Paul Robeson Quotes
The other reason that I am here today, again from the State Department and from the court record of the court of appeals, is that when I am abroad I speak out against the injustices against the Negro people of this land.
United States, Congress, House, Committee on Un-American Activities. Investigation of the Unauthorized Use of U.S. Passports—Part 3. Government Printing Office, 1956, p. 4499.
Ames was not a native Southerner but as a General of the Union Army he had been the military commander of the wartime district of Arkansas and Mississippi where he became sufficiently popular to be elected Senator. However, once the segregationists returned to political power, Ames lost his bid for reelection amidst a massive, vicious campaign of intimidating Blacks from voting combined with local, rural corruption of the local balloting process. Ames also served as a general in the Spanish American War and was the last surviving Civil War general.
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American bass baritone concert artist and stage and film actor who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and for his political activism. Educated at Rutgers College and Columbia University, he was a star athlete in his youth. He also studied Swahili and phonetics at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London in 1934. His political activities began with his involvement with unemployed workers and anti-imperialist students whom he met in Britain and continued with support for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War and his opposition to fascism. In the United States he became active in the Civil Rights Movement and other social justice campaigns. His sympathies for the Soviet Union and for communism, and his criticism of the United States government and its foreign policies, caused him to be blacklisted during the McCarthy era.
