On Thursday, September 4 I had the honor of participating in a panel discussion entitled “The Peekskill Riots: Then & Now.”
The panel was part of an ongoing program that was inaugurated in 2024 by a local Peekskill resident, MS. Wendy Talio. Researching the history of some vacant land, she discovered that it was near the site of a concert given by Paul Robeson back in 1949 --- a concert that was first cancelled due to a riot by right-wingers and then rescheduled and held eight days later. The “Peekskill Riots” were a major event in the era usually mis-named the McCarthy era. They were considered by many on the left a first blow in the imposition of fascism in the U.S. They also symbolized the vicious attacks levied against Paul Robeson who for most of the 20th century was a famous and beloved actor and singer both in the US and abroad.
Paul Robeson was an All-American football player at Rutgers. For three years after graduating, he played professional football, using his earnings to pay his way through. Columbia Law School. He briefly practiced law before embarking on an acting and singing career. Among his many achievements was the longest Broadway run of a Shakespeare play when he played Othello --- a role he reprieved at Stratford-on-Avon in Great Britain in the late 1950s.His performance of “Ballad for Americans” was played at both the Republican and Communist Party conventions in 1940.
By the late 1940s, his opposition to racism, specifically his refusal to sing before segregated audiences, and his support for the left-wing of the New Deal coalition, got him into trouble with the extreme right wing. He campaigned for third-party (Progressive) Party candidate Henry Wallace in the 1948 election. In 1949, he attended a World Peace conference in Paris and said that it was inconceivable to him that black Americans would take up arms against the Soviet Union.This quote was “changed” as it came to be reported in the US media to an assertion that black Americans would refuse to fight against the Soviet Union.
[For details on the remarkable life of Paul Robeson, including his persecution by the American political establishment, see Martin Duberman, Paul Robeson (NY:Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), Paul Robeson, Here I Stand (Boston:Beacon Press, 1972) and Susan Robeson, The Whole World In His Hands, (NY:Citadel Press, 1981).]
The widespread publicity about the Paris quote, coupled with his support for the Wallace campaign, and his frequent praise for the Soviet Union made him the subject of vituperation. Black leaders, beginning with Brooklyn Dodgers star Jackie Robinson were brought before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee to denounce him. Walter White of the NAACP also testified in opposition to Robeson’s position. He was denounced far and wide and many of his planned concerts were cancelled. By the Fall of 1949, he was someone who “respectable” black Americans were supposed to publicly oppose and he was anathema to racist and anti-communist whites.
In this context, right-wing groups in the area where the concert was scheduled demanded that the concert not be held and promised demonstrations. In fact, the first concert had to be cancelled because a mob attacked the people setting up the venue --- destroying the equipment and chairs and beating those who had arrived early to set things up. Luckily no one was killed.
At a rally in Harlem a few days later, Paul Robeson asserted that the concert would be held. He stated, “If the police will not protect us, we will protect ourselves.”
And so the concert was held on September 4, 1949.1500 men from a couple of labor unions in New York City and surrounding areas stood shoulder to shoulder in a circle around the venue while approximately 20,000 attended the concert. When it was over, the police made sure that the vehicles carrying people leaving the concert ran a gauntlet where mobs showered them with rocks. Though many people were injured, there were no fatalities. No one was arrested for either inciting or participating in the riots and the events themselves became “forgotten” my most of the locals --- although the American left made a big deal about it. The writer Howard Fast wrote a personal account of his experiences both in the riot at the first concert where he was part of a small group that fought back against the mob as well as during and after the second riot. The book is called Peekskill, USA, Inside the infamous 1949 riots. One can find the Kindle edition here. The American left argued that the people who perpetrated the attack on the concert goers were fascists and that the riot was an “opening gun” in the transformation of the US into a fascist country.
[My mother, brother and I had spent some time during the summer of 1949 near Peekskill. I later learned that my parents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, had attended one of the concerts (I was not brought with them) and when they returned they were ashen-faced, and just went silently into their cottage. I personally learned about the events by reading Howard Fast’s book and hearing a first-hand report from the mother of a good friend.]
When she learned about the 1949 events, Ms. Talio was determined to recapture history from the “memory hole” to which too many elements of our history get consigned. She formed an organization ROBESON IN PEEKSKILL. Their website has a tremendous amount of information:https://www.robeson-in-peekskill.org
[For a 40 plus minute summary of the actual Peekskill events with some testimony from participants see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU1RQlyNGDY]
On the website, the organization states: “As proud members of this community, we believe it is important to commemorate the Peekskill Riots, not only as a significant chapter in Peekskill’s history but also as a reminder that freedom of expression is a fundamental right of every American citizen.
Our project serves as both a testament to this right and evidence of Peekskill's transformation from a town marked by violent intolerance of Paul Robeson’s political views to one where citizens – left, right, and center – can respectfully and peacefully agree to disagree.”
[https://www.robeson-in-peekskill.org/about-us]
The panel that I participated in was both an effort to continue to excavate the memories of the 1949 events in Peekskill and also part of a long process of re-acquainting Americans with Paul Robeson, the man, the political activist and the artist. In my presentation to the panel, I argued that the fears of the left in the aftermath of the Peekskill riots that fascism was on the march proved unfounded. I noted that my parents said in their prison correspondence that they considered themselves the first victims of American fascism. In fact, that statement was wrong on a number of fronts. Black Americans living under Jim Crow in the South had been living under a form of fascism for decades. Also, those injured at either of the Peekskill riots might justifiably argue that they were victims of American fascism.
However, I considered it even more important to state that the general left-wing view at the time was wrong. In my opinion the misnamed McCarthy era did not produce fascism because the left had been thoroughly defeated by the early 1950s.The poor showing of the Progressive Party Wallace campaign in 1948 revealed that very few Americans were persuaded to abandon the “establishment” wing of the Democratic Party symbolized by President Harry Truman. Organized labor for the most part embraced and cooperated with the anti-communist provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act. Liberals such as Hubert Humphrey supported the newly formed Americans for Democratic Action which was explicitly anti-communist. Finally, there was virtually no opposition to the Korean War. Henry Wallace himself who had run against President Truman in 1948 specifically broke with the leadership of his party and supported the Korean War.
Thus, from a ruling class perspective, fascism was not necessary to defeat the left.
American democracy, flawed as it was, remained in place. During the course of the 1950s, the Supreme Court began to dismantle much of the repressive legislation that had been passed in the early years of the “McCarthy” era. There was space in the 1950s for the Southern Freedom Movement to be successful. Despite terrible injustices, such as black-listing, the execution of my parents, and the almost complete destruction of Paul Robeson’s career --- his income went from about $100,000 in 1947 to about $2000 in 1949 --- the country turned away from out and out fascism. Robeson, himself, won his passport fight with the State Department and was able to perform overseas after 1958.
Unfortunately, I argued that today things are much worse. We have an entire political party, the Republicans, in thrall to Trump’s authoritarianism. WE have Congress appropriating millions for a massive expansion of ICE to become, in effect, Trump’s private army. We have Universities kow-towing to Trump’s demands that they suppress dissenting students. WE have major news media becoming mouth-pieces for Trump and Trumpism rather than independent voices. WE have a Supreme Court that seems hell bent to turn the clock back to before the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of the 1960s.Trump (without any evidence) blamed the left-wing for the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk while years previously, he had made light of an attempted murder of the husband of one of his political opponents, Nancy Pelosi.
During the panel discussion, we noted that Robeson’s forthright stands in support of his political positions, even though it cost him dearly are a model of resistance we all need to follow today. For example, Paul Robeson re-wrote some of the lyrics to his signature song, “Old Man River” (in the original Showboat version from the 1920s, the song begins, “N-----s work hard on the Mississippi” and ends with “I’m tired of living and afraid of dying”
[For details on the evolution of the lyrics over time, see the Wikipedia entry at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ol%27_Man_River])
Robeson changed the beginning to “There’s an Old Man called the Mississippi. That’s the Old Man I don’t like to be. What does he care that the world’s got troubles. What does he care that the land ain’t free.” He ended the song with “I keep’s laughin’ instead of cryin’! I must keep fighting until I’m dyin’! ”We made sure that the audience knew that about Paul Robeson. We concluded that it is important to learn the story of how Robeson and his supporters resisted the rioters at Peekskill and the thought controllers associated with McCarthyism. We noted that in these perilous times for American democracy, we all need to learn that resistance is the only option.
We also reminded the audience of the goals of the ROBESON IN PEEKSKILL organization – to resist attempts to violently suppress those with whom we disagree. Both themes – the theme of resistance to authoritarianism AND the idea that political disagreements must be conducted in reasonable and respectful ways --- are important goals of ROBESON IN PEEKSKILL.I was honored and proud to be part of that panel and look forward to many more activities by ROBESON IN PEEKSKILL in the future.
Michael Meeropol is professor emeritus of Economics at Western New England University. He is the author with Howard and Paul Sherman of the recently published second edition of Principles of Macroeconomics: Activist vs. Austerity Policies.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
