Honolulu Record, August 11, 1949, vol. 2 no. 2, p. 8
frank-ly speaking
By Frank Marshall Davis
V. Depression and War: Paul Robeson’s Stand
Two distinguished Americans are leading the resistance movement against the drive of Big Business toward World War III as a way out of the new depression and for preservation of tremendous profits through global domination. They are Henry A. Wallace, former vice president, and Paul Robeson, singer and actor.
You don't hear much about Wallace in the islands. Out here he gets the silent treatment. On the Mainland he is lambasted or ignored. Recently the propaganda guns of the warmongers have been turned on Robeson, and the errand boys of Big Business, who live on the crumbs tossed by the trusts and monopolies, have taken up the cry.
The intensive effort to discredit Robeson and render his leadership ineffective, thus confusing his followers and making them potential supporters of the suicidal and selfish policies of Big Business, began during the World Peace Conference at Paris in April. With vicious inaccuracy, Paul was quoted by the daily press services as saying that "American Negroes would never go to war against Russia."
Despite generations of experience common to Negroes of being caricatured by the daily press, despite the common knowledge that the white newspaper can seldom be trusted to print truthful accounts of events concerning Negroes, there were many of the "professional Negro leaders" who took the published report as gospel truth and rushed into print to vilify one of the most famous men of our time, regardless of color. They were like faithful dogs, trying to curry favor with their masters.
But what has been most encouraging to the fighters for peace has been the reaction of the Negro people who, acting on the same distorted reports, have rejected the "me too, boss" attitudes of their so-called leaders and have written letters to the Mainland press, both Negro and white, supporting the alleged stand of Robeson.
What Paul said, however, is different from what the press services reported. Instead of saying that "American Negroes would never go to war against Russia," he said that Negroes would not "join in a war of aggression against Russia." There's all the difference in the world between those statements. The 1,800 delegates from 52 nations at the Paris conference, including Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, world famous scholar and a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and Paul himself have denied the first report and confirmed the accuracy of the second statement.
Here is what else Robeson had to say:
"The emphasis on what I said in Paris was on the struggle for peace, not on anybody going to war against anybody.
"Go and ask the Negro workers in the cotton plantations of Alabama, the sugar plantations in Louisiana, the tobacco fields in South Arkansas, ask the workers in the banana plantations or the sugar workers in the West Indies, ask the African farmers who have been dispossessed of their land in the South Africa of Malan, ask the Africans wherever you find them on their continent:
"Will they fight for peace so that new ways can be opened up for a life of freedom for hundreds of millions and not for just the few; will they fight for peace and collaboration with the Soviet Union and the new democracies; will they join the forces of peace or be drawn into a war in the interest of the senators who have just filibustered them out of their civil rights; will they join Malan in South Africa who, just like Hitler, is threatening to destroy 8,000,000 Africans and hundreds of thousands of Indians through hunger and terror; will they join their oppressors or will they fight for peace?"
To these words may be added those of Mrs. Eslanda Goode Robeson, his wife, who told a Wallace Peace Rally held recently in Madison Square Garden, New York:
"I know that every sensible Negro in this country, professional leaders notwithstanding, feels that if he must fight any future war for democracy, the proper place to begin such a fight is right here."'
That, frankly, is the attitude of many of America's 15,000,000 Negroes, whose oppressive treatment has set the pattern for discrimination against other non-white groups, not only on the Mainland but in other possessions arid dominated areas such as the Hawaiian Islands.
Disillusionment has followed both world wars of this century, sold to America as "crusades for democracy." The Negro was promised equality after World War I and instead got a wave of lynchings, riots, and revival of the Ku Klux Klan. Even though World War II was a duel to the death against the kind of fascist racism most Negroes taste with their daily bread, there were those who remembered the unkept promises of 1917 and preferred bearing arms against the Bilbos and Rankins of the South than against Hitler.
That is why Paul Robeson says that the bulk of the Negro people will not be inclined to support any aggressive war planned by Big Business against the Soviet Union or any other nation which is known to have abolished jim crow and color discrimination. There is no desire among the Negro masses to strengthen the hands of their own oppressors The feeling is growing that if there must be fighting, let it be against the Dixiecrats, the northern perpetrators of such raw deals as the frame-up of the Trenton Six in New Jersey, and those who use the happenstance of color to restrict job Opportunities and housing.
That is why efforts to discredit Paul among the plain people have fallen flat, and also why all the big guns of thought control, including the aptly named un-American committee, have been turned against him. No aggressive war planned by Big Business can be successful without the support of the 15,000,000 American Negroes, one tenth of the population. It should be obvious by now that mere words won't get Negro support; it can be forced only through guns and the absolute terrorism of fascism. Therefore, the fight for peace and against fascism has as its natural allies the Negro people and, with them, the other non-whites who stand in a similar position. (To be continued)