dignity. The AP right up also reported
that Robeson had called President Truman's program for colonial development

(06:55):
in Africa an invasion that equated to a new slavery.
The New York Times ran both this AP report and
another article on April one, ninety nine. This other article
was headlined Paris quote Peace Congress a sales, US and
Atlantic packed upholds Soviet This piece quoted Robeson as saying, quote,

(07:18):
we colonial people's have contributed to the building of the
United States and are determined to share in its wealth.
We denounced the policy of the United States government, which
is similar to that of Hitler and Google's. We want
peace and liberty and will combat for them, along with
the Soviet Union, the democracies of Eastern Europe, China, and Indonesia. Immediately,

(07:40):
Robeson was denounced as a communist and a trader. Newspapers
sought comment from other prominent black people, expecting them to
denounce Robeson as well. The U. S. State Department demanded
a response from Roy Wilkins and Walter White of the
n double a CP, and the House un American Activities
Committee brought in Jackie Robinson to testify against Paul Robeson

(08:03):
in July of ninety nine. Robeson and Robinson were two
of the most famous black men in the United States
at this point, and so this was an intentional effort
to try to get an equally prominent black man to
denounce Paul Robeson. Jackie Robinson apparently reluctantly testified that Paul
Robeson did not speak for all black people and that

(08:27):
while he was entitled to his own views he sounded
silly expressing them in public. Jackie Robinson also said of
the ongoing civil rights struggles in the US, quote, we
can win our fight without the Communists, and we don't
want their help. All of this was happening just at
the start of the Second Red Scare. Civil rights, labor rights,

(08:48):
and other progressive organizations were already under a lot of scrutiny,
and some did have Communists among their members. The Communist
Party also advocated for things like labor rights and eat
well civil rights across races and sexes, so it made
it easy to brand other organizations fighting for these same
things as communist. Many civil rights organizations and their leaders

(09:11):
were eager to distance themselves from Communism as much as possible,
and all of this fed into why some of the
people and organizations who had previously seen robes In as
an ally suddenly shunned him and even condemned him. At first, Robeson,
who was still in Europe, had no idea what was
happening back in the United States, and when he found out,

(09:34):
he initially did not realize the scope of it. He
thought he could just issue a response when he got
back home, but once it became clear. It was really devastating,
especially when it came to Jackie Robinson's comments. As a
black athlete himself, Robeson had actively supported Robinson's efforts to
break the color line in Major League Baseball, and publicly,

(09:58):
Robeson maintained his sports saying quote, I have no quarrel
with Jackie. I have a great deal of respect for him.
He is entitled to his view. I feel that the
House Committee has insulted Jackie, It has insulted me, it
has insulted the entire Negro race. All of this happened
shortly before Robeson was supposed to perform near Peak Skill,

(10:21):
New York. He had performed in and around Peak Skill
at least three times in previous years, and while there
had been some protests, including by the American Legion when
he was at Peak Skills Stadium in nine, this time
was different. We'll talk more about that after a sponsor break.

(10:47):
The concert that Paul Robeson planned to perform on August
ninety nine was just outside of Peekskill, New York, at
Lakeland Acre's Picnic Ground. It was sponsored by Pete Seeger's
booking agency People's Artists, Inc. This was a fundraising event,
with proceeds going to the Harlem Chapter of the Civil

(11:08):
Rights Congress. This was a civil rights and legal defense
organization whose founder, William L. Patterson, was also a leader
in the communist part of USA. This organization was focused
on protecting the civil rights of black people and communists,
so as an organization it faced a lot of suspicion.

(11:29):
Peak Skill is in Westchester County, and this area had
previously been both agricultural and industrial, but all of that
had declined, allowing developers to buy up large tracts of
land for cheap and then build summer resorts. About eighteen
thousand people were living in Peak Skill year round, and
in the summer it was host to about thirty thousand vacationers,

(11:50):
most of them Jewish people from New York City. Robeson's
music was widely popular among Jewish people, which was one
of the reasons for an annual summer concert in Peak Skill.
Except for the people whose livelihoods depended on this summer crowd,
the town's year round residents generally did not like them.
Every summer, locals dealt with traffic and crowds and shortages

(12:14):
of just basic goods and stores, along with just suddenly
being vastly outnumbered by people they did not see as
part of their community. In some cases actively disliked because
of anti Semitism. In other cases just like I felt
like they had different cultural priorities and views. I feel
like this is the refrain of everyone who lives in

(12:34):
a tourism town. Yeah, peak season is always please get
these people out of here. Leading up to the concert,
the Peak Skill Evening Star published numerous articles, editorials, and
letters to the editor about it. Most of them were negative,
describing Robeson as a communist and a subversive and the
concert as a threat to Peak Skill. On August twenty three,

(12:57):
article ran under the headline Robeson concert here aid subversive unit,
and it set in part quote, every ticket purchased for
the Peak Skill Concert will drop nickels and dimes into
the basket of an Unamerican political organization. The time for
tolerant silence that signifies approval is running out. A letter

(13:17):
to the editor by local veteran leader Vincent J. Boyle
equated communism with polio. In other words, it was a terrifying,
contagious disease capable of silently infecting people. Public sentiment among
peak Skills year round residents was overwhelmingly against the concert.
Multiple organizations spoke out against it, including the j c S,

(13:40):
the Kawanis Club, and the Knights of Columbus, but there
were at least a few people who defended Robeson's rights.
A play one letter to the editor from August that,
in part quote, the principal danger that appears on the
horizon is that those who think of themselves as good
Americans should become anarchy and forget if they ever fully

(14:02):
understood and truly appreciated the great value of democratic principles,
the greatest of which is tolerance for the expression of
minority and unpopular ideas, freedom of speech, press, and orderly assembly.
Another letter made a similar argument, although both of the
people who had written these letters were very careful to

(14:25):
point out that they personally were not communists. Afterward, they
were both subjected to a lot of harassment and threats.
In light of all this, the concerts organizers made three
different requests for police protection. Those requests were all ignored. Meanwhile,
the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars were

(14:45):
planning a protest parade. The Joint Veterans Council supported a
protest as well. In addition to the allegations that Robeson
was a Communist subversive. The picnic area where the concert
was being held was adjacent to cemeteries were veterans were buried,
which the veterans groups found deeply offensive. On August, several

(15:06):
people arrived at the picnic area to set up, including
putting out a thousand rented folding chairs. One was novelist
Howard Fast, who was one of the last people able
to make it into the picnic area before demonstrators from
the American Legion blocked the entrance. Although the organizations that
were planning to protest the concert stressed that their demonstrations

(15:28):
would be peaceful, the situation in the picnic ground quickly
became ugly and violent. Demonstrators made a bonfire from the
chairs and songbooks that were being used for the event.
Robeson was lynched in effigy, and someone burned across. People
shouted things like quote, we're Hitler's boys here to finish
the job, as well as yelling white supremacist, racist, and

(15:52):
anti Semitic slogans. The few people who had gotten there
early to set up wound up cornered on the stage
singing we Shall Not Be Moved, which was the only
music for the evening. Robeson had been kept out as
a venue. When it was clear that the concert wasn't happening,
some of the demonstrations, organizers started calling for people to disperse.

(16:14):
Police then cleared the area that some of the people
who had been protesting took their antagonism out into the community,
mostly targeting Jewish people, artists, people who lived in the
area or were there from the summer that for whatever reason,
the protesters saw as suspicious or subversive. Peak Skill American
Legion leader Milton Flint said of this quote, our objective

(16:38):
was to prevent the Paul Robeson concert, and I think
our objective was reached, And Robeson later said quote, they
were not merely attacking me personally. They were attacking the
Negro people, the Jewish people, and all who stand for
peace and democracy in America. Robeson and other people who
had been involved in this concert met at Harlem's Golden

(16:59):
Gay Ballroom shortly after all this, and they decided to
reschedule the concert for September four, which was the Sunday
of Labor Day weekend. This time the venue was in
the neighboring town of Courtland in the Hollowbrook Country Club.
Once again, locals in Peak Skill and community and city
groups planned a protest to oppose the concert. Since requests

(17:21):
for police protection had gone unheeded in August, concert organizers
worked with several trade unions to make a plan for
union members to defend the concert site. It's really not
clear how many people would have attended the August concert
if it had been able to go on, but the
crowd on the afternoon of September four was huge, with

(17:43):
estimates ranging from fifteen thousand to twenty five thousand people.
In addition to Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger, other performers
were added to the set, singing classical music, folk songs,
and spirituals, and giving an appeal for funds from the
Civil Rights Congress. Union members made a shoulder to shoulder
human wall all around the crowd and the stage as

(18:06):
a physical barrier between them and the protesters. The concert
itself went well. Pete Seeger later described feeling a sense
of relief and accomplishment that their plans to protect everyone
and get through the concert had worked, but then as
the crowd tried to leave, the police funneled everyone through
the same exit and down miles of the same long

(18:27):
winding road where people were waiting with piles of rocks
to throw at the cars and busses as they went by.
The rocks had been put there ahead of time to
throw at vehicles and the people in them as they left.
Paul Robeson was driven out of the area, hiding in
the floor of a van with the hope that he
wouldn't be spotted. His son, Paul Robeson Jr. Was married

(18:49):
to a white woman, and members of the crowd threatened
to murder a different black man who was in the
car with a white woman in a case of mistaken identity.
Pete Seager was in a car with his wife and
two young children, along with his father in law and
a couple of other people. Seegar described one of his
children in the floor of the car covered in shattered

(19:10):
glass as they tried to get out. When they drove
past a police officer and Seeger asked if they were
going to do something. The officer just said, quote move on.
Seeger kept the two rocks that smashed through the windows
and later used them as part of the chimney in
the home that they built. At least fifteen cars were
overturned as people tried to leave. Through all of this,

(19:33):
some of the bus drivers spled, leaving around a thousand
passengers stranded in this melee. Meanwhile, back at the concert site,
demonstrators attacked people who were still trying to leave. Someone
spit on Eugene Bullard, who we just had an episode about,
and after he spit back, he was badly beaten, including

(19:53):
by police, And even though all this was caught on video,
no one was ever prosecuted for it. Although no one
was killed, at least one forty people were injured during
all of this, and some of them were seriously injured.
And once again, as the crowd moved away from the
scene of the concert, violence spread out into the community,
targeting black and Jewish people who were still in the

(20:15):
area with harassment, threats, and slurs. After all of this,
news coverage generally condemned the violence, while often subtly or
sometimes directly blaming robes In for it, framing him as
an anti American communist. The New York Times reporting set
in part quote lamenting the twisted thinking that is ruining

(20:38):
Paul Robeson's great career. We defend his right to carry
his art to whatever peaceably assembled groups of people he wishes.
That is the American way. New York Governor Thomas Dewey
ordered an investigation that was handled by District Attorney George Finelli,
and it absolved police of any blame, but in a
c LU investigation concluded that the West Chess police had

(21:00):
allowed the violence to happen. The a c l You
also noted that state troopers on hand had tried to
break up fights or protect people when they witnessed violence,
but the state troopers were far outnumbered by other officers,
making up about two hundred of the roughly nine hundred
fifty officers present. The a c l used report on
the violence also included this statement quote, A comprehensive and

(21:24):
patient investigation of these incidents brings to light one outstanding
fact that the rioters believed they were carrying out a
patriotic duty in what they did. They believed that the
nation would applaud them and the national press would lend
them support. They believed that in denying freedom of speech
to a political minority, they were following the lead of

(21:48):
the federal authorities. We're going to talk more about the
aftermath of all of this after we first pause for
a little sponsor break. After the violence of September four,

(22:08):
a lot of people in and around Peak Skill maintained
that communists had provoked the violence, but the only provocation
they were referencing was Paul Robeson having played a concert.
There was no evidence that communists had called for or
instigated any violence, although there was ongoing Ku Klux Klan

(22:29):
activity in the area. The a c LU report concluded
that the clan was not responsible for the rioting. There
had even been a protest sign in the August seven
parades that had read, quote, twenty years ago, we cleaned
out the clan, now we'll clean out the commies that said.
Cross burning is heavily associated with the clan, and crosses

(22:50):
were burning during the riots, and the violence does seem
to have inspired later clan activity, with clan members burning
crosses that bore the label quote we protest Paul Robeson
and communism. The riots also inflamed racism and anti semitism
more generally. In late August and early September of nineteen

(23:11):
forty nine, people in and around Peak Skills started displaying
signs in their windows that read wake Up America. Peak
Skill did. This also appeared on protesters signs, and it
became a bumper sticker. In response to this and other incidents,
including a controversy at Sarah Lawrence College, which is also
in Westchester County, the American Legion in Westchester County established

(23:35):
its own Unamerican Activities Committee in nineteen fifty two. Simultaneously,
the riots inspired the civil rights and labor rights movements,
including a new wave of protest songs. An album called
The Peak Skill Story, including both music and spoken word,
by Paul Robeson, Howard Fast, Pete Seeger and the Weavers,

(23:55):
was released just days after the riots. Seeger song Hold
the Line was part of this album and begins let
me tell you the story of a line that was
held and many brave men and women whose courage we
know well. How we held the line at Peak Skill
on that long September day. We will hold the line forever,
till the people have their way. Nobody was ever prosecuted

(24:18):
for the violence or destruction of these two events. Paul
Robeson and twenty six others did file a two million
dollar civil suit against Westchester County and two of the
veterans groups involved, but that was eventually dismissed, and all
the musicians associated with the concert had their careers disrupted. Performers,
including Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger, and Woody Guthrie, who had

(24:41):
been at the concert but had not performed, were turned
away by venues, had bookings canceled, and were otherwise closed
out of the industry. Prominent politicians and people in other
industries cut ties with them, sometimes publicly, but this was
by far the worst for Paul Robeson. He did not
backed down on any of his statements about US foreign

(25:03):
policy or colonialism, or racism, or his experiences as a
black man in the United States versus in the Soviet Union.
The FBI investigated him for years. The Paul robes And
file on the FBI website, where it keeps its vaults
of stuff from Foyer requests, includes thirty one parts, and

(25:24):
some of them are hundreds of pages long. None of
this stopped his activism, though, and he did not back
away from his support of communism or the Soviet Union.
In nineteen fifty, he published a pamphlet called The Negro
people in the Soviet Union, in which he described the
Soviet Union as inspiring the independence movements in Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia,

(25:47):
and India. He also talked about Europe's colonization of Africa,
saying quote, the Soviet Union is the friend of the
African and West Indian peoples, and no imperialist wolf described
is a benevolent watchdog, and no Tito disguised as a
revolutionary can convince them that Moscow oppresses the small nations.

(26:09):
Later on in the pamphlet, he wrote, quote, the Soviet
socialist program of ethnic and national democracy is precisely the
opposite of the Nazi, fascist, South African and Dixiecrat programs
of racial superiority. That same year, the US became involved
in the Korean War, which Robeson also spoke out against.

(26:29):
As he was preparing for an international tour of concerts
and peace rallies, the State Department canceled his passport. Immigration
officials were also instructed to keep him from traveling to
Canada or Mexico, where passports were not required. Although he
was still in demand as a performer outside the United States,

(26:50):
he wasn't allowed to travel to work, and he was
also banned from most domestic venues, so for the most
part he couldn't work in the US either. His remaining
performances had to work around this. At one point in
nineteen fifty two, he did an outdoor concert in Washington,
where part of the crowd of twenty five thousand people

(27:10):
was across the border in Canada. Robeson later said his
annual income dropped from one hundred thousand dollars to two
thousand dollars After the peak skill riots, He and his wife,
is Landa lost their home in Connecticut and moved to Harlem,
New York as a note. They were married until her
death in nineteen sixty five, but their relationship was sometimes strained.

(27:33):
They had remained married in spite of a pattern of
extramarital affairs on Paul's part. As Robeson tried to find
other ways to make ends meet, he started a newspaper
called Freedom, which was one of the few publications in
the US to extensively report on apartheid in South Africa
during this period. A paper ran until nineteen fifty five.

(27:54):
In nineteen fifty six, Robeson tried to get his passport
restored and During that process, he refused to sign an
affidavit stating that he was not a communist. Afterward, he
was called before the House Un American Activities Committee, where
his testimony was truly defiant. He was just not going
to cooperate with what he saw as a total sham

(28:16):
of a proceeding. He repeatedly refused to say whether he
was a communist. He invoked the Fifth Amendment over and over,
and he called the proceedings ridiculous. He said at one point, quote,
I am not being tried for whether I am a communist.
I am being tried for fighting for the rights of
my people. I stand here struggling for the rights of

(28:36):
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'm 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

(28:58):
been on many a picket line for the steel workers too,
and that is why I am here today. He also
elaborated on that quote that had been misreported and had
fed into the Peak Skill riots. Quote. No part of
my speech made in Paris says fifteen million American Negroes
would do anything. I said, it was my feeling that

(29:19):
the American people would struggle for peace, and that has
since been underscored by the President of the United States.
Now in passing, 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.

(29:43):
And when asked repeatedly whether he had praised Joseph Stalin,
he finally answered, quote, whatever has happened to Stalin, gentleman,
is a question for the Soviet Union. And I would
not argue with the representative of the people who, in
building America wasted sixty two a hundred million lives of
my people, black people drawn from Africa on the plantations.

(30:05):
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.
When the meeting was finally announced as adjourn, Robeson said quote,
I think it should be and you should adjourn this forever.

(30:26):
In addition to having been essentially blocked from his career
as a performer after this, Robeson's name was removed from
the College Football All American roster. So one thing that
we do need to note here is that Robeson's praise
for the Soviet Union went way beyond his own experience
of racial oppression as a black man. So many of

(30:48):
the quotes we have read from him, he had a point.
He was correct in his notation that the United States
was expecting young men, especially young black men, to go
to war while not protect the black men at home.
Like a lot of what he was saying was absolutely valid.
But what we're talking about, as far as his opinions
went beyond that. It's likely that when he visited the

(31:10):
Soviet Union in nineteen thirty four, he did not know,
for example, about the holadamor Soviet authorities took steps to
hide that from prominent visitors, and a lot of the
other most notorious actions on the part of the Soviet
Union had not happened yet when he was there in
nineteen thirty four. But by the time Robeson appeared before

(31:31):
the House an American Activities Committee, it was clear that
Stalin's control of the Soviet Union had been ruthlessly authoritarian
and dictatorial, and that he and his administration had carried
out purges and mass deportations and executions, unjust imprisonments, and
industrialization and collectivization efforts that had led to widespread famine

(31:54):
and death. But Robeson never publicly reconsidered his early support
of the Soviet Union or its leaders, including Joseph Stalin,
and he also praised other Communist dictators, including Mao Zedong.
For example, after Stalin's death in nineteen fifty three, ropes
And published a eulogy that was full of effusive praise, saying,

(32:14):
in part quote, yes, through his deep humanity, by his
wise understanding, he leaves us a rich and monumental heritage.
Most importantly, he has charted the direction of our present
and future struggles. He has pointed the way to peace,
to friendly coexistence, to the exchange of mutual scientific and
cultural contributions, to the end of war and destruction. How consistently,

(32:39):
how patiently he labored for peace and ever increasing abundance
with what deep kindliness and wisdom, he leaves tens of
millions all over the earth bowed in heart aching grief.
At least in earlier years like the nineteen thirties and forties,
robes And seems to have been concerned that if he
denounced anything the Soviet Union was doing, it would feed

(33:03):
into anti Soviet and anti Communist fervor, which he thought
would do more harm than good. And he repeatedly made
the point that the United States had this long history
of slavery and genocide that really wasn't acknowledged when the
US was condemning atrocities that were carried out by other nations.
But we really do not know his thoughts on why

(33:24):
he continued to so vocally support and praise Stalin and
other Soviet leaders as well as other dictators when all
of this became more known, or why he pointedly criticized
the imperialism of Western nations while seemingly ignoring Russian imperialism
in Eastern Europe. In ninety eight, the U. S. Supreme

(33:45):
Court issued a ruling in Kent versus Dulls, finding that
it was unconstitutional to deny someone a passport because they
were a communist or refused to sign an affidavit regarding
whether they were a communist. Afterward, robes and passport was
finally restored and he left the country. But all this
had been emotionally and financially devastating. He experienced periods of

(34:09):
profound depression and other mental illness, and at various points
was hospitalized for treatment in Moscow. In nineteen sixty one,
he tried to take his own life. He returned to
the US in nineteen sixty three, where his life was
increasingly secluded and reclusive. In nineteen seventy two, Jackie Robinson
published an autobiography titled I Never Had It Made, in

(34:31):
which he suggested that if he had to do it
all over again, he would not have spoken out against
Paul Robeson. He also said that his respect for Robeson
had increased over the years because he had sacrificed everything
he had, including his wealth and career, to try to
help people. Paul Robeson died in Philadelphia on January twenty three,

(34:52):
nineteen seventy six, at the age of seventy seven. There
are a number of books and films about Paul Robeson's life.
Then it was announced that director Steve McQueen was working
on a biopic. I have not been able to find
anything more recent than that since like or so, so
I'm not sure what the status of that is. Sometimes

(35:14):
those projects move very slowly. Yeah, sometimes they move very slowly,
and sometimes they just kind of sputter out evaporate. So
who knows. Do you have listener mail for us? I do.
I have a couple of different quick pieces of listener mail. Um.
In our behind the Scenes episode on the Lowry War,

(35:34):
we talked about me going down a rabbit hole of
outdoor drama, and so we have gone. We've gotten a
lot of great email about the outdoor drama dramas that
are located near where people live or that they know about.
So this first email is from Tyler, and Tyler says, Hi,
Holly and Tracy from the latest Behind the Scenes Lowry
and Midgley. You were speaking about historical drama performances. There's

(35:54):
one here in the Texas Panhandle that runs nightly during
the summer months now and it's been fifty sixth season.
It is outside Amarillo, in an amphitheater in the Palodarro Canyon,
America's second largest canyon. It's loosely based on Colonel Charles
Goodnight and the early settlers of the region, but with
singing and dancing. Worth a look if you're ever in

(36:16):
the area. People driving by tend to think of this
country as endless, flat nothing, but if they get off
the interstate and see the canyon, find it amazingly beautiful.
Keep up the good work on a regular listener to
every episode for the last several years. So the name
of that show is apparently just Texas Outdoor Musical. There's

(36:38):
more about it at Texas dash show dot com. We
have also gotten lots of emails and tweets and other
such things telling us about this next one. So this
is from Gloria and Gloria wrote Holly and Tracy. I
just finished listening to the behind the scenes for the
Lowry War and you're wondering about outdoor theater productions. We
had two here in Ohio for many ers. The original

(37:01):
was two COMPSA and his run for over fifty years. Unfortunately,
the other, Blue Jacket, is no longer in production. I've
put the info I found on both in this email.
A lot to read, but I wanted to give you
the history on them, and I'll also, uh Gloria sent
some dog pictures were very cute. Uh So the information

(37:23):
about the two compsa outdoor drama is at two Comes
the Drama dot com. These are not that you only
emails we've gotten about outdoor dramas, so this may come
up again in some future listener mail we will see.
Thank you so much to everybody who has told us
about the outdoor dramas of their local area. If you

(37:43):
would like to write to us or at history Podcasts
at I heart radio dot com and we're all over
social media and missed in History that still find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
and Instagram, and you can subscribe to our show on
the I heart Radio app or wherever you like to
get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is

(38:05):
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H

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Holly Frey

Tracy Wilson

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