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Shana L. Redmond<\/strong> writes abou<\/i>t\u00a0Paul Robeson\u2019s afterlife in a U.S. Prison<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI have begun to undertake the task of trying to establish a Paul Robeson month here at Marion Federal Penitentiary,\u201d wrote Bil Brown-El. An incarcerated person in the medium security prison in rural Illinois, USA, Brown-El addressed his June 1977 letter to Tony Gittens, director of the Electric Playhouse in Washington D.C. Brown-El was aware of the film festivals held by Gittens in his hometown and hoped that, with the proper setting of his conditions, his humble request would be met favorably. He continued,<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em>From the very outset I would like to say that this have never been accomplished before here at the institution. There are very limited programs dealing with our people here at Marion, as well as very few films dealing with our people, black people, very few\u2014education[al] or other. It would be [a] joy to see this project; a Paul Robeson month get off to a good start. <\/em><\/p>\n Beyond the need for more cultural opportunities at the prison for Black people, Brown-El argues that the answer to the question of why pursue this course is \u201cvery simple\u201d: \u201cPaul Robeson is one of America\u2019s greatest men.\u201d His use of the present verb tense, alongside his earlier frustration with those who \u201care ignorant to just who Paul Robeson is\/was,\u201d highlights that Paul had not left the world nor these precarious men, even a year and a half after his death.<\/p>\n Marion penitentiary, Illinois<\/em><\/p>\n Prison may seem a surprising location in which to find the great singer, actor, and radical Paul Robeson (1898-1976) but he knew something of those people and conditions. Though never incarcerated himself, Robeson was the son of a formerly enslaved man who secured his freedom through escape from a North Carolina plantation. He also lived through eight years (1950-58) of detention in the United States when his passport was revoked due to his political labors and global solidarities. He spoke in support of the incarcerated Scottsboro Boys in 1935 and the Trenton Six in 1949, as well as his comrade Ben Davis, whose membership and activism in the Communist Party, USA was used to convict and imprison him under the Smith Act in that same year.<\/p>\n Economic dispossession and political repression<\/strong><\/p>\n Robeson was passionately and vocally opposed to the conditions of economic dispossession and political repression that produce imprisonment within Black communities, all the while forwarding alternatives to that violence. And though it would be inaccurate to label Robeson an anti-prison activist, his commitments are aligned with the urgent calls from contemporary Black U.S. communities and organizers for prison abolition<\/a>, which abolitionist geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore<\/a> describes as change that is \u201cdeliberately everything-ist\u201d in its design and impact. It is then not a surprise that imprisoned people would seek Robeson out as Brown-El did, especially in the 1970s when incarceration in the U.S. was rapidly becoming the way to contain and disappear poverty and Black insurgency.<\/p>\n Though the proposed program at Marion Penitentiary was less spectacular and significantly less resourced than that which occurred in universities and museums all over the world, it was no less researched. Brown-El began his time with Robeson well before his communication with Gittens. While in solitary confinement at the United States Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, he read \u201cPaul Robeson: Farewell to a Fighter,\u201d by Carlyle Douglas, a writer for Ebony<\/em> magazine who covered Robeson\u2019s 1976 memorial at Mother A.M.E. Church where his older brother Ben had pastored for more than twenty years. In it, Douglas describes the \u201cknots of sombre people\u201d who braved a rainy Harlem day to honour Robeson. Amongst the strangers and members of multiple former vanguards (\u201cthe old Harlem Writers Guild, the Old Left\u2026\u201d) were<\/p>\n ideologues whose visions he had shared and supported, there were people whose personal resolve had been strengthened by the example of his steel-hard integrity, and people who loved him because he sang of them and to them with a voice unmatched in its combination of technical mastery and natural beauty. <\/em><\/p>\n The Negro spirituals and world folk songs that define Robeson\u2019s career were inspiration to hundreds of thousands of people or more, and include his famed \u201cDidn\u2019t My Lord Deliver Daniel<\/a>,\u201d which declares in verse two that \u201cfreedom shall be mine.\u201d His unwavering belief in ultimate justice undoubtedly encouraged many to brave the weather and crowds in order to pay their last respects. Descriptions of the memorial were bookends to Robeson\u2019s life, which Douglas covered in broad, yet thoughtful, strokes.<\/p>\n![\"SR](\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/SR_CultureMatters_Marion.jpg\")
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