SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson were both heroes. Robinson, the great athlete who broke baseball's color barrier and inspired millions across America with his courage under a hail of hatred, as Count Basie's band sang.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DID YOU EVER SEE JACKIE ROBINSON HIT THAT BALL")
BUDDY JOHNSON: (Singing) Did you ever see Jackie Robinson hit that ball? It went zoomin' cross the left field wall. Yeah boy...
SIMON: And Paul Robeson, who had been a college football star, then played in the NFL while he went to Columbia Law School and would become one of the most admired bass baritone singers in the world.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "OL' MAN RIVER")
PAUL ROBESON: (Singing) Ol' man river, that ol' man river, he must know something.
SIMON: Both men were mighty advocates for equal rights. Though they never met, they were brought into public disagreement during the period of McCarthyism and what became known as the Red Scare. Howard Bryant, who talks about sports on our show, has a new book, "Kings And Pawns: Jackie Robinson And Paul Robeson In America." And Howard joins us. Now, thanks so much for being with us.
HOWARD BRYANT: Oh, thanks for having me, Scott.
SIMON: Howard, please set the scene for us, July 1949. Why was Jackie Robinson asked to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee?
BRYANT: It was a time when the Cold War was beginning to ramp up to a point where - for the next 40 years - where the United States and the Soviet Union were mortal enemies. The great Robeson had given a speech saying that he thought it was unthinkable that the African American community would fight on behalf of the United States - or something to that effect - when the Soviet Union had lifted up nonwhite people to a state of humanity or a place of humanity.
Now, he had never said those words. He had been quoted by the Associated Press. And the response, of course, was extremely vocal against. And the response was to find an African American to counter Robeson's speech. You have to remember that Paul Robeson was one of the most famous, if not the most famous Black American in the world at that time. And the House Un-American Activities Committee went to Jackie Robinson who, at that time, was also the most famous Black person in America, to testify against Robeson.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JACKIE ROBINSON: I haven't any comment to make, except that - on that statement - except that if Mr. Robeson actually made it, it sounds very silly to me. But he has a right to his personal views, and if he wants to sound silly when he expresses them in public, that's his business and not mine.
SIMON: Howard, what was the effect?
BRYANT: The effect was extremely damaging to Robeson. His personal status had been declining anyway. But Jackie's testimony really did turn the rest of the country against Robeson, whatever was left of Robeson's reputation.
SIMON: I know I feel compelled to point out. I mean, of course, Jackie Robinson, who had served in the U.S. Army, was also briefly court-martialed for refusing to move to the back of a bus on an Army base in Texas. I mean, he was not a pushover for anyone.
BRYANT: No. And that's the hard thing about this. I think what I was trying to get at in this project was you have these two gigantic figures, and both of them were in this position of advocacy for their people. And the most compelling thing I found here was the lengths that both of them felt like they had to go, only to end up really disillusioned by the time they reached the end of their lives because neither one sort of felt as though they accomplished that goal.
SIMON: I have to ask in these times, why didn't Paul Robeson denounce the rule of Joseph Stalin, especially after the Soviet Union itself exposed some of the cruelties of Stalin's regime?
BRYANT: I think part of it is pride - the pride of being a ballplayer, of being that - Robeson believed that the United States had blood on its hands as well. And he said so in his own testimony to HUAC in 1956, where you've killed 60 million of my people, and I'm not going to discuss this with you. And I don't think - I think he felt like there was no - that the motivation of the committee was simply to get him to admit he was wrong about Russia when what he wanted was for the United States to admit that it had been wrong in what it had done to African Americans.
And also, out of pain. I think that the Robeson piece of this was very, very painful, too, because he believed in the Soviet experiment, like a lot of people did. And I think that in a lot of ways, it was sort of like a man without a country, that he had believed in this new experiment in Russia, just as he had once believed in the experiment in the United States, and both, I think, had sort of betrayed his ideals.
SIMON: You write, today, that the U.S. might be going through a period of retrenchment, similar to what you saw - what we saw in the years of the Red Scare.
BRYANT: Well, that's right. Well, so much of the playbook today feels like the second Red Scare. You have the attack on left-wing and progressive politics. You have the attack on the arts and the defunding of the arts. The vitriol, the sort of - the language that we hear today is very similar to the language that we were hearing then. And it was fascinating to me how the parallels feel even more and more urgent, you know, what is past is prologue.
SIMON: Two great men, Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson, had tough later years, didn't they?
BRYANT: They did. And I think that - I felt such compassion in a lot of ways for both of them, for these two great men. Robeson lost everything and had been forgotten in a lot of ways. And it was - and that has translated into today as well. I mean, he is - when I talk to young, Black kids about Paul Robeson, when I talk to Black people about Paul Robeson my age, they don't know who he is. And when I think about Jackie, it's somewhat similar, even though, of course, he remains an icon, and people know the name Jackie Robinson. But what they don't know is that - you know, the disillusionment that he felt. So it's this really sort of bittersweet story and also inspiring to me, though, of these two people who did everything that the United States had asked of them, and yet, both wound up in a very disillusioned place.
SIMON: Rachel Robinson, bless her, still with us.
BRYANT: A hundred-three years old, Scott.
SIMON: Maybe we should end with how she sees it.
BRYANT: Rachel Robinson is such an important character in this book and in the story of Jackie Robinson. People need to know that when Jackie - for everything that we talk about today - baseball was tired of Jackie Robinson. The sport could not wait to get rid of him. The Dodgers traded him to the hated Giants in 1956, at the end of the season. They were tired of him fighting for civil rights. They were tired of him complaining about the American racial order. If it's not for Rachel Robinson and her charm and her intelligence and her determination to restore Jackie's reputation, and her grit - she's the one who brought Jackie back. She's the one who went to the Dodgers. She's the one who went to Major League Baseball and said, don't forget this man. And so, to me, there's no telling this story of Jackie Robinson and his place in American history right now without Rachel. Rachel is really the one who made it happen.
SIMON: Howard Bryant, talk to you next week.
BRYANT: Oh, my pleasure, Scott. Thank you.
SIMON: His new book, "Kings And Pawns: Jackie Robinson And Paul Robeson In America." Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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