Doing Work on Paul Robeson's Wikipedia Article and then I got Sidetracked

This entire and very volatile part of Jackie Robinson's life was absent from his Wikipedia article so I spent the better part of a day making sure it was included.

Statement About Paul Robeson to HUAC

Jackie Robinson struggled with his decision to testify before The House Committee on Un-American Activities regarding the widely misquoted[69] declaration made by the famous entertainer Paul Robeson that African Americans would not support the United States in a war with the Soviet Union due to their continued second-class citizen status under law following World War II[70]. Technically, Robinson was not required to testify, but he knew there would be repercussions if he did not.[71]

Paul Robeson had done previous service on behalf of Jackie Robinson's entry into professional baseball. At their annual meeting in December of 1943, Robeson had addressed the baseball owners. As both a former athlete and a leading man on stage, he assured them that integrating baseball would not cause violence but would in fact propel the country closer to its ideals.[72]Robeson was the first black man to speak before the owners on the subject and afterward they gave him a round of applause. After the meeting commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis remarked that there was no rule on the books denying blacks entry into the league.[73] Two years later Robinson became the first black baseball player in professional baseball.[74]

During week of July 13th 1949, Robinson eventually agreed to testify fearing that it might negatively and permanently and damage his career if he declined.[75] It was a major media event with Robinson's carefully worded statement appearing on the front page of The New York Times the following day. 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. [76]He’s still a famous ex-athlete and a great singer and actor.” 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";racial discrimination in America was not "a creation of Communist imagination."[77] Neither immediately following his testimony nor at any time thereafter did Paul Robeson quarrel with or denigrate Jackie Robinson.[78] He refused to be “drawn into any conflict dividing me from my brother victim of this terror.”[79] Jackie Robinson never forgot the experience or what he perceived as Robeson's magnanimity. Near the end of his life Robinson wrote in his autobiography about the incident, [80]

"However, in those days I had much more faith in the ultimate justice of the American white man than I have today. I would reject such an invitation if offered now…I have grown wiser and closer to the painful truths about America’s destructiveness. And I do have increased respect for Paul Robeson who, over the span of twenty years, sacrificed himself, his career, and the wealth and comfort he once enjoyed because, I believe, he was sincerely trying to help his people."[81][82]

The reaction to Robinson's statement at the time in the white 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." [83]Reaction in the Black press was mixed. The The New York Amsterdam News was supportive, saying that "Jackie Robinson had batted 1,000 percent in this game" but the Black newspaper 'New Age' remarked that "being Jim Crowed by Washington's infamous lily white hotels In 1963" Robinson had left the capital immediately after his testimony.[84] and The Afro American Newspaper ran a disparaging cartoon depicting Jackie Robinson as a frightened little boy with a gun vainly attempting to "hunt" Robeson.[85] In 1963, when Robinson criticized the Black Muslims, Malcolm X harshly alluded to Robinson's earlier and potentially damning testimony of Paul Robeson.[86]

REFERENCES:
69^ Duberman, Martin,Paul Robeson 1989.pg358The Paris Speech and After
70 ^ Foner, Phillip,Paul Robeson Speaks 1978.pg197Address to The Paris Peace Conference
71 ^ Robinson, Rachel,Jackie Robinson:An Intimate Portrait 1996pg 225
72 ^ Pringle, Kenneth,Robeson, & Robinson," APBnews.com24 August 2001, p. 1
73 ^ Tygiel, Jules,Baseball's Great Experiment 1983pg30 Conspiracy of Silence
74 ^ Robinson, Jackie,I Never Had It Made 1972pg37 Breaking The Color Barrier
75 ^ Duberman, Martin,Paul Robeson 1989.pg361-362The Right to Travel
76 ^ Duberman, Martin,Paul Robeson 1989.pg361-362The Right to Travel
77 ^ Duberman, Martin,Paul Robeson 1989.pg361-362The Right to Travel
78 ^ Foner, Phillip,Paul Robeson Speaks 1978.pg219Lets Not Be Divided
79 ^ Foner, Phillip,Paul Robeson Speaks 1978.pg219Lets Not Be Divided
80 ^ Duberman, Martin,Paul Robeson 1989.pg361-362The Right to Travel
81 ^ Duberman, Martin,Paul Robeson 1989.pg361-362The Right to Travel
82^ Robinson, Jackie I Never Had It Made 1972.pg98The Price of Popularity
83^ Duberman, Martin,Paul Robeson 1989.pg361-362The Right to Travel
84 ^ Duberman, Martin,Paul Robeson 1989.pg361-362The Right to Travel
85 ^ Duberman, Martin,Paul Robeson 1989.pg361-362The Right to Travel
86^ Duberman, Martin,Paul Robeson 1989.pg527Attempted Renewal

F*ck Richard Corliss: Time and Low Life

What's sad is that if someone like say Jeremy Paxman had written a similar piece and made similar points it would have been so much better.

Ol' Man Charisma/PAUL ROBESON: 1898-1976 By RICHARD CORLISS :

"If Robeson rejected a homegrown system of oppression to embrace another (referring to the Soviet Union), more toxic one, that was his right. He should no more have been denied a passport then than he should be praised for stainless political acuity now."

"More toxic one?" Talk to someone in Iraq or Vietnam or World War II veteran Issac Woodard who had his eyes gouged out simply for being black. Hell, even someone on an Indian reservation but no, our American way of life 'worked' in the 1950's, it was 'the free world, the 'lesser evil' right Richard?"

"In one Promethean figure were packed the power, glamour, pathos and tragedy of black dreams and leftist myopia in the 20th century. "

Just such UTTER SHIT writing!F*cker can't review a film so I don't know why I'm surprised.

"Through three decades of Soviet tyranny (including the murder of one of his Russian-Jewish friends), he remained faithful to the U.S.S.R. And here his charm failed him. He could sell sand to Saharans, but he couldn't peddle Stalin to America."

Robeson never 'peddled anything' and Richard Corliss is a lying sack of sh*t. To paraphrase Pete: Robeson went INTO the darkness, you don't just shove it up your nose and get into a limo."

Richard Corliss is just horrendous a great example of how right wing journalism is actually most mainstream journalism in the states. Still, like Ann akaMann Coulter they can only just annoy you and not much else because in reality they are just too historically-and culturally- inept to be any real threat. Why do I even care?!!!

Year of The Ox

My Wikipedia Pages by Catherine

Paul Robeson

Rachel Fuller

Russ Meyer

Paul Robeson and the Labor Movement

Peekskill Riots

Council on African Affairs

Paul Robeson and The Spanish Civil War

Paul Robeson, The Soviet Union and Communism

Paul Robeson filmography

The POOL Group

The Proud Valley

Native Land

Jericho/Dark Sands

Spanische Windtorte

The nature of 2009 is IRREPRESSIBLE!

Katy Perry : Generic Tone Deaf Corporate Music Shill and Anti-Feminist piece of trash

Ned Flanders in a padded playsuit. There will be no pics of that tone deaf piece of corporate swill known as Kate Perry and her sexless and linear interpretation of the pinup aesthetic via heavily padded dresses that display early onset osteoporosis , photo shop and makeup applied with trowel on this post. Nor will there be links to her erotic-less "Girls, Gone, Wild, Brazzers, raunch culture" airhead songs.
I just felt the need to state what a catty, talentless , tone deaf, knock kneed anti-feminist load of tripe she is-definitly the heir to the Mandonna corporate shill legacy. Kate Perry is nothing but Sandi Thom in a padded bra but with a poorer singing voice. But its that desperate Christian upbringing trying to hijack Kustom culture that is the most pathetic.

Virtually Katy Perry's entire career is owed to that right wing Cuban Walter Winchell aka Perez Hilton which is frankly like saying you owe it all it to a piece of vapid shit. The "challenge" to her Methodist religious freak roots are so pathetically evident in her attempts to be "edgy" that it's almost a case study in how someone's boring childhood can be taken out on the public via a media onslaught.


"When I met her I was bit frosty with her because someone asked her to describe herself. She's like, 'Aha, I'm like a fatter version of Amy Winehouse and a skinnier version of Lily Allen!' It's like, you're not English and you don't write your own songs, shut up!"

-Lily Allen

Exactly, she and her crappy 'catalog of songs' need to be banished to the cut out bins.

Listen Up To Tony Benn

Great Cover of John Entwistle's 905

I loved the tribute to Pete and Roger as the Kennedy Center Honors, it really stole the show away. To see them FINALLY get recognition from the establishment for their life's work was priceless to me. I am disappointed though that the expression "their Bassist vanished into the haze" was read and then they cut to 9/11 in the tribute film.

John played 9/11 right alongside Zak, Pete and Roger...

Ox dude, next time don't do so many drugs and drink so much!

Rest in peace Thunder Strings.