Martin Duberman - Paul Robeson: No One Can Silence Me: The Life of the Legendary Artist and Activist (Adapted for Young Adults)

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NO ONE CAN SILENCE ME

Adapted for Young Adults

MARTIN DUBERMAN

Foreword by Jason Reynolds

For the new generation of Black Lives Matter activists who will finally give Paul Robeson his due as The Great Forerunner

As an artist I come to sing, but as a citizen, I will always speak for peace, and no one can silence me in this.

Paul Robeson

BY JASON REYNOLDS

ON A SATURDAY MORNING IN 1988MAYBE 1989WITH Rice Krispies and sugar milk still on my breath, I sat on the side of my parents bed. It had become tradition for my father and me to watch old movies, usually dusty cowboy flicks or goofy comedies where a slap on the head sounds like a bicycle horn. But on this day, there was something else, someone else, on the screen. A man towering over his co-stars, his body a little thicker, his hair a little thicker, his voice a little thicker. I remember his baritone sounding so strange to me, an alien timbre, because up until that moment Id assumed my father had the deepest voice in the world. But this man on the televisions voice was deeper. Much deeper.

Who is that? I asked my father.

That, he said with a flicker of pride in his eyes, is Paul Robeson.

Id heard that lilt in my fathers voice a few times before then. That bell in his throat always seemed to ring at the mention of men he admired. Muhammad Ali. Dr. King. Michael Jordan. Stevie Wonder. His own fathermy grandfathera blind man named Brooke. And in this moment I knew to put Robeson on that list. But my father never said why. Didnt give me any of his usual adventure tales about how hed met Robeson at a grimy diner somewhere or how he thought we might be related to him, because according to my father we were related to everyone. Instead, he just said Paul Robesons name, then turned back to the black and white moving across the screen.

The truth is, I didnt get it then. The film itself didnt strike me, especially since I was used to Saturday morning movies involving small-town sheriffs or slapstick shenanigans. And I never had a chance to revisit the conversation because a few years later, my family changed. There were no more Saturday morning movies. No more sitting on the side of the bed, because my father slept in a different one, in a different house, and our relationship had become the Wild West, dry and overheated with no room for questions. But fortunately, years later when I got to college Robesons name was invoked, this time by a professor. And just like with my father, the professor who brought Robeson up seemed to have light sitting on the back of his tongue. All I knew was that name and that voice. But this teacher would unfold this mans story, and the myth of the bottom-voiced giant would make the rest of us, including bored-to-death seventeen-year-olds like me, feel like more. Like the mere acknowledgment of his life could, and did, cast a spell on the uninspired, which is why it was such a shame I hadnt heard anything about this man since I was six. Since my father. Nothing in middle school. Not a word in high school.

This book, Paul Robeson: No One Can Silence Me, will fix that, will make sure your more-ness is made plain, now.

Here you will learn:

About a Black man whose father was a slave.

About a Black man who, despite that, was a superstar college athlete as well as valedictorian.

About a Black man who then becomes a lawyer.

About a Black man who, after facing racism in the legal profession, becomes an actor and singer.

About a Black man who sang in several languages and lived abroad.

About a Black man who arguably became the most famous Black man in the world.

And, with all the notoriety and success, understood he was still a Black man, and fought for the freedom of his people.

Heres what you will really learn:

You. Maybe a you you have yet to meet. And maybe this will be the introduction of you, today, to future-you. Because though Paul Robesons story is impressive (youll see!) and explains why his name seems to lift off the tongues of all who say it, what his life really serves as is perhaps the greatest reminder of the possibilities of a single person. Thats right. This is a story about you. About me. About our potential to be whole, to be stocked with interest and ideas. To be fully free in the parts of ourselves we can control, and to fight for freedom against the parts of our society that have convinced us that we are to be controlled. That we could be all that we are, limitlessly. That sitting on the side of the bed watching cops and clowns is a comfortable tradition, but one that at some point has to end. If not, we may never know what Paul Robeson knewwhat you are about to find outthat there is a world within us, but there is no world without us.

IN FEBRUARY 1942, ONE OF AMERICAS BEST-KNOWN singers and actors stepped onto a stage in Kansas City, Missouri. Robesons eyes scanned the auditorium as he performed the first half of his concert. Both white and Black people had gathered to hear himnot unusual for one of the foremost Black artists of his time. But Robeson saw that the Black concertgoers had been seated in the top balconythe worst seats and the farthest from the stage.

When the program reached its intermission, Robeson left the stage, applause ringing in his ears. When he returned, he startled the audience by announcing that hed complete the second half of his programbut only under protest.