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FREEDOMWAYS   FIRST QUARTER 1973

What I would like most to tell about Paul Robeson is about his humanity, his warmth and his love for people-especially little people.

I remember that day in 1948 when Paul came to Detroit to sing to the workers of the Rouge plant of the Ford Motor Company. Local 600 of the United Auto Workers had sent an honor guard to accompany me to the airport to pick up Paul. I was to bring him to our home for Sunday breakfast, which my wife had prepared for six people. But the honor guard consisted of 30 UAW members. And no sooner did the neighbors learn via an instant grapevine that Paul Robeson was our guest than the crowds began to swarm into our home. My wife did herself proud. She prepared breakfast for at least forty-until everything ran out, eggs, toast and all. At the height of the noise, the crowd and the confusion, I had lost track of our honored guest. I ran thru the house, then outside. There on the porch I found him, surrounded by at least a dozen kids, with Paul sitting on the floor, two on his lap and all of them wide eyed, excited and enthralled with the man and his love.
 
Love for people, a passion for justice and a yearning for freedom. That is the Paul Robeson that no power on earth can conceal. 

Without the punishing persecution to which he was subjected, I have a feeling Paul Robeson would be here with us tonight. With us he would share our hatred and our rejection of the values and the violence and the greed and the bitterness which have given support in our country to the wickedness of war, of racism and of poverty. He would be in the front ranks of the fighters for peace, for equality and for decency.

How tragic for this present generation of our youth to be denied his participation in their lives! Not only the magnificence of his art, but also the genius of his mind-and for black youth in particular. What a model for this and every generation to aspire to!

I have had the great good fortune to know that genius and to want to emulate that model. But of all the superlatives we can justifiably bestow, I would point first to his loyalty . . . loyalty to principle, to justice and to friends.

At the Foley Square Trial of 1949, eleven Communists were to be tried and jailed for their beliefs. To appear to be on the side of the defendants was to invite suspicion, calumny and often legal persecution. But one of those on trial was Ben Davis, and Paul Robeson was a friend of Ben Davis. So Paul Robeson put it all on the line-his economic security, his safety, his career. Without hesitation or equivocation, in those darkest days when the very right to think was 

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---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-21 08:15:19