Paul Robeson: A Biography (Lives of the Left) [Paperback]

Martin Duberman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1565849418 | ISBN-13: 978-1565849419 | Publication Date: May 6, 2005 | Edition: annotated edition

Passionate and enormously talented, Paul Robeson lived one of the great lives of the twentieth century. Martin Duberman's classic biography, Paul Robeson, draws on a vast archive of family papers, interviews, and FBI files to chart the 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; from his political awakening to his downfall as a victim of McCarthyism and the efforts of the U.S. government to destroy him. In a book The Nation hailed as "[ranking] among the finest biographies of any twentieth-century American figure," Paul Robeson is a monumental and powerfully affecting portrait of one of this century's most notable performers, political radicals, and champions of racial equality.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"This big, engrossing, empathetic biography by distinguished historian-playwright Duberman is a major act of cultural restoration, forcing a fresh confrontation with Robeson's often highly independent political stances as well as his artistic creativity," praised PW. Photos.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Library Journal

Award-winning historian Duberman here offers a monumental life-and-times biography of scholar, sportsman, singer, actor, and political activist Robeson. This splendid workthe result of seven years' careful research in dozens of public and private manuscript collections, plus interviews with more than 130 peopletells more about Robeson's place in the world than about his interior life, for he left behind few letters or diaries. Yet there is much to observe, from Robeson's family life and love affairs through his encounters with bigotry and some enlightened support to the growth of his international musical/theatrical career and its decline due to his steadfast devotion to left-wing politics. A thoroughly documented work that is required reading for anyone seeking to understand 20th-century social history in America. Bonnie Jo Dopp, District of Columbia P.L.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 804 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The; annotated edition edition (May 6, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565849418
• ISBN-13: 978-1565849419
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,276,298 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The definitive biography, December 18, 2000

By 

Christopher A. Smith (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Paul Robeson (Paperback)

Duberman's biography of Robeson is excellently researched and well written. A balanced handling of the subject was not a straightforward task; Robeson rarely committed his thoughts to writing and aside from periods of depression in later life he wrote few letters. Duberman relies largely on the writing of his wife Essie, who was a meticulously diarist. As the author points out this is a dangerous strategy; Robeson and his wife had personalities which couldn't have been more different, therefore rely on her descriptions of Paul's thoughts and feelings would be suspect at best. Duberman tackles this challenge by conducting a wide range of interviews with those who knew Paul, thereby presenting a more balanced account of his emotions and motivations.

As far as the factual/chronological points are concerned, Robeson's FBI files, ironically, provides a detailed record to which Duberman refers frequently.

It is a testimony to the ruthless effectiveness of the McCarthy Communist witch hunt that a man like Robeson is not better know to recent generations in America. A linguist, actor, athlete, singer, intellectual, and humanist there are few figures in 20th century America who are his equal. The ironies of his life are striking. Robeson was valedictorian of his Rutgers class, and All-American actor, played Carnegie hall, and toured Europe in an age in which Blacks in America were denied the most basic civil rights. Had his affinity for Soviet culture and socialism not put him at odds with the America's post WWII anti-Red hysteria, Robeson would likely have been one of the giants of the Civil Rights movement. Robeson truly was a man ahead of his time - a radical in a time in which the Black elite was promoting patience and working "within the system".

Was Robeson a Communist? He certainly identified with his own idealized view of the "people's struggle" which was occurring in the Soviet Union (a view which, as Duberman describes, was often at odds with the facts.) To call Robeson a Communist in many aspects would be correct; he sympathized with the cause and was vexed that Black American soldiers would fight against the Soviet Union while at home they were denied their basic rights. But even the FBI's decades-long effort to link Robeson formally with the party met with failure. We have no evidence that Robeson a card-carrying member of the Communist Party.

Robeson's Communist leanings are a complex part of his story. When Nikita Khruschev declared to the world the crimes of Stalin's purges Robeson was undoubtedly greatly effected. However, Robeson never commented, even in private to those with whom he was intimate - we don't know what he thought or how he felt. Duberman is unable to fill in the blanks and resists the temptation to do so; he simply chronicles Robeson's subsequent decline into clinical depression and ill health.

A well written biography of one of 20th century America's most interesting figures.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Probably the best book on Paul we'll ever get..., January 18, 2002

By 

William E. Adams (Midland, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Paul Robeson (Paperback)

Martin Duberman presents an exhaustive, objective examination of the awesomely talented, psychologically complex, and perhaps politically naive Robeson. I am white, and grew up in a racist family, but from the moment I heard Paul Robeson's recording of "Get On Board, Little Children" I was hooked. I was only 14, but that song, less than 90 seconds long, launched me on a journey away from bigotry that is still proceding, 43 years later. I fell in thrall to the voice, ended up owning 11 vinyl albums and reading everything by and about him I could. His defense of Stalin-era Communism is stubborn and troubling, but there is no disputing his importance as a fighter for civil rights before it was fashionable. I am not sure how those of us who were not yet adults in the '40's and '50's can fairly judge the politics of the man...especially those of us who are not Afro-American. I prefer to let his controversial politics take a backseat to his pioneer acting and singing. This was a real MAN, who could hold a stage with only his voice and his charisma and his talent, making white, affluent audiences listen to negro spirituals, union songs, Chinese and Russian and German songs, and like it. Robeson was glorious and tragic, brilliant and flawed, courageous but sometimes selfish, furious often and yet capable of the most tender lullabies. One of the most fascinating American lives of the 20th Century. Professor Duberman has done great work with this book. If Robeson interests you, buy it and read it. I'm glad I did.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Strong work, hidden subject, reveals a man of strength and principle, August 14, 2005

By 

Tony Thomas (SUNNY ISLES BEACH, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Paul Robeson (Paperback)

Robeson is a difficult subject for a book. He was a person whose image was a symbol for both people who idolized him as a plaster saint and for people who pilloried him as a communist, a decadent fraud, and an enemy of Black people. Everyone around Robeson seemed to have an ax to grind about him, or over him, or define their lives and livelihood based on their association or opposition to him.

To top that off, Robeson was a reserved person who tried to keep his emotions and opinions to himself. He was not a writer or a diarist. He led a public life that hid his real personal life and sometimes did nothing to disavow false public perceptions of him that benefited his wife, his political comrades, his artistic career, and his financial needs.

With all that, Duberman has a tough task to carry out. He does it well here with an enormous amount of documentation, particularly on issues that protectors of this or that image of Robeson would like not to appear in public. At the same time Duberman is honest enough to indicate the gaps in his knowledge, things that will never be known because Robeson's mind was often very much his own.

For those expecting a plaster saint who rises out of the toil of the slaving black masses and seeks only to advance the struggle, this book is a disappointment. The real Robeson came out of the middle class, was an outstanding student and an all American athlete at Rutgers (then a private university), who went on to Columbia law school. His milieu was arts, actors, writers, socialities. He prefered to live in England, not the USA, and did so from his first opportunity until WWII brought him home. As soon as the witch-hunt travel ban on him was broken, he spent the rest of his life living in England, the USSR, and the GDR returning to the US only after his mental and physical health was broken.

While Robeson remained legally married to the same woman all his life (although they both contemplated divorce several times), his marriage featured semi-open infidelity chiefly on Robeson's side. In fact, particularly in the years he lived in the US, he frequently did not even reside in the same house or flat as his wife, but with his lovers, or in several cases with a lover and her husband. They were only firmly reunited in the same place when disability forced Robeson to seek his wife's support and protection and that briefly for she died shortly after their return to the US in the early 1960s. The loves that lasted and he longed for, the women he was close with, and the people he really lived with, were usually white women he met
on the stage or as a singer, not his African American wife, who used her position as Robeson's wife as a means to become a public figure and to launch her various attempts at careers.

It is of course unfortunate that Robeson came up in a generation where the Stalinized Commuist parties and the USSR were misidentified as embodying a struggle against oppression, discrimination, and racism. Yet, the picture that Duberman paints if of a man whose genuine attraction was to fighting against racism and oppression everywhere. Robeson's fire came out of the stories he learned of his own family from slavery, and his identification with the suffering of victims of fascism in Spain, Germany, and Italy. The US government explained its persecution of Robeson in part due to his advocacy of independence for the colonies in Africa and Asia.

Indeed, Duberman shows that both in WWII and afterwards, the Commuist Party which he looked to for leadership, but never belonged to, tried to get Robeson to muffle his criticism of American racism and imperialism. At times, they too added to the pressure on Robeson to give up talking about politics to advance himself as an artist. This is not surprising to anyone familiar with the CP's real history as reformists who sought to subordinate the struggle to the needs of a makeup between US imperialism and the Kremlin bureaucracy.

Even his refusal to support fighting witch hunt persecution of enemies of the CP like the SWP or his continued condemnation of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, a real workers rebellion as close to the 1917 revolution led by Lenin and Trotsky as anything until Castro Cuban revolution, are not as important as the resolution with which Robeson devoted himself to attacking the racism, the war drive, and the imperialism of the US government and its big business institutions.

Robeson always had the choice to live a very comfortable life as an actor and a singer, by simply doing what everyone around him, including leaders of the CP wanted, just stick to music and the theater. Yet, his devotion to the struggle showed he realized what was important and what was not. And with all his warts and pecadillios, all the legacy of his mislearning from Stalinism, he is an outstanding and inspiring example of what life and greatness is really about.

This book is fair, not partisan, and exquisitely documented. It tells so many truths that I have not addressed here, says things about Robeson I have heard people who knew Robeson say for decades, but am finally glad to see in print.

This book paints not only a picture of Paul Robeson, but of the degree of evil, racism, and crime that holds up American capitalism. What emerges, even though Paul Robeson's desires to keep his feelings within himself, is the story of a heroic man whose strength was not his voice, not his acting skills, but his devotion to principle, even if sometimes those principles were wrong.

Read this book!