A young Black engineer from the U.S. sought opportunity in the Soviet Union. He ended up at the center of an international incident.
Danny Cherry Jr. is a native of New Orleans. He has short stories published in X-ray Lit Mag & Literally Literary, and non-fiction published at The Daily Beast and Buzzfeed News.
A fellow Black American living in Russia described Robinson as “a quiet, scholarly bachelor.” | Lev Nosov/Wikimedia Commons Despite the praise from the Amtorg representative, Robinson had reservations. From what he read in books and newspapers, Robinson considered Russia an agricultural wasteland, far behind industrialized America. He had hardly ever thought of the place.
On American soil, the Soviet Union funded a fight against systemic racist policies, viewing that as the easiest in-road to the Black community, which could in turn foment broader dissension against the U.S. government. The use of propaganda pamphlets had shown some efficacy — the most jarring featured an image of a Black body hanging from the Statue of Liberty. But their most powerful weapon in gaining Black membership was the use of legal defense in trials seen to be unwinnable.
Paul Robeson is welcomed in Moscow on January 19, 1935. | Afro American Newspapers/Gado via Getty Images In order to outmaneuver his enemies, he needed to identify the plotters, and to do that he had to draw them out from the larger group. Robinson went to the river and sat on the sandy embankment the next day. About 10 yards away, several Americans glared at him, any of whom could be those scheming against him. For five days he kept a watchful eye on the white Americans and stayed far from the edge of the beach. He clung to his Russian coworkers. When they went to the beach, he went.
They ran at him. As reported by witnesses, Robinson picked up a stone to defend himself. They retreated, but when Robinson turned to walk away, Lewis ran and punched him in the back of the head, knocking off his glasses. “There is a colored fellow in our crowd who just came in. Whoever had the nerve to hire him and send him here had very little brains for you can imagine what a life he will live over here being the only one,” he wrote. Another coworker of Robinson’s complained to an American reporter that there was an effort to force the rank-and-file into “something no white American will stand for: social equality with the colored race.
Back in the States, there were powerful people who had reason to try to turn the tide against justice. The acting chief of Eastern European Affairs for the State Department sent information to the Bureau of Investigations , led by a 35-year-old J. Edgar Hoover. If Soviet officials saw a chance to elevate Robinson, Americans saw an opportunity to tear him down.
Meanwhile, Lewis and Brown’s defense, provided by the Soviets, framed them as brainwashed by American capitalist racism, which resonated with the Soviet public. Lewis was urged to write an apology to the Soviet proletariat for failing to understand the consequences of national and racial dissension. But this fell flat, since it was discovered that his response was crafted by others, and prior to that, that a line had been scratched out.
Robert Robinson is sworn in after being elected to the Moscow Soviet on Dec. 27, 1934. | Planet News Ltd via the Daily Herald
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