Paul Robeson: To be Afrikan or Not To Be

Further Info

This story was made as part of the “Recalling Robeson” project, celebrating the life and work of black actor, singer and campaigner, Paul Robeson. Led by Anna Farthing of Harvest Heritage Arts and Media, supported by Bristol Old Vic, Colston Hall, Watershed, Pervasive Media Studio, ABLAZE, Aim Higher, Festival of Idea, The Paul Robeson Wales Trust, The South Wales
Miners Library,  and numerous volunteers.

Transcript

My name’s Donna Whitcliffe-Smart. I’m a learning mentor and Aim High Coordinator at Bristol Metropolitan College. What’s very key for me and important is the fact that Robeson talks very much about the fact that as Africans we need to be African so I’ll just take some bits from here.

Paul Robeson here says (from booklet) “Shall Negro sharecroppers from Mississippi be sent to shoot down brown-skinned peasants in Vietnam?” and it’s a very pertinent question because whilst it was an American war it wasn’t an African American war.

Looking through his things as well I noticed that he’d made a trip to the Pyramids and at that point he says “In every black man flows the rhythm of Africa.” It’s taken different forms in America, in the Caribbean, in South America, but the base of all these expressions is African and for me that’s very very key as a woman of African descent trying to find myself, trying to pass on what I know to young people because as many of our African scholars have said, the main thing we need to be is to be African, but that is a thing that we don’t want to be because of the way in which Africa has been portrayed and the way in which our history has been twisted and hidden as well.

One of the things Wade Noble says who is a African-American historian scholar is that ‘to be African, or not to be’ and Paul Robeson actually said the same thing too in kind of a different way, but it means the same thing. He says, “In my music, my plays, my films I want to carry always the central idea to be African.” and for me that is the best thing that he could have said and it just reminds me of what I need to be. My number plate on my car has actually got that on it as well ? to be African or not to be. Central.

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