'SEE ME FOR WHAT I AM'

Let Paul Robeson sing Let Paul Robeson Sing is the brilliant new exhibition about Robeson's life at the National Museum and Gallery in Cardiff. There are photos of Robeson graduating from Columbia University, his is the only black face in his year. Another section is dedicated to his singing and acting careers. The costumes he wore playing Othello are on display as well as wonderful stills from the films and plays he performed in. As you walk around the exhibition a recording of Robeson singing Negro Spiritual fill the rooms. The last room in the exhibition contains archive material, videos, recordings chronicling Robeson's life. The organisers allow you to write comments and views about the exhibition on the walls. The exhibition ends on 3 June

What do you consider to be your father's greatest achievements? Paul Robeson was born in a small New Jersey town in 1898. At that time the US was a viciously segregated society. He was one of a handful of blacks who got a place in a college. He was his college's top scholar for two years in a row. In 1917 he was named the greatest college [American] football player of the year. That was a revolution in itself! He played at the highest level in three other sports. Later on he became an internationally famous singer, actor and political activist. He was a virtual superman. But contrary to mythology he was not a natural singer or athlete. He worked hard for his art. For instance he studied and revised the part of Othello from 1924 to 1942--that's 18 years! All his life he faced racism. While playing American football he got beaten up and racially abused. Racism meant that he couldn't get into the squad. One day a white player stamped on his hand and pulled his hair. Dad picked him up and pretended he was going to break his back across his thigh. The coach said, 'Okay, you've made the team.' He never forgot what happened. Almost 30 years after the incident he told a reporter, 'I thought about killing him--I meant to kill him.' Later I said to my dad, 'Why are you lying. You were trying to make the team, not go to jail.' My father got quite serious and said, 'In America, I want white people to know that their great hero, the man who they love--Paul Robeson--will at a certain point, if white racists go too far, kill a white man.' How did he get involved in politics? He was an artist first, and an artist who was political to the death. He never confused being an artist with being a political activist. Political activists are organisers. They organise people to do specific things. They join parties, they help build unions. He was strictly an inspirer. He was not a joiner of anything. He was a free spirit. He tried to inspire people. He had friends who disagreed with 99 percent of his politics. People and culture were more important than ideology to my father. He grew up in the Zion church--a black church with a very revolutionary history. Frederick Douglas came from it, and it was where I buried my father. He always was a man of the church. He was a man full of contradictions. In my opinion he handled them quite well. So if you say what was he, if you pick one thing, no slot will fit. The question is, how did the parts fit together? He made his own mind up about what he was going to do with his life. His talents meant that he was able to live outside the racist environment of the US, and therefore was able to massively broaden his cultural vision. However isn't there a point in his life where he moves from using his massive individual talents to bring about change and looks to collective and political organisations? Even though my father was willing to give his life for political causes he was never a politician. He would never join a party. He sang what he wanted and went where he wanted to go. In Europe his centre was always in London, even though he travelled to the Soviet Union a lot. He loved Russian culture but he was never comfortable living in Moscow. It was much too puritanical at that time. I am the Communist of the family, not my father. I was a leading cadre in the party for 14 years. I was chairperson of the Harlem region and a member of the party's national committee. He was never a joiner of anything. He said he would never accept any organisational discipline that would encroach on his personal life or artistic life. Dad's personal life was his own-- he was a free spirit, there were other women in his life and the party frowned on that. At certain times he was close to the leadership, and when they asked him to modify some of his personal life he told them to mind their own damn business. I will give you another example of my father's independence from the party. The head of Radio Moscow was forced to resign because he played one of dad's spiritual songs on the radio. This was frowned upon because it was seen as religious propaganda by the authorities. Sergei Eisenstein even wrote an article in 1934 defending my father's interpretations of gospel songs. So when my father toured the Soviet Union in 1936 he made his own protest. He included a section of spirituals and work songs in his concert. The authorities then refused to print a translated lyric sheet that was to be given to the audience. So dad got up and explained each song in Russian. He truly did not agree with Stalin. He saw him as a modern Russian nationalist. All that withstanding, my father for the rest of his life never criticised the Soviet Union. The enemy [US imperialism and racists] made that impossible. The industrial trade union movement and the civil rights movement of the 1960s stands on the shoulders of the Communists. One of the 20th century's greatest men, Paul Robeson was famous for his singing, acting and left wing views He was an inspiration to those fighting racism in the US(below)

Did your father know about Stalin's purges that took place in the late 1930s? If he did, why didn't he speak out against them?

My father was aware of the purges. There was no way that you couldn't have known what was going on. The first time he came to the Soviet Union in 1934 Marshal Kirov was murdered. His friends were people like Sergei Eisenstein and Maxim Litvinov. I knew what was going on. Between 1936 and 1938 I was educated in Moscow. I went to Model School Number 25, a special public school. I was a year behind Stalin's daughter and two years behind Molotov's son. There were a lot of students whose parents just vanished.

You couldn't read the papers without knowing something was wrong. You read the trial transcripts, and there was no way that this made any sense. What, the top ten generals were all German spies? My father's friends in the Soviet Union were all part of the reform wing or the anti-Stalinist wing. Stalin shot them all. Although dad was the most popular artist in Russia for two decades, the Stalinists never gave him the time of day. But at the same time my father would always defend the Soviet Union and even Stalin. Why? Not just because he was loyal to the system, but because the Soviet Union under Stalin was the best ally available for African Americans and those fighting against colonialism. As far as my father was concerned, it was not in African-American interests to criticise Stalin. Of course he empathised with his friends in the gulag and those executed. But for my father there was a scale of evils.

By 1934 people at the top of the party knew what Stalin was about. Someone should have marched into his office and emptied a gun into his head. The failure of stopping Stalin meant that over 2 million communists, those that organised the revolution and built the country, were shot or died in the gulag. Until the communist and socialist left demolishes Stalin's legend there will never be a viable communist/socialist party. You can't carry that degree of monstrosity. What Stalin murdered was the flower of the progressive Russian tradition.

There is a tradition on the left which has always stood out against Stalin. Trotsky attempted to reclaim the real tradition of the revolution. What were your and your father's views on Trotsky?

Dad had friends who were open Trotskyists, who despised Stalin politically. One of his best friends in Britain was the black Trotskyist CLR James. There is no doubt Trotsky was one of the great revolutionaries. When I travelled in Russia I heard inspiring stories about the role he played in the Russian Revolution. For example, during the Civil War Lenin put Trotsky in charge of the Red Army. Unlike Stalin, Trotsky was a hands-on commander. At one point the frontline had apparently dissolved. Trotsky was travelling along with one escort in a small car. Suddenly about 2,000 deserters came running down the road. They surrounded him. Trotsky climbed up on top of his car and made a speech. By the time he had finished they had formed ranks, and Trotsky marched them back to the front. Trotsky was a man with extraordinary charisma and energy, and in addition he was a Jew. In 1917 racism against Jewish people in Russia was enormous. Stalin used the fact that Trotsky was a Jew to turn some of the newer Communists against him.

In 1949 your father performed an open-air concert in Peekskill. Racist thugs attacked the concert. Was it one of the key points in the Cold War?

Peekskill had a massive impact on my father. He always believed that white workers could be anti-racist. But it was at Peekskill that he believed it in his heart. Before the concert started, snipers were spotted in the hills surrounding the venue. The rednecks wanted to assassinate my father. A union organiser asked a group of white trade unionists to volunteer to protect him. He was asking them to take the bullet and sacrifice their lives. So many volunteered that they had to organise a ballot. One trade unionist who was not picked cried. What humanity! I always use this story to demonstrate that white workers are prepared to fight racism and injustice.

One of the most inspirational parts of Paul Robeson's life was the way he stood up to the McCarthy witch-hunts.

My father was always a bit mystified when people tried to make him into a hero over his stand against the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). He was called to HUAC in 1956 after the McCarthy era was already over. McCarthy's power had already waned. By the time they got round to my father you could tell the committee to go to hell sideways and then use the fifth amendment. The popularity of my father and the folk singer Pete Seeger meant they never went to jail, whereas the Hollywood Ten did. Dad thought that they were much braver than he was--he was right. HUAC called my father in 1956 for a different reason--they wanted to intimidate the growing civil rights movement.

What is the future for the left in the US today?

King, Malcolm X and Robeson paid the price for speaking out. Nobody is better than the US authorities at making our leaders irrelevant. In terms of the civil rights movement they cut off some heads and bought off the rest. For 80 percent of Afro-Americans, their standard of living has gone down. Right now we have an incredibly right wing government. We are going to do anything we've got to do to have a mass movement that compels the government to act. For that we need allies--hopefully the trade union movement, which seems to be breathing again, and the growing alliance between blacks and Hispanics

Seattle was crucial. Young people seem to have been comatose for years. It woke them up. Secondly it can be a bridge between the minority movements and the Greens. I hope that this book will broaden people's horizons and put Robeson's life in context. Some don't want me to show his bad side. They want a saint. With friends like that we don't need enemies. If you try and brush away my father's flaws he will vanish. When kids see icons they think they have nothing to do with them. My father said to me, 'All I want is for people to see me for what I am.'