AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, joined by Juan González. Welcome, Juan.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Good day, Amy. And I have to think that the events of the last few days in Iraq show that the American people can, on occasion, have an impact on their country’s foreign policy, and clearly the protests and the questions raised by many people across the country had an influence on the Clinton administration’s finally agreeing to go along with the deal brokered by Kofi Annan.

AMY GOODMAN: I think there’s no question about that. Actually, in the second segment of our show, we’re going to hear about major protests that took place yesterday — one in Washington, four people arrested at the White House; one in New York, 25 people arrested — and we’re going to be speaking with Columbia professor Edward Said. But right now we’re going to turn to another issue and, in fact, a legendary figure, Paul Robeson, who won a Grammy last night. I don’t usually watch the Grammys, Juan, but last night I watched for two hours and 36 minutes before I got the 30 seconds of mention of Paul Robeson.

ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, 12-time Grammy winner Sting.

STING: Thank you. Thank you. The word “legend” gets thrown around with reckless ease these days, but when the Recording Academy uses it, as it has only 13 times in 40 years, it means something truly special. One of music’s true legends was Paul Robeson, who this year is being honored by the Academy with its Lifetime Achievement Award, not only for his remarkable operatic voice, but for his courage and commitment to continue singing at a time when the McCarthy witch hunt threatened to destroy the lives and careers of so many of our greatest artists earlier this century.

AMY GOODMAN: And that’s Sting last night presenting this Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously to Paul Robeson. He died 22 years ago. In fact, this year is the centennial of his birth.

Yesterday, I wanted to see if I could go to the event for Paul Robeson, which actually took place before the actual Grammys. And when I called to all the various people at Radio City Music Hall and their PR people, Juan, I finally got through to someone, and I said, “When would the Paul Robeson honorary tribute be in the program?” And they said, “Let’s see. Is he a rapper, blues, or does he do country?”

Well, in fact, legendary singer, scholar, actor, athlete and political activist is Paul Robeson. Son of an escaped slave, Robeson was attacked, blacklisted and hounded by the government for his political beliefs. During the 1950s, he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, where he refused to say whether he was a member of the Communist Party. Government officials revoked his passport, and he was then blacklisted by the film and theatrical establishment. At two infamous concerts in Peekskill, New York, concertgoers were attacked by right-wing gangs. Paul Robeson died in 1976 at the age of 77.

PAUL ROBESON: [singing] Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen
Glory hallelujah

Sometimes I’m up
Sometimes I’m down
Oh, yes, Lord
Sometimes I’m almost to the groun’
Oh, yes, Lord.

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, certainly a song that describes Paul Robeson’s own life. And here to talk to us about this great man is Howard Fast, acclaimed novelist and good friend and fellow activist of Paul Robeson, author of more than 80 books, including Citizen Tom Paine, Freedom Road and Spartacus and, most recently, An Independent Woman, the sixth and final book of the Lavette saga.

Howard Fast, we welcome you to Democracy Now!

HOWARD FAST: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us about your friend, Paul Robeson, honored last night. A bit sad that it was 22 years after his death.

HOWARD FAST: Well, I was thinking today, reading the Washington Monthly, of a bit in there about what Vernon Jordan and President Clinton talk about. And Vernon Jordan, when asked, said, “Mostly we talk about pussy.” And I was thinking of Robeson, a giant of a man, who has been very wisely called perhaps the greatest single — the greatest expression of a Renaissance man in the history of the United States — a great athlete, a great intellectual who spoke five languages, a man of incredible principle and courage. I was honored to know him.

My first contact with him, at a distance, was when I saw Othello. And that brought to mind the character of Gideon Jackson in my book Freedom Road, which became internationally one of the widest-read published books of our time. But he could never play that role, nor could Freedom Road be made into a theatrical film, because of the way he was blacklisted, driven, persecuted. Well, I met him shortly after the war. And we struck a bond. I was with him at Peekskill, the riot. And this coming Saturday, I will tell the full story of the Peekskill riots at the Paul Robeson centennial meeting at Long Island University. I knew him well. We were together a great deal. He would come to my house for dinner, where he could be alone and himself and relaxed.

After he was blacklisted, I was with him at many speaking dates, where he sang to trade unions, Black churches, places that still welcomed him. Now, it’s hard to speak of him because there are no comparisons. In a wise society, rather than the insane society that we live in today, he would have been one of the great leaders of our land. But we don’t elevate such people to leadership. He was a man of great gentleness. He had a voice that was utterly incredible. There’s no other voice like it. It wrapped itself around you. It became a part of you. It took you in. When he would come to my house, my daughter, who was 7 — 6, 7, 8 years old at the time — this was the high moment in her life. And he would pick her up in his hands and sing “Water Boy” to her, which is her favorite song. And the voice — the voice took on a mysterious and wonderful substance. In all my life, I never heard another voice like it.

Well, we rewarded this man for his refusal to go along with the so-called virtues of the Cold War. It rewarded him by closing every concert hall to him, by damning him. When he was invited to sing at a great meeting in Canada, he was told that he would be arrested at the border if he tried to cross the border. Every infamy, every dirty insult that the mind of J. Edgar Hoover or the House Un-American Committee could create was thrown at this man. And through it all, he stood tall and superb.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Howard Fast, I’d like to ask you: How did this, his ostracism and persecution, begin? Did it begin with the McCarthy hearings, or were there already doors that were being shut to him even before in the ’40s, when you first met him?

HOWARD FAST: Well, his position — he took a leftist position from the very beginning of his public life. He was against war. In the ’30s, he went to Spain and sang to the members of the Lincoln Brigade, to the soldiers of the republic. He never, never varied his absolute consistent position against war. If he were alive today, he would be leading the battle against this demented desire to bomb Iraq.

Well, if you go back to his valedictorian address, he was one of the first white students at Rutgers — one of the first Black students at Rutgers University, indeed at that time one of the few Black students at any white college in America. And in his valedictorian address when he graduated from Rutgers, he spoke of the meaning, the importance of the racial crisis in America and how it must and should be solved. So, his thinking probably came from his father, from his family. And it molded him, and he molded his thinking in that direction. So, I cannot say when he became a leftist and a protagonist of the struggle against racism, but he was there, and he was the first public figure of a great Black man leading the struggle against racism.

When one reviews his life, the meaning of his life, of his integrity, one would think that this country would be honoring him as one of the greatest men in its history.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, this year, as we were saying before, is the hundredth anniversary of his birth. April 9th, to be exact, will be that day. But still the U.S. government, as it blacklisted him years ago, is also dishonoring him even with their refusal to honor him with a postage stamp. I like to say that Paul Robeson is too big for a stamp, but what’s your comment on that, Howard Fast?

HOWARD FAST: I think it’s disgraceful, when you think of the people they have put on postage stamps.

AMY GOODMAN: This year, I believe one of them is Tweety Bird.

HOWARD FAST: Yes. We’re a very strange people. We give rise to great men, and we destroy them. I have no doubt that as time goes on, his place in history will be acknowledged, and the meaning of the man, in terms of a people always denigrated, subject to an endless round of insults, and at the same time producing one of the noblest specimens of the human race that certainly I have ever encountered or read about. There has been no other man, not even Martin Luther King, who did what Paul Robeson did, alone and with the dignity. There was no great civil rights movement to support him. He stood alone against the racists of the world.

AMY GOODMAN: Well —

HOWARD FAST: And he — go ahead.

AMY GOODMAN: Howard Fast, I want to thank you very much for joining us, and we will be going ahead in the months to come, as we have in the past month, celebrating Paul Robeson’s life. And we want to thank you very much for honoring him with us today.

HOWARD FAST: Thank you for giving me the opportunity.

AMY GOODMAN: Howard Fast, acclaimed novelist and good friend and fellow activist of the legendary Paul Robeson, singer, scholar, actor, athlete, political activist, given a posthumous Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award last night.

You’re listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! Up next, more on the Gulf crisis with professor Edward Said, and then we look at the status of Puerto Rico, as it’s being considered in Congress today. Stay with us.