PAUL L. ROBESON - AUTOGRAPHED SIGNED PHOTOGRAPH - HFSID 49901

PAUL ROBESON
Vintage photograph of the international singer and actor, Black activist who was banned during the McCarthy Era. (3½x5½)
Photograph signed: "Best wishes/Paul Robeson". Sepia, 3½x5½. Athlete, actor and singer Paul Robeson (1898-1976) was taped by playwright Eugene O'Neill to star in a revival of his The Emperor Jones in 1924. Robeson later premiered in O'Neill's All God's Chillun Got Wings, but it was his rendition of "Ol' Man River" from Show Boat that brought him the widest acclaim. Robeson began his ties with the Soviet Union in 1934, when filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein invited him to Russia. Robeson was impressed with the country's equal treatment of the races and made a number of trips to the U.S.S.R., including opening 1959 with a Kremlin gala hosted by Nikita Khrushchev. His Soviet sympathies led to his being put under surveillance by the FBI in 1941 and put on the 1947 "black list" of suspected Communists, a charge that was later refuted. His "manifesto-autobiography" Here I Stand (1958) helped restore his passport, and thereafter he planned a world tour. However, ill-health and paranoia of CIA operatives (whom Robeson and his family accused of tampering with his mental stability using a CIA mind depatterning program called MKULTRA) pushed Robeson into a suicidal manic depressive state, and after attempts to end his own life, he was hospitalized. Between 1961 and 1963, he received ECT treatment in London, though with no psychotherapeutic care, his conditions only worsened. His family eventually relocated him to a Berlin hospital where he was treated. While he recovered, he lived out the remainder of his life deeply affected by his psychological trauma. Image lightly silvered. Slightly soiled at background, minor, light stains. Tape stains on verso, no show through. Overall, fine condition.