Paul Robeson congressional hearings

Paul Robeson's post World War II persecution by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI and the political right in the U.S. was, in part, due to his vocal support for the Soviet Union, which was a cause célèbre among well-known artists and scientists during the 1930s and 1940s. He had been particularly impressed by the absence of negative racial attitudes towards him during his visits to the Soviet Union. During the Cold War years the United States and the Soviet Union became fierce competitors as the two emerging superpowers. In the 1950s, McCarthyism and the Red Scare dominated the headlines, and many artists, scientists or academics with leftist affiliations who failed to denounce communism became unemployabled and blacklisted.

Robinson was reluctant to testify to HUAC on these matters, in part because of Robeson's prior advocacy on behalf of integration in professional baseball. Among other things, at the annual winter meeting of baseball owners in December 1943, Robeson became the first black man to address baseball owners on the subject of integration. At this meeting, he argued that baseball, as a national game, had an obligation to ensure segregation did not become a national pattern.[5] The owners gave Robeson a round of applause and, after the meeting, Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis remarked that there was no rule on the books denying blacks entry into the league.[5][6] As such, Robeson had done much to pave the way for Jackie Robinson's entry into major league baseball, just over three years later.[7]

According to Jackie Robinson, in 1949 he struggled with his decision to testify against Robeson to HUAC. Technically, Robinson was not required to testify, but he believed there would be repercussions if he did not. In July 1949, Robinson eventually agreed to testify before HUAC, fearing that declining to do so might negatively and permanently damage not only his career but also the future integration of professional athletics.[8] His testimony was a major media event, with Robinson's carefully worded statement appearing on the front page of The New York Times the following day. In the statement – prepared with the help of Branch Rickey, who in order to facilitate the testimony, released Robinson from a prior agreement not to make any political statements during his baseball career[9] – Robinson said that Robeson "has a right to his personal views, and if he wants to sound silly when he expresses them in public, that is his business and not mine . . . . He's still a famous ex-athlete and a great singer and actor."[8] Robinson also stated that "the fact that it is a Communist who denounces injustice in the courts, police brutality, and lynching when it happens doesn't change the truth of his charges," and that racial discrimination is not "a creation of Communist imagination."[9][10] Robinson left the capital immediately after his testimony to avoid, as the black newspaper New Age pointed out, "being Jim Crowed by Washington's infamous lily-white hotels."[11]

In general, Robinson's testimony placated Americans worried about the threat of Communism,[12] and reaction in the mainstream press was positive, including an article by Eleanor Roosevelt in which she wrote, "Mr. Robeson does his people great harm in trying to line them up on the Communist side of political picture. Jackie Robinson helped them greatly by his forthright statements."[10] Reaction in the black press was mixed. The New York Amsterdam News was supportive, saying that "Jackie Robinson had batted 1,000 percent in this game," but the black newspaper Afro-American ran a disparaging cartoon depicting Jackie Robinson as a frightened little boy with a gun vainly attempting to "hunt" Robeson.[10]

Much later, in 1963, after Robinson expressed disagreement with the political positions of the Nation of Islam, then-Nation of Islam minister Malcolm X commented harshly on Robinson's testimony concerning Robeson, citing the testimony as an example of Robinson's submissiveness to the white establishment.[13] Nearly forty five years later, in the 1998 British Robeson documentary Speak of Me As I Am, Oscar Peterson Jr. recalled the Robinson-Robeson incident, stating "that it was very hurtful to see Jackie Robinson be made to attack Paul Robeson whom many of us loved so dearly."[14]

• Duberman, Martin (1989). Paul Robeson. New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-0-394-52780-2.