“And You Know Who I Am”: Paul Robeson Sings America

It’s an iconic image of an iconic man: Paul Robeson standing amongst the workers at the Moore Shipyard in Oakland, California, singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The year is 1942, the midpoint of World War II, a time when national loyalty oaths were used to isolate and dismiss Communist Party members or sympathizers, to maintain industry function during the war effort, and to discipline the increasingly strike-ready (and interracial) union workers. The oath was but one strategy to enforce unity during the Popular Front, which, according to Michael Denning, was composed of “not simply New Deal Liberalism and populism. It was a social democratic culture, a culture of ‘industrial democracy’ and ‘industrial unionism’ ” (The Cultural Front xvii). An advocate of organized labor and internationally renowned artist of stage and screen, Robeson was poised to document that moment with his incredible voice.

Yet he did so most definitively, not with the national anthem, but with “Ballad for Americans,” a dynamic song that, with its first performance on November 5, 1939, had announced the dawn of U.S. involvement in World War II. Robeson was in perfect form that day, commanding a chorus on CBS radio, to whom he sang as they also sang to him, punctuating his narrative history of the nation. From the battle for U.S. independence to the industrial age that formed them as a class, the song demonstrated the innovations of the people who make up the nation. This hallmark moment in the development of the Popular Front was also a defining moment in Robeson’s career; he continued to sing “Ballad for Americans” for years after, with students at summer camps and union choruses on major stages. Yet “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the national anthem of his native land, was not a noticeable part of his catalogue or performance career. These two songs in juxtaposition tell us something of Robeson’s distinctive relationship to and pride in his citizenship and suggests the reasons why we continue to struggle over the national anthem as representative of a nation still at war.

Identity is at the core of each of these songs but in strikingly different ways. As All Things Considered host Robert Siegel puts it, “Ballad for Americans” is an “operatic folk cantata”; it contains moments of detailed recitative that provide depth in a song that otherwise labors for historical comprehension. The song dramatically slows at the entrance of Robeson’s repeated line, “And you know who I am,” which over the course of the ten-minute song is questioned regularly by the chorus (“No. Who are you, mister?”). In response, Robeson proudly announces that he is the “nobody who’s everybody”: the mechanics, musicians, teachers, and farmers whose belief in the nation is informed by their identities as Negro, Russian, Czech (and double Czech) as well as Jewish, Methodist, and atheist. This diversity of perspectives is not a liability in “Ballad”; it is instead the exceptional contribution and wealth of this nation’s citizens, suggesting that the work of the nation is ongoing, but more perfect with each new arrival.

Such dynamism and flexibility is absent in the U.S. national anthem, which is charged with cohering a nation not in the making but already made. The photograph of Robeson singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” with the Oakland workers (the “nobodies”) just a couple of years after his performance of “Ballad” is, in some respects, a perfect portrait of his relationship to that song—an anthem which is today (thanks to NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick and numerous other athletes) open for interrogation in dramatic and increasingly public ways. The stark simplicity of the black-and-white image in Oakland is a freeze-frame without sound; though his mouth is poised with verse, the luscious voice that marked Robeson’s career is absent. We do not know what Robeson sounded like singing the U.S. anthem; he never recorded it nor was he filmed singing it. For a man whose studied repertoire is marked by the inclusion...