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PAUL ROBESON 

The Magnitude of the life and personal achievements of Paul Robeson, the man, is of staggering proportions. As athlete, scholar, linguist, world-renowned performing artist and statesman, Paul Robeson embodies in the excellence of his achievements the standards of "universal man"-a renaissance human being in our time. The editors of FREEDOMWAYS salute him on his 75th birthday.
From the very beginning of the magazine, as a Quarterly Review of the Freedom Movement, Paul Robeson was a source of inspiration and support. The basis of this was his personal friendship, over many years, with several of the editors of FREEDOMWAYS and his thorough conviction that such a magazine was needed as a vehicle of ideas and analysis.
It was in the original plan of this quarterly magazine that the late Louis E. Burnham, who edited Robeson's newspaper FREEDOM in the 1950's, was to have been the editor-in-chief of FREEDOMWAYS when it was started in the spring of 1961. We were privileged to have organized a "welcome home" celebration for Paul in 1965 here in New York which was his last and only public appearance in New York before his retirement because of ill health. A special issue of FREEDOMWAYS devoted entirely to Paul Robeson published in the spring of 1971 has, undoubtedly, made a special contribution to the revival of popular interest in this great freedom fighter.
Paul Robeson's stature as a world figure arises not only from the standards of excellence which he maintained in all of his endeavors from early youth, but from the internationalism which permeated his work in his adult life. His early and sustained interest in Africa and the struggles of its peoples; his initiative in forming the Council on African Affairs here in the United States, in collaboration with W. Alphaeus Hunton and W.E.B. Du Bois; his association with the freedom fighters defending the Spanish Republic in the late 1930's and his active participation in the work of the World Peace Council after the second world war were each concrete examples of Paul Robeson's world outlook. Because of this internationalism Robeson is
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Statement by the Editors of FREEDOMWAYS read by actor, director Ossie Davis at the Annual W.E.B. Du Bois Cultural Evening in New York City, February 16,'73.

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