“THEY FEEL ME A PART OF THAT LAND”:

WELSH MEMORIAL LANDSCAPES OF

A thesis submitted

To Kent State University in partial

Fulfillment of the requirements for the

Degree of Master of Arts

by

Mark Alan Rhodes II

August, 2015

© Copyright

All rights reserved

Except for previously published materials

Thesis written by

Mark Alan Rhodes II B.A., St. Cloud State University, 2013

B.E.S., St. Cloud State University, 2013

M.A., Kent State University, 2015

Approved by

______Chris Post, Associate Professor, Ph.D., Department of Geography, Masters Advisor

______Mandy Munro-Stasiuk, Professor, Ph.D., Chair, Department of Geography

______James L. Blank, Ph.D, Dean, College of Arts and Science

Table of Contents

TITLE PAGE ...... I

SIGNATURE PAGE ...... III

TABLE OF CONTENTS ...... III

LIST OF FIGURES ...... V

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... VIII

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER 2: ROBESON AND PHILOSOPHY; ROBESON AND GEOGRAPHY ...... 8

The Philosophies of Paul Robeson ...... 9

Location and Scale ...... 11

Memory, Heritage, & Landscape ...... 13

Archival Research ...... 16

Interviews ...... 18

Landscape ...... 19

CHAPTER 3: ROBESON’S PHILOSOPHICAL FRAMEWORK ...... 23

Anti-Colonialism ...... 25

Socialism/Labor ...... 32

Human Rights ...... 36

CHAPTER 4: THE MEMORIAL LANDSCAPE ...... 42

The Grand Pavilion – Porthcawl ...... 42

The South Miners’ Museum ...... 53

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The South Wales Miners’ Library ...... 55

The National Waterfront Museum ...... 61

National Library of Wales ...... 66

CHAPTER 5: EXHIBITING MEMORY: TEMPORARY, MOBILE, AND PARTICIPATORY MEMORIALIZATION AND THE LET PAUL ROBESON SING! EXHIBITION ...... 70

The Paul Robeson Exhibition ...... 70

Participatory, Temporary, and Mobile Landscapes ...... 72

Let Paul Robeson Sing!...... 79

CHAPTER 6: PAUL ROBESON, MEMORIALIZATION, AND WALES ...... 97

Socio-Political Factors in Welsh Memorialization...... 97

The Productions of Scalar Social Relations ...... 104

Memorial Entrepreneurs ...... 109

Philosophical Disconnects on the Landscape ...... 112

The Commemorative Power and Potential of Paul Robeson ...... 119

CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION ...... 122

REFERENCES ...... 126

DISCOGRAPHY ...... 151

FILMOGRAPHY ...... 152

APPENDIX 1 ...... 153

APPENDIX 2 ...... 154

APPENDIX 3 ...... 155

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. A map depicting all the sites where Robeson personally interacted with in Wales (sojourns), sites where temporary commemorations in honor occurred (ephemeral), and sites where was or is a material presence of Robeson on the memorial landscape (March 2015) Source: author ...... 6 Figure 2. This map shows the same data as the previous map, however only sites during Robeson's life are being highlighted by the large red icons (March 2015) Source: author ...... 7 Figure 3. The Grand Pavilion, Porthcawl, Wales (June 2014) Source: author ...... 42 Figure 4. Audience of the South Wales Miners' 's Transatlantic Exchange on Oct. 7th, 1957 in the main auditorium of The Grand Pavilion Source: Morgan 2004, 108-109 ...... 43 Figure 5. The Paul Robeson Room in The Grand Pavilion from the perspective of the elevator looking to the right (June 2014) Source: author ...... 46 Figure 6. The first of eight panels hanging in the Paul Robeson Room in The Grand Pavilion (June 2014) Source: author ...... 47 Figure 7. A framed image in the Paul Robeson Room of Robeson and in their 1943 production in (June 2014) Source: author ...... 49 Figure 8. An author "selfie" with the Young Robeson bust (June 2014) Source: author .... 50 Figure 9. The Young Robeson bust, modeled from Paul Robeson Jr., and sitting in the corner of the Paul Robeson Room. (June 2014) Source: author ...... 50 Figure 10. A painting of Robeson hanging in the Paul Robeson Room based off of a 1940 photograph by (June 2014) Source: author ...... 50 Figure 12. The Young Robeson bust in the foyer of The Grand Pavilion being appropriated into an event (n.d.) Source: Jennifer Wallen ...... 52 Figure 11. Some The Grand Pavilion staff have their photo taken with the Young Robeson bust in the main foyer of the Pavilion (n.d.) Source: Jennifer Wallen ...... 52 Figure 13. The front entrance of the primary South Wales Miners' Museum building (June 2014) Source: author ...... 53 Figure 14. A vinyl record of the Transatlantic Exchange and accompanying biographical information (June 2014) Source: author ...... 54 Figure 15. Front view of University's South Wales Miners' Library (June 2014) Source: author ...... 56 Figure 16. Photos on display in the SWML from the 2007 dedication of the Let Paul Robeson Sing! Exhibition to the SWML by Paul Robeson Jr. (June 2014) Source: author ...... 58 Figure 17. Republican propoganda posters from the used in the Let Paul Robeson Sing! Exhibition and on display at the South Wales Miners' Library (June 2014) Source: author ...... 60

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Figure 18. The Let Paul Robeson Sing! Exhibition additional information binders in the South Wales Miners’ Library (June 2014) Source: author ...... 60 Figure 19. View of the main entrance of the National Waterfront Museum (June 2014) Source: author ...... 62 Figure 20. The digital display of the "Achievers Gallery" in the National Waterfront Museum (June 2014) Source: author ...... 63 Figure 21. The front of the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth (June 2014) Source: author ...... 66 Figure 22. A re-created poster-print from The Proud Valley for a 2010 showing of the film in Wrexham sponsored by the National Library of Wales and the National Screen and Sound Gallery of Wales. The print is now hanging in the hallway outside of the Screen and Sound Archive office (June 2014) Source: author ...... 67 Figure 23. Robeson's films on display in the National Library of Wales' gift shop (June 2014) Source: author ...... 67 Figure 24. The Robeson memorial at the top of the first floor of the School of Oriental and African Affairs Library (May 2014) Source: author ...... 76 Figure 25. The Paul Robeson memorial dedicated on 20 Sep. 2006 (May 2014) Source: author ...... 76 Figure 26. Large painted styrofoam chains hang as an archway in the entrance to the Thomas Centre in Swansea during the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition (Feb. 2002) Source: Dobbs and Cope 2002a, 7 ...... 79 Figure 27. "He was kept in the disease of his chains but he found the cure. Tom May age 9 3/6." Taken from the "Responses To A Life" section of the exhibition. Source: Dobbs and Cope 2002a, 7...... 80 Figure 28. Visitors to the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition participating in the pyramid (2001) Source: Dobbs and Cope 2002b, 33...... 80 Figure 29. The life-size Paul Robeson portrait in storage at the SWML (June 2014) Source: author ...... 82 Figure 30. Visitors to the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition standing with the life-size image of Paul Robeson Source: Dobbs and Cope 2002a, 39 ...... 83 Figure 31. The Women in Jazz Swansea logo which accompanied the additional exhibition panels during the showing at the Centre in Swansea (June 2014) Source: author ...... 84 Figure 32. One of the slavery panels added to the exhibition at the Tredegar House in Newport (June 2014) Source: author ...... 84 Figure 33. The student mural which was designed for and remained in the Tredegar House in Newport for ! (Aug. 2002) Source: Dobbs and Cope 2002b, cover.. 86 Figure 34. The full mural for the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition in Swansea. (Feb. 2002) Source: Dobbs and Cope 2002a, 113 ...... 87

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Figure 35. Detailed view of the Swansea mural depicting a young Robeson, the multiple images of a young women screaming racist comments during the , and the image of Captain America hanging his head after 9/11 (Feb 2002) Source: Dobbs and Cope 2002a, 109...... 88 Figure 36. A newspaper article printed in preparation for the touring exhibition at the Butetown History and Arts Center (June 2014) Source: Let Paul Robeson Sing! ...... 89 Figure 37. The bilingual logo of the “Let XXXXXXX Sing!” exhibition revealed in the Tredegar House in Newport (June 2014) Source: author ...... 90 Figure 38. The "Let XXXXXXX Sing!" exhibition Source: Dobbs and Cope 2002b, 57 ...... 91 Figure 39. Croesco’s Let Paul Robeson Sing! touring exhibition logo (June 2014) Source: author ...... 93 Figure 40. The locations of the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition (Dec 2014) Source: author ...... 96 Figure 41. The Dai Francis exhibit in the South Wales Miners Museum (June 2014) Source: author ...... 101 Figure 42. Paul Robeson Close in East Ham, , (May 2014) Source: author ...... 107 Figure 43. An image of the same Paul Robeson Close sign (Aug 2008) Source: GoogleEarth ...... 107 Figure 44. One of two large banners representing the NLW hanging in an non-accessible storage room (June 2014) Source: author ...... 117

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Acknowledgements

This thesis is dedicated to my parents, Mark and Linda Rhodes, who have never faltered in their love and support for me and my goals. Their influence of hard work, responsibility, and determination to never stop short of your best permeates my life.

I also want to thank my advisor, Chris Post, whose combination of freedom and guidance have allowed me to shape my own project, yet held onto the reigns when I started veering too far of course. My committee members Jim Tyner and George Garrison and the knowledge they brought has also been indisputably vital in the completion of this thesis. Gareth John, thanks for your inspiration that led me back to Wales. Particular thanks has to go to Jen Mapes and Kathryn

Hannum for helping me out on more than one complicated idea, and thanks to everyone in

McGilvrey Hall 445, especially for putting up with two solid years of Paul Robeson factoids.

This thesis also comes just weeks after the passing of the man who introduced me to Paul

Robeson, Stephen Fuller. May his music and memory continue to live on through his students.

Thank you to the Kent State University Department of Geography and Graduate Student

Senate for providing the necessary funding to complete this project and Aberystwyth University,

Swansea University, and St. Cloud State University for supporting me while in the UK. Also a thank you to Mark Rogovin, the Paul Robeson Wales Trust, The Grand Pavilion, and the Royal

Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales for providing essential materials for this thesis.

Finally, thanks to everyone in Wales who spoke with me and enabled this research: Tayo

Aluko, Jon Anderson, Greg Cullen, , Pyrs Gruffudd, Gareth Hoskins, Beverley

Humphries, Susan James, Rhys Jones, Rhys Dafydd Jones, Mitch Rose, Kim Peters, Amanda

Rogers, Ceri Thompson, Emily Trahair, Daniel Williams, Siân Williams, and many others.

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Chapter 1: Introduction

Paul Robeson has been described as one of the Unites States’ greatest musicians, scholars, athletes, actors, and activists of the 20th century. Certainly, Paul Robeson’s fame on the football field, on the concert and theatre stage, in film, and through his own scholarship and activism reached around the world. The blacklisting and illegal seizure of Robeson’s passport for his adamant beliefs in anti-colonialism, socialism, and human rights ended nearly half a century ago. However, despite a world-wide generation of commemorations, publications, , films, plays, poems, and documentaries, there is still little recognition of him on the material memorial landscape. An exception to this lack of memorialization is found in Wales (one of the nations of the ) with an extensive presence of Paul Robeson on the material landscape, and his status as a national hero.

Robeson was born in 1898 in Princeton, New , to Maria and Reverend William

Robeson, an escaped slave and Union veteran. Excelling in academics, athletics, and the arts in high school, Robeson earned a scholarship to , where being selected for the

College Football All-American team in 1918 and 1919 was among his many accomplishments.

In 1923, he graduate from with a law degree, but while financing his education he played football professionally and joined a theatre company that traveled to Britain.

Encountering the intense racial divides that limited his ability to practice law at the level which he desired, Robeson took his life in a more professionally artistic direction by acting in theatre, later on screen, and eventually as a musician. After moving to London for almost a decade, he began to further his interest in ethnomusicology, African culture, and politics. By the mid-1930s

Robeson had fully integrated these interests into his art. Not long after, Paul Robeson began to

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very actively participate politically in issues of labor rights, anti-colonialism, and human rights, specifically in such political debates as Welsh unionization, British decolonization, the Spanish

Civil War, and ultimately the griping violation of human rights occurring in the United States.

Paul Robeson is regarded as one the greatest U.S. vocalists, actors, and civil and labor rights leaders. He holds the record for the longest running Shakespeare play on Broadway. He was a member of an NFL championship team as well as the 1918 and 1919 All-American college football teams (Harris 1998). He held a key to the city of Boston, three honorary doctorates, and a law degree from Columbia (Ramdin 1987). In the early , Robeson was considered one of the greatest African Americans alive, yet not ten years later, he was classified as one of the greatest “un-Americans.” After regaining this respect after the McCarthy era (despite never having lost it in other parts of the world) it would be expected that today his name would be no less commonplace than Martin Luther King Jr. (Naison 2002). African American studies specialist, Mark Naison cites the cultural and political leaders in the United States for Robeson’s continued shadowy presence, particularly in relation to other great African American activists.

Instead, in the United States, commemoration of him in any form has been virtually non-existent.

Having been blacklisted, Robeson’s passport was revoked during the McCarthyism era for his firm and outspoken Antifascist stance on social issues such as labor exploitation and racism. Before, after, and during (via mail correspondence) this period Robeson developed a widespread international influence through singing, acting, and speaking in areas such as , the , Germany, and the United Kingdom. Beyond any of the international relationships he formed, his bond with Wales and the was the strongest (Francis

2003). I explore this relationship further as a comparative study of his influence and commemorative presence in Wales, exploring the material memorial landscape of Paul Robeson.

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The memory that does exist on the memorial landscape partially lies within museums, archives, and commemorative buildings. These are found in both the United States and the rest of the world, but for some reason Paul Robeson is remembered more vibrantly in the nation of

Wales – where he never lived – than in the United States or anywhere else. Beyond this, it is quite possible – borrowing a method from Schein (1997) – that through the discourse of the memorial landscapes of Wales, a different Paul Robeson is being remembered than in the United

States. I submit, there are certain connections that can be drawn between his philosophical beliefs and his memorial landscapes that answer for this discrepancy. Wales, for example, has a strong socialist history and Robeson was able to connect with that aspect of Welsh society. Were his other philosophical beliefs transmitted into Welsh society, and is that evident in the Welsh memorial landscape of Robeson? This thesis reveals exactly how Paul Robeson’s philosophical transcension1 of scale has impacted his memorial landscape in Wales.

The answer to these questions lay in three stages. First, after setting up the research design and literature for this thesis in chapter two, the various philosophies of Paul Robeson are identified, including how and where they were implemented and influential, in chapter three.

Second, in chapters four and five, data on Paul Robeson’s depictions on the Welsh memorial landscape are acquired through personal interviews, archival information, and landscape analysis. Third, in chapter six, various methods of analysis are applied, linking Robeson’s different philosophical values with his memorial landscapes and resulting in an understanding of the unique relationship between Paul Robeson’s philosophical beliefs, the memorial landscape, and Wales.

Throughout this thesis, Wales will be referred to as a nation or country, one of three semi-autonomous nations of Britain ( and England being the others) and one of the four

1 An act, process, or instance of transcending. Source: www.merriam-webster.com

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(including Northern ) semi-autonomous nations of the United Kingdom. Despite being given devolved powers and semi-autonomy in 1999 with the establishment of the Welsh

Assembly in , the capitol, Wales is still not considered a state and, more so than Scotland and , continues to remain closely linked socially and politically with England.

Besides politically, it is important to note some of the major cultural distinctions in Wales. First,

Welsh is the co-official language of Wales and, despite only 25% of the population being fluent, is legally required to be used in conjunction with English wherever public funding is involved.

Second, Wales is a small country to begin with, but of its three million inhabitants, two-thirds live on the southern coast or the south valleys of Wales. South Wales is further heightened culturally because of the prominence of the (now defunct) South Wales coal mines and the communities that evolved with them. Lastly, the National Eisteddfod will be mentioned numerous times. The Eisteddfod is a week-long festival celebrating , people, and culture, and is seen as one of the most prominent expressions of national identity in Wales.

The motivations for this project come from when I was first introduced to Paul Robeson by the late Dr. Stephen Fuller in a music and world cultures course as an example of a singer of

African American and one of the most talented U.S. bass singers. Being fascinated by his singing, I began to learn more about him by listening to his recorded speeches. Having a basic understanding of this famous US artist, on my first visit to Wales, in the National

Waterfront Museum (NWM), there was display on Robeson both because he had been voted that year as one of the fifteen most prominent Welsh achievers in history and because they had an ongoing exhibition on the history of Jazz in Swansea, Wales. I was shocked that Robeson was being portrayed as one of the fifteen most prominent Welsh achievers, when I was quite confident that he was an US citizen. Upon returning to the United States, I began reading more

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about Robeson and his many references to Wales and the Welsh miners. I also became aware of the two exhibitions in Wales in the 1980s and 2000s on Robeson and his relationship with

Wales. This unique relationship is the basis of many geographically-based questions. What is the full geographical extent of his memory on the landscape? Why is Paul Robeson remembered so well in Wales today when he was not Welsh, never lived in Wales, and spent relatively little time there? How did these memorial landscapes come to be? And what exactly about Robeson is being remembered in Wales in relation to other locations and Robeson’s overarching historical narrative?

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Figure 1. A map depicting all the sites where Robeson personally interacted with in Wales (sojourns), sites where temporary commemorations in honor occurred (ephemeral), and sites where was or is a material presence of Robeson on the memorial landscape (March 2015) Source: author

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Figure 2. This map shows the same data as the previous map, however only sites during Robeson's life are being highlighted by the large red icons (March 2015) Source: author

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Chapter 2: Robeson and Philosophy; Robeson and Geography

Despite Paul Robeson being a force in intellectual circles within and outside of academia, the current research on Paul Robeson is relatively limited. Most common are traditional biographical sketches (e.g. Duberman 1988; Davis 1998; Boyle and Bunie 2001; Hayes 2001;

Goodman 2013; Swindall 2013) often originating from his friends and family (e.g. Robeson

1930; Seton 1958; Brown 1976; Robeson 1989, 1993, 2001, 2010). Recently, critical academic analyses of Robeson (Stewart 1998a; Dorinson and Pencak 1999, 2002; Criterion Collection

2007), each using a different cultural framework (critical theater studies or critical ethnomusicology perspectives for example), have begun to rival, question the grounds of his near mythical standing, and deepen more traditional biographical works. Robeson’s own writings, speeches, and art also reveal a more holistic understanding of his life (Robeson 1958; 1978).

The lack of memory and limited research on Robeson has led to an absence of him within geography with the only exceptions being slight mentions in Jim Tyner (2006) and David

Featherstone (2013). Since Paul Robeson identified himself as an African American, it is important to address geographer Owen Dwyer’s (1997) review of African American-based research within geography among six major geography journals.2 There had only been 176 articles pertaining to African Americans, less than two percent of total publications by 1997.

Dywer called for a redirection in attention and a topical shift towards a better understanding of race. More recently, geographic research on African Americans and race in general has increased. Individual geographies of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. (Dwyer 2000;

2002; Alderman 2003; Alderman, & Popke 2007; Boykoff 2007; Alderman 2008; Dwyer &

Alderman 2008; Inwood 2009), Malcom X (Tyner 2004, 2006), David Yates (Featherstone

2 Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Antipode, Economic Geography, Geographical Review, The Professional Geographer, and Urban Geography

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2013) with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and W. E. B. Du Bois (Sibley 1995; Ahmad 2002;

Wilson 2002) represent a foundation for further work within geography. This research combines concepts such as memorial entrepreneurs and scalar politics from the memorial landscape approach used for Martin Luther King Jr., with a more philosophical approach taken by geographers Tyner, Featherstone, Dohra Almad, David Sibley, and Bobby Wilson, who approached narratives with their subjects’ own philosophical framework.

The Philosophies of Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson, besides representing an underrepresented population in geography research, can be best understood through his philosophical beliefs, ontology, and ideology. Anti- colonialism, human rights, and socialism must then be analyzed by their status in the twentieth century to understand how Robeson was influenced by these movements, and contextually where he stood within them.

Colonialism has been heavily discussed by geographers, especially with the ideological movement of post-colonialism within the field. The gap in the research lies in the study of anti- colonialism and its associated movements, though there has been limited work already (e.g.

Carswell 2006; Glassman 2005; Mercer, Mohan, and Power 2003; Phillips 2011; Sidaway 2000;

Von Eschen 1997). Specifically, Pan-Africanism (a major sub-concept of Robeson’s anti- colonist framework) research within geography has focused on the philosophies of Fanon

(discussed further in Chapter 3). Nigel Gibson (2012) applied his ideology in an analysis of Post-

Apartheid South Africa, and Steve Pile (2000) critically looked it from a spatial perspective. In addition to this Fanonian approach, Federico Caprotti (2011) focuses on understanding colonial perspectives in Ethiopia and Grace Carswell’s (2006) analysis of the impact and resistance to

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colonialism in East Africa. Overall, however there is still much more work which can contribute to anti-colonial discourse (Morrissey, Kearns, and Meredith 2014).

Like geographic research on African Americans, the geographical research dealing with extremely broad subject of human rights can be improved upon. In addition to the aforementioned work on Martin Luther King Jr., , and W. E. B. Du Bois and Amy

Ross’s (2001) work on war and , most other geography research on human rights focuses specifically on the memorial landscape of the (Dwyer 2000,

2002; Dwyer & Alderman 2008; Post 2009; Tretter 2011). Within human rights activism again most focus has been on civil rights activism. An example to this trend is the edited work of geographers Jenna Loyd, Matt Mitchelson, and Andre Burridge (2012), which addresses prisons, mass incarceration, xenophobia, and their effect on minority communities. Geographers Steven

Hoelscher (2003) and Josh Inwood (2012) studied civil rights activism in the present and past, respectfully, and shown that geography would greatly benefit from additional research on civil

(and human) rights activism.

As what is becoming a pattern, geographers have discussed Marxism, but the specific topic of labor activism within socialism is somewhat neglected. With Featherstone (2003),

Andrew Herod (2003), Wendy Jepson (2005), Anne Knowles (2006), Don Mitchell (2004), and

Steven Tufts and Lydia Savage (2009) as some of the exceptions, labor activism research within geography would prosper from additional attention.

In general, geography did not begin to see any sort of anti-oppression focus until the mid-

1990s (Kobayashi 2014, 1110-13). While there is an increasing trend and inclusion of Feminist,

Pan-Africanist, and other activist narratives, Audrey Kobayashi adds to that assessment that anti- racism especially remains “incomplete, contested, and extremely uneven from place to place.”

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Location and Scale

Paul Robeson held many philosophical ideas which transcended scale as they passed from global movements into local communities and relationships through the actions and influences of Robeson. This transcension, or the act of going beyond set limits, of scale was then influenced by these communities and individuals in their acceptance or rejection of Robeson’s beliefs, which ultimately influenced Robeson’s place in the memorial landscape. Through this reciprocation of banal and exceptional memory, landscape, and scale, Paul Robeson emerges as a source of geographical research.

Besides simply knowing what Paul Robeson thought and did and how his actions fit into a geographic framework, knowing where those thoughts and deeds came to fruition is vital (For similar geographical biographical methods see Ogborn 2008, Tyner 2006, and Daniels and Nash

2004). His voice traversed the entire planet, and he physically covered nearly as much territory transcending many scalar, racial, and social barriers along the way. He lived in the United States and in England, and spent many years in the Soviet Union. Conveniently, these three countries have place-based research on Robeson already completed, specifically in England (e.g. Holt

2002; True Pioneer: The British films of Paul Robeson 2007) and the Soviet Union (Lewis 1998;

Horne 1998; Perucci 2004, 2009, 2012; McConnell 2010; Verzuh 2012). In the United States, the country’s lack of remembrance and focus on his socialist underpinnings has been discussed by novelist (2002), historian Laurel MacDowell (2003), African American studies professor Mark Naison (2002), historian Ron Verzuh (2012), historian Joseph Walwik (2002), and geographer Graeme Wynn and historian Richard Mackie (2012). On the other hand, for those places where he is remembered (especially outside of three nations mentioned) there has been very little discussion. Wales can then be identified and compared as a nation where in

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Robeson spent relatively little time, yet is very prominent within popular memory. Almost all academic work on Robeson in Wales has been conducted by historian Hywel Francis (2003) and literature specialist Daniel Williams (2006, 2010, 2012), who have contributed greatly towards the identification of Robeson’s legacy in Wales. Additional Welsh works on Robeson include

Davies (1981), Hill, V. (2006), and Paul Robeson: Speak of me as I am (2007).

Via scale, I approach these different geographies and then link them into my question of the memorial landscape of Paul Robeson. As a constructed social, political, and economic product, scale serves to constrain ideas to particular orderings (Mitchell 2002; Hoskins 2004).

On one hand, Herod (1991) states that banal activities often construct scale, but the transcension

(and construction) of scale can also occur through exceptional activities, such as those undertaken by Robeson. Geographer Gareth Hoskins (2004) describes the ultimate relationship between scale, memory, landscape, and identity as a reciprocal one, where each exerts its own production back onto the others. He uses The Immigration Station on Angel Island as an example of a site where the ideas of the nation are physically embedded into the local landscape, but then those ideas of the nation are also shaped through individual and interaction with that landscape.

Dwyer and Alderman (2008) and Alderman (2003) brought together the ideas of scale, memory, and politics to civil rights commemoration, specifically the scalar politics of commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. on street signs and the relationship between King’s own geographies (and philosophies) and his current memorial landscapes. Alderman and Inwood

(2013) tied social justice and politics to commemoration analyzing the role between the political motivations of those in power to entreprenuerize memorial landscapes and that of minority groups to use the memorial landscape to establish counter-narratives to these structural politics.

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Finally, geographer Sara McDowell (2008), through examples from Northern Ireland, analyzed heritage, identity, and memory and their interconnectivity.

Memory, Heritage, & Landscape

Unlike Robeson and his philosophies, memory in geography has not been ignored in scholarly work. Commemorative and memorial landscapes have seen a spike of attention since geographer Ken Foote (2003) published Shadowed Ground in 1997 and established his four-part typology of tragedy and violence representation on the landscape: sanctification, designation, rectification, and obliteration. Since that time, the idea of the memorial landscape has spread throughout the field. Memorial or commemorative landscape, however does not have a set definition. I will use the definition ‘memory in place’ for this thesis. This idea merges concepts of humanist cultural landscapes (Tuan 1980; Cosgrove 1998), social justice (Smith 1994; Doss

2010), Marxist conceptions of commemoration (Harvey 1979; Peet 1996), and the spatial politics of commemoration (Wishart 1997; Dwyer 2002; Post 2009; Savage 2009; Alderman 2010).

Performance and other commemorative events memorializing Robeson also fall within this definition of memory in place, however in this thesis only the material memorial landscape of Paul Robeson will be analyzed. Given additional space and time Robeson’s memorial landscape could all be intrinsically tied to performance; either of those imitating, honoring, or influenced by him or from groups and individuals inter(acting) within the landscape.

Performativity studies would include a discussion of agents (actors) and structures (scripts) that are at play on the landscape (Merriman and Webster 2009; Rogers 2012; Waterton and Dittmer

2014), including a focus, through biographical studies, on the unfolding of blueprints, contradiction of master narratives, and counterpoints of difficult histories (Palmer 2014). Trans- scalar ideas of life stories may be utilized as both historical traces of scripts and actors and a

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means to identify potential futures helping to understand how social organizations today utilize

Paul Robeson as a foundation for future change. While performance is not central to the framework of this material landscape study, it is nevertheless deeply influential in both the creation of Robeson’s memorial landscapes and the analysis of them.

While scale and performance are major components in memorial landscapes, the role of individuals who are invested in the shaping of the memory, heritage, and reputation of others, is an equally important concept coined by sociologist Gary Fine (1996) as reputational entrepreneurs. Fine (1996, 1159) wrote, “[r]eputational entrepreneurs attempt to control the memory of historical figures through motivation, narrative facility, and institutional placement.”

Fine further illustrates reputational entrepreneurs as “salient” in politics, specifically in areas where the reputations of party politics can be bolstered or undermined through the memorial control of historic figures. Even more so, Fine argues that the role of reputational entrepreneurs is more powerful and explicit in the cultural and memorial control of celebrities. Since the term’s introduction a handful of studies have been produced from political science and English, but mostly out of the field of sociology (e.g. Jansen 2007; Toye 2008; Mastangelo 2010). Fine also explored the role of reputational entrepreneurs of celebrities such as Sinclair Lewis

(Campion and Fine 1998) and, on a much more banal and “tiny public” scale, a chess champion

(Fine 2013).

While very few geographical studies have adapted Fine’s reputational entrepreneur concept (e.g. Alderman 2002; Post 2009), Dwyer and Alderman (2008, 6) expand upon his definition and coin the term memorial entrepreneur. They define memorial entrepreneurs as

“individuals, alone or in league with others, who endeavor to influence the meaning of social issues and debates about the past.” They saw Fine’s definition as too confining and not

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encompassing of the role of activism, agency, or the larger movements associated with individuals. Geographers Matthew Cook and Micheline van Riemsdijk (2014) further utilize this concept in their analysis of non-state Holocaust commemoration in Berlin and the role of a single individual in interpreting, challenging, and creating new understandings of the past. A similar study on a broader scale, one that introduced more concepts of collective memory, was conducted analyzing Holocaust plaques in Berlin (Jordan 2006). Geographer Hamzah Muzaini

(2013) also utilized the concept of memorial entrepreneurs as he traced a single individual’s political and emotional endeavors to commemorate the Battle of Kampar in Malaysia.

The introduction of agency, and the transgressive aspects of power, is another potential of memorial landscapes. Memorial landscapes are embedded with power and hegemonic constructs, including ideas of race, class, gender, and other socio-political orderings and exclusions.

Memorial landscapes can be analyzed for how well they conform to these hegemonic structures, or how well they enable visitor agency to construct counter-narratives and transgressive acts of power. Geographer Olaf Kuhlke (2001) demonstrated such a memorial landscape through the mobility and empowerment of disenfranchised groups during pride parades. In this case, mobility enabled individuals to construct their own counter-narratives in contrast to the more hegemonic institutional practices of the cities and states where the parades took place. However it is important to note that, as in the case of the Pride Parades, what appears to be public space and transgressive representation on the landscape is often still policed and under hegemonic control

(Mitchell 2002; Mitchell and Staeheli 2005)

Several additional studies result in many insightful perspectives on Robeson, yet none completely integrate both his ideas and his geographies, let alone in a way that represents

‘memory in place.’ The two most dominating approaches have discussed the lack of memory on

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him (Robeson and WNET 1972; Wright 1975; Brown 1976; Blum 1998; Guerrero 1998;

Robeson Jr. 2001, 2010) and the importance of his legacy in Education (Detroit Public Schools

1978; Dunn 1987; Blum 1998, 1999, 2002, 2008; Harrison and Lampman 200; Blum 2002;

Fernekes 2004; Ellis 2013).

In summary, using these concepts of memory, scale, and Paul Robeson’s philosophy together with what has been done on his commemoration and history, I will attempt to answer how Paul Robeson’s transcension of scale impacted his commemoration in Wales. Of course, to better understand and tie together the memory of Paul Robeson with Wales, a better understanding of Wales and Welsh identity may be employed through literature such as musicologist Susan Hill (2007), geographers Rhys Jones & Luke Desforges (2003), historian

John Davies (1993), and activist and historian Paul Robeson Jr. (1989). In the end, through

Wales, a better understanding of the memory of Paul Robeson will become manifest. This understanding will then, just as Robeson did, expand to transcend multiple scales.

Methodology

Archival Research

Archival research constitutes the foundational research strategy here. Data concerning the personal, cultural, and physical memory of Paul Robeson resides in archives worldwide, but my study area will focus on archival research in Wales, particularly on Wales’ material memorial landscape. Through the archives, I will attempt to answer three questions: in Wales, where did

Paul Robeson go, what did he do there, and how is he remembered?

The National Library of Wales (NLW) in Aberystwyth holds the most extensive record of

Welsh history in the world. While there is not a specific collection on Paul Robeson, many

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materials on his involvements in Wales are in the National Archives including the Papurau’r

Parch. T. J. Davies (Papers of the Rev. T. J. Davies) and all notes involved in the writing first and only Welsh biography of Robeson. The in London is an important archive of Robeson as well, specifically in a Welsh context for their materials on the film The

Proud Valley. In the ’s South Wales Miners’ Library (SWML) collections on

Paul Robeson, videographer Susan Robeson (Paul Robeson’s granddaughter) and Hywel Francis established the Paul Robeson Trust, housing the most complete archive of Paul Robeson’s involvement in Wales. The Trust and the larger system of Swansea University’s Library and

Information Centre act as starting points of reference for my research. Siân Williams, the Curator of the SWML and Keeper of the Paul Robeson Archive, has provided extensive access to both publically held and privately stored materials. All archive visits were supported via letter from the Kent State Department of Geography that authenticates my research.

Sociologist Michael Hill (1993) discussed sedimentation, or the level of organization of specific archival materials. Using Paul Robeson as an example, primary sedimentation would be archives founded by him in a single collection. No archives in Wales have primary sedimentation, so I require the secondary sedimentation archives of the SWML. With most other materials donated by a secondary source, such as family, and all Welsh material from the Paul

Robeson Archives at Howard University. The remainder of the archives in Wales have tertiary sedimentation where information on Paul Robeson dispenses across the archives and collections and presents the challenge of locating it quickly. Geographer David Wishart (1997) stated that no historical data can be taken as being objective, and that we constantly reinterpret history based on our own perceptions. Similarly, those who record and organize the history, reflect their own time and culture onto the archives, creating the necessity for multiple perspectives. By visiting

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multiple archives in Wales and the United States, I hope to generate the best representation of

‘history as actuality’ as a baseline historical context (Wishart 1997, 113).

Interviews

I utilized the data and method of interviews in order to gain additional information to support the evidence collected in the Welsh archives. Starting with four interviewees, Dr. Daniel

Williams, Siân Williams, Ceri Thompson, and Susan James, and the anticipation of a snow- balling effect, I hoped to gather a well-rounded perception of how Paul Robeson is remembered in Wales, and other possible resources. Dr. Williams, Professor of English Literature, is the

Director of the Richard Burton Centre for the Study of Wales and the Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales at Swansea University, and his research revolves around Welsh language and identity and the Celtic-African-American connection, including

Robeson’s Welsh connections and perceptions. Siân Williams, Susan James, and Ceri Thompson curate the SWML, the National Waterfront Museum (NWM), and the Bit Pit National Coal

Museum respectively, and provided information on both the representations of Robeson, and the public reaction to these landscapes. All were essential in determining the different discourses of the memorial landscapes.

From these primary interviews, a number of additional interviews and correspondences took place expanding perspectives and information on Robeson. Dr. Hywel Francis, MP

(), formerly a professor and librarian at Swansea University, who helped established the Paul Robeson Trust, is now the M.P. for Aberavon (in South Central Wales), and provided a political perspective on Robeson. Besides corresponding with him via email, because of his work with the Trust, he has also published an article on the subject of Paul Robeson’s legacy in Wales and other materials related to Robeson. Dr. Pyrs Gruffudd, an associate

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professor of geography at Swansea University, who utilizes Robeson in his courses, was helpful in understanding broader trends in the Welsh national memorialization of Robeson. Tayo Aluko and Greg Cullen (2006) are both playwrights, Tayo the actor of his plays, who have written plays centered around Paul Robeson which received great attention in Wales.

All interviews followed a semi-structured approach centering on the following questions

(Dunn 2000):

1. To what extent do you feel Paul Robeson is remembered or represented in Wales? 2. Why do you think he is remembered/represented in such a way in Wales? 3. In Wales, do you feel like any of his beliefs are remembered more so than others, or do most people who know of him have a good conception of who he was overall?

Predominantly, questions were tailored for each interview. Hywel Francis and Siân

Williams know the public extent of the Paul Robeson Trust, Daniel Williams and Prys Gruffudd better understand the role of Paul Robeson in Welsh national identity, Susan James and Ceri

Thompson have greater interactions with the public and the reactions visitors have to Paul

Robeson, and Tayo Aluko and Greg Cullen are better aware of Robeson’s cultural representation and reception in Wales

Landscape

The primary method of extracting and analyzing the physical representations of memory on the landscape in Wales will be through landscape analysis, using photography and field notes.

As geographer Rich Schein (1997) suggested, there is no consensus in landscape analysis.

However, geographer Paul Groth (1997) reaffirmed that this lack of consensus offers a variety of methods and theory for the field. I focus on landscape as discourse (Schein 1997) and text

(Holdsworth 1997). Both provide a method of analysis that stress the constructed narratives of landscapes yet acknowledge the meaning one ’s own performance generates. Schein (2009, 380-

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384), for example discusses landscapes as places of both material artifact and discourse materialized, as a palimpsest of past, present, and future social and cultural practices and their material evidence. He wrote (380) that his framework was driven by

[t]he combination of landscapes of place – or landscapes and historical – and the place of landscape – or an interrogation of the landscape per se – not only as material artifact but also as discourse materialized, including normative aesthetics and ethical dimensions.

Geographer Deryck Holdsworth (1997) similarly incorporated archives and historical context into the reading of the landscape in order to avoid the narrow-mindedness which accompanies more traditional and subjective methods of only visually observing the landscape.

This methodology will vary slightly from other memorial landscape studies. Alderman

(2003; 2008; 2012) and Alderman and Inwood (2013) examined the memorial landscapes of

Martin Luther King Jr. through text. They examined the politics behind the construction of the landscapes, and then how different people then interact and understand those landscapes. I will then, through the information gathered in interviews, connect the memorial landscape to the personal connections the Welsh have with those landscapes. Schein (2006, 5) again addressed the importance of seeing a cultural landscape as not only material, but “as an entée into ideas and ideals.” Not only do they reveal “social worlds of the past,” but they represent continued values of the present. This is not too far removed from Erica Doss’s American studies (2010) work where she was able to connect certain memorial landscapes with different emotional connections

(e.g. a sense of shame over the in Duluth, or gratitude and the World War II memorial in Washington D.C.). Overall, through these processes, I will develop an understanding of how the physical memorial landscapes are created, their impacts, and people’s reactions to those landscapes.

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The SWML, and NLW also have museum exhibits and additional Welsh landscapes of

Paul Robeson can be found in The Grand Pavilion in Porthcawl, the South Wales Miners’

Museum (SWMM), and the NWM. No longer present, the Paul Robeson Exhibition was in

Treorchy and the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition traveled around the country. Robeson’s

English landscapes will be briefly compared and are comprised of five locations in Greater

London. Geographers Emma Waterton and Jason Dittmer (2014) provide a Posthumanist template for the analysis of the performance of the museum which focuses on three components: curators, visitors, and non-human elements. Hoelscher (2003) also analyzes cultural memory through the performance of museums, focusing on slavery’s representation in plantation museums. On a more national state-oriented scale, yet utilizing similar methods, geographer

Jamie Gillen (2014 ) uses walking tours in her analysis of Vietnam’s state-discourse and the collaborative power of tourism in Vietnam’s War Remnants Museum. Sociologist James Loewen

(1999, 3, 1995) also addresses the memorial landscape through “the courageous souls who challenged the United States to live out the meaning of its principles” who are often written out of history. Overall, exhibits, exhibitions, and museums in particular are experienced spaces and places that, through similar experiential analysis, reveal individual, cultural, and national discourses.

The sites listed above were chosen for their content on Paul Robeson and include all material memorial landscapes in in my study. He is either the main focus of the landscape or a prominent feature at each site. This study did not include any potential sites in

Scotland, Northern Ireland, the , or any other portion of the United Kingdom.

In conclusion, this research is a layered process. Archival research composes the foundation, interviews and other secondary sources will reveal the different potentials of

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memory, and landscape analysis will reveal memory materialized. Discourse analysis and museum analysis closely relate to archival research, except while archival research creates the foundation of my research, discourse and museum analysis especially will be used to analyze the research itself. As each of these pieces falls into place, a clearer image of the memory of Paul

Robeson in Wales appears. The various methods applied towards the memorial landscapes of

Paul Robeson in conjunction with the existing literature on Paul Robeson and his three primary philosophies will form the best explanation of how Paul Robeson’s philosophical transcension of scale is evident in the Welsh memorial landscape.

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Chapter 3: Robeson’s Philosophical Framework

Paul Robeson, one of the most unknown achievers of the twentieth century, expressed his philosophical beliefs throughout his life in his research, singing, acting, athleticism, and activism. Of the many quotes which describe Robeson’s life, struggle, and philosophy, the following statement applies most to development of a Robeson philosophical framework: “[o]ne day,…, the example and struggle of Paul Robeson will be fully recognized by all for what it was and is: a blueprint for human existence” (Blockson 1998, 250).

How does this ‘blueprint of human existence’ relate to Paul Robeson’s philosophical beliefs? How was he influenced by leading scholars, activists, and artists, and how did his beliefs fit into larger philosophical movements? And what evidence exemplifies Robeson’s actions as they relate to his philosophical framework? Blockson uses the term ‘blueprint,’ but a synonym that better illustrates the complexities that are intertwined with the plurality of Robeson’s beliefs is framework. Anti-Colonialism, socialism, and human rights were the three tracts of Robeson’s framework, though they are broad generalizations and still do not include every aspect of

Robeson. In this chapter I hope to simplify these dense, interconnected, ever-expansive philosophical stances into a form of communication that can be easily understood, evaluated, taught, and compared. Understanding the philosophies, actions, and examples of his ideological framework will provide the appropriate contextual background for understanding where Robeson stood.

Robeson’s philosophical developments neither occurred in a vacuum nor did they have a specific starting point. In order to understand the influences and actions of his later life, Robeson

Jr. (2001) argued that Paul Robeson’s early years, specifically the influences of his father, set the stage and influenced Robeson’s philosophical development.

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Paul Robeson’s father, Rev. William Robeson preached as a Presbyterian minister for the

Witherspoon Presbyterian Church for twenty years before 1898, when Paul Robeson was born

(Duberman 1988, 6). The Presbyterian Church is not commonly associated with the African

American community, but by the turn of the century the Church, due partly to its large missionary presence and the association of slave owners, their slaves, and the Church, had a rapidly growing African American presence. Just as the P.C.U.S.A today is arguably the most liberal of the major denominations, there was a strong movement within the Church at the end of the 19th century to move away from its perception of being selfish and mercenary. Rev. Matthew

Anderson (1897) wrote that the Church must move beyond pity and towards love and respect in order to ensure every race and nationality their God-given rights and privileges. The Church also clarified that financial prospects had nothing to do with their motives (I always question when someone must clarify what they do not stand for).

Tolerance, just as today, did not thoroughly permeate the Presbyterian Church, nor was it insusceptible to outside forces of white supremacy. Rev. Robeson found this out in 1900 when the intolerance of Princeton, ’s, leaders towards his sermons of social injustice forced him out of the Presbytery. In 1907 Rev. Robeson found a new denominational home in the

African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Zion Church and founded his new parish, St. Thomas, in

1910 in Somerville, New Jersey. Less is known about the impact of the A.M.E. Zion Church on

Rev. William Robeson’ last decade of life, though most of his convictions were said to be uncompromising. Most importantly, the A.M.E. Zion Church would, ultimately, have a more profound impact on Paul Robeson’s life (Duberman 1988, 8). His eventual blacklisting limited his concerts to Black Churches across the country in the 1950s, and one of his greatest supporters was his brother Rev. Benjamin Robeson, minister of an A.M.E. Zion Church in . Paul

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Robeson Jr (2001) insisted that these interactions his father had with the Church (generally speaking) shaped everything he did in life and laid the foundation for his philosophical ideas.

Anti-Colonialism

Anti-Colonialist is the first of the three philosophical components which makes up Paul

Robeson’s ‘blueprint of human existence,’ though featured heavily within this category is also the role of Pan-Africanism and . The ideas of the anti-colonialist movement itself cannot be separated from the ideas coming out of the broader human rights movements, but what makes anti-colonialism and Pan-Africanism unique are their philosophical worldviews and perspectives. Anti-colonialism revolved first around the non-violent resistance teachings of activist Mahatma Gandhi (1965) and, second, around those who held a more militant perspective such as revolutionary scholars (1963) and Amílcar Cabral (1980). Also included in the anti-colonial movement was the structure of Marxism. Robeson built upon and reinterpreted many of the anti-colonial discourses of Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. As

Williams (2012, 167) states it was his black nationalist philosophies in conjunction with ethnic and cultural factors, such as folk songs, that led Robeson to believe that Marxism and a cosmopolitan understanding of the world was the means to end imperial control.

Robeson’s foundation for these socialist anti-colonial beliefs came first from the Soviet constitution and later the famous African-Asian Bandung Conference. “Article 123,” issued by the Soviet Union in 1936 Constitution, influenced Paul Robeson greatly through the following:

Equality of rights of citizens of the U.S.S.R., irrespective of their nationality or race, in all spheres of economic, state, cultural, social and political life, is an indefeasible law. Any direct or indirect restriction of the rights of, or, conversely, any establishment of direct or indirect privileges for, citizens on account of their race or nationality, as well as any advocacy of racial or national exclusiveness or hatred and contempt, is punishable by law. (USSR 1936)

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While controversial, because of the issues occurring in the Soviet Union at the time,

Robeson developed his understanding of the Soviet Union from the perspective of their political propaganda. This further combined with Robeson’s incredibly powerful first- hand experiences of freedom and tolerance in the Soviet Union to lead Robeson, until he became aware of the discrimination that was covertly occurring, to be one of the Soviet

Union’s most vocal supporters (Robeson 1958).

These ideas manifested at the 1955 Bandung Conference, to which Robeson remotely contributed, and in the Ten Principals of Bandung. He forever cited the Principals in reference to his opinion on international affairs and an example of countries with colonial legacies coming together in an effort to form an economic and political block to imperial exploitation.

1. Respect for fundamental human rights and for the purposes and principles of the charter of the United Nations. 2. Respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations. 3. Recognition of the equality of all races and of the equality of all nations large and small. 4. Abstention from intervention or interference in the internal affairs of another country. 5. Respect for the right of each nation to defend itself singly or collectively, in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations. 6. (a) Abstention from the use of arrangements of collective defense to serve the particular interests of any of the big powers. (b) Abstention by any country from exerting pressures on other countries. 7. Refraining from acts or threats of aggression or the use of force against the territorial integrity of political independence of any country. 8. Settlement of all international disputes by peaceful means, such as negotiations, conciliation, arbitration or judicial settlement as well as other peaceful means of the parties’ own choice, in conformity with the charter of the United Nations. 9. Promotion of mutual interests and cooperation. 10. Respect for justice and international obligation. (Robeson 1958, 46-47)

Robeson also played a major role within British politics promoting the Labour and

Communist Parties’ agenda of de-colonization, especially concerning India. Joining forces with

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British politician Sir. Stafford Cripps, British M.P. Shapurji Saklatvala, and other leaders, he was brought into the House of Commons on more than one occasion to be asked his opinion on his ideas of race, colonialism, and ‘third world’ cultures (Duberman 1988, 213).

One of the few debates concerning Robeson is his role in films which, indubitably, served as propaganda for British Colonialism. The three sides to the debate are first, that he was making a living while opening up the possibility for Blacks to obtain major roles in future films (Ellrod

1997). The second is that he was coerced into creating each movie and then later manipulated through the editing process (Robeson 2001). The third admits that he was used and or agreed to the British colonial propaganda, however in each part he played he progressively exerted his own agency, representing African people and culture in a way that, while still being manipulated, was still radically different from mainstream film (Musser 1998; 2007).

Many other leading anti-colonialists also happened to be friends of and influences to Paul

Robeson. Saklatvala, Indian Prime Minister (1964), Cripps, and journalist

George Padmore were all involved in the very political debate of British de-colonization. One way Marxism influenced Robeson was through “Article 123” of the Soviet Union 1936

Constitution which on paper granted, under penalty of law, complete equality to all citizens and was seen by many as the solution to colonialism.

Saklatvala, an Indian, was the third Asian M.P. in the United Kingdom, and was a prominent figure in both the Communist Party and in the Indian League. One of his most prominent identifiers was the public polarity expressed between himself and Gandhi. Both supporting humanitarian and independent goals for India, Saklatvala’s industrialized challenged Gandhi’s ideas of communal cottage capitalism (or vice versa). Despite geographical irony that Gandhi was a political power in India while Saklatvala was an Indian political power

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in Britain, Gandhi refused a national rebellion while Saklatvala called for India to act in 1927 after he was influenced by colonial Ireland (Saklatvala and Ghandi 1927).

One of the most influential figures in British politics which also influenced Robeson was

Cripps (1946). Cripps didn’t necessarily wish to change colonialism (as he defined it); what he desired was a strong and powerful commonwealth of equally free, understood, and respected nations, with Britain sitting no higher politically, economically, or socially than any other member. This idea of nationalism without inequality is clearly expressed in Robeson’s music.

Not only does Robeson sing the national and nationalist anthems of many countries (e.g. , the Soviet Union, the United States, Russia, Poland, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales), but specifically within his rendition of composer Ludwig van Beethoven and poet Friedrich

Schiller’s “All Men are Brothers.” The lyrics of the song, “[b]rothers, sing your county’s anthem; Shout your land’s undying fame;…Raise on high your country’s sign;… Brothers, lift your flag with mine,” reflect this nationalist aspect of Robeson’s anti-colonialist philosophy

(Robeson and Booth 2013).

Lastly, anti-colonialism includes many of the leaders of the Pan-African movement. Pan-

Africanism also focused on fighting for national and ethnic sovereignty and against , but specifically, African freedom was fought for because of its overall diasporic effect and the interconnectedness of all Africans (Robeson 1978, 88).

Paul Robeson’s role in Pan-Africanism and his identity as African began in the 1930s as he expanded his work as an ethnomusicologist. In 1933, he enrolled in the School of Oriental and

African Studies (SOAS) at London University where he began research into African languages and folk music. It was through his involvements with the school that he became involved with, and an honorary member of, the West African Students Union (WASU) (Robeson 1958, 32).

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During this time, his political ideas evolved from “I’m an artist. I don’t understand politics” in

1931 (Ramdin 1987, 75) to his famous 1937 speech “[t]he artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative” (Robeson 1978,

119).

This swift shift in philosophy can in no small part be contributed to his ongoing contact and friendship of the members of the WASU: , Nnamdi Azikiwe, Cyril Lionel

Robert James and one of their mentors Du Bois (Swindall 2013, 67). The WASU was mostly comprised of male students from wealthy West African families in British colonies who were concerned about continued colonial rule (Given 1989). Kenyatta is a great example. While he fought for freedom from colonial oppression for Kenya (which he eventually helped achieve and became the independent state’s first president) and other African nations, he also had prolonged interactions with Padmore (1937) and Gandhi, who were both involved in the broader concept of

Anti-colonialism (Mzee Jomo Kenyatta 2014). This overlapping of influences and philosophies, from Robeson, Kenyatta, Du Bois, Gandhi, and Padmore, is just one example to the intricacy of the layering of Robeson’s ideology.

Azikiwe was another major influence on Paul Robeson’s African thoughts. Just as he mentored , who later became the first president of Ghana, the first ‘post’- colonial African country, Azikiwe influenced Robeson during their interactions in London.

Azikiwe used his expertise in political science and journalism to decolonize Nigeria and become its first president in 1963. Interestingly, he attended and taught at Lincoln University (where

Robeson coached football) and attended Columbia University (where Robeson earned his law degree). It would be hard to argue that Azikiwe’s time at Lincoln and Columbia did not involve

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philosophical transfer of civil rights ideologies which would then add to his overall stance in

Pan-Africanism and reciprocation between Robeson and himself (French 1996).

To best understand where Paul Robeson fits into the movement of the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, analyzing the writings of the leaders of the movement, which Robeson would have read and influenced, sets the stage. Cabral, Fanon, and are all considered leaders of

Pan-African thought during the time of Paul Robeson. Nyerere (1965; 1967; 1973) was a teacher-turned-politician who fought for the independence of Tanzania and became its first president. Despite controversial practices of his government, Nyerere was a leading example of

African Socialism and independence who hosted and supported the South African-based African

National Congress and the continental Pan-African Congress. Fanon fought for Algerian independence, while exposing the ontology of the colonized through his writing and psychiatric work (Emory University 2014). Fanon, much like Du Bois, revealed that the colonized have ontologies imposed upon them through means such as language, religion, and other cultural and racial values (Peterson 2007, 24). It is in Fanon’s (1963) The Wretched of the Earth that he argues that the only cure for this is the violent destruction of race as a social construct, a true and encompassing revolution. Cabral (1980) was born in Guinea Bissau but grew up in and is recognized for his work in Cabo Verde as an agronomist and struggle for the de-colonization of

Portuguese colonies. Like Fanon, he did not shy away from a militant response to colonialism, however, he did not believe militancy was inevitable. He instead championed the idea of cultural resistance and the role it ultimately plays in breaking down colonial rule. The work and philosophies of these individuals parallels that of Paul Robeson throughout his struggle for

African freedom.

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Robeson fully believed African Americans in the United States could not be free until all

African people around the world were free. In Here I Stand Robeson (1958, 64) wrote, “[c]an we oppose White Supremacy in South Carolina and not oppose the same vicious system in South

Africa?” As you will see in all of Paul Robeson’s philosophies, humanitarianism and the oneness of humankind are constantly present.

While Robeson did act and perform art from African cultures, his most impacting contributions towards the Pan-African movement were through his speeches and his work with the Council on African Affairs (CAA). 3 Even before he founded the CAA, Robeson (1978, 88-

104) was vocal about the importance of an African nationality, the ceasing of European intervention in Africa, and the concept that colonialism was rooted in race. He argued, long before biology had proven so, that race was not a physical thing. Rather it is a social construct for the means of economic exploitation.

Once the CAA was founded, Robeson found a national and international platform, beyond his own stages and personal speeches, from which to combat colonialism and racism in

Africa. There was certainly a trend from the early 1940s, when Robeson (1978, 158, 193) decided that the world must act, to the realization that the world wasn’t acting in the late 1940s and the necessity of African countries to achieve freedom for themselves. Through the CAA, he appealed to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President Harry Truman, and the United

Nations on numerous occasions, both raising awareness of and concerning the Fascist-like states of South Africa and Kenya and calling the United States and the World into action. “ACTION

3 Throughout his life Robeson’s opinions on his film acting career evolved, but to others such as his close friend Du Bois (as cited in Reid, 1998, 175), this was a representation of double consciousness, or “…;two warring ideals in one dark body…” As Mark Reid (1998, 168), English professor and cinema specialist, states in his chapter, “Race, Working-Class Consciousness, and Dreaming in Africa: Song of Freedom and Jericho,” Robeson’s work in many of his films embodied the marriage of Pan-Africanism and benevolent colonialism.

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NOW,” is what Robeson (1978, 164) wrote in a joint U.S.-United Nations address in 1946:

“WILL AMERICA HELP FREE AFRICA?...AMERICA MUST ANSWER!” When no answer came, or at least no answer that Robeson agreed with, there was a definite shift in his philosophy, as evidenced in his speeches. Paul Robeson (1978, 193-4 & 307-317) was becoming more militant and supportive of militant protest in places such as Kenya and South Africa. In 1949, he stated that there will be no tolerance and no compromise, “racism must be destroyed” (Robeson

1978, 194) Just as Du Bois, Robeson saw the connections between slavery and racism. In referring to the Union of South Africa, he said, “[o] my brothers and sisters of the two USA’s – we are going to be free!” (Robeson 1978, 325). Not only did he see freedom in Africa as freedom for African Americans, he was willing to lead the African American charge to “pry loose” the chokehold colonialism and held on the continent (Robeson 1978, 351).

So, it is clear that Robeson was influenced by some of the greatest anti-colonial and Pan-

African leaders and activists of the twentieth century. His honors themselves speak to his involvement in the movements, from being invited by Nkrumah to teach for the Institute of

African Studies at the University of Ghana, to an award from the United Nations in 1978 for his contributions towards the international fight against , and his 1950 Nigerian ‘Champion of Freedom’ award (Ramdin 1987, 196; O’Malley 1978; Hunton 1958, 117).

Socialism/Labor

This Anglo-directed anti-colonial philosophy nicely into Paul Robeson’s

Anglo-originating socialist ideology. Robeson’s philosophies on the global labor movement are quite possibly the most difficult to contextualize of his three philosophies. For the benefit of relative simplicity, emphasis will be on socialism in the United States and the United Kingdom

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including the Soviet influences to each of these areas. Philip Foner (1967; 1991), a leading labor historian, provided a good consensus of the dominance in the United States’ labor movement of trade unions, as opposed to government organizations. The exception to this concept would be

President F. D. Roosevelt’s (1947) New Deal. Quite differently, in the United Kingdom the labor movement was propelled by party organization. It was then, through the many socialist parties, especially the leading Communist and Labour Parties, that unions were able to gain traction

(Communist Party 2014; Labour Party 2014).

Most of Robeson’s influences came from leading labour activists in Britain. While in

London he had many discussions on Marx, socialism, and labour with such individuals as writer

Herbert George Wells, poet , Cripps, and Nyerere. Cripps and Nyerere highlight the intersection of anti-colonial and Pan-Africanism, respectfully, with socialism.

Cripps (1946), a leading figure in the history of the Labour Party was an advocate for a curtailing of private industry and property and increasing jobs, pay, conditions, and benefits. Many of

Nyerere’s (1967) beliefs on labor were later published in his government’s programs. The

Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) Creed and the broader Arusha Declaration state that all citizens deserve equal pay, there must be an absence of exploitation, workers should own the means of production, a democratic government is necessary, and socialism must be a belief system. This last point clearly connects with Robeson. They both believed people cannot simply put in place a socialist political or economic system. It must be accompanied by a fundamental revolution of principal, where people live the ideals of socialism and are not simply dictated by them (Robeson 1958; Nyerere 1967).

Robeson’s labor ideas, to a greater extent than his other ideologies, evolved throughout his life with his experiences. As he traveled to the Soviet Union, other nations of the British

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Isles, and eventually back to the United States, his writing reflected a changing opinion of the role labor rights and socialism should have on the world (Horne 1998).

Museum curator Charles Wright (1975) provided the best synopsis of Robeson’s worldwide contribution to the international labor movement. From advocacy in and of the Welsh mines, to his support of the India League, to his presence on the front lines of the Spanish Civil

War, to his singing of “” all across the United States in union halls and public and state venues (Robeson 2013a), Robeson championed the ideas of scientific socialism. Wright, of course, is not the only writer of Robeson’s labor involvement. Singer (2007) and historian Joseph Walwik (2002) also discussed Robeson through the Peekskill Riots, historian

Ron Verzuh (2012) spoke of his Peace Arch Concerts, and Robeson’s own work through music

(Robeson 2013b) and film (The Proud Valley 1940 and Native Land 1942) represents his role in the worldwide struggle for labor rights and ideas of socialism.4

Wright’s (1975) book, Robeson, Labor’s Forgotten Champion, speaks not only to

Robeson’s contribution to labor, but also the lack of memory of him in 1975 which continues today. He identifies the different unions Robeson supported and sometimes helped organize: The

International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, the Tobacco Workers of North

Carolina, the National Maritime Union, the United Public Workers’ Union, the United

Automobile Workers, the National Negro Labor Council, the South Wales Miners’ Union, and many more to lesser extents. In addition to his union activity, he then linked this activity to his geography. Wales, Scotland, , England, and Hawaii all receive special attention by

4 This recording, and these two films, represent only a fraction of Robeson’s greater artistic legacy. Throughout this thesis, where relevant, I have cited his works (see Filmography and Discography). In later chapters The Proud Valley and his Welsh recordings will be discussed in further detail. Overall, however, most films Robeson produced he later denounced, along with some of his recordings. In light of this, and the complications which arise from deeply interpreting film and music, I have chosen to focus primarily on Paul Robeson’s writings and speeches, many of which reference his art, where he provided his own interpretations and perspective.

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Wright, since they all received special attention by Robeson as pivotal centers of international commerce and thus centers of labor movements.

Peekskill, New York, is also discussed by Wright, but other scholars have also paid special attention to the riots at Peekskill which served as the turning point in Paul Robeson’s national reception. Recently passed, legendary folk singer, Pete Seeger sang at the concert at

Peekskill, and it was his organization, Peoples Artists Inc., that helped sponsor the 1949 concert.

With an audience composed mostly of union supporters some men surrounded Robeson on his concert platform, while others created a periphery to protect the concert-goers from the ever raucous protesters. The violence occurred after the concert when, as the cars and people were leaving, thousands of rocks were thrown while the police who had been containing the protestors either did nothing, or contributed to the violence (Wright 1975, 123). Robeson’s response to the violence is also just as important. He asked where the next Peekskill would be and how much further will the racists and those who wish to exploit the common worker go in their violence?

Again, Robeson’s philosophies blur, since the riots at Peekskill were as much racially charged as they were politically, and Robeson used the event in further discussion of both socialism and human rights. Wright (1975, 127-128) ended by quoting Robeson, “[l]et them continue… It

[Robeson’s voice] will be heard above the screams of the intolerant.”

The Secretary of State under President Truman, Dean Acheson, revoked Paul Robeson’s passport that year. The blacklisting period had begun, and for the next decade Robeson had to rely, with the exception of the Black Church, on trade unions and universities for his support.

That, however, did not diminish his returned support of labor rights. Together, Robeson and unions across the globe waged ‘war’ (as Harvey Murphy of the Mine Mill and Smelters Union of

British Columbia put it) against the U.S. g overnment. Murphy’s union invited Robeson to

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Canada in 1951 and despite not needing a passport to cross the border, the U.S. Border Patrol was under order to deny Robeson passage. In 1952, and for the next two years,

Robeson went back to the Canadian border and held a concert at the Peace Arch in Blain,

Washington, first of all in protest of his own denied freedoms, but also in support of the international labor movement and the freedom for all human beings (Verzuh 2012).

Paul Robeson’s other expression of his pro-labor ideas became manifest in his art. Unity

Theater, which he founded in London, is one example. Unity Theater provided a stage for actors to perform works which they had written and were accepted by the common people of Britain, somewhat like a working actors union. Robeson also made sure that many of his concerts were accessible to all. Especially as he toured the British Isles outside of London and the areas of the

Caribbean and Central America, he charged as little as one dollar or pound for entry. Of course his art itself acts as a testament to the struggles of labor (Duberman 1988). The song “Joe Hill” describes the martyrdom of a union leader in Utah (Robeson 2013a). The film The Proud Valley is now a Welsh national symbol for its depiction of miners in Wales and their fight for labor rights (Musser 2007). The documentary Native Land highlights the many injustices which occurred in the United States against unions in the 1940s. Paul Robeson (1978, 119) stated “[t]he artist must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery.” He made his choice. He had no alternative.

Human Rights

The third philosophy of Paul Robeson was his involvement and influence in the civil rights movement and more broadly the constant universal equality of human rights. More so that his other philosophies, there is little separation between his influences and the leaders of the movement, at least in the early twentieth century when his conceptualization of human rights

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developed. With statesman Frederick Douglas (1945) as the backdrop, political activists Booker

T. Washington, , and Du Bois (2007; 1993; 1970; Balaji 2007) were the most influential individuals to Robeson and, within the human and civil rights movements, are often viewed in polarities.

Paul Robeson’s acting actually led to a public vilification of him by Garvey. Garvey’s separatist (Pan-African Nationalist) beliefs found their way into Robeson’s theories on civil rights, but they didn’t stop Robeson from accepting a handful of roles which Garvey saw as a disgrace to Robeson and all Black people. Robeson, on the other hand, did not agree with

Garvey’s ideas on race or repatriation. Robeson (1978, 104) firmly believed that race was a social construct and laughed at the idea of destroying white civilization. He also was firmly against leaving the United States. When asked by Democrat

Chairman Francis Walter of the House Un-American Activities Committee why he did not stay in Russia, Robeson (1978, 427) replied, “[b]ecause my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here and have a part of it just like you. And no Fascist- minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear?”

Washington’s ideas of cultural assimilation, a strong education and, for those who were able, a responsibility to utilize their skills in whatever way was acceptable to mainstream culture are evident in Paul Robeson’s early life. Robeson even mentions Washington as he writes about his early educational experience and how much he respected Washington (Hayes 2001).

Robeson’s early acting career reflected this. While these two figures were in stark ideological contestation between separatist and assimilationist ideals, Robeson mainly from his father’s teaching of subtlety, balanced the two (Duberman 1988, 15). Professor of drama Colin Chambers

(2006) however, argues that Robeson’s (1958) autobiography served as a breaking point with his

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father’s more Washington influenced philosophies. Overall, while these two ideologies conflicted as far as Robeson’s human rights philosophies are concerned, the stress on integrated education and a Pan-African Nationalist approach to cultural and political distinction were balanced through an air of respect and tolerance.

Douglas and Du Bois were the most influential to Robeson and Robeson, in turn, was most similar to them. Both were scholars, statesmen, and activists, and both discussed race as a social construct. Douglas said “[w]e are then a persecuted people; not because we are colored, but simply because that color has for a series of years been coupled in the public mind with the degradation of slavery and servitude” (Goldfield 1997, 92). Beyond simply being influenced by

Du Bois, Robeson and Du Bois became great friends as they grew older. Both were highly educated, part of the WASU in London (Carew 2004), and friends with Nkrumah and fought for an independent Ghana and African de-colonization in general. Du Bois earned the Lenin Peace

Prize, while Robeson earned the Stalin Peace Prize. Du Bois served on Robeson’s CAA, and both were ultimately vilified and condemned by the U.S. government; Robeson was forbidden to leave and Du Bois was forbidden to enter (Robeson 1958).

Robeson’s role in the human rights movement is often cited as paving the way for his predecessors such as singer Harry Belefonte, boxer Muhammad Ali, and activists Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. (Nazel 1980). Robeson set the example for African Americans in sports and campaigned for their continued integration (Dorinson 2002a, 2002b, 2002c). He broke the stereotype of the Black actor on stage (Baraka 1998; Duberman 1998). He was the first to program Negro music as concert music (McGinty and Shiely 1998; New York Public Library;

Pencak 2002a). After a long struggle with stereotypes in film, he walked out on Hollywood (Als

2007). On the political stage Robeson, again using the CAA and his own influence, fought for

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outlawing lynching and Jim Crow throughout the United States, all the while attempting to unite, arouse, and lift off the inferiority complex he perceived of many African Americans (Bell 1998;

Perucci 2004).

During Paul Robeson’s time in high school and at Rutgers he broke through every racial barrier in athletics which was presented to him. He became the first African American to play for

Rutgers, coached football for one year at Lincoln University, and then played in the NFL for three years with the Hammond Pros, the (who were the championship team the year prior), and the Milwaukee Badgers (Harris 1998). Robeson (1978, 151) carried this support of desegregated sports throughout his life and was part of the committee who met with Major

League Baseball to put an end to prohibiting Black players (Dorinson 2002c).

On the stage and screen Robeson fought another battle against the use of his body in a way which played into the established ‘norms’ of a Black actor or a Black man in general. The

1937 film Jericho is an example where he only signed on to act in the film after he was guaranteed editing control. His roles in Othello and All God’s Chillun Got Wings, where he co- stared with a white woman as his partner, also broke down color barriers in the United Kingdom, but especially in the United States. This exertion of power, first, created movies that for the first time did not have racist overtones, and secondly, paved the way for other Black actors to hold dignified positions (Criterion Collection 2007).

In the same manner as his acting, Robeson lifted African American music above its perceived level to the concert stage. He was the first concert singer to hold an event where only

African American music was programmed. This represents Robeson’s idea of the validity of the

African American culture and his agreement with Garvey that assimilation shouldn’t be the only solution to the many problems facing African Americans in the United States (Pencak 2002a).

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Within politics and the legal issues facing the human rights movement Paul Robeson played a major, and often underappreciated or contested, role. Paul Robeson founded the CAA, was on the , led a march on Washington against lynching, and spoke in almost every state on the horrible discrimination of (Duberman 1988).

To this day, debate continues as to why Robeson was blacklisted and his passport revoked. Officially, it was caused by his support of African independence movements. Another perspective cites his ties with the Soviet Union and communism. The final opinion offered is that

Robeson was detained because, as he traveled around the world, he spoke out against the humanitarian violations and racism in the United States. He chose to fight for freedom and so they revoked his passport, but his voice shattered that barrier and soon after his body did so as well (Robeson 1978, Beeching 2002). Today Robeson’s body and voice continues to represent values of the civil rights movement, represented here by the words of the late former Poet

Laureate of New Jersey Amiri Baraka:

That’s why these revolutionaries still give us strength every day, That’s why the fools and racists can’t make them fade away, Two great beings of fire and light, Two great figures who can make day out of night, And the huge constellation called Paul Robeson has returned once again, His century of revolutionary struggle will guide without end, Paul the artist, Paul the actor, Paul the scholar, Paul the fighter, All combined so that he was the tallest of men. (Baraka 2006)

In the end, whether he was fighting against colonialism, racism, or capitalism, Paul

Robeson was fighting Fascism. Just as he often replied to the question of his political stance, he was a staunch Ant-Fascist. He was on the front lines during the Spanish Civil War. He shook his finger in President Truman’s face and threatened Negro action after being told lynching wasn’t a

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national concern. Robeson marched with thousands of Welsh miners, leading them in song, through the streets of London in protest of labor exploitation. His life went from that of vocal expression to that of militant protest despite the strongest attempts by the U.S. government to silence him. They could never did, but twenty five years of blacklisting have left a scar on the memorial landscape of Paul Robeson. However, his involvement internationally was not expunged from all landscapes and there are isolated pockets throughout the United States.

However, on a national scale, Wales uniquely recognizes Robeson as a hero not only of the

Welsh but for his works internationally. It is on the Welsh memorial landscape that connections can be drawn as to how well the aforementioned philosophies have been represented and the intricate political, cultural, and historical implications which may arise from an incomplete representation. Paul Robeson was more than the singer or the actor. He was an anti-colonialist, a socialist, and a human rights leader. This memory of Robeson holds the potential to contribute to the world a philosophical blueprint of human existence.

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Chapter 4: The Memorial Landscape

Landscapes are discourse, they are text, they are palimpsest, and they are culturally, politically, and emotionally charged. As past, present, and future evidence and agents, landscapes can be understood and analyzed as a way of revealing these varied ideas and ideals.

In this chapter I incorporate all of these concepts, all already expanded upon in Chapter 2, into the understanding of Paul Robeson’s Welsh material memorial landscapes. The Paul Robeson

Room, the SWMM, the SWML, the “Achievers Gallery,” and the NLW are the only five sites in

Wales which permanently memorialize Paul Robeson on the material landscape. The following is a descriptive-based overview of each site, including the sites’ histories, audiences, key figures, and spatial orientations.

The Grand Pavilion – Porthcawl

Porthcawl, a small coastal town in

South Wales, is home to The Grand

Pavilion, cited by itself as the town’s

“Jewel-in-the-Crown” (Morgan 2004, 9).

The Grand Pavilion is where, from 1948 until 2010, the South Wales Miners’

Eisteddfod was hosted, including in 1957 Figure 3. The Grand Pavilion, Porthcawl, Wales (June 2014) Source: author during which the now famous

Transatlantic Exchange concert between New York and Porthcawl occurred. The international outrage over Paul Robeson’s blacklisting from 1948-58 fueled the exchange as workers, politicians, and union leaders from the South Wales coalfields were among the first members of

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Figure 4. Audience of the South Wales Miners' Eisteddfod's Transatlantic Exchange on Oct. 7th, 1957 in the main auditorium of The Grand Pavilion Source: Morgan 2004, 108-109 the Let Paul Robeson Sing Committee based in Manchester. To bring pressure to the State

Department, Robeson was invited to the Miners and National , two of the most prestigious invitations Wales could offer. After four consecutive invitations however, the state department had yet to release Robeson’s passport, so with the help of Robeson Jr.’s knowledge of technology and funding from the Miners Eisteddfod, via telephone, Paul Robeson gave a concert on October 7th, 1957 to the Miners Eisteddfod at The Grand Pavilion in Porthcawl,

Wales (Morgan 2004). Francis (2003, 6) was in attendance and wrote that the Transatlantic

Exchange “has become part of Welsh popular memory.” Of course this statement raises certain questions. What aspects of Robeson are remembered as part of the exchange, and what is the definition of Welsh popular memory?

While often miss-cited as the first transatlantic concert of its kind, the Miners actually reused the idea from a concert Paul Robeson gave earlier in the year in the St. Pancreas Town

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Hall (Science Museum 2014). Interestingly, this early concert is not as often cited, nor does it seem to be as vividly remembered as Robeson’s Transatlantic Exchange with Porthcawl.

The concert in Porthcawl was somewhat of a dialogue between , the

President of the South Wales Miners, Paul Robeson, the Male Voice Choir, and the audience in The Grand Pavilion. During the concert Paynter expressed the collective disgust of the South Wales miners and their families, stating “our people deplore the continued refusal of your government to return your passport and to deny you the right to join with us in our festival of song. We shall continue to exert what influence we can to overcome this position” (Paynter

2013).

Both at the opening and the closing of the concert, the song We’ll Keep a Welcome in the

Hillsides was dedicated to Paul Robeson. It was during the dialogue that Robeson helped establish his connection with Wales through his statement “[m]y warmest greetings to the people of my beloved Wales, and a special hello to the miners of South Wales at this great festival”

(Booth, Robeson, and The Treorchy Male Voice Choir 2013b) He further demonstrated the breaking of not only spatial, but perceived racial barriers through his singing of the song Land of my Fathers recited here:

Wales, Wales, Oh but my heart is with you and long as the sea your poor walk shall be to Cymru my heart shall be true. (Booth, Robeson, and The Treorchy Male Voice Choir 2013a)

In response the entire audience joined with the Treorchy Choir in singing We’ll Keep a

Welcome in the Hillsides back to Robeson.

We’ll keep a welcome in the hillsides, we’ll keep a welcome in the vales, this land you love will still be singing when you come home again to Wales. This land of song will keep a welcome and with a love that never fails. We’ll kiss away each hour of hiraeth when you come home again to Wales. We’ll keep a welcome in the hillsides when you come home again to Wales. (Booth, Robeson, and The Treorchy Male Voice Choir 2013a)

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In the concert William Paynter further stated that the concert was a testimony to the struggle for freedom and against racial discrimination.

In 1998, The Grand Pavilion, ‘as part of the worldwide centenary commemorations of

Paul Robeson’s birth’ held Paul Robeson Centennial Concert: A special tribute in words and music to this international figure. As stated by the poster hanging in the Paul Robeson Room, the event was organized by the County Council in conjunction with the Miners Eisteddfod.

These interactions had various scalar impacts. Robeson’s voice, as it boomed and echoed around the hall in The Grand Pavilion, connected to the Welsh audience on a personal level

(Jackson 1985). Robeson was a world-famous non-Welsh artist with only a slight connection to the country, but in line with both Welsh memorial tradition and patterns of Robeson’s celebrity and political activism (Spohrer 2007), people in Wales latched onto his celebrity (Pyrs Gruffudd,

Associate Professor of Geography, Swansea University, 5 June 2014, personal conversation). It is also important to note that this was a Transatlantic exchange and, as Robeson Jr. (2010) explained, the eisteddfod’s audience brought an uplift to Robeson’s spirits during one of the most difficult times of his life. It was also the support shown in 1957, again according to

Robeson Jr., that heled shift public opinion in U.S. politics forward and thus policy outlawing blacklisting (Jackson 1985). This connection between Wales and United States in The Grand

Pavilion will be important to note when interpreting the memorial landscape.

The memorial landscape of Paul Robeson in The Grand Pavilion has been dynamic both in representation and integration into the performed landscape of the Pavilion. Visitors, performers, audience, and staff all interact with Paul Robeson’s memorial landscape differently and those interactions, along with the landscape, have changed over time. Ranging from the art and information provided in the Room, to the spatial relationships in and of the Room, to the

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many differing ways people perform the memorial landscape, The Grand Pavilion in Porthcawl serves as a living, yet static, memorial to Paul Robeson and his relationship with Wales.

Figure 5. The Paul Robeson Room in The Grand Pavilion from the perspective of the elevator looking to the right (June 2014) Source: author

The Paul Robeson Room (Figure 5) can be entered by either the parking entrance to The

Grand Pavilion or by the elevator from the main lobby. In either case, the Room is laid out before the visitor and all the artwork, panels, and pictures are visible. From left to right visitors (though many people who enter or pass through the room are not visitors) to the room find a picture from

Robeson’s Othello, a large painting of Paul Robeson, and a series of biographical panels from

Columbia College broken up by a poster of the Pavilion’s Paul Robeson Centennial

Concert and a bust of Robeson. Each item has a different level of local influence and represents a

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different Robeson. Together, however, they form the overall memorial landscape of Paul

Robeson at The Grand Pavilion.

The Columbia College panel series “Paul Robeson: A brief timeline of his life, 9,

1998 – January 23, 1976” (Figure 6) is set up in a very traditional timeline format, chronologically going through and highlighting important events from Robeson’s life while also

including broader events for historical

context. The eight panels, similar to most

other biographical works on him, provide a

synopsis of Paul Robeson’s life,

highlighting his education, acting, singing,

and politics, and including his major

achievements and events surrounding his

life. The panel series comes from a U.S.

perspective and relegates Wales to only a

few lines of the text: including The Proud

Valley, two concert tours, his invitations

while restricted from travel, and the Figure 6. The first of eight panels hanging in the Paul Robeson Room in The Grand Pavilion (June Transatlantic Exchange. This is noteworthy 2014) Source: author because almost all of Robeson’s interactions with Wales are mentioned, however they simply are not presented in as much detail as his other memorial landscapes in Wales. One exception to this less-detailed account is the Transatlantic

Exchange. Every date listed throughout the timeline, besides Robeson’s birth, is listed by year only. The Transatlantic Exchange was the only exception as it is listed down to the day as “5th

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October 1957.” Speaking with muralist Mark Rogovin (8 Sep. 2014, personal conversation), this was just a coincidence as the panels were not edited for local context.

The panels were published by Columbia College Chicago and the Paul Robeson 100th

Birthday Committee in 1998 for organizations interested in educating people about Paul

Robeson’s life. Project Coordinator Mark Rogovin (8 Sep. 2014, personal conversation), described the origin of the panel series and the accompanying books Paul Robeson’s Living

Legacy (Armentrout and Stuckey 1999) and Paul Robeson Rediscovered (Powers and Rogovin

2000) as a project to research Robeson’s Chicago connections in preparation for centennial celebrations, but as organizations around the country began to realize the lack of material on

Robeson, the researchers organized into the full committee. Connections with the Center for

Black Music Research at Columbia expanded their sponsorship and solidified the university as a co-publisher of all committee materials. The panels, accompanied by Paul Robeson’s Living

Legacy, were duplicated at least one hundred times and sent around the country. Rogovin stated that the panels themselves were designed as a form of pubic pedagogy, and the books were designed for a classroom setting. Specifically, “Notes for Educators” (Calvin and Rogovin 1999,

20-24) combat the erasure of Robeson’s public stature by providing lesson plans focusing on his involvement in civil rights, his perspectives on social, political, and cultural space and time, and his accomplishments and connections across academia, athletics, and performing arts.

Paul Robeson’s three Othello performances constitute one of his defining roles, especially in Britain where two of the three took place (Figure 7). , a famous

British actor who played in Robeson’s initial production, is cited by Duberman

(1998, 125) saying that “for us [Robeson] was a great figure, and to all young people in England at the time …[Robeson] was a great figure.” While the two productions of Othello were in

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England, their relative location, especially

Robeson’s seven-month production at

Stratford upon Avon would have been influential to people in Wales. This connection between Robeson and theatre is further strengthened through the Welsh play

Paul Robeson Knew My Father (Cullen

2006) and the positive reception of the play

Call Mr. Robeson (Tayo Aluko, actor, writer, and musician, 27 June 2014, personal conversation) as it toured through Wales. Figure 7. A framed image in the Paul Robeson Room of Robeson and Uta Hagen in their 1943 Othello production in Overall, Paul Robeson’s role in theatre is New York (June 2014) Source: author highlighted on the memorial landscape in The Grand Pavilion and is representative of the triangulation of theatre, Paul Robeson, and Wales.

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Figure 8. An author "selfie" with the Young Figure 9. The Young Robeson bust, modeled Robeson bust (June 2014) Source: author from Paul Robeson Jr., in the corner of the Paul Robeson Room. (June 2014) Source: author

Figure 10. A painting of Robeson hanging in the Paul Robeson Room based off of a 1940 photograph by Yousuf Karsh (June 2014) Source: author 50

The two works of art in The Paul Robeson Room constitute the largest and most noticeable artifacts in the room. The first item, the large painting of a somewhat older Paul

Robeson hangs on the wall. Created in 2007, the painting is very similar to other Welsh/British colliery artwork, especially by miners who use rough edges and thematically create dark and worn looking settings and individuals, highlighting their humanity and working class status

(Holmes-Roe and Whitaker 2015). Opposite the painting, the bust of ‘Young Robeson’ sits on a pedestal. In many ways there are two different Robeson’s in The Paul Robeson Room. The

Young Robeson, in contrast to the rough painting, has been crafted into a Classical representation of Robeson’s younger self, with little room left for symbolizing his humanity or class relations.

That being said, the material memorial landscape of the Paul Robeson Room is intrinsically tied back into the concept of performance and utilizing the idea of a living memorial. When I first visited the room I was alone and walked around it following the timeline, reading, and taking pictures. When I came to the bust of Robeson, I did what any technology savvy fan of Robeson would do, I took a selfie (Figure 8). When I began speaking to the staff working at the ticket booth in the lobby about Paul Robeson one of their first questions for me was, ‘[h]ave you taken a selfie with Paul yet?’ ‘Paul,’ as it turns out, has become a good luck charm and focal point of The Grand Pavilion, especially for the staff. Not only do their Facebook pages reflect this special relationship as they crowd around the bust for group photos (Figure 11), but during events Paul would eventually end up as part of the experience. He would be given a wig and sunglasses during their Elvis week, and acquire elements from other performances

(Figure 12). A third example of Paul being a part of a living memorial landscape, and one that continues today more so than photos and event dress, is the rubbing of his head as the staff pass

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by. This is done out of both routine and luck, but inevitably in this very local and personal example of Robeson’s commemoration, he remains a part of peoples’ memories and everyday lives. The embeddedness of Robeson into the banal movements of The Grand Pavilion staff has led to increased knowledge and recognition of Robeson. The staff were all very familiar with the events of the Transatlantic Exchange including the United States’ role in necessitating the

Exchange and the South Wales miners’ unique connection to Robeson.

Finally, the spatial aspects of the Paul Robeson Room must be addressed. The artifacts in the room are aligned so that whether you enter though the outside doors or through the elevator you will either see the painting or the bust of Robeson, and despite which way you enter the room, as you pass through into the Pavilion, you will pass the poster of the centenary concert.

Interestingly however, taking the full temporal

view of the room into question, while the panels

run in their intended manner from earlier to later,

the additional artifacts show the two older images

Figure 12. The Young Robeson bust in the Figure 11. Some The Grand Pavilion staff have foyer of The Grand Pavilion being their photo taken with the Young Robeson bust in appropriated into an event (n.d.) Source: the main foyer of the Pavilion (n.d.) Source: Jennifer Wallen Jennifer Wallen

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of Robeson first and the two younger images after. This coincides with the immortalizing of

Robeson that is present in the bust. As you experience the room, whether you are following the panels across time, or coming either of the two main entrances to the Pavilion, Paul Robeson eludes traditional mortality and natural effects of time.

Relative to The Grand Pavilion as a whole, until recently the Paul Robeson Room was located not at the parking entrance, a floor below the main entrance, but in the foyer of the

Pavilion, in the line of sight of anyone entering the pavilion or utilizing the ticket or information areas. The reason for this change was unknown by the Pavilion staff I spoke with, other than that the artifacts were moved during a major renovation and never moved back. The secondary lobby entrance still sees considerable traffic through the room, but this move may be symbolic of a transition away from the correct ‘time’ to remember Robeson, and in conjunction with a more general trend throughout Wales, where Robeson is no longer sitting in the same spotlight as the early 2000s, but is still not completely erased from memory.

The South Wales Miners’ Museum

The SWMM (2012) houses another small portion of Paul Robeson’s material memorial landscape in Wales. The museum was first established in 1975 near Pontrhydyfen in the Afan

Forest Park east of and , and for thirty years was funded and operated locally by the

West County Council. In 2008, funding Figure 13. The front entrance of the primary South Wales Miners' Museum building (June 2014) Source: author 53

from County Borough Council, Welsh Assembly, Heritage Lottery Fund,

Coalfields Regeneration, and Communities First helped to modernize and expand the museum

( 2015). Most artifacts in the museum and volunteer staff hours are donated

by mining families. Throughout the museum, there is only one artifact directly representing Paul

Robeson, a record from the Transatlantic Exchange. Though only a single artifact, this memorial

landscape narrates the importance of both community and individual influence on concepts of

memorialization and memory.

Again, the joint role of Robeson and Wales against the U.S. government and in support

of the Welsh miners is clear. The primary difference at the SWMM is the political affiliation

expressed. Whereas most popular sources cite the exchange as a Labour event, it is clear through

the narrative of the SWMM that the

National Union of Mineworkers

(N.U.M.), an organization strongly

associated with the Communist Party,

was the sponsoring organization. The

most prominent cover text, other than

Paul Robeson’s name, is “N.U.M.”

For a record cover of this period, such

a large is not common,

which says beyond simply producing

the record for sales, the N.U.M. was

concerned with their association with

Figure 14. A vinyl record of the Transatlantic Exchange Paul Robeson. This is accompanied and accompanying biographical information (June 2014) Source: author

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by the attached note stating that the record “has been kindly donated by who was

General Secretary of the N.U.M. 1968-1984.” A short biography accompanies the record and represents all three of Paul Robeson’s philosophies to some extent, citing the American civil rights movement, his involvement in the Communist Party of America, and his speaking out against imperialism.

While one of the smaller memorial landscapes of Robeson, the SWMM provides a narrative from the perspective of the South Wales miners more directly than any other site. That discourse will be very important in the overall analysis of Robeson’s Welsh memorial landscape.

The South Wales Miners’ Library

The SWML is one library amongst the Swansea University Libraries system. As a part of the University it is located in Swansea on the Hendrefoilen Campus. It was established in

1973, serves as the unofficial headquarters of the Paul Robeson Wales Trust, and is the repository of all Robeson-Wales related archival materials, including the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition (See Chapter 5). The library also acts as a hub of Robeson related activities, hosting videographer Susan Robeson, Robeson Jr.’s daughter, presenting the exhibition for university functions, and acting as a meeting place for individuals like musician and journalist Beverly

Humphreys, Hywel Francis, Daniel Williams, Susan James, and Siân Williams, all of whom hold important roles in the continuation and discussion of Robeson’s memory and memorial landscapes in Wales. Finally, a small percentage of the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition materials are displayed and publically available as components of the material memorial landscape.

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Figure 15. Front view of Swansea University's South Wales Miners' Library (June 2014) Source: author

The library was opened through the research of David Egan (professor of Welsh education policy), Hywel Francis, Merfyn Jones (historian), and Alun Morgan of Her Majesty’s

Inspectorate (of educators) in 1973 with support from the South Wales Area of the National

Union of Mineworks, Swansea University, and a Social Sciences Research Council grant.

Francis and Williams (2013, 8) explain how Francis was appointed as history lecturer and tutor- librarian in 1973 after serving as the senior research officer “principally responsible for the co- ordinating of the salvage operation and establishing the library in 1972-4…” The materials salvaged came from most of the remaining workmen’s institutes, which were originally established as centers of education for coal miners. The library recreated the same atmosphere at the institutes, and was established as of one of the most prominent community-university centers across Europe. Siân Williams currently serves as Librarian and established the SWML’s

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Department of Adult Continuing Education. Besides acting as an educational center and library, the SWML also serves as an archive for a variety of South Wales artifacts including the Richard

Burton Papers, a collection of South Wales miners’ banners, and a memorial to the Welsh casualties in the Spanish Civil War (Francis and Williams 2013).

As an archive, the SWML stores a multimedia collection of Robeson documentaries, theses, dissertations, newspaper clippings, meeting minutes from Welsh unions, and Robeson commemorations. The archives served two main purposes in my own research. First, they provided background into Robeson’s interaction with Wales and subsequent events, and second, they partially illuminated the popular perception of Robeson in Wales. Quotes and statements from newspaper clippings, and findings revealed in scholarly works, all contribute to an understanding of Robeson’s presence in Wales and its change over time. Susan Robeson, speaking at the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition, made it clear that Wales is an exceptional case for Robeson’s heritage, revealed both issues of the past and solutions for the present and future (Let Paul Robeson Sing!: An audience with Susan Robeson).

“[t]he same spirit is still alive in terms of how my grandfather’s spirit and memory lives on generation to generation. … He transcended so many of the barriers that divide us today; barriers of race, barriers of class, barriers of nationality, in a way that had never quite been done before.”

Despite having less content than the National Library, being a very small facility located in

Swansea with few staff means greater access to the materials is easier for more people and the staff that are on site are very familiar with exactly what materials they do have.

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Figure 16. Photos on display in the SWML from the 2007 dedication of the Let Paul Robeson Sing! Exhibition to the SWML by Paul Robeson Jr. (June 2014) Source: author

The SWML acts as a node of community development and knowledge diffusion and growth. In the log books only a few lines above my own signature was Hywel Francis’s. My personal group interview with Susan James from the National Waterfront Museum, the Outreach

Learning Officer for the National Museum Wales (NMW), Cori Thompson from the Big Pit

National Museum UNESCO World Heritage site, the Public History Curator for the National

Museum Wales, and Siân Williams, the head curator of the SWML, was testament to not only the SWML’s, but Robeson’s, potential for community and knowledge connection. From our discussion, I was able to relay the connection between Paul Robeson and the town Gilfach Goch

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from the filming of The Proud Valley (Exton 1984; Rowlands 1985). Cori Thompson has connections with the Gilfach Goch Garden Ladies Guild, and now Susan James will begin exploring the possibility of bringing one of the Let Paul Robeson Sing! sponsored educational programs to the town.

While the SWML is a source of knowledge and memory production because of the individuals that visit it and the archives it contains, the memorial landscapes also contribute to the memory and knowledge production for any students or visitors to the library. In 2007,

Robeson Jr. donated the entirety of the Let Robeson Sing! exhibition to the SWML. In general, he was instrumental to the creation, success, and continued existence of the exhibition. After

Hywel Francis (email correspondence, 4 Jul. 2014) visited the United States and met Robeson

Jr., Robeson Jr. began visiting Wales. After the link between the two was forged, the Welsh government tasked Francis (1999, 1-4) with investigating the Robeson exhibition touring the

United States and sculpting the Wales-based Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition. At the opening of the exhibition, Robeson Jr. was the guest of honor (Dobbs and Cope 2001b), and once the exhibition and the smaller touring versions were no longer constantly touring, Robeson Jr. donated them to the library (Daniel Williams, personal conversation, 30 May 2014). Visitors to the museum are able to see photographs of Robeson Jr. at the library during his visit in 2007, thus reinforcing the library’s link not only with Robeson, but the entire Robeson family.

The second element to the memorial landscape of the SWML is the works of art depicting Robeson and the Spanish Civil War. As stated above, Robeson was a key supporter of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War and the war was a major shifting point in his ideological life. He was invited as the guest of honor during the memorial service in Mountain

Ash for the thirty-three Welsh casualties, and while there is no evidence of this event in

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Figure 18. The Let Paul Robeson Sing! Exhibition additional information binders in the South Wales Miners’ Library (June 2014) Source: author

Figure 17. Republican propoganda posters from the Spanish Civil War used in the Let Paul Robeson Sing! Exhibition and on display at the South Wales Miners' Library (June 2014) Source: author

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Mountain Ash, there are two large, and four smaller, posters at the SWML, which provide visual conformation of Wales’ and Robeson’s mutual involvement in the Spanish Civil War (Figure

17).

The most extensive and prominent aspect of Paul Robeson on the memorial landscape of the SWML is the bound collection of Let Paul Robeson Sing! materials that is displays an all- encompassing introduction to Paul Robeson. The fifteen glossy-sleaved binders (Figure 18), in the words of the exhibition itself, “celebrate the life of Paul Robeson and his relationship with

Wales” (Dodds and Cope 2003b, 1). The subjects of the fifteen binders are as follows:

1. Paul Robeson in Wales 2. Exhibition in Pictures 3. Proud Valley 1940 4. Paul Robeson’s Theatre 5. Paul Robeson’s Music 6. Unity Theatre 7. “” Special Edition Part 1 8. “Freedomways” Special Edition Part 2 9. Peekskill 1949 10. Slaves 11. Paul Robeson Jr. in Wales 12. Race and Racism in Wales I 13. Race and Racism in Wales II 14. Race and Racism in Wales III

The binders serve as the partially transparent findings of the researchers Marilyn Robeson

(Robeson Jr.’s wife and Paul Robeson’s daughter-in-law), Phil Cope, Susan Croft, Jen Wilson,

Glenn Jordan, and Hywel Francis and their results further discussed in the next chapter.

The National Waterfront Museum

The NWM was founded in 2005 in Swansea as a museum of innovation and industry within the Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales system. During its tenure the museum

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Figure 19. View of the main entrance of the National Waterfront Museum (June 2014) Source: author has played a key role in the continued memory of Paul Robeson in Wales through exhibits, events, and educational programs. After visiting the museum during three different occasions and speaking with Susan James, the NWM’s material memorial landscape of Paul Robeson helps to shape not only his national identification to people in Wales, but also the ways in which the

Welsh identify with him.

Today, there is only one representation of Robeson on the material landscape of the

NWM, the “Achievers Gallery”. It is an interactive digital display of one hundred individuals important to Wales. As the “Gallery” (Figure 20) states, “[t]hese industrialist, actors, politicians, musicians and others are either of Welsh decent, were born in Wales or settled in Wales. They all

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achieved greatness in one way or another.”

As Susan James (29 May 2014) personal

conversation) pointed out, Paul Robeson

made it into the one hundred because of

his music, and the exhibition as a whole

included individuals who had contributed

to Wales in some way. The “G allery’s”

inclusion of Robeson is further made

unique, since he was not of Welsh decent,

wasn’t born in Wales, and never settled in

Wales. Still, he is included, and as Susan

James clarified, individuals who ‘came to

Wales and contributed in some way’ were

also included in the gallery.

Though the gallery is now a single

large panel, from 2007 through 2011 Figure 20. The digital display of the "Achievers Gallery" in the National Waterfront Museum (June visitors could vote from the hundred 2014) Source: author ‘achievers’ for who has achieved the most.

As cultural and heritage specialist Rhiannon Mason (2007, 35) worded it, visitors can ‘vote for

new heroes.’ Every year the fifteen highest voted individuals would be displayed separately in an

expanded “Achievers Gallery.” Robeson was present in these fifteen in at least 2007 and 2011

(Mason 2007). While these votes were beyond-a-doubt influenced by personal experiences and

external influences, before voting for someone they would read the biographies provided in the

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display. Today names are no longer pulled out annually, but the display and the biographies remain, and people can still vote for individuals.

Paul Robeson’s biography is short, but of great interest if not for what is included, then for what is excluded from the biography. The text that is present is as follows:

Paul Leroy Robeson [1898-1976]

Impact/Legacy Actor and singer who became a role model for oppressed people across the world

Origin Born in Princeton, New Jersey to poor black family. Wins scholarship to Rutgers College, New Jersey

Achievements 1920 – starts acting career. Appears in 11 films including Showboat, Jericho and Proud Valley 1923 – graduates in Law from Columbia University 1925 – begins his copious recording career 1947 – increasingly condemns many aspects of American foreign policy. Passport is withdrawn in 1950. South Wales miners participated in a campaign to have his passport reinstated 1958 – issued with a passport and revisits Wales. Sings at the National Eisteddfod in Ebbw Vale.

Paul Robeson’s origin story at the NWM is also interesting in that the museum pulls out his scholarship to Rutgers from his achievements. Identifying Robeson as not only an African

American but as poor and educated may be a tool of the museum to help people in Wales to better identify with him. The NWM is additionally a leading organization continuing the Let

Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition, presenting Robeson in such a way to break down racial barriers today in Wales. Through both the material landscape and their education programs the museum addresses poll, taken in summer 2014, that revealed in the past decade racism in

Wales has increased by 10% to include 30% of the population (Taylor M. and H. Muir 2014). A

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survey of schoolchildren taken in 2014 by the organization Show Racism the Red Card revealed that about half of 11-16 year-olds believe that certain racial slurs are appropriate to use (Bevan

2014). Also, the Race Council Cymru (2012) found from their 2012 survey that 49% of Welsh

Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic population have been a victim of racism within the last five years. These issues of exclusion and discrimination are summed up by Jackson and Jones (2014) research which addresses the irony of an increasingly xenophobic Wales’ national anthem, We’ll

Keep a Welcome in the Hillsides. Overall, the NMW and the NWM are concerned with breaking down communication barriers and fostering an ideology of equality across race and culture throughout Wales.

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National Library of Wales

Figure 21. The front of the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth (June 2014) Source: author

The last representation of Paul Robeson on the Welsh material memorial landscape is a poster-sized print from the film The Proud Valley hanging in the walls of the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales (NSSAW) within the NLW (Figure 22). Also within the National

Library is a smattering of other Robeson artifacts, including his unique presence in the gift shop and his prominence on an old banner for the Library.

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Llyfrgell Genedlaethol

Cymru or The National Library of

Wales was established in 1907 by

Royal Charter, and the NSSAW

(2015) was the result of merging the Wales Film and Television

Archive and the NLW’s Sound and

Moving Image Collection in 2001. Figure 23. A re-created poster-print from The Proud The Library is located in Valley for a 2010 showing of the film in Wrexham sponsored by the National Library of Wales and the Aberystwyth, known as the cultural National Screen and Sound Gallery of Wales. The print is now hanging in the hallway outside of the Screen and capital of the country because of Sound Archive office (June 2014) Source: author the institutionalization of the Welsh

Figure 22. Robeson's films on display in the National Library of Wales' gift shop (June 2014) Source: author

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language, Welsh Assembly offices, and Aberystwyth University. The NLW has the only permanent presence of Robeson on the Welsh material memorial landscape outside of South

Wales. Morgan (2007, 21) described the NLW (in conjunction with the NMW) as a ‘rib cage for nationality,’ and the Library as a fitting first representation of a formalized Welsh institution.

The film The Proud Valley, mentioned previously as a Welsh national symbol of miners’ labor rights (Musser 2007), was a 1939 British drama who’s African American protagonist

David Goliath, played by Paul Robeson, befriends a Welsh mining community and helps them get through difficult times. Criticized for dehumanizing the character David by not giving him a romantic relationship, allowing others to stand up for him, and ultimately having him sacrifice himself for the safety of the town, The Proud Valley also was an outstanding historic achievement. It stared a Black man, who by most accounts was just the same as anyone else in the film highlighting the popular opinion of a historically tolerant Wales (Ceri Thompson,

NMW, 29 May 2014, personal conversation). One line which has been made famous both by the film and later by the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition is, “Aren’t we all black down in the pit”

(The Proud Valley 1940).

The remaining elements reveal the role of the NLW through Robeson’s presence in the gift shop (Figure 23) and on older promotional materials of the library. Within the gift shop it was not too surprising to find The Proud Valley on display, seeing as it is a landmark film within

Welsh cinema. The social media organization “Wales in the Movies” even uses Robeson’s photo for their profile picture platform-wide (Clarke 2015). It was also not surprising to find the

NLW’s published work: Gadewch I Paul Robeson Ganu! Let Paul Robeson Sing!: Dathu bywyd

Paul Robeson a thrafod ei berthynas â Chymru: Celebrating the life of Paul Robeson and his relationship with Wales. What was surprising was to find also on display a collection of

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Robeson’s other non-Welsh movies ( The Paul Robeson Collection). This collection could only be on display in the NLW, due to the connection the library is making between Wales and Paul

Robeson, since no other connection to Wales existed throughout any of Robeson’s other films.

Paul Robeson is remarkably present on the material memorial landscape of Wales, especially considering the relative small size of Wales and Robeson’s poor representation in nations much larger. These sites are only the memorials which are currently present on the landscape in Wales. In the next chapter two additional landscapes will be discussed that are no longer presently available to visit, yet were very influential in the representation of Robeson’s philosophical beliefs and continued memorialization. These Welsh memorial landscapes also do not include non-material memorializations of Robeson through theatre and music, nor do they reveal more personal memorializations such as family artifacts related to Robeson. Overall, this chapter focused on how Robeson is currently represented through public material memorialization in order to set up further analysis in Chapter 6 on the politicization and influence of each of these sites on the Welsh collective memory of Paul Robeson.

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Chapter 5: Exhibiting Memory: Temporary, mobile, and participatory memorialization and the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition

Ever since his first interactions with Welsh miners striking in London, Paul Robeson has been considered by some to be an “honorary Welshman” (Edwards 1998). While the African

American actor, athlete, activist, singer, and scholar never lived in Wales he did have various interactions in Wales throughout his life. He supported the unionization efforts of the mineworkers, supported the international involvement in the Spanish Civil War, was the lead in the film The Proud Valley, traveled the country visiting family and performing, and interacted with activists as they protested the U.S. State Department for the release of his passport. This special relationship has been reflected on the memorial landscape of the country in various ways, but the grandest representation has been the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition which Robeson’s son said was “a vibrant living testimony to the connection between my father’s legacy and Welsh life today and in the future” (Dobbs and Cope 2003b, 6). The exhibition combines the concepts of participatory, temporary, and mobile memorialization in order to uniquely commemorate Paul

Robeson through a sensatory, spatially, and conceptually diverse program.

The Paul Robeson Exhibition

In the case of Welsh memorialization of Robeson, an excellent example of Foote’s (2003,

33) memorial landscape concept of collective values of tragedy and their negotiated meanings by way of landscape, culture, and social memory was the Paul Robeson Exhibition (not to be confused with the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition) created by Martha Edwards and Ken

Goodland in 1985. The Exhibition contained neither participatory, temporary, nor mobile characteristics. While it was briefly on display in London in 1985 at the , it

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was predominantly displayed in a room at the Parc and Dare Theatre in Treorchy, Wales until the mid-2000s (Edwards 1998, 11). The exhibition, while a testament to Edwards and the South

Wales Valleys affinity for Paul Robeson, is described as something closer to a personal collection than a true exhibition in the sense of providing a larger narrative (Road 1998). Ceri

Thompson (29 May 2014, personal conversation), said that “for years it was stuck under the stage” and now even though the Big Pit has it, it remains in storage since it wasn’t a “modern display,” instead made out of cardboard and non-released copywritten images. While the lack of mobility and adaptability over time was an ultimate demise of the exhibition, the non- participatory element of the exhibition creates a stark difference between the publications of the

Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition and the Paul Robeson Exhibition. Overall, the Paul Robeson

Exhibition remained in Treorchy for twenty-five years and during that time provided valuable insights into the role of Paul Robeson in Wales and many of the philosophies he stood for, but because of its lack of participatory, temporal, or mobile characteristics was not able to alter its content, medium, or audience and thus faded from existence.

Memorialization and memorial landscapes as concepts understood through the fields of art history, sociology, and geography transcend the traditional representations of statues, plaques, and toponymic commemoration to incorporate more temporary and grassroot expressions of memory in place. Historically and methodologically rooted in the studies previously mentioned of traditional concepts of the memorial landscape, less conventional studies build upon these foundations as they begin to push the boundaries of the material when it comes to the memorial landscape.

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Participatory, Temporary, and Mobile Landscapes

The first key aspect of non-traditional memorial landscapes is visitor participation. This participatory memorialization, more so than temporary or mobile memorialization, has been studied and supported across disciplines. Waterton and Dittmer (2014, 4) discussed the

“unconscious patterns of perambulation among visitors.” In other words, the participation of the audience or visitors to a memorial landscape shapes the meaning of that landscape. For example, the author while attempting to conduct participant observation of the Korean War Trenches

Exhibition in the Australian War Memorial, shapes the subject’s attention to different objects since the author’s areas of interest in the exhibition “inevitably affected their initial moments in the space” (Waterton and Dittmer 2014, 11). Another war memorial landscape relevant to participatory memorialization is the commemoration of WWII in Singapore and the educational programs that accompany it. Muzaini (2006) described the extensive exhibitions and “Learning

Journeys” as an attempt to increase national identity both at the local scale but also in context with universal narratives of multiculturalism, commemoration, and heritage. One critique of this educational/memorialization collaboration that Muzaini (2006, 217) found was due to the requirement of the Learning Journeys program in schools, visiting war sites is now “seen as an obligation.” The third major component of participatory memorialization is the interaction between visitors and the material landscape of memorial sites. Alderman and geographer Rachel

Campbell (2008, 340) introduced symbolic excavation, a metaphor representing the reconstruction of historic narratives via material artifacts, and the role of the museum and performance in producing and consuming history. With the cultural power of such artifacts in slavery history and narratives, visitors to the Slave Relic Museum “touch the past viscerally” by

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touching and holding items such as shackles (Mitchell 2000, 100). Alderman and Campbell

(2008, 352) conclude with the following:

“Rather than communicating a single, detached narration of the past, the physical engagement of visitors with the slave chains allows for more concrete and personal relationship with the history of slavery and its legacy. It is a bodily form of commemoration that allows any number of emotions and thoughts about the past and present to surface depending on one’s identity and background.”

Despite these examples of participatory memorials and the agency and affect caused by such participatory experiences, in none of these examples did the visitors physically create part of landscape, nor did they directly influence the continued shaping of the landscape by the designers. Doss (2010, 362) provides the artistic and community participatory response to protests of the Danza Indigenas (a work of public art memorializing the effects from colonialist practices in ) as a way for art and memorial to expand beyond the material and engage participation and discourse around issues being memorialized. Below, using the Let Paul

Robeson Sing! exhibition as an example, I will further discuss the importance of not only experiencing memory, but shaping it through participatory memorialization.

Temporary memorialization in non-conventional forms of memorial landscapes is the second key concept exemplified. The final statement in Savage’s (2009) Monument Wars:

Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape is a call for a ten-year moratorium on monument building in D.C. Instead, he stated that ephemeral monuments, or temporary installations, be the medium through which memory would be represented on the landscape. The use of temporary memorialization, architectural historian Kirk

Savage (2009, 312) argued, would allow for additional public input, prevent any project from becoming ossified or obsolete, embrace debate, difference, and diversity of content, rotate the projects located on the most valuable memorial real estate, and decentralize the memorial

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landscape of D.C. Geographer Jeffery Durbin (2003) cited makeshift (or temporary) memorials as being beneficial over permanent memorials for a number of reasons. They generally are more inclusive in their design. Because of this, they are often ideal in the commemoration of grief, morning, and more controversial events, and, while they are temporary, like the memorial established for the 1996 bombing at the Olympics, they often lead to more permanent monuments. Doss (2010, 72) also wrote extensively on temporary memorials, stating overall that traditional forms of memorialization “no longer meet the needs of today’s publics” and that temporary memorials are flourishing at sites of tragedy and trauma. Overall she cited their general trend towards civic and communal practices distinct and away from official or mainstream commemorative practices of the state and their proactive nature which allows for increased social agency challenge.

Mobile Memorialization, the last example of a non-traditional memorial landscape and almost always a type of temporary memorialization, holds many of its own characteristics including adaptability, mobility, and a diverse spatiality. The Moving Wall (a half-sized replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial), The Wall That Heals (also a half-sized replica), The

Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall (a three-fifths replica), and American Veterans Traveling

Tribute (a four-fifths replica) all travel around the country and provide access to the memorial for people who may not be able to visit the site in D.C. One caveat to this and many other mobile memorials is the cost involved. In the cases of the traveling Vietnam memorials it is about $4000 per week for a city to rent (Doss 2010). Another example of a mobile (and participatory) memorial, is the AIDS Memorial Quilt, a traveling and growing memorial to individuals who have died from AIDS. However, just as the traveling Vietnam memorial is limited in cost, the

AIDS quilt became immobile once it grew to over forty thousand panels. Doss (2010, 122) still

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stated that, “[i]ntimate, elegiac, and collaborative, the quilt is a collective portrait of contemporary America.” Slightly less costly and more mobile, but still requiring personal vehicles and often a coordinated police escort, are funeral processions and what remains on the vehicles after the initial procession. Doss labels these as “rolling tombstones,” and they represent personal memorial landscape that remains embodied to the individual through their vehicle.

Combining personalization and access are two types of memorialization, according to Doss

(2010),which represent powerful cultural icons structuring normative ideas of labor, race, and

U.S. hegemony: circuses and protests. Circuses (and minstrel shows) represent, according to

Doss (2010, 260), “the epitome of modernity…mobile, mysterious, and artificial spectacles…highly routinized, controlled, and competitive forms of modern capitalism.” They are used as a mobile form of cultural influence, providing ideas about racial difference and imperialism, working within the confines of consumerism. Doss (2010, 359), when explaining the counter-protests to Danza Indigenas,uses the Social and Public Art Resource Center

(SPARC) as an example and their ninety-foot “You are My Other Me” placards and images with their quote “Good Art Confuses Racists.” In this instance anti-hate and an attempt to counteract such contaminants as imperialism and racism from the memorial landscape are the primary narratives. The Abraham Lincoln Funeral Train which traveled for two weeks from Washington,

D.C., to Springfield, Illinois, not only was increasing access and providing a powerful ideological narrative but was an adaptive memorial as it traveled. During its journey thousands of mourners laid flowers on the train, thus shaping the very composition of the memorial. Arches were also constructed along the entirety of the route often made of banners or U.S. flags. In this case, not only did the memorial change across space, but the places it traveled through changed

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as well (Doss, 2010). These concepts of memorial adaptability through and of places will be very important as I begin analyzing the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition.

As an example of the potential for participatory, temporary, and mobile commemoration

Wales hosted the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition, while the limitations of spatially fixed memorials are exemplified across the border in England. University College London’s SOAS dedicated a plaque to Paul Robeson in 2006 as a memorial to his relationship to the school during his time in London. At the time is was a high-profile event with M.P.s attending and a full tribute concert (Coughlan 2006), but this summer I learnt what can happen to these more traditional forms of memorialization over time. Having read the BBC article from the day of the event describing the dedication of a memorial, I traveled to the SOAS to find and analyze it. I first went into the galleries where there were three staff working up front. I asked if they knew where the Paul Robeson memorial was located since. None of them knew, but more importantly none of them knew who Paul Robeson was. Next I went to the main SOAS building across the

Figure 25. The Robeson memorial at the top of Figure 24. The Paul Robeson memorial the first floor of the School of Oriental and dedicated on 20 Sep. 2006 (May 2014) African Affairs Library (May 2014) Source: Source:Figure 2. Theauthor Paul Robeson memorial dedicated on 20 Sep. author 2006 (May 2014) Source: author

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pathway, the Library. Upon entering, I asked the two student workers at the front desk if they knew where the Paul Robeson memorial was, but they had the same response as three earlier.

Despite their ignorance, I decided to explore the library anyway, in case they just weren’t familiar with it. Sitting directly at the top of the first floor landing was a large black granite circular memorial to Paul Robeson (Figure 24 and 25). Curious as to the students’ familiarity with the building and SOAS, I went back downstairs to the two students and asked two questions. Are you an SOAS student and do you ever go upstairs in the library? They were both

SOAS students and one student said they go upstairs two to three times a week and the other said they go upstairs daily. So, both students pass by this plaque multiple times a week and were a part of the school honoring him, yet neither knew what it was a plaque of or who Paul Robeson was. This is an example of not only a traditional exhibition, but a traditional memorial whose static nature has rendered it obsolete on the landscape (at least from the perspective of the students I spoke to).

Tackling the vast expanse of literature, landscapes, and events that surround the Let Paul

Robeson Sing! exhibition is in itself a thesis topic. The sheer number of influential people who were directly related or within one degree of separation from the exhibition is exhausting, ranging from actor William Shatner to . There is no doubt as to the extent to which this exhibition, with the full backing of the Welsh Government, was able to connect individuals, movements, and nations across borders. However, the exhibition is no longer in full use and while it would be a nearly inexhaustible study in itself, it can best be served in this thesis, not as a current memorial landscape of Paul Robeson in Wales, but, as a past landscape exemplifying new, non-traditional, and effective forms of memorialization.

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While Robeson’s interactions with Wales contribute to Let Paul Robeson Sing!, this unique exhibition was started after Hywel Francis’s (30 June 2014, email correspondence) visit to the

United States 1998 and was hired by the Welsh government in 1999 to travel to New York and further research Robeson. While the majority of the funding for the exhibition came from the government’s National Assembly for Wales, there were many other sponsors: The Department of

Culture, Heritage & Sport, The Home Office, GMB, T&GWU, HTV, Art Works Wales,

Academi, Arts & Business New Partners, HSW Print, Sterling Asset Management, Tŷ Nant, the

NLW, NMW, National Museum of Performing Arts, Newport City Council, UNISON, Arem

Media, Equality and Human Rights Commission, Index on Censorship, Women in Jazz Swansea,

Wrexham County Council, and Northeast Wales Institute of Higher Education (Dobbs and Cope

2001a, 2001b, 2002a, 2002b, 2003a, 2003b).

As already stated, there were many people involved in the project. Francis provided much of the initial research, and exhibition designer Phil Cope, a photographer by training, designed the exhibition, Darren Dobbs, also an exhibition designer and photographer, is the first author on all publications, Beverley Humphries conducted many interviews and ran media programs for the exhibition, Susan Jones and Sian Williams continue to organize the educational programs that accompany the exhibition, and cultural and African American studies specialist Glenn

Jordan, Marilyn Robeson, Robeson Jr., director of Unfinished Stories Susan Croft, and musician, composer, and economist Jen Wilson did additional research.

Overall, the goals of a Welsh exhibition on Robeson as they were laid out to Francis

(1999, 4) before his trip to New York were as follows: explore the educational and cultural activities linked to an exhibit on Robeson, show how Robeson is the bearer of African American culture, and make the Welsh dimensions of Robeson appear at the forefront. In 2001 The Mirror,

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a British tabloid, said the following, which I believe is relevant to the goals of the Welsh

Assembly: “[w]e’re building a new Wales and our young need to be equipped to make the choice to stand against human hatred.” These sponsoring organizations, involved individuals, and goals of the exhibition lay an important foundation for the exhibition as an example of participatory, temporary, and mobile memorialization. The achievement and overall effectiveness of the exhibition through the eyes of the organizers has been determined qualitatively, quantitatively, and temporally. As Hywel Francis (29 Jan. 2015, email conversation) explained, the exhibition was wonderfully successful because of the following:

“…the large numbers who visited the exhibition, the general public acclaim signified by Welsh and UK Government recognition through ministerial endorsement, press, and TV coverage, and perhaps most important Paul Jr saying it was THE Robeson exhibition… its sustained success over the years as indicated by the tours, the response books and its transformation into the Croeso exhibition was an affirmation of all this.”

Let Paul Robeson Sing!

The Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition exemplifies participatory memorialization in three distinct ways: visitor experiences, visitor participation in creation and adaption, and educational and student programs. Experiencing the memorial landscape of the exhibition furthermore enables visitor participation in three

unique situations. Figure 26. Large painted styrofoam chains First, similar to the example from the hang as an archway in the entrance to the in Swansea during the Slave Relic Museum by Alderman and Campbell Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition (Feb. 2002) Source: Dobbs and Cope 2002a, 7

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(2008), chains were used to symbolize slavery and the

breaking of those chains symbolized Making

Connections (Dobbs and Cope 2001b). Visitors did not

touch the chains and shackles, but instead they were

placed at the entrance of the exhibition and individuals

had to pass through the archway of broken shackles

(Figure 26) thus symbolizing the moving beyond Figure 27. "He was kept in the disease of his chains but he found the cure. slavery towards something other. Due to this Tom May age 9 3/6." Taken from the "Responses To A Life" section of the movement the image of the chains was etched into the exhibition. Source: Dobbs and Cope 2002a, 7 minds of the visitors. The responses from the children

in particular showed that the chains served as powerful

stimuli and metaphors (Figure 27).

Figure 28. Visitors to the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition participating in the pyramid (2001) Source: Dobbs and Cope 2002b, 33.

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Brutal, blistering, flesh-tearing shackles. Rusty, clanking, iron chains.

–the first two lines of the poem “A Pocketfull of Paul” written by seven and eight year- old school children. (Dobbs and Cope 2001b, 77)

Second, participation was utilized through performance as visitors sat inside a glass- walled pyramid in the center of one of the exhibition rooms (Figure 28) and were encouraged to speak or sing inside thus recreating the moment when Paul Robeson movingly sang Mozart’s

“O’ Isis, Osiris” inside an Egyptian Pyramid (Boyle and Bunie 2001, 371). Within the pyramid, the song also sometimes plays, thus also giving visitors the direct experience of hearing Robeson sing (Mirror 2001). This idea of performance, both by the exhibition (Robeson’s recording being played) and by the visitors’ interactions within the pyramid, represents the type of performance- generated memory and memorial landscape that Waterton and Dittmer (2014) and geographer

Amanda Rogers (2010) described. As Rogers (2010, 60) wrote, performance illuminates broad concerns about the world and provides a means to re-imagine them. Using this same statement, it could then be said that performance as a means of participation in memorial landscapes provides historical narratives, empowers individuals to reconstruct those narratives, and, borrowing a term from architect Jane Palmer (2014), traces alternate futures.

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The last example of participation through experience in the exhibition is use of Robeson’s body, and the embodiment of memory through interacting with

Robeson’s life-size portrait. Photographer

Deborah Willis (1998; 2007) and Black

Studies professor Jeffrey Stewart (1998b) wrote on Robeson’s body from various perspectives, but in this case visitors were asked to stand in front of the six-foot-three image of Robeson in his football uniform

(Figure 29). This form of experience embodies Robeson’s memory by showing the mass of the professional football player and having the visitors’ body be dwarfed by it. This embodiment empowers

Robeson as a large and powerful man, and thus makes the violence he sustained and eventually succumbed to an ever more potent experience to the visitors.

Figure 29. The life-size Paul Robeson portrait in storage at the SWML (June 2014) Source: author

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Figure 30. Visitors to the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition standing with the life-size image of Paul Robeson Source: Dobbs and Cope 2002a, 39

The shaping of memorial landscapes through participation is the second type of participatory memorialization. The final stop through the exhibition was Phil Cope’s “Responses to a Life” section, which included the opportunity to write comments and reactions on the walls

(Dobbs and Cope 2002a, 6). These writings were received from visitors of all age groups and origins. While these responses were a form of introspective reflection, they also added to the

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exhibition as people read the responses which were often times incredibly powerful and sometimes in the form of art, song, or poetry. Interaction between responses also occurred as visitors responded or built upon drawings and statements. Even further change occurred as the exhibitors read the responses. Dobbs and Cope (2002a, 7) described how, as the exhibition toured Wales, it changed in reaction to visitors’ responses. They said the following:

In Cardiff, it was apparent that many children, and some adults, who cited the exhibition had little or no understanding of the horrors of the TransAtlantic slave trade and the part Britain played in it and the part it…In response, the Paul Robeson Wales Trust worked with Jen Wilson of Women in Jazz Swansea to create two new sections to Let Paul Robeson Sing!...The first dealt with the realities of the slave trade; the second explored the origins of the Negro Spiritual…

Figure 32. The Women in Jazz Swansea Figure 31. One of the slavery panels added to logo which accompanied the additional the exhibition at the Tredegar House in exhibition panels during the showing at the Newport (June 2014) Source: author Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea (June 2014) Source: author

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Again in Swansea, while visitors were understanding the historic ramifications of slavery, there was an alarming number of people who dismissed the events as being solely historic and solved in the present. In response to this, as the exhibition went to Newport, additional panels were implemented describing issues of slavery and political and racial exclusion today (Dobbs and Cope 2002, 6-7).

The last example of participatory memorialization is the use of educational programs. As previously referenced, Muzaini (2006) stated that educational programs can serve as an effective means of relaying information to large amounts of people, often children, in a way that instills a greater amount of retention and influence than traditional memorialization. However, required educational programs may have the opposite impact and embed a negative feeling of obligation into the subject being discussed. In Wales there are several reasons that the educational programs were effective as compared to Muzaini’s Singapore example. First of all, being a traveling exhibition, the children would have only visited the site a single time and not repeatedly over the course of their education. Second, since Robeson was the subject of the programs, performance and art were the medium through which learning was achieved, providing both a more effective means than a traditional classroom experience and often utilizing an enjoyable form of education. Lastly, now that the exhibition is no longer running, the educational programs have shifted from being in conjunction with the exhibition and schools to a form of public pedagogy through summer and extra-curricular programs where students only attend if they are interested.

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The importance of art in the educational programs that have run from 2001 until the present is the key to the programs’ success both in the interest of the students and in the imparting of content. During the exhibition itself, the largest projects were often student-created murals. In Newport, the student mural (Figure 32), which is several meters tall, depicts the

Transatlantic slave trade between an industrialized and commercialized America and a traditional Africa as, fueled by British trade. Overall, the subject is an important concept to discuss, but there would seem to be more primitive representation of Africa than necessary,

Figure 33. The student mural which was designed for and remained in the Tredegar House in Newport for Let Robeson Sing! (Aug. 2002) Source: Dobbs and Cope 2002b, cover 86

especially while America is seen as having wealth, technology, and infrastructure and Africa

(while of course arguably limited in its access to such developments) by this time was not a continent defined by masks, grass skirts, and wooden shields. This mural remained on display at

Tredegar House in Newport until 2014 when it was taken down and removed (Jane Crescenzi,

Property Administrator, Tredegar House, 19 June 2014, email correspondence).

It is clear that the second major mural which was created in Swansea just following 9/11 is both larger and more complex than the previous mural. Overall, it represents the title of the exhibition Let Paul Robeson Sing! which was the name of the committee formed in Britain to campaign against the United States and the U.S. State Department’s decision to illegally cancel

Robeson’s passport. The woman seen screaming is an iconic image from the Peekskill riots

(Figure 35) which were a watershed event during the early days of the Red Scare as it affected

Robeson. It is fascinating to note that while the United States was still reeling after the

September attacks, children in Wales were able to associate the falling of the twin towers as a

Figure 34. The full mural for the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition in Swansea. (Feb. 2002) Source: Dobbs and Cope 2002a 87

metaphor for the Unites States’ own attack

on Robeson. The use of Captain America

hanging his head, which was the popular

image circulated after 9/11, further

legitimizes not only the students’ criticism of

the US, but their demand for U.S. self-

criticism. Similar self-critique and popular

opinion in the United States, particularly

involvement in the has been

channeled through Captain America in

Marvel’s more recent comics (Dittmer 2012).

Additionally, U.S. imperialism is prominent

in the mural as the weight of the United

States bears down on all other countries,

some collapsing under the pressure and

others struggling to bear the weight.

Throughout, the mural also holds writing, Figure 35. Detailed view of the Swansea mural depicting a young Robeson, the multiple images mostly starting with the phrase ‘when I grow of a young women screaming racist comments during the Peekskill riots, and the image of up I want…” Additional analysis on this Captain America hanging his head after 9/11 (Feb 2002) Source: Dobbs and Cope 2002a mural would be beneficial into identifying the thoughts and influences of the exhibition on the children and how the mural in turn affected visitors, but with limited access to high quality photos, there is only so much analysis that can be done. The mural was transferred from the Dylan Thomas Centre where the exhibition was being

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held, to the reception area of the County Hall, where the Swansea city offices were in 2002, but when the new Civic Centre was built in 2007, all artwork was removed and the mural was not transferred (Andrew Dulley, Assistant County Archivist, , 18

June 2014, email correspondence). Nonetheless, the mural is a relic to the quality of thought, emotion, and discourse that can occur through the use of participatory memorialization, especially through art and education.

Temporary forms of memorialization in the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition can be traced along the same benefits as provided by Durbin (2003),

Mayo (2009), Savage (2009), and Doss (2010), including the prevention of ossification, their utilization for increased social agency, difference, and diversity, and the freeing up of valuable memorial real estate. Also, while the exhibition includes many of the benefits stated above, temporary memorialization’s trend towards civic and communal practices and away from official or mainstream commemorative practices of the state does not completely apply. While there were other actors involved in the memorialization process, the Welsh Assembly maintained a powerful role and held the purse strings for any changes that were

made to the exhibition. Figure 36. A newspaper article printed in Changes to the exhibition were one of the greatest benefits preparation for the touring exhibition at the Butetown received by being a temporary installation. As the exhibition History and Arts Center (June 2014) Source:The Let changed and moved, its uniqueness remained provocative and the Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition at the SWML

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local newspapers were eager to

interview people from the area who

knew Robeson, the children involved in

the project, and the visitors to the

exhibition (Figure 36). Each major site

also was able to bring in different

individuals as the guests of honor for

Figure 37. The bilingual logo of the “Let XXXXXXX the events. Robeson Jr. attended the Sing!” exhibition revealed in the Tredegar House in Newport (June 2014) Source: author opening in Cardiff, the (a popular Welsh rock band) performed in Swansea, South African Deputy High

Commissioner George Johannes opened in Newport, and Tayo Aluko sang in Wrexham. When

added to the changes in the content, location, and population, these temporary exhibitions on

Robeson provided absolutely experiences for every visit.

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Figure 38. The "Let XXXXXXX Sing!" exhibition Source: Dobbs and Cope 2002b, 57 Along with preventing ossification, temporary memorialization has a proactive nature 91

which allows for increased social agency, difference, diversity. Children, through art, were able to make lasting and meaningful impacts on the memorial landscape of the exhibition. Avoiding a more permanent exhibition allows for greater critique of such things as U.S. imperialism, which a small nation’s government, like Wales, may not have done to such an extent had the exhibition not been temporary. Being a temporary exhibition also allows it to shift its focus quickly if need be. For example, the “Let XXXXXXX Sing!” exhibition that was added in Newport was a product of being able to quickly assess a lapse in understanding and fulfil that gap (Figure 37 and

38). This addition is also another somewhat provocative memorial which fits Doss’s (2010) description of challenging power. This “continued oppression of artists, singers, writers, and journalists throughout the world today” would not have been added if the memorial was not temporary (or participatory), and Dobbs and Cope (2002b, 9) would not have addressed the general trend of people assuming that these oppressions only took place in the past and outside of the United Kingdom.

Finally, temporary memorials free up valuable real estate from the memorial landscape.

None of the locations that the exhibition toured to were Paul Robeson Centers. In Swansea, the exhibition was actually at the Dylan Thomas Centre. The Centre only consists of a few rooms, so it is ironic to have an exhibition on an individual with no personal connection to Thomas take up most of the Centre. Instead, the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition was able to remain in each location for about two months before moving on and allowing the host institution to either revert back to its original structure or, in the case of the and the National

Library of Wales, bring in a different exhibition. Overall, the temporary state of the Let Paul

Robeson Sing! exhibition increased diversity and potency of content creating the highest possible

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impact on the people visiting and lessoning the burden of the institutions which hosted the exhibition.

The last non-traditional characteristic of the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition is its mobility. Through mobile memorialization, secondary and tertiary exhibitions were able to be created further increasing access. This additionally increased the exhibition’s focus on West and

North Wales, which is often problematic in Welsh memorialization (see chapter 6).

Just as changes and visitor agency were only possible through temporary or participatory memorialization, mobility further enables change in the exhibition while still receiving the benefits of temporary memorialization. Each location allowed for a different exhibit to open within the full exhibition: slavery in Swansea, oppression in Newport, and North and West

Wales in Wrexham. Mobility also prevents ossification by making a landscape not only temporary but itinerant. Furthermore, access is increased as the exhibition moves, enabling people who may not have been able to visit the exhibition before to do so, or simply easing the access of those who chose not to visit the site before.

Access is one of the key concepts of Figure 39. Croesco’s Let Paul Robeson mobility, and the Paul Robeson Wales Trust and Sing! touring exhibition logo (June the Equality and Human Rights Commission 2014) Source: author were both aware that with increased mobility the exhibition would have increased impact.

Relatively soon after the full exhibition was created the Trust was founded to deal with massive complexity of the several-roomed exhibition. The Trust, however, also realized that the size of the exhibition would limit both its transportation and hosting, so they decided to create a scaled model of the entire exhibition (Figure 39). This smaller exhibition was then sent to places like

Barry and the Butetown History and Arts Centre. Further need for mobility was seen in 2007

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when the Equality and Human Rights Commission founded the Croeso Project and saw the potential for the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition and educational programs to have further impacts on issues of equality and discrimination. Because of this, they created an even more mobile exhibition that was comprised of thirty roll up stands (Ceri Thompson, Siân William, and

Susan James, , 2014, personal conversation; Croeso 2009). All three versions of the exhibition are stored at the SWML, however, as Siân Williams explained, only the Croeso projects continue to be used. This exhibition is rented for free several times each year to locations throughout Wales including Swansea University functions and the National Eisteddfod.

Last of all, with increased mobility comes an increased focus on West and , areas that often do not receive much attention due to their very low populations, as compared to

South Wales. When the exhibition traveled to Wrexham in North Wales a special exhibit was added highlighting Robeson’s relationship with North and . Besides this additional focus, the traveling exhibits also increased the access of the North to the exhibition. Daniel

Williams (30 June 2014, personal conversation) explained that while Robeson did maintain a stronger relationship with the Valleys, he also had considerable interaction with North Wales. It is important that the memorial landscape not only includes this content, but that access to these often overlooked locations is addressed, something that mobile memorialization did in this situation.

Including the entirety of the country in the narrative and the memorial landscape of Paul

Robeson is important as the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition shaped the national identity of

Wales through landscape, discourse, and language. Gadewch I Paul Robeson Ganu! is entirely bilingual with Welsh always listed as the primary language. Adding the Welsh language to national ideas of internationalism and acceptance within a memorial landscape that spans the

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entirety of the nation are all important in the discussion of and identity and the role memorializing Paul Robeson plays in it. In the following chapter I will explore these ideas further, incorporating Robeson’s philosophies, memorial landscapes, and the Let Paul

Robeson Sing! exhibition.

In summary, the changes to the exhibition resulted diversity across time and space, providing an absolutely unique experience in every location of the exhibition. Six publications documenting the exhibition within Wales would only be possible through very unique locations

(Dobbs and Cope 2001a, 2001b, 2002a, 2002b, 2003a, 2003b). Through participatory, temporary, and mobile memorialization (ideally all three combined) a new non-traditional form of memorialization that increases agency, diversity, and access through the shaping of memory can be accomplished. The Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition combines these forms of memorialization to achieve agency, diversity, and access through its sensatory, spatially, and conceptually diverse program.

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Figure 40. The locations of the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition (Dec 2014) Source: author

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Chapter 6: Paul Robeson, Memorialization, and Wales

Having introduced all of the sites of Paul Robeson’s Welsh material memorial landscapes, I wish to take a step back and analyze some of the general trends them. This chapter discusses how these sites relate to other memorial landscapes in Wales and the United Kingdom, and demonstrates how these differences ultimately shape the materialization of Robeson’s philosophies onto the landscape. The two exhibitions listed in the previous chapter, and the five sites from Chapter Four, reveal that these landscapes are socially and politically influenced and are a product of scalar social relations, including a high impact by only a few memorial entrepreneurs. In the Welsh memorial landscapes, and those found in London, these factors contribute to the presence of Paul Robeson on the landscape, but also are the cause of philosophically disconnected narratives of Robeson or no lasting narratives at all. This chapter will tie together how philosophical memory is a product of memorialization, and reciprocally how memorialization is a socio-political product of place.

Socio-Political Factors in Welsh Memorialization

Historically, Wales’ memorial landscapes were created and influenced by its union with

England, its position within the British Empire, and internal political power struggles. Post- , Welsh memorialization continues to see political strife. There continues to be a lack of critical colonial discussion upon the landscapes especially between the Labour, Communist, and Parties, and their connections to Robeson’s philosophies. In Wales, these three particular parties strongly represent ideas of socialism, communism, and nationalism, respectively.

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Started in 1906, the Labour Party’s primary goal was to serve and promote the interests of trade unions. Historically embracing a sense of “naïve cosmopolitanism” (Davies 1993,484), socialism, and turning their backs on the Welsh language, (2011) today is focused on sustainability and access, particularly in rural communities, social equality, and the continued development and support of Welsh language and culture. Labour also controls , as evidenced by Jones (2014b) in his statement that compares Wales with Jamaica as the second most one-partied nation in the democratic world.

With the founding of the British Communist Party in 1920, the South Wales Miners’

Federation was seen as a leading organization in Britain promoting the ideas of Leninist

Communism and international socialism in general. Davies (1993, 534) writes that Lenin personally considered the miners in South Wales as “the advance guard of the British revolution.” Today the Communist Party in Wales has relatively very little support but stands on two platforms: organized labor both in Wales and across Britain, and increased devolution and redistribution of the wealth for the Welsh Assembly and local communities (Jones 2015).

Plaid (Gendlathol) Cymru (the National Party of Wales) was founded in 1925 (Davies

1993, 547). Originally concerned with achieving a Welsh-speaking Wales, Plaid Cymru today focues on socialized healthcare and education, equality for Welsh-speakers, increased Welsh autonomy, and sustainable natural and historic landscape management (Plaid Cymru 2015).

Despite recent success and the forming of the Labour-Plaid Cymru “” Government in

2007, the party has since fallen to the third largest party in Wales behind the Conservatives.

The variances between these parties, as well as political influence from others, on the topic of identity is discussed by NMW National Partnership Manager Angela Gaffney (1998,

153) through a dichotomy in Welsh memorial landscapes between imperial pride and

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independent identity. This conflict between (Welsh) identity and the (British) state ultimately led to a compromise in many areas. First of all, local memorialization dominated, and many communities vied for control of Welsh national identity. In Cardiff, the official capital only since

1955, most of the largest memorials, those for the First and Second World War, were constructed prior to Cardiff being named the capital. Combining this with the popular conception of Cardiff not being “Welsh enough,” economist W. J. Roberts (1919 as cited in Gaffney 1998, 49) wrote,

“the danger was that Cardiff would claim whatever was done, whilst Cardiff would not claim to be a Welsh town.” Founding of the NLW in 1907 in Aberystwyth instead of Cardiff reinforces this deconstruction of the Welsh identity. Again this concept is supported by Gaffney’s writing:

The stories behind the building of such memorials peel away the façade of national unity and reveal a society determined to place commemoration of the individual within local communities above the creation and consolidation of broader civic and national images. (Gaffney 1998, 67-68)

In addition to these more localized aspects of Welsh memorialization, my conversations with Daniel Williams (Professor of English Literature, Director of the Richard Burton Centre for the Study of Wales, and Director of the Centre for Research into the English Literature and

Language of Wales, Swansea University, 30 May 2014, personal conversation) and Prys

Gruffudd (Associate Professor of Geography, Swansea University, 5 June 2014, personal conversation) further confirmed not only the localized aspect of Welsh memorialization but the institutional aspects. One of the major causes for there being a lack of institutional toponymic commemoration in Wales is a history of limited institutional control (Wilson 1996). Without its own Ministry of Transportation, there was no ability to memorialize Robeson, or any other national icon, via street signs. The politically complex campaign for bilingual road signs alone was a pronounced challenge for Wales (Jones and Merriman 2009; Merriman and Jones 2009).

Williams explains how Welsh memorialization in not only a debate of local versus institutional

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or personal versus abstract memorialization, but how it is explicitly tied to issues of nationalism and colonial legacy, issues underrepresented in Robeson’s memorial landscapes in Wales:

It would be interesting to look at Welsh street names and the kinds of figures that are memorialized. In general a lot are imperial figures from the 19th century, because that’s when Wales develops and it’s very much a British Wales. The memorials in Cardiff, around the National Museum and so forth, they’re memorials to British heroes, martyrs for Empire a lot of the time. So that creates a context where actually remembering Welsh history isn’t normal, or becomes some kind of significant political act and therefore becomes divisive, and I think we’re still living with a kind of legacy of that… There’s the statue of Bevan of course on Queens street in Cardiff, but the concert hall in Central Cardiff is called St. David’s hall which is completely…the safest kind of name you could come up with... The opera center is the Millennium Centre, again completely devoid of any cultural resonances at all… (Daniel Williams, personal conversation, 30 May 2014)

Much of the history of Welsh memorialization is ultimately tied into Welsh politics. The

Spanish Civil War is one of the few examples in Welsh history with academic case studies from the three primary Welsh political parties with perspectives that align with Robeson’s: Labour,

Communist and Plaid Cymru. Robeson was the principal guest at the ceremony to honor Welsh casualties and politically in the War. The Spanish Civil War is an example of politically contested memorial landscapes in Wales and the potential that politics have in the creation of

Robeson’s presence in Wales.

Historically, the Communist Party of (CPGB) played a major role in

Robeson’s life and philosophical development (as outlined in Chapter 3). In the memorial landscape of the CPGB, Dai Francis, Will Paynter, the National Union of Mineworkers

(N.U.M.), and the Communist support of the Spanish Civil War all figure prominently in the historic and present landscape discourses of Wales. The image provided (Figure 41) depicts the memorial to Dai Francis at the SWMM. Here, you can see the depiction of Soviet, Pan-African, and labor union artifacts. Similarly, at the SWML, Will Paynter’s Communist-leaning South

Wales Miners’ Federation memorial to the Welsh who fought in the . The

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Spanish Civil war also reveals the connection between Robeson, the CPGB, and the Spanish Civil War.

The Spanish Civil War is such a key point in world history, and one that has been exaggerated so much in Welsh popular memory, that most political groups vie for public ownership and connection to the war

(Jones 2014a, 51). The British Isles

International Brigade Memorial Trust

(2015) lists seventeen memorials to the war The Dai Francis exhibit in the South in Wales alone. The CPGB, Plaid Cymru, Figure 41. Wales Miners Museum (June 2014) Source: and the Welsh Labour party each directly author use at least one of these memorials to claim legitimacy for their party’s commitment to the

Republican cause. Plaid Cymru is unique in this equation because of their relative absence in the power struggle between the Communist and Labour Parties in Wales in 1930s and their pacifist stance on the War, despite their suppost of the Basque autonomous government (Daniel

Williams, 30 May 2014, personal conversation).. Thus, having a Spanish Civil War memorial outside of their offices in Llanlli is evidence of the disconnect between a political group’s history and philosophy and the memorial landscape.

Overall, throughout this thesis, there is ample evidence to demonstrate the power which the Welsh Labour Party has in the memorialization processes in Wales. Continuing the discussion of the Spanish Civil War, the Labour Party today holds most public ownership of the

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memorial landscape, starting in 1967 with the first memorial in the Aberdare Labour Rooms. As in their memorials, the Labour Party focused on honoring the soldiers and their families, in contrast to the Communist party’s focus on honoring the cause. Stradling (2004, 159-160), incontrast to Francis’s (2004) Labour-oriented assessment of the war, provides an analysis of the memorial landscape as it has been consistently influenced by Communist politics, “[t]he desolate landscape of involuntary suffering which stands, mostly occluded, behind the figure of every volunteer, hardly ever acknowledged in public, was (pace Horner) the authentic monument to the ideals that men had carried to Spain.” Williams (2012, 149) concludes that while Stradling’s analysis is at times excessive, the Welsh Labour Party was not the only party that invested an internationalist identity into the memorial landscape that inaccurately reflected Welsh values.

This internationalist narrative injected in to the Welsh memorial landscape of the Spanish

Civil War devalues and excludes any nationalist narratives and is a key process involved in the development of the Welsh material memorial landscapes of Paul Robeson. Promoting Robeson as a national figure in Wales and as a symbol of national identity devoid of nationalist ideology is another fascinating socio-political feature of Robeson’s memorial landscapes. While Welsh nationalism has been both heralded and demonized over time (Jones 2014a), Jones and geographer Carwyn Fowler (2007, 340) identify the nationalist movement (particularly in 1960s

Aberystwyth) as a movement of civil disobedience emphasizing civil liberties, anti-colonialism, and minority rights. From Robeson’s writings and speeches there is no evidence to suggest that he was directly concerned with , however he was supportive of some nationalist movements, the continuation of the Welsh language (a cornerstone of the Welsh

Nationalist movement), and Wales’ continued “resistance of oppression” (Robeson 1978, 364).

Not including a discussion of Welsh nationalism within the larger concept of Welsh identity

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however, continues to only identify the South Wales oriented Labour Party internationalism while distinctly ignoring what Williams (2012, 165) described as the convergence of Communist and Nationalist thought in Wales during the 1930s.

Jones and Fowler (2007) identify some of the issues surrounding Welsh Nationalism as the growing economic, territorial, and linguistic disparities within Wales. As the cornerstone of nationalism, the Welsh language has long been used to define the nation as separate from

England, but without closer analysis of the Welsh language and other discontinuities in the Fro

Gymraeg (Welsh-speaking heartland), or Welsh homeland, there is little room for counter- narratives. Instead, as is the case in the Paul Robeson landscapes, a national identity of internationalism turns attention away from these internal issues which arise from more critical discussions of Welsh nationality.

Similarly, colonialism, while the subject of a third of Robeson’s actions and ideology, is the subject most excluded from Robeson’s material memorial landscapes in Wales. Within this excluded concept however, are two very distinct and historically contested narratives. Past and present, is Wales a colony, or is Wales a colonial power? Daniel Williams (2012), women’s studies and literature specialist Jane Aaron and historian Chris Williams (2005), political scientist Richard Jones (2005), Glenn Jordan (2005), and historian Neil Evans, historian Paul

O’Leary, and social policy expert Charlotte Williams (2003), through critical postcolonial studies, all level to some extent that it was and is both and only through a discussion of colonial legacy that a better understanding of Wales’ role in history be understood. Ned Thomas (1991), founder of the journal of Welsh studies Planet and one of the early leading figures promoting discussion of Welsh colonialism and nationalism, argues that British colonization of Wales has led to a psychological inferiority complex with historical knowledge. This has telescoped into a

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romanticized past and a disenfranchisement of power over the perception of Wales and its ability to shape its future. Since Thomas’s book, the ability for Wales as a nation to take responsibility for injustices, despite its perceived tolerance, has been and continues to be a major national issue as it continues to confront racism and economic, cultural, territorial, and political exploitation and oppression (Thomas 1991, 121).

The Productions of Scalar Social Relations

Robeson’s extensive presence on the Welsh memorial landscape is not necessarily expected since he never lived in Wales. The different social relationships operating on different scales ultimately shaped Robeson’s Welsh memorial landscapes and resulted in a more personal, complex, and localized form of commemoration than Robeson’s memorial landscapes outside of

Wales, particularly in England. For example, Robeson spent a decade living in London, so it would be expected that his presence on the English memorial landscape would be quite extensive relative to Wales. However, despite his films, concert and acting tours, union involvements, and political activism, Robeson is not memorialized anywhere on the English material landscape outside of . The few memorial landscapes that do exist are quite different in scale and style than those in Wales. Comparing the two nations’ landscapes based on scale at the institutional and personal level, and through complex and generic representation, reveals the distinctive role of scale and social relationships in the memorialization of Paul Robeson in the landscape in Wales.

In total, there are five locations in and around London where Paul Robeson is commemorated on the material memorial landscape. In East Ham there is a street (or cul-de-sac) named Paul Robeson Close. UCL has named a student dorm , and, as

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previously mentioned, UCL’s SOAS holds a plaque in his honor in the Library. Part of English

Heritage’s Blue Plaque program, one of the houses Robeson lived in in, The Chestnuts, is commemorated with the words “Paul Robeson…Singer and Actor lived Here.” The Hounslow public library is named the Paul Robeson Library and can be found within a private shopping center in the center of the district. Unlike all of the Welsh sites of commemoration, these sites in

London center around toponymic memorialization and in so doing present two clear distinctions in the social relations Robeson shared in both Wales and London and how those distinctions are now materialized on the memorial landscape.

During the height of the Spanish Civil War in 1937, Robeson (1958, 52-53), upon returning to London, a place he had come so much to admire, realized the amount of hypocrisy and bureaucracy holding back any revolutionary actions. He made the following statement:

It was in [the industrial areas of] Britain – among the English, Scottish, Welsh, and of that land – that I learned that the essential character of a nation is determined not by the upper classes, but by the common people,… (Robeson 1958, 48)

This statement reflects the different scalar relationships Robeson shared within London and

Wales. In London, Robeson’s relationships were much more institutionalized and generalized. In contrast, the relationships Robeson developed with the Welsh were much more personal and complex (Robeson 1978, 364, 453). The dialectics of personal versus intuitional and complex versus generic scalar relationships are one of the first and major influences on the memorial landscape of Robeson. Personal, used in this way, represents a landscape operating on a very localized, embodied, and community-based scale. Opposite personal on a scalar spectrum, institutional represents landscapes being directly influenced and created through national agencies, universities, and other large institutional bodies. Generic, rather than a representation of scale, refers more to the content of the landscape, specifically a lack of context for the subject

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of a memorial landscape. In contrast to generic on the spectrum of contextual representation, complex representation shows a broad and deep understanding of the subject.

Paul Robeson’s institutional relationships ultimately led to similarly institutionalized memorialization. One of the key differences between his relationships in London and Wales, was that in London Robeson consistently interacted with large institutional bodies. Through the UCL,

Parliament, the theatre productions, or the British film industry, Robeson was consistently engaging his social relationships on an institutional level. The memorial landscape reflects this through his commemoration via , the Ministry of Transportation, and UCL. This is not to say he did not form institutional relationships in Wales. His involvement with leaders of the Welsh Communist Party (Dai Francis and William Paynter) and the Welsh

Labour Party (), in addition to his relationship with the National Eisteddfods, are examples of institutional relationships. Landscapes in Wales also reinforce these relationships in the NLW, NWM, NMW, and the Welsh Assembly.

While Robeson often operated on a global, and certainly institutional, scale, his philosophies, actions, and now memorials have developed on more personalized scales. With the exception of the Paul Robeson Theatre in the Hounslow Public Library, all of Robeson’s English sites of memorialization reflect the institutional nature of his interactions. On the other hand in

Wales, community-based commemoration is the baseline of Robeson’s memorial landscape. His representation at the SWMM, the Paul Robeson Room, the Paul Robeson Exhibition, and partially through the SWML and the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition, reflect his tendency to transcend scale and bring his international ideologies and actions down to a local community, family, or individual in Wales.

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The institutionalizing of Paul Robeson’s relationships in London led to more permanent institutionally sponsored material memorial landscapes through plaques and toponymic commemoration. Overall, while being more permanent than the Welsh sites, they are also more generic. The story of the SOAS memorial from the previous chapter is a perfect example of one of the ways Robeson has been generalized from his own memorial landscape in London. In the

Figure 42. Paul Robeson Close in East Ham, Figure 43. An image of the same Paul London, England (May 2014) Source: author Robeson Close sign (Aug 2008) Source: GoogleEarth case of the SOAS, despite Robeson’s representation as a singer, scholar, athlete, actor, and activist and within the premise human rights and Pan-African perspectives, institutional generalization or abstraction (in a non-Marxist context) generalizes Robeson. Paul Robeson

Close is another English example of institutionalized abstraction. Not only is there no philosophical context on the memorial landscape, but the high level of personal abstraction is further evidenced through the discarded state of the street sign (Figure 42). Accessing Google

Streetview, August 2008 was the last time the sign appeared in its appropriate fashion (Figure

43). Wales also has examples of generic memorial landscapes. The poster-sized The Proud

Valley print in the NSSAW is one example that is neither personal nor complex. Most public visitors to the NLW would not venture down the hallways of the Archive in order to see the

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print. Furthermore, no additional text is provided to explain the film or print, so only those who have seen the film before would be able to make the connections between Robeson, the Welsh miners, and the many philosophical expressions given in the film. Overall, however, the generalization of Robeson from all sights in London, even those such as SOAS, abstracts not only the memory of Robeson, but the philosophies he represents.

Finally, landscapes, which are not generic products of institutional social relationships, are often constructed around complex personal relationships. In the case of Wales these landscapes also happen to also be the product of fine-scale memorialization:

We don’t put that much credence or emphasis on symbols of state, or public pronouncements… And you can see that as again a legacy of a nation that has no state... The symbols of statehood tend to be British whereas the Welsh tradition is more… about relations between people, the idea of the ‘gwerin’, the folk, and that’s seen to be the sphere where the real history happens. (Daniel Williams, personal conversation, 30 May 2014)

The body, the scale at which personal relationships occur, is the most detailed scale geographers utilize to understand spatial and social relationships. In my conversation between Siân Williams,

Ceri Thompson, and Susan James, Susan provided a supplemental perspective to Daniel

Williams on the embodiment and personal relationship between Wales and Robeson from her experience working with the National Waterfront Museum and National Museum Wales educational programs:

INTERVIEWER: It’s interesting. It’s kind of how I justify that this whole project needs researching because he never lived in Wales, he lived in England, he lived in the United States, he was a U.S. citizen. He didn’t even spend that much time in Wales compared to the Soviet Union. He spent almost five years of his life, months at a time, in the Soviet Union. And yet Wales, I feel more than any other place, he’s still a prominent figure. SUSAN: I think when he came though he got so stuck in. He went schools, he went to community centers– CORI: –Talygarn, lots of places– SUSAN: –That’s it…Eisteddfods. He made an effort, and I think that meant a lot for people. It was more of a personal… he’s making such an effort to try to come to us and talk to us one-to-one, cause he did. It wasn’t just a concert, he would walk around and

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talk to people. I think maybe that is an element of it as well, cause he was so personal. It felt like he wanted to support people one-to-one perhaps, and at a time of oppression. It was something that– CORI: –Somebody was on our side.– SUSAN: –Because politicians weren’t doing that. So you know, if this movie star could do it and then speak to us, and I say us, you know, imaging what it was for them at the time, and understand what we’re going through, and I can see some of the ways of how he was changing politics and perhaps that’s one of the reasons why they had empathy. (Ceri Thompson and Susan James, National Museums Wales, 29 May 2014, personal conversation)

Overall, the role of Robeson’s celebrity, and his development of personal relationships with the Welsh, has led to, in varying extents, a long standing and complex collective memory of

Robeson in Wales (Pyrs Gruffudd, 5 June 2014, personal conversation). Hywel Francis (30 June

2014, 29 Jan. 2015, email correspondence) also consistently uses the term Welsh popular memory. Daniel Williams (30 June 2014, personal conversation), while being weary of the overstatement of a collective Welsh identity, also listed a number of elements of the Welsh popular memory of Robeson and how that popular memory can be very different than an academic (institutional) memory. This complex and personalized identity with Robeson has resulted from, and is similar to, the type of community-based memorial entrepreneurship similar to Campion and Fine’s (1998) description of Sauk Centre, Minnesota’s memorialization of

Sinclair Lewis. In Wales’ case there are participatory exhibitions, interactive digital displays, museums run by local artists and miners, and archives developed by those who already had personal relationships with Robeson.

Memorial Entrepreneurs

Memorial entrepreneurship is one very specific role social relations play in the production of Paul Robeson’s Welsh material memorial landscapes. While all memorial landscapes are impacted by the actions of an individual or collective memorial entrepreneur, in

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Wales, most of the Robeson memorial landscapes were constructed by the entrepreneurship of just three individuals. In five of the seven sites the role of the individual is clearly the dominant factor in the construction and maintenance of the landscape. Martha Edwards, Hywel Francis, and Paul Robeson Jr. all represent the role that a single individual has in the writing, interpreting, challenging, and creating of new understandings of the past. Furthermore, these individuals in

Wales have not only influenced the production of the past through Robeson’s memorial landscapes but continue to influence his presence and the role Robeson has in the development of the future of Wales.

Similar to the efforts of Gunter Demnig in the physical construction and maintenance of small stone memorials in Berlin (Cook and van Riemsdijk 2014), Martha Edwards shaped the

Paul Robeson Exhibition. Edwards (1998, 11) deliberately began constructing “a true picture…of the warmth and depth of his [Robeson’s] character” after realizing his Welsh ties were going unmentioned in most accounts.

Road (1998) wrote,

Martha began her Robeson collection more than a decade ago after hearing a radio profile of him which did not mention his connections. The collection contains photographs, film stills, newspaper cuttings, record sleeves and autographed programmes.

This description of motivation in lobbying for individual memories, in light of commemoration being ignored or concealed by state-sponsored landscapes, is a key component in Cook and van

Riemsdijk’s (2014) utilization of memorial entrepreneurs.

In the same manner as Muzaini’s (2013) analysis of Chye Kooi Loong’s political memorial entrepreneurship of the Green Ridge Battlefield in Malaysia, Dr. Hywel Francis can be viewed as a politically, personally, and academically motivated memorial entrepreneur of Paul

Robeson through his involvement in the SWMM, the SWML, and the Let Paul Robeson Sing!

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exhibition. Throughout this thesis Francis maintains an integral role. He is on the board of the

British Isles International Brigade Memorial Trust, he is a leading researcher in Welsh unionization (Francis and Smith 1998), and his father, Dai Francis, has an exhibit in the SWMM, was involved in the Transatlantic Exchange, and coined the often used phrase Cyfaill Cymru a’r

Byd’ (Friend of Wales and the World) in reference to Paul Robeson (Francis 1976).

Within reputational or memorial entrepreneurial studies (e.g. Fine 1996, 2013; Campion and Fine 1998; Alderman 2002; Jordan 2006; Jansen 2007; Dwyer and Alderman 2008; Toye

2008; Post 2009; Mastangelo 2010; Muzaini 2013; Cook and van Riemsdijk 2014), no attention has been paid to the role of family members, but Paul Robeson Jr. has certainly played the role described by Cook and van Riemskijk (2014, 139) of shaping both the processes and outcomes of Robeson’s memorial landscapes in Wales. In the previous chapter, successfulness of the Let

Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition was evaluated based on Robeson Jr.’s statement that the exhibition was “[t]he Paul Robeson exhibition” (Dobbs and Cope 2001b; Hywel Francis, 29 Jan

2015, email correspondence). The role of “interpreting and co-constructing…meaning at installations” is another that Robeson Jr. played in the grand opening of the exhibition at the

National Museum of Wales (now the National Museum Cardiff) as he gave his approval of the exhibition and incited personal connections and emotional responses from those attending (Cook and van Riemskijk 2014, 139; Dobbs and Cope 2001b). Even for those who were not in attendance, Robeson Jr. legitimized the exhibition, Pavilion, and SWML, through his representation in the media (e.g. Jackson 1985; Rowlands 1985; Jones 2001; Cavill 2001), a crucial element of a reputational (memorial) entrepreneur as stated by Fine (1996, 1187).

While there have been critiques of Paul Robeson Jr., as well as Hywel Francis and

Martha Edwards, as revealed from personal interviews of individuals in Wales, England, and the

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United States, it is important to remain cognizant of economic, political, and personal motivations of memorial entrepreneurs. Without memorial entrepreneurs many exceptional individuals and the movements they embody would remain excluded from the landscape.

Muzaini (2013, 406) provided Chye in Malaysia as an example of an individual not interested in economic benefits, rather only interested in “promoting the site and selling narratives of the

Battle to the state as well as the local population.” Overall, it is important to note that Robeson’s memorial landscape in Wales would most likely not exist if it were not for the efforts made by these memorial entrepreneurs. While the memorialization is a slight contradiction for the amount of time and connections Robeson had in Wales, it is acknowledged by these individuals and all other scholars of Robeson, that he is not adequately commemorated or remembered in any other part of the world, except possibly in (Carmody 2014). Through Wales, and the international ties that these memorial landscapes have established, a more global trend in memorializing Paul Robeson may be initiated. After all, I was an individual with only the most basic understanding of Robeson before visiting Wales, and now I have begun to influence others understanding of Robeson in the United States.

Philosophical Disconnects on the Landscape

Socio-political issues, social and scalar relations, and the role of memorial entrepreneurs on the Welsh material memorial landscape of Paul Robeson result in an incomplete materialization of Robeson’s philosophical framework onto the landscape. In each of the seven

Welsh sites discussed, certain philosophical discourses are exaggerated and excluded. Below is an individual assessment of these sites and the extent to which Robeson’s philosophy transcends scale and is represented on or excluded from the memorial landscape.

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The Paul Robeson Room in Porthcawl’s Grand Pavillion is the first site and a clear example of the rift that exists between the Communist and Labour Parties. In a Welsh news article Dai Francis is listed as the leader of the miners and the prominent individual at the event instead of Paynter (Gibson 2001). Williams (2010) argued that within Welsh popular memory today Robeson has been politicized toward the Labour Party, despite both Dai Francis and Will

Paynter being leaders in the Communist Party. For example, American studies specialist Mark

Exton (1984) argued that it was the Welsh Labour M.P.s that were challenging the U.S. State

Department and thus brought about the exchange concert.

The panels in the Pavilion, through their use of historical context, also provide a biased perception in their presentation of Robeson’s life. Each of the hundred-plus historical events listed on the panels are either on the topic of racism and issues of the Black community or on anti-colonialism, Fascism, and war. This is significant since one-third of Paul Robeson’s philosophies aren’t addressed (from his labor, anti-colonial, and human rights activities).

Surprising, and perhaps revealing to the differences in Welsh and U.S. memorials of Paul

Robeson, while in Wales Robeson’s anti-colonialism is often disregarded on the memorial landscape, for the U.S.-based panels in the Paul Robeson Room, Robeson’s socialist and labor values are the philosophies not adequately represented on the landscape.

In the SWMM, Robeson’s connections with the N.U.M., Lawrence Daly (a Communist

Party of Great Britain leader), and the Communist Party of America evident a clear narrative his

Communist Party affiliation. The biography of Robeson provided also reveals additional information as to the Robeson’s philosophical transcensions and how they are represented on the memorial landscape of the museum. The text is as follows:

Paul Robeson was involved in The American Civil Rights Movement as well as becoming politically involved in response to the Spanish Civil War. He spoke out against

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Imperialism, was affiliated with the Communist Party of America and was an out spoken critic of the American Government.

This statement represents all three of Paul Robeson’s philosophies to some extent.

However it more prominently mentions Robeson’s involvement in human rights and socialist movements through the American Civil Rights Movement, the Spanish Civil War, and the

Communist Party of America. Left out of this narrative, similar to the narratives found at the other memorial landscapes, is a discussion of nationalism as it fits within Robeson’s Anti- colonial/Pan-African ideology and the Welsh political climate. Robeson’s socialist ideology is strongly stressed overall and specifically in this statement through his involvement in the

Communist Party of America. His third philosophy of anti-colonialism however is only addressed by his speaking out against imperialism. Every paragraph of the accompanying biography stresses the importance of internationalism to Paul Robeson and Wales. These connections include the Welsh miners’ link to Robeson, the role the miners had in shaping U.S. policy, and the international nature of the Transatlantic Exchange. The landscape symbolizes how Robeson’s memorial landscape not only becomes politicized through organization and party affiliation but how his ideologies have been shaped through transcensions of scale to reveal only certain aspects of his philosophy stronger than others.

In the SWML, beyond the term memorial entrepreneur, an additional term, not yet coined, is needed for the place in which various memorial entrepreneurs interact and influence each other. Memorial consortium fits within these parameters as a type of corporate headquarters for knowledge and memory production. The SWML is the primary example of a site of memorial consortia in Wales through the development of Robeson’s continued memory. Paul Robeson Jr.,

Susan Robeson, Hywel Francis, Siân Williams, Susan James, Daniel Williams, Phil Cope,

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Beverly Humphreys, and many others interested in the continued research on Paul Robeson have utilized and shaped the library and archives injecting their personal research into the memorial consortium which reciprocally shapes the memorial entrepreneurs.

The Spanish Civil War’s representation in the SWML, particularly as it relates to the Let

Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition, provides another example of the materialization of Robeson’s philosophy onto the memorial landscape, and when placed into the historical context previously mentioned, holds several discrepancies. The depiction of Paul Robeson’s involvement does provide the assumption that this was an international struggle revolving around labor, but the strong Communist ties also are revealed, especially through the large posters hanging on the wall

(Figure 17). So, where are Robeson’s other two ideologies? Socialism, and the internationalism that accompanies the ideology is the most evident, but human rights issues are only somewhat addressed in the bottom two small posters (Figure 17), clearly revealing an Anti-Fascist narrative and depicting the loss of human (young) life. The large poster on the left (Figure 17) might also be interpreted as White-Black solidarity through the multi-racial composition of the human figure. Robeson’s cultural distinction, nationalist, and anti-colonial framework is lost in his internationalist representation in Wales, specifically in the SWML memorialization of the

Spanish Civil War (Duberman 1988, 172-173 as cited in Williams 2012, 168).

The composition of reference books in the SWML is also unique in that while most other memorial landscapes across Wales representing Robeson focus on internationalism and

Robeson’s connections with labor and the working class, here there is a clear focus on Robeson’s role in the struggle for human rights. Once again, there is also a clear connection between

Robeson’s relationship with Wales and the involvement of Robeson Jr., exemplifying, for the second time in the material memorial landscape of the SWML, the role of memorial

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entrepreneur. Overall, again, one-third of Robeson’s philosophy absent from the landscape…anti-colonialism.

The NWM’s “Achievers Gallery” is, as Mason (2007) wrote, a historical continuation of

Cardiff City Hall’s 1909 Hall of Heroes. Now there is an increased diversity of individuals, and the NWM includes individuals who are not necessarily of Welsh nationality. There are several points of inclusion and exclusion within Robeson’s biography in the “Gallery” worthy of addressing. Under “impact/legacy,” Paul Robeson is titled an actor and singer. In defining him in such a way it excludes his career as an activist, athlete, and scholar. In contrast, labeling him as an international role model for oppressed people allows the Welsh to simply become a cog in a vast system of ‘oppression.’ The word oppressed (commonly used when speaking of Robeson) is, in this case, perhaps too vague, and visitors are left without context to Robeson’s specific philosophies. Speaking with Susan James (NWM, 29 May 2014, personal conversation), she emphasized that most people approaching Robeson at the museum identify Robeson as a singer rather than his ideologies, and if they do recognize his philosophical framework, it is most often a recollection of his labor rights activism. Describing Robeson as an ‘actor and singer who became a role model for oppressed people across the world’ reinforces those perceptions.

The final part of Robeson’s biography within the “Achievers Gallery” is his listed achievements. Not surprisingly, the five dates provided are mostly related to Wales, though there is no mention of his involvement with the Spanish Civil War and memorial service in Mountain

Ash, and Robeson’s graduation from Columbia Law is listed though there is nodirect connection with Wales. As much as the material landscape of the museum has revealed valuable insight into nationalism, racism, and Welsh identity, the importance of audience perspectives further contextualizes these possible disconnects between visual and perceived landscapes and memory.

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Robeson’s presence in the NLW and the NSSAW is unique in that it is the only landscape outside of south wales and the valleys. Similar to the involvement of the Welsh Assembly,

NMW, and the NWM, the presence of Paul Robeson in the NSSAW and the NLW reinforces the extent to which Robeson is not only a national figure of Wales, but how Wales as a country is attempting to use this connection in the (re)establishment of a strong national identity. The library continues to utilize its location in the cultural capital to its promotional advantage by hosting exhibitions that exemplify Welsh culture and history. Paul Robeson falls into this exemplification.

Francis (2003, 4) saw the film The Proud Valley expanding beyond South Wales, representing Robeson’s own values of international labor. He wrote, “[o]ne of the great artists of the world was saying that besieged mining communities of South Wales were not alone.”

Overall, The Proud Valley and its poster-sized print in the

NSSAW did and continues to engage in only two conversations, labor and race, once again eliminating discussions of anti- colonialism or Pan-Africanism.

In the case of the items in the gift shop, while there is a great deal of philosophical content within the artifacts being sold,

Robeson is not being presented in any particular fashion beyond a product to be consumed. In this case, he is not only a Figure 44. One of two large banners representing the commoditized product being sold in the gift shop of the NLW, NLW hanging in an non- accessible storage room but is being consumed by visitors as a mythological figurehead (June 2014) Source: author of Wales, one that is celebrated and remembered for his international greatness. The gift shop’s

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additional text and materials also provide no opportunity for counter-narratives which might further contextualize Robeson. The NLW seeks to strengthen the tie between Robeson and Wales

(Figure 47, where he has the prominent top left position on an old banner of the NLW), which in turn strengthens the image of Wales, further enabling the nation to manipulate that image and identity through the careful control of Robeson’s memorial landscapes.

As mentioned in the previous chapter, the Paul Robeson Exhibition provided a much more strict biographical depiction of Robeson’s relationship with Wales and his “Christian

Socialism” (Edwards 1998, 8). Edwards (1998, 6) also highlighted Robeson’s heavy involvement in U.S. civil rights, though once again Robeson’s anti-colonialism was excluded from the narrative of the landscape.

Adding the Welsh language to national ideas of internationalism and acceptance within a memorial landscape, the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition that spanned the entirety of the nation was and is an important element in the discussion of Welsh nationalism and identity and the role memorializing Paul Robeson plays in it. While there is a much heavier focus on

Robeson’s involvement in Africa in the exhibition, his anti-colonialism (particularly in Ireland, the Caribbean, and South and Southeast Asia) was overshadowed by the promotion of his labor and human rights activism. Slavery, freedom of speech, racism, feminism, and unionization were the largest philosophical frameworks being portrayed during the exhibition. Particularly important because the exhibition was funded by many national organizations in Wales, the lack of nationalist or colonial discussion particularly reveals at a national level how memorialization in Wales can be shifted away from colonial discourse. However, unlike the other sites in Wales

(or England), visitor agency is fully enabled through production of powerful counter-narratives that would then have the possibility of addressing nationalist and colonialist discourses.

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In all of Paul Robeson’s Welsh memorial landscapes there is an obvious tendency of a similar imperial legacy. Welsh nationalism is never discussed, Welsh colonialism is never discussed, and Wales as a colony is certainly never mentioned. This is a scalar barrier which Robeson’s philosophical materializations did not transcend. In so doing, there is little discussion of

Robeson’s Pan- or his anti-colonial efforts.

The Commemorative Power and Potential of Paul Robeson

Within colonial discourse, Paul Robeson can address many of the issues which accompany colonialized legacies and suppressed national identities. Africana studies specialist

Khonsura Wilson’s (2013) Robesonian framework revealed the power of creativity in social activism and identity. When this creativity is combined with education (similar to what is occurring with the Let Paul Robeson Sing! educational programs), it is an excellent example and source for the discussion of activism in favor of nationalism, human dignity, and liberation (Von

Blum 1998, 338). In Wales, protest and activism against perceived threats to landscape and identity have not been absent (e.g. Woods et al 2012; R. Jones and Merriman 2009). Particularly in the form of the creative arts, historic bardic anti-colonialism through present-day poetry and music continue to contest English and British colonial rule over Wales and current neo-colonial practices (Aaron 2005). The Manic Street Preachers (1996, 2003, 2011a, 2011b), an internationally recognized Welsh pop group, is another example of creativity (music) and activism in Wales as they sing songs protesting English and US colonialism including “We Her

Majesty’s Prisoners,” “Enola/Alone,” “Kevin Carter,” and “Let Paul Robeson Sing.” “Let Paul

Robeson Sing” is just one of the many examples provided by Williams (2012) of a response to the British colonial legacies in Wales. Daniel Williams (2012; personal conversation, 30 May

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2014) argued that Robeson and his - Afrocentric - cultural nationalist philosophy has the potential through memorialization to not only help establish a better cultural identity and history in Wales but also break down colonial stereotypes and inferiority complexes.

This philosophical discussion would also provide a check to the power structure of Robeson being predominantly portrayed singularly as a Labour Party supporting internationalist.

Finally, Robeson’s memorial landscapes, beyond the possibility of combating legacies of

British colonialism, hold the power to establish discourse and critique of Welsh colonization and

Wales’ role in the British Empire (Aaron and Williams 2005). Despite bardic critique

(exemplified by Aaron 2005 in the previous paragraph), those with power in Wales did elect to join the empire, and despite devolution, according to a poll conducted by the ITV Wales (Powell

2014) during the height of the 2014YES Campaign for only 17% of people in Wales today would vote for independence from the U.K (according to BBC Wales

2014 that number fell to 3% the week following Scotland’s “no” vote). The lack of colonial discourse on Welsh memorial landscapes excludes discussions of what Williams (2005, 7) described as obvious occasions where the Welsh served as active agents of the British Empire.

The issues resulting from these occasions, ultimately instances of economic and racial inequality, when not included in the discourse of Robeson’s memorial landscape are not only absent but obscured through narratives of overall Welsh tolerance and equality (Jordan 2005; Williams

2012; Daniel Williams, 30 May 2014, personal conversation; Greg Cullen, playwright, 4 June

2014, personal conversation). Overall, Robeson, through the memorial landscape, does have the power to address these issues. Palmer’s (2014) discussion of life stories or biographies and the power of their memorialization to not only address issues of the past and relate them to the present, but their ability to trace alternative futures is absolutely relevant to what has been

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occurring and has future potential to occur through Robeson in Wales. Tayo Aluko (actor, writer, and musician, 27 June 2014, personal conversation) and Greg Cullen (4 June 2014, personal conversation), Robeson playwrights for Welsh performances, were both confident in their plays’ histories of tackling these issues. In many ways Robeson’s material memorial landscapes have come close to these more performative acts of commemoration. Francis (2003) in particular stresses the successes of the Robeson memorial landscapes in Wales in connecting Wales into a cosmopolitan discourse of equality and labor rights. Despite there being shortcomings in the landscapes’ current ability to engage colonial legacies, the potential exists. And every interviewee from this study felt confident in the potential of the memorial landscapes to portray

Robeson in a way which would invoke the entirety of his being. The only barriers to this potential are the social-political-hegemonic traditions in Welsh memorialization, and the ways scalar social relationships, including memorial entrepreneurs, continue to affect the philosophical frameworks of the material memorial landscapes of Robeson in Wales.

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Chapter 7: Conclusion

Paul Robeson was and continues to be made ‘a part of that land[scape]’ in Wales

(Robeson 1958). The ways in which his philosophies transcend scale to become a part of the

Welsh material memorial landscape are varied in both type and method. On the one hand,

Robeson’s memorialization is being influenced by a number of secondary influencers and processes of Welsh memorialization. On the other hand, the very memory of Robeson shifts from site to site, revealing the lack of Robeson’s anti-colonialism and Pan-Africanism on the

Welsh memorial landscape. The material landscapes of The Grand Pavilion, the National

Waterfront Museum, the National Library, the South Wales Miners’ Museum, the South Wales

Miners’ Library, the Paul Robeson Exhibition, and the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition reveal not only processes of Welsh memorialization, but the unique representations of the memory of

Robeson throughout Wales.

The material memorial landscapes of Paul Robeson have been spatially distributed throughout the country based on a number of factors. First, the influence of MP Hywel Francis is evidenced through his relationship with of the Miners’ Museum and Library, the Paul Robeson

Room, his mention in the National Waterfront Museum, and the Paul Robeson Trust Wales. This relationship between the memorialization of Paul Robeson and Dr. Francis can then be traced further to the relationship between these sites and areas and the Robeson family. In addition to the relationships of these influential individuals, the relationships Paul Robeson had with the people in these areas are also significant in his memorialization and the scalar social differences which resulted, specifically personalized and localized landscapes. Here, a division between

English and Welsh memorialization, as we examine Robeson’s own division in class relations as

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he interacted with individuals in England and Wales, reveals itself through the differences of institutionalized and abstract memorialization.

The role of national politics on the Welsh memorial landscape of Paul Robeson is indisputable. Due in large part to the earlier process of Union-dominated Welsh commemoration and later processes of Labour-oriented Welsh internationalism and Unionism, little Welsh commemoration has addressed either colonialism or nationalism. This has been clearly reflected in the Welsh memorial landscapes of Paul Robeson and supported by their comparison to

Robeson sites of non-Welsh origin.

The national politics of individual actors in the construction of Robeson’s memorial landscapes have also been made clear. Illustrated through a temporal break and a relational shift, the fact that Robeson had little presence on the material memorial landscape of Wales until the mid-1980s is emphasized through the visits, via MP Hywel Francis, of Paul Robeson Jr. That connection, between Hywel Francis of the Labour Party and the Robeson family, is what ultimately fueled the continued strength of the Robeson-Wales connection on the material memorial landscape.

Looking again at the differences in the material memorial landscapes of England and

Wales, there appears to be marked differences in the scale of both the commemorating unit and the intended audience of those memorial landscapes. This difference can be traced back to

Robeson’s own performance of those landscapes. There was a clear distinction between

Robeson’s interactions in England compared to those in Wales. This distinction, coupled with the variation of memorial entrepreneurs, the introduction of a strong memorial consortium, and the differences between Welsh and English memorialization, led to the Welsh memorial landscapes reflecting Robeson’s actions. His involvement with the working class and bottom-up

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approach to interacting with people in Wales contrasts with his clear presence in the English

(London) institutional bureaucracy and the overall top-down relationships of his earlier career.

Beyond generating a better understanding of the process of memorialization, particularly as it applies to Wales and Paul Robeson, there are a number of consequences that result from

Robeson’s memorial landscape. The national internationalist identity that is coupled with

Robeson’s material memorial landscape in Wales, while very nicely tying Wales into the global economic structures and issues of human rights, does little to address Welsh nationalism. If anything, these memorial landscapes continue in the Welsh tradition, memorializing values of

Unionist identity over Welsh identities.

In addition to a sense of Welsh national internationalism, the other underrepresented element from the Welsh memorial landscape (of Paul Robeson) is the colonialist conversation.

Not only was Anti-Colonialism one of Robeson’s major philosophical beliefs, Wales has played an active role in colonialism, as both the colonized and colonizers. Eliminating any discussion of colonialism eliminates the post-colonialist epistemology from any memory of Paul Robeson and

Wales.

Finally, the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition, while also an example of representational issues of Welsh memorialization and politicization, can be seen as an example of the positive aspects of Wale’ memorialization of Robeson. Its diversity across time and space provides an absolutely unique experience through participatory, temporary, and mobile memorialization. The exhibition increases agency, diversity, and access through this sensatory, spatially, and conceptually diverse shaping of public memory.

Nearly eighty years ago Paul Robeson made the following statement:

“Every artist, every scientist, must decide NOW where he [sic] stands. He [sic] has no alternative. There is no standing above the conflict on Olympian heights. There are no

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impartial observers. Through the destruction-in certain countries-of the greatest of man’s [sic] literary heritages, through the propagation of false ideas of racial and national superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. [The struggle invades the formerly cloistered halls of our universities and other seats of learning](Statement added in Robeson 1958, 52) The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear…[t]he artist must take sides. He [sic] must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative.” (Robeson 1978, 118-119)

Artists, scientists, and scholars today continue to involve themselves in politics and issues of social justice. This work is one example of historical geography not only revealing a historic narrative, but using that historic narrative to better understand and relate to issues of the present.

Neoliberalism, discrimination, and violence are still invading the ‘cloistered hall of our universities.’ Using Paul Robeson’s philosophies in the memorial landscape is just one example of actors combating these modern-day issues, yet this very process of memorialization is filled with examples of the scripting of the landscape for the benefit of those in power. Paul Robeson was a champion of anti-colonialism, socialism, and human rights. In Wales these strong philosophies were not universally constructed in the material memorial landscape, but the spatial discrepancies reveal the intricacies of memory as it transcends scalar relationships and the potential effectiveness memorial landscapes have in the continuation of heritage.

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Let Paul Robeson Sing!: An audience with Susan Robeson. Treftadaith, Wales: Brynaman

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Native Land. Directed by L. Hurwitz and P. Strand. 80 min. Frontier Films. 1942. DVD.

Paul Robeson: 20th century Renaissance man, entertainer and activist. Directed by B. Stewart.

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Paul Robeson: Here I Stand. Directed by St. C. Bourne. , Thirteen, WNET, and Menair Media.

1999. DVD.

Paul Robeson: Speak of me as I am. Directed by R. Hammer. 58 min. BBC Wales. 2007. DVD.

The Proud Valley. Directed by P. Tennyson. 76 min. 1940. CAPAD and Ealing Studios. 2010.

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152

Appendix 1

Anti-Colonialism Human Rights Labor

The Grand Pavilion X X

Let Paul Robeson Sing! X X

National Library Wales

National Waterfront X X

Museum

Paul Robeson Exhibition X X

South Wales Miners’ X X X

Library

South Wales Miners’ X X X

Museum

153

Appendix 2

Content Scale Power

Complex Generic Personal Institutional Transgressive Hegemonic

The Grand X X X Pavilion Let Paul X X X X Robeson Sing! National X X X Library Wales National X X X X X Waterfront Museum Paul Robeson X X X X Exhibition South Wales X X X X Miners’ Library South Wales X X X X Miners’ Museum English X X X Heritage Plaque Paul Robeson X X X Close Paul Robeson X X X House Paul Robeson X X X Theatre School of X X X Oriental and African Studies

154

Appendix 3

155