Eslanda Goode Robeson

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Robeson (center) follows the trial of Hans Globke , 1963

Eslanda ("Essie") Cardozo Goode Robeson (born December 15, 1895 in Washington, DC , † December 13, 1965 in New York City ) was an American anthropologist, author, actress and civil rights activist. She dealt mainly with the African American minority in the United States and with the problems of Africa. Robeson was the wife and manager of singer and actor Paul Robeson .

Life

Early years and marriage

Eslanda Cardozo Goode was born in Washington, DC in 1895, the only daughter and the youngest of three children. Her paternal great-grandfather was a Sephardic Jew who was expelled from Spain in the 17th century. Her grandfather was South Carolina's first black Treasury Secretary, Francis Lewis Cardozo . Her father, John Goode, was a paralegal at the War Department and later studied law at Howard University .

Robeson enrolled at the University of Illinois and later earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Columbia University in New York. At Columbia she began to campaign politically for black rights. She then worked at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and soon became the chief histologist of surgical pathology. She was the first black woman in such a position.

Eslanda and Paul Robeson met at Columbia Summer School in 1920 and married the following year. Eslanda Robeson gave up her wish to study medicine and henceforth supported her husband as a manager. Paul Robeson saw his wife in an interview as the driving force of his career: “[...] I never wanted [to be an actor]. I just said yes so she would stop harassing me. ”Eslanda worked in the hospital until 1925, then her work for her husband became more and more important and she had to stop. In the following years the couple lived in Harlem , London and France.

In 1927, the couple had their only child, Paul Robeson Jr., while touring Europe. But the Robesons' marriage was difficult. Eslanda suffered from her husband's affairs with designer Freda Diamond and actresses Fredi Washington and Peggy Ashcroft Robeson's longstanding relationship with Yolanda Jackson eventually led to Eslanda Robeson agreeing to a divorce. Even so, there was never a divorce. Eslanda decided to "stand over Paul's affairs" and stick with him but pursue her own career.

In the late 1920s, Robeson decided to write a biography. It appeared in 1930 under the title: Paul Robeson, Negro. Robeson himself was very upset about this. He believed she had put words into his mouth and described him as lazy and immature. The New York critic Harry Hanson, on the other hand, praised the book as inspiring and emphasizes that it was written with a lot of knowledge and deep pride. He recommended that white America read the book. WEB Du Bois listed it in the “Must Read” category in NAACP magazine The Crisis . But there were also negative voices. Stark Young called it "biographical junk" in the New Republic .

Eslanda Robinson began working as an actress herself. She played the role of Adah in the film Borderline by Kenneth MacPherson and played in two other films. In her diary she noted: "Kenneth and HD always made Paul and me laugh so much with their naive notions of blacks that our make-up was destroyed by the tears and had to be redone."

Study of anthropology

In 1931 the Robesons lived in London and had become increasingly estranged. Eslanda enrolled at the London School of Economics in anthropology and graduated in 1937. She learned a lot about Africa in England and traveled to South and East Africa for the first time in 1936. In 1938 the Robesons returned to the United States. Three years later they moved to Enfield to the farm "The Beeches". Eslanda Robeson received her PhD in anthropology from Hartford Seminary in 1946 . Based on her diaries, she wrote her second book, African Journey, in the same year. It was the first book by a black woman about Africa and for the first time offered a different view of the continent.

Eslanda had found an important advocate in the writer Pearl Buck , and the two continued to work together. In 1949 her book American Argument was published, in which Eslanda Robeson talked about society, politics, gender roles and racial relations.

In the cold war

With the Cold War, the Robesons' situation changed dramatically. The couple had first visited the Soviet Union in 1934 and were impressed by the lack of racism. They shared communism's stance on racism, colonization and imperialism. They also accepted the political cleansing of Stalin's Great Terror without protesting against it. Nevertheless, they helped Eslanda's brother Francis escape in 1938. Her brother John had already returned from the Soviet Union the year before and Paul Jr. also left the elite school in Moscow.

In 1941 Eslanda and Paul Robeson formed the Council on African Affairs with other influential black civil rights activists . As a member, Eslanda Robeson spoke again and again about her criticism of Western colonialism, which subjugates black people for political and economic advantage.

In the McCarthy era , the Robesons became the target of anti-communist persecution. His passport was withdrawn and his career came to a standstill. The family's income fell dramatically and the Connecticut home had to be sold. On July 17, 1953, both Eslanda and Paul Robeson had to testify before the Senate. When asked if she was a communist, she pulled out the 5th Amendment to the United States Constitution and questioned the legitimacy of the trial. Her passport was also withdrawn until the decision was revised in 1958. Robeson continued to fight for the decolonization of Africa as a member of the Council of African Affairs and wrote as a UN correspondent for the pro-Soviet New World Review .

After the passports were returned to the Robesons, the family fled to London and the Soviet Union. Eslanda traveled to Africa again. where she took part in the first post-colonial All-African Peoples' Conference in Ghana in 1958 . In 1963 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She returned to the United States and died in New York in 1965.

Fonts

  • Paul Robeson, Negro . Harper Brothers, New York 1930 ( digitized version )
  • African Journey , John Day Co., 1945
  • with Pearl S. Buck : American Argument , John Day Co., 1949

Filmography

  • 1930: borderline
  • 1937: Jericho
  • 1937: Big Fella

Honors

literature

  • Barbara Ransby: Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs Robeson . Yale University Press, New Haven 2013, ISBN 978-0-300-12434-7

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Barbara Ransby: Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson . Yale University Press, New Haven 2013 ( Online at Google Books )
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Paul Robeson Jr .: The Undiscovered Paul Robeson. An Artist's Journey 1898–1939 . John Wiley & Sons, 2001
  3. ^ A b Jessie Carney Smith, Robert E. Skinner: Epic Lives: One Hundred Black Women Who Made a Difference . Visible Ink Press, Detroit 1993, pp. 441-446
  4. ↑ Alden Whitman: Paul Robeson Dead at 77; Singer, Actor and Activist . In: New York Times , Jan. 24, 1976, p. 57
  5. ↑ Martin Duberman : Paul Robeson . Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1988, p. 294
  6. ↑ a b Eslanda Goode Robeson . In: Encyclopedia of World Biography , Volume 23, Gale, Detroit 2003 ( online )
  7. ↑ Harry Hanson: The First Reader . In: New York World , June 25, 1930, p. 11
  8. ^ WEB DuBois: The Brewing Reader . In: The Crisis , Volume 37, September 1930, p. 313
  9. ↑ Stark Young: Paul Robeson, Negro . New Republic, Volume 63, August 6, 1930, pp. 345f
  10. ↑ Kyna Morgan: Eslanda Robeson . Women Film Pioneers Project, Columbia University Libraries, New York 2015
  11. ^ Eslanda Robeson: Diary (March 20-29, 1930) , Yale University, Kniecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven
  12. ↑ Barbara Ransby: Robeson, Eslanda Goode . In: Black Women in America , African American Studies Center, Oxford University Press
  13. ^ A b Robert Shaffer: Out of the Shadows: The political writings of Eslanda Goode Robeson . In: Joseph Dorinson, William Pencack (Eds.): Paul Robeson. Essays on His Life and Legacy . McFarland and Co, 2002, p. 106 ( digitized version )
  14. ^ Ann Zeidman-Karpinski: Robeson, Eslanda Cardozo Goode . African American Studies Center, Oxford University Press
personal data
SURNAME Robeson, Eslanda Goode
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Robeson, Eslanda Cardozo Goode (full name); Robeson, Essie (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American anthropologist, author, actress and civil rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH December 15, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Washington, DC
DATE OF DEATH December 13, 1965
Place of death New York City