Chapter 1: What childhood movie characters intrigued Nichole Hill?
From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Emanuel Berry, sitting in for Ira Glass. As a middle schooler, there was always one channel I wanted to watch, TCM, the Turner Classic Movie Channel, an entire channel dedicated to old movies from Hollywood's golden age. I loved these films, The Lady Eve, On the Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, shout out to my boy Jimmy Stewart.
I was fascinated by the dramatics, the over-the-top slaps, the sultry looks, the glamorous makeup and hairstyles. To my delight, I recently learned that I was not the only Black middle schooler spending her spare time glued to this channel. Nicole Hill was also sad.
Anything with Bette Davis, I was like, her eyes are so big and she's so bad and I, like, need to watch everything that she does. Marlon Brando...
was my first really big crush and guys and dolls was my obsession and I used to like every Friday night God bless my mom and my aunt I would invite them up to my room and we would do a viewing of guys and dolls like every single Friday and I would share new facts that I had learned what like what OK, so I mean, this is like a very basic fact, but Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra hated each other.
And there's this scene where Frank Sinatra has to eat cheesecake and he really hates cheesecake. And so Marlon Brando keeps messing up the scene so that Frank Sinatra has to keep eating the cheesecake. And I was like, oh, they are so dramatic. Oh, my God.
The behind the scenes. Whenever I talk with Nicole, she always has some fact like this. You mention some historical figure, an actor, heck, even a mutual friend, and she'll tell you some obscure detail that you've never heard before. She's always clocking these things. I think it's why, as a kid, she noticed something about these movies that I never did.
I remember the first time I noticed that I didn't want to see a Black person in the films because of the way they were going to show up, which was Gone with the Wind. And I remember not knowing anything about Hattie McDaniel's history.
Hattie McDaniel plays Mammy, an enslaved house servant.
I just remember feeling really ashamed. Of like, that's what I would have been. I was going to these movies as a form of escapism. And then whenever black people showed up in the movies, they were always serving. They were always poor. They were always versions of. Myself that maybe I feared. I was like, I don't know. No, no, no, no, no. I don't want to grow up and be that.
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Chapter 2: Who were Paul and Essie Robeson and why are they significant?
They get on the train, they go home. And then I was like, and then what?
And then what became this question that drove Nicole? It stayed in her mind for years. What would it look like if you got on the train and followed those characters home and went with those actors into their real lives offstage and the lives of their families, their community?
What was the Black version of the Diva on Diva Cheesecake Showdown, whose passions and jealousies were people gossiping about? Where could she find those details, that drama? A couple years ago, Nicole was searching through Black newspapers from the 1930s through 60s, researching for her job at the time.
And Nicole, being Nicole, ended up deep in online news archives and in backrooms of university libraries, looked at all the microfiches, tried to get her hands on any and every archival Black paper, from the Chicago Defender to the Detroit Tribune to the Washington Afro-American. And this is where she got the answer to her question, and then what? It was all in there.
The drama, the details, the lives. Like this, from a 1938 paper.
I always remember the first thing I noticed is a woman in a bathing suit and they're saying like pretty hot A or something like that. And then on the side, they're talking about, you know, this baseball player that they'd run out of town because he'd been talking wild and they're talking about voting.
And then I keep flipping through and they're talking about dating and they're talking about people are giving one another advice. The paper had an advice column. It was called the Court of Afro Relations. And they have like a picture of a judge. And so you write in and the judge tells you, like gives you advice for how you should handle it.
And so there is a woman and she is married and her sister is in town and her sister is seeing a married man.
Okay.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Paul Robeson face in his career?
Personally, I want to know about that kind of mess. Not just the fact that Washington enslaved black people. I want to know who those people were and the details of their lives. I want to know about all of our ancestors' mess. So that's what we're going to do today. And there's no one I'd rather do this with than Nicole Hill. Detail hunter, amateur historian, renowned gossip.
She is going to take us inside a very big American life. A man who became one of the most famous people in the world and then all of a sudden was not. This story is hilarious and moving and it is very messy. Stay with us. It's This American Life, Act One, The Was It Couple. So, Nicole Hill has a podcast that I love called Our Ancestors Were Messy.
Every show is a true-life saga that she tells someone, and there's of course drama and glamour and heartbreak and poor judgment, all the best ingredients. Some of these stories are about capital-F famous people, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Paul Robeson. Paul Robeson exists in this weird twilight, right?
Like, I think he's still famous enough that a lot of people know his name, but probably in a way that's like, oh, yeah, he sang that song, right? Old Man River. And it is shocking, as you'll see, that this is all that's left because Paul Robeson was so famous. Like, I can't even think of a modern celebrity to match how big he was. He was an athlete, an actor, a singer.
It's like he would have sung the national anthem at the beginning of the Super Bowl, played in the football game, and then performed the halftime show. He was also a lawyer and spoke a bunch of languages, including Russian, Greek, Swahili, and French. His wife, Eslanda Robeson, Essie for short, was also famous, and also an everything-at-once type person, scientist, writer, anthropologist.
So what the hell happened to these two superstars that now America barely knows who they are? Well, you will find out not just what happened, but also how and why. And you'll see what a marriage between two superstars looks like, inside and out. Basically, we're going to kiki and catch up on all the drama of the Robesons.
Here's Nicole and her guest, author Jason Reynolds, with her show Our Ancestors Were Messy.
The Secret Adventures of Black People presents Our Ancestors Were Messy. Today, witness a roaring 20s meet-cute.
You didn't tell us she had a boyfriend. She had a boyfriend, a doctor. He was dirty macking.
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Chapter 4: How did Essie support Paul Robeson's career?
Welcome to the salon recording of our ancestors were messy. Thank you so much for being here. Oh, my God. I'm so excited. I just had like 10 thoughts run through my head. Okay. So this is Jason Reynolds. This is my guest for today. You have a beautiful and very impressive resume. I'm not going to thank you. I won't do that to you. So I'm going to tell Jason a story.
I want you to imagine we're going to do this little exercise here. If somebody were to be given a black history report, like the average American on the street, any age, you give them a black history report, you say, I want you to do it on Paul Robeson. What do you think that they would say?
Who's Paul Robeson? Yeah, I think that the average American has no idea that Paul Robeson ever lived. If they've heard of him, I think they'd probably say he was an actor, but they would know that he had something to do with a freedom fight of sorts, I think.
Yeah, I think people know he's an important figure, but they probably don't know why. So Jason, I'm going to tell you Paul's story in four parts. This is how he came to know, to love, to fear, and to forget the revolutionary Robesons. So first, how he came to know the Robesons. The year is 1920. We're in Harlem.
It's summertime, and 24-year-old Eslanda Cardoza-Good, or Essie as everyone calls her, she lives with her best friend, Minnie Sumner, in a tiny studio near all the action. They're like in it in Harlem. By day, Essie is a level-headed chemistry major at Columbia University. She's studying to be a doctor at the Teachers College. She's also dating a doctor at Harlem Hospital.
She's pledged Delta and is a descendant of one of the elite black families in D.C. known as the First Families. By night, she and her roomie Minnie are throwing ragers. They're known around Harlem for how wild their parties get and for Essie's bathtub gin that would reportedly mess you up. So she is vibrant. She's opinionated. She's hot. Who could play her? This is a picture of her.
Who do you think could play her?
Essie?
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Chapter 5: What were the Robesons' views on communism and activism?
Mm-hmm. A young Halle Berry. Oh, yeah? We always going like Halle Berry.
It's a real, it's a romantic town. Essie enrolls in a summer course at Columbia. She shows up to class and spots a 22-year-old nicknamed Harlem's Darling. This is Mr. Paul Robeson. He's 6'3". He's chocolate. He's got a smile. He's got a voice. He's studying at Columbia Law and playing in the NFL, which doing both at the same time is obviously wild. He's pledged Alpha. Who could play him?
Ooh, that's a tough one. What about the young brother who played in centers, who played the guitar?
Yes, Miles something.
Miles something, yeah. Maybe that young brother could pull it off.
Man, the pressure. I felt the pressure. You felt the pressure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look at that. We're going to give him the role of a lifetime. Well, that was the role of a lifetime, the second role. Okay, so we're going to picture Miles. So Essie's seeing a doctor and Paul is seeing, like, all of the women of Harlem. So they're just friends. Friends who go out to dinners and to the all-Negro tennis matches and to plays.
Some starring Paul because he's an actor. He's pretty good at it. They're just two friends taking in post-World War I Harlem. Somewhere along the way, if you can believe it, Essie and Paul become more than friends. I know nobody saw that coming. I know how shocking it is. She dumps her boyfriend and he dumps all the women of Harlem. He was Dirty Mac-ing. Leave that man.
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Chapter 6: How did public opinion shift regarding Paul Robeson?
They dump all their people and our ancestors start dating. People are like, okay, but do not get married. Because this is the thing. His boys think that she is too ambitious. Her girls say that he's a player. Plus, Essie and Paul, by their own admission, argue a lot. They're opposites in temperament and style and height.
They also want an unconventional arrangement where instead of man and wife, they are going to be equals. So one rainy day in August 1921, a year after they started hanging out, Paul and Essie elope. They move into a tiny apartment in Harlem. Their friends and family are like, God bless.
So Paul is studying to be a lawyer, which is a huge deal for many reasons, not least of which because he and Essie are the first generation to come up in an America without slavery. His dad was actually born enslaved and then escaped on the Underground Railroad as a teenager. All around them, Americans are trying to figure out a way to beat Jim Crow, and Paul hopes to do his part as a lawyer.
So, while Paul is studying, Essie supports the couple as the first black woman to lead a lab at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. Paul ends a job at a law firm where he's subjected to all kinds of racism, all kinds of indignities. They hate that. So Essie's like, Paul, you know what you should do? You should quit being a lawyer and you should become a full-time actor.
Paul is like, what are you even talking about? But she's like, no, no, no. I think you're a generational talent. I see something here. And so she stays on him for years until he does it. She becomes his manager, publicist, acting coach on top of her day job.
Can we pause for a second?
We should pause for a second to talk about Essie.
What are you feeling? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell us where you're at.
So Essie said, listen, I know you're a lawyer, which still in America is one of the most prestigious jobs one might have. But I think you should quit.
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Chapter 7: What led to the erasure of the Robesons' legacy?
I mean, like I also have a serious, serious commitment to black women for this reason. I think because I also think that like, you know, we live in this time now. It's funny. We're talking about our ancestors, but we live in a time where like the Internet has convinced us that we all hate each other, that we all are terrible to one another. Black women are terrible. Black men are terrible.
We're all terrible. And I just we've always been awesome.
things have always been tricky yes but we've always been supportive and loving and and i just want to say to essie like that's it does my heart good to know that somebody would say you know what they're killing you at work and i know where your heart is i know what you what you're capable of yes and so i'm gonna go ahead pour this into you yes now i'm hoping that the story unfolds you know i'm saying because i because i know how it go so i'm hoping that my man hold us come on paul
You know what I mean?
Okay. How we came to love the Robesons. For the next four years, our 20-something-year-old ancestors grind. Paul's profile and his star rise and rise until everyone is talking about Paul Robeson. In 1925, he lands his first film role in a movie called Body and Soul, directed by the hardest-working man in cinema, Oscar Michaud.
And between Paul's acting skills and Essie's PR brilliance, they score invites to house parties in Harlem where they could have run into the likes of Louis Armstrong or Josephine Baker. And they're like, let's go. So in the movie version, it's wintertime. They get to a house. They take off their jackets. They put it in the back room. It's packed. It's a Harlem brownstone, so it's loud.
It smells like booze. All around them, people are talking about art and jazz and dance. Our ancestors stopped in on a conversation about a thing that we all think of when I say the Harlem Renaissance. You know what? You love it. Let's say it together. One, two, three. The Russian Revolution and the rise of communism. I was going to say jazz.
I was going with jazz. So close.
Four centuries, Russia's labor system of choice was serfdom. Everyone always points out that it's not slavery. Peasants were just legally bound to the land they were born onto, and they had to work that land and couldn't leave or change jobs or travel or marry without the landlord's permission. But the landlord didn't own the people, just the land.
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Chapter 8: What lessons can we learn from the Robesons' story today?
Black people around the world began to identify with Russian serfs. In 1917, Communist Party leader Vladimir Lenin, with the help of the peasants, labor unions, and soldiers, overthrows Russia's Tsar and forms the newest, largest country in the world, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The USSR bills itself as a worker's utopia without capitalism, colonialism, or racial hierarchies.
Black people across the diaspora, including Paul Robeson, are so into this. Now, I know when we think of Harlem Renaissance era black folks, we don't really think, oh, yeah, super into Russia. But the Soviet Union is promising to be a place that's going to be free of racism and a haven for workers.
So while Paul and Essie are taking in these ideas about Russia, his success as an actor continues to grow. The couple moves to London and Essie quits her job to manage him full time. So goodbye being a doctor. Paul lands his career-defining role in the musical Showboat, where he sings what will become his signature song, Old Man River. I think we all know it.
Should we all sing it together right now?
Old Man River. That's the only part I remember.
That's how it starts.
That's the melody.
Mm.
River. He must know something, but don't say nothing. He just keeps rolling. He keeps on rolling.
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