Eslanda and Paul Robeson: Revolutionaries in the Making (Part 1)

The secret adventures of black people presents our ancestors were messy. Today, witness a roaring 20s meet cute. You didn't tell us you had a boyfriend. She had a boyfriend, a doctor. He was dirty makin'. Paul and Islanda Robinson forged a bond defined by love. They also won an unconventional arrangement where they're gonna be equal. War. You say she already did it, see? I'm glad you said that. That's me. That's me. And ultimately, revolution. He's like, they want your labor for as close to free as possible. And they want to treat you like second-class citizens, just like black Americans and Russian Serfs. This episode starts. 2024 MacArthur Fellow and New York Times best-selling author of Young Adult Novels and Poetry, Jason Reynolds. There's an honoring of the sacrifice of my ancestors that I think I would want to see through. And your host, Nicole Hill. So in the movie version, it's wintertime. They get to a house just like this. Live in front of a studio audience in a living room in Washington, D.C. This is our ancestors were messy. I feel like this is a setup. A show about our ancestors and all their drama. Hello. I am on my way to the museum to do some research for season two. Target release date fall, 2026. Market calendars. And actually, the museum that I'm going to is this Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture, one of my favorites, if you can believe it. And now felt like, as good a time as any to let you know that this episode is brought to you by the community of donors that fueled this independent podcast known lovingly as the household. Now, the household is a reference to a gilded age black newspaper's nickname for their D.C. readership. And dragging all of you into archival deep cuts like that is among my proudest accomplishments. So back to the household, it's their monthly support that covers the cost of producing the show and what has allowed my team and I to bring you this bonus two-parter just in time. For February's 100th anniversary of Negro History Week, which later became Black History Month, thank you to everyone that's given monthly and to the one-time donors because it's all made a difference. So our ancestors were messy, it's still a completely independent production and we want to continue bringing you histories, source from archives across the country, with award-winning editing and sound design, and guess ready to dig into all things history and gossip, but we need your help. Will you join the household at our ancestorswormessy.supercast.com? For $7 a month, you can help cover the cost of producing another season's worth of stories. Right now we can bring you like one or two, but I'm trying to bring you a whole slate this fall. In addition to supporting the show, members of the household can access to the director's commentary for each episode, outtakes, exclusive interviews, and for this one, I'll be sharing video of the first time I told the story live from New York as part of the 2025 Tribeca Festival with special guest, the American Life Executive Editor, Emmanuel Berry. Now I love both tellings equally do not make me choose, but I think it's fun to hear different perspectives. So keep the archival deep cuts coming, join the household today at our ancestorswormessy.supercast.com, the link is also in the show notes, enjoy the episode. Okay, so this is Jason Reynolds. This is my guest for today. You have a beautiful and very impressive resume. I won't do that to you. I will just say that the thing that I am the most excited about is that you were on Antique's Roadshow. I think that's so exciting. How did you get into collecting? Oh gosh, I come from one of those families. Your mom is like what people would call a hoarder, but she calls a collector and an antiqueer. So I grew up in a household full of old things, and I was always used to watching my mom sort of get fixated on particular things, and then just collecting, collecting. So over time, you just kind of inherit that habit. What's the best thing you found or collected? I don't know. I have old postcards from Langston Hughes. I have very rare books that you can't find anymore in first editions, but also books that are out of print, like "Montage of a Dream Deferred," which we all quote all the time. But I have the actual book. I have the very first shirt that we ever saw for Real Williams Wear. I own that shirt. That's in the Rockstar video, the pink and brown. Oh, yeah, yeah. Just like random light, you know what I mean? What kind of black are you? All the kinds, except for the self-hating kind. Because they exist. I like to think of blackness as both abstract and concrete, both of those things, right? That it exists in sort of this amorphous way, and also in a way that I could put my finger on, both, right? And because of that, I think it gets to be expansive. And so whatever it is that I am is the kind of black I am. Whatever it is I do is the black thing to do, right? I look at it as a neon color. You know, that's the way I see it. Yeah. It glows in the dark. Oh, that's beautiful. I didn't say he's a poet. I mean, you know that, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, good, good, good. What is your relationship with Paul Robeson? There's like a weird thing about Paul Robeson for me, just because when I think of the way we use the term Renaissance man, Paul Robeson, especially for black people, right? Paul Robeson is who comes to my first. I mean, he did a lot. He did everything, right? I mean, the way that we think about like Harry Belafonte, right? They can't be a Belafonte without Paul Robeson. They couldn't have been, especially in the earlier parts of his life, a Jim Brown or Maya Angelou, right? Who did lots and lots of things, right? A life well lived where she dabbled in all these things. Paul Robeson is sort of that figure to me and everything black. Yeah. Okay, so you know a lot about Paul. A little bit about Paul. Okay, all right. We're gonna see if I can surprise you a little bit. All right. It's 1964. And a 37-year-old black man is at a party in New York City. He does not give any details about this party, but it is the 60s. So I'm picturing that it looks like the Jetsons living room. Like space AG, futuristic, this is the vibe. He would be played by Brian Tyree Henry. Okay. Glasses, smiley, but underneath the smile, he's seething. His name is Polly. So he's mixing, he's mingling, but he is on a mission. He's approached by a black man. The man says, can we talk somewhere private, Paul? He's like, okay. So they go somewhere private and the man says, I'm XCIA, and I have information about your dad, Paul Robeson. Before the 1950s, if you'd stopped the average American on the street and asked whose Paul Robeson they might have said, oh, he's one of the greatest civil and labor rights leaders in the world. After the 50s, you'd get a lot of, was he like an actor or something? Maybe this is just a function of time. The public memory can only hold but so much, but Polly doubts that and so do others. Coretta Scott King described Paul as having been buried alive. And Polly wants to know who did the burying and why. So Polly's talking to this man who's just revealed himself to be XCIA and the man tells him, I heard that the director of the CIA had a meeting with his Super Spy. And the Super Spy asked, do you want me to solve the Paul Robeson problem? And the CIA director said, not yet, we don't want to create a martyr. This is the story of how we came to know, love, fear and forget the revolutionary Robesons. Okay, act one how we came to know the Robesons. So we're leaving the 60s. The year is 1920. So Polly is not even a thought. We're in Harlem, it's summertime, and 24-year-old, as Landa Cardo is a good, or Essie, as everyone calls her, you will be Essie later. 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, studying to be a doctor, she's also dating a doctor at Harlem Hospital. She's pledged Delta, and it's a descendant of one of the elite black families in DC known as the first families. As in Cardozo High School Cardozoes. Right, I know, it's wild. Wow. 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. - Mm-hmm. - A young Halle Berry. - Oh, yeah? Okay, I think we like Halle Berry. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - We're gonna give it to you. - We're always going like Halle Berry. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - It's a real, it's a romantic town. - S.E.M. roles in a summer course at Columbia. She shows up to class in spots a 21-year-old nicknamed Harlem's Darlin. This is Mr. Paul Robeson. He's six-three, he's chocolate. He's got a smile, he's got a voice, he's studying at Columbia Law, playing pro football, pledged alpha, who could play him? - Ooh, that's a tough one. Anybody got anything? - He's always going to go into it. It should be illegal to use him, man. - I mean, I'm looking at like, it's a hard one. - I know. - Mom, I'm thinking. - Who is it? - Dampson, Dampson may be, but he's small too. - He's also famous. (laughing) - But that's for us, I'm not right. (laughing) Like, we sick of it, we sick of it. - He's going to be behind my accent. - What about the young brother who played in Sennis? Who played the guitar in Sennis? - Wow. - What's his name? - Oh, what's his name? - Yeah, yeah, his real name is like, it's Mao's, ain't it? - Yeah, Mao something. - Mao something, yeah. Maybe that young brother could pull it off. - Look at that, we're going to give him the role of a lifetime. - The role of a lifetime. - That was the role of a lifetime. (laughing) (laughing) - I mean, we're talking about a one in a million to the fleet right in exactly the factory, you know what I mean? - Okay, so we're going to picture Mao's. - Man, I felt the pressure well. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. (upbeat music) - 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 the plays, some starring Paul because he's an actor, they're just two friends taken in post-war war, one Harlem. So black people from across America and around the world are migrating to the neighborhood and bringing with them their food, their art, their music and ideas, and it's all blending together. It's creating something new and Essie and Paul are so energized by this. I have to throw them on the floor, I don't know why. Signore that. As friends, I'm guessing Paul and Essie would have gone to these things called protest parades that had started a few years before they met in 1917. Black folks would get together by the thousands and they would of course dress up and they would hold signs protesting racial violence and discrimination and then they would march. And the white press is like, oh my God, what are these Negroes doing? They're freaking out. At these protest parades, they often carry American flags and they call themselves Americans. This upsets a lot of people. There's of course racism, but in addition to that, there are millions of white families who were impoverished by slavery for centuries because obviously like how do you compete with free labor? So their thinking was like, we know capitalism works. It's just the issue is that slavery is robbing us of our jobs. Once we end that, then the American dream is gonna finally be within reach. But then slavery ends and the robber barons and all of them were like, okay, so here's barely enough money to survive. And then here are the worst working conditions you can ever imagine. And if you complain, we're just gonna give the jobs to black people and to immigrants. And so then all those white workers are like, oh my God, not again, these people aren't even Americans. They need to get out of this country. Paul and SC are called new Negroes. They're the first generation to come up in America without slavery. The vibe is very like I'm black, I'm proud. Lots of them agree with Marcus Garvey and they want out of the country. They wanna join his back to Africa movement. Garvey is genuinely shocked to learn that there are so many new Negroes like Paul and SC who are like our parents built this country. We're proud to be black, we are Americans and we're gonna stay and see to it that the nation lives up to its promise. If you were in the 1920s, your parents have weren't slave. Now they're free. You were in the middle of this debate. Do you think that you would wanna stay here or do you think that you would wanna leave? - I would wanna stay. - Why? - I think it's tricky. First of all, it has to be acknowledged that they were in Harlem. If I was in Mississippi, maybe not. - Great point. - They in Harlem, right? And so if I'm in Harlem and my family is blood for this country, we've built this. I think there's a point of pride that I have and there's an honoring of the sacrifice of my ancestors of the ones that have done this work that I think I would want to see through despite the consequences. - Do you think that you would be calling yourself an American? - No. - No. - I think that probably at that time. I think I would have understood why people were. And maybe I would have, right? But it would have always tasted pretty nasty, that's all. But I think I think I understand why it is important to exert that. I understand why it's important to exert it now. But it don't always taste so good. And I think I would have been what I do now, which is call myself a black American, though I shouldn't have to create qualifiers. And they shouldn't have had to sort of use qualifiers, but at the end of the day, it isn't always just to sort of delineate a difference. The prefix of black also serves as security blanket for me. It makes me feel better about what it is and who it is I am in this particular country. I'm okay with sort of adding it on. It doesn't make me feel like I'm necessarily apart from everybody else, it just means that like, there's an asterisk kid that should be acknowledged as a point of pride for me. (upbeat music) Okay, so we know what Camp Essie and Paul are in, where Americans were staying put. After their friendly adventures, Essie says that she and Paul would go back to her apartment. They would kick out her best friend Mini, they'd sit on the floor and they'd talk for hours. Maybe about the missions they'd inherited. Essie grew up with stories of her grandpa, Francis Lewis Cardoza, the first black person in America to be elected to statewide office as treasurer and then secretary of state of South Carolina during Reconstruction. When Reconstruction era ended and America entered her Jim Crow era, Essie's grandpa was framed for fraud and imprisoned. When he got out, he fled to DC with his family and became an educator. Cardoza education campus in DC is named after him. He teaches his family to lift as they climb and the most important thing they can do is work to beat Jim Crow. Essie hopes to do her part as a doctor. - Hmm. The Marvin Gaye go to Cardoza. Do we know anybody in Washington, Indiana? - All right, y'all know. (laughing) You should check. I think Marvin might have gone. I think he might have graduated from Cardoza. - Really? - Pretty sure. - I should check on that. - Okay, okay. Well, I was like, I should write it down, no, it's recorded. All right. Paul grew up idolizing his father William Robeson. He'd escaped slavery and his teens via the Underground Railroad and settled in Princeton, New Jersey where he started his family and worked for 20 years as a preacher at the All Black Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church. When Jim Crow began, Pastor Robeson spoke out against all of the racism that was happening down south and his all white church board fired him. In his final sermon, he told his devastated congregation do not be discouraged, do not think your past work is in vain. Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church is still there to this day. Paul learns that beating Jim Crow was as important as anything else he'd do and he hopes to do his part as a lawyer. (upbeat music) Somewhere along the way, if you can believe it, SC and Paul become more than friends. I know nobody saw that coming in. I know I was shocking it is. She dumps her boyfriend and he dumps all the women of Harlem. And-- (laughing) - He didn't tell us she had a boyfriend. - She had a boyfriend, a doctor. - He was dirty-backing. (laughing) - Leave that man. (laughing) - They dump all their people and our ancestors are dating. People are like, okay, but do not get married. This is a thing. His boys think that she is too ambitious. Her girls say that he is a player. Plus, SC and Paul by their own admission argue a lot. Their opposites and temperament and style and height and everything, but at their core, they are, at the core of their relationships are their talks on the floor and ambitions and curiosity. They also want an unconventional arrangement where instead of men and wives, they are going to be equals. So one rainy day in August, 1921, a year after they started hanging out, Paul and SC alope. Their friends and family are like, God bless. The newlyweds move into a tiny apartment in Harlem. Paul's in law school and SC supports the couple as the first black woman to lead a lab at New York Presbyterian Hospital. Paul ends a job at a law firm where he subjected to all kinds of racism, all kinds of indignities they hate that. So SC's like, Paul, you know what you should do? You should quit being a lawyer and you should become a full-time actor. And SC's, I mean, Paul is like, what are you even talking about? But she's like, no, no, no, no. I think you're a generational talent. I see something here. And so she stays on them 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. What are you feeling? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, tell us where you're at. - Let's say, listen, I know you in lawyer. - Mm-hmm. - Which still in America is one of the most prestigious jobs one might have. But I think you should quit to become an actor. - Full of time. - 'Cause she believes, I just want, she deserves a round of applause. - I appreciate it, that's amazing. 'Cause I mean, that's a different, you think about the time. What a, that's a pretty bold risk. - Yes. - But what an incredible example of love and support. I mean, like, shush. And then say, look, and I'm gonna pick up all the, I'm gonna go ahead be your manager. I'm gonna do everything. I just wanna shout out, I love. This is, I also have a serious, serious commitment to black women for this reason. I think 'cause 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 the time where like the internet has convinced us that we all hate each other. - Yes. - That we all are terrible to one another. Black women are terrible, black men are terrible, we're all terrible, we're not. And I just, we've always been awesome. Things have always been tricky. - Yes. - But we've always been supportive and loving and I just wanna 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 capable of. - Yes. - And so I'm gonna go ahead, put it into you. - Yes. - And I'm hoping that the story unfolds. (all laughing) - And you know what I'm saying? 'Cause I know how it goes. So I'm hoping that my man hold us, come on Paul. (all laughing) You know what I mean? - So Essie starts booking Paul acting and singing gigs, including Negro spirituals at private parties for rich white people. 'Cause this was like a way that you did it back in the day if you were a hustler. Essie joined him at the gigs, which means that she probably has to sit through endless conversations about Africa. Now for Essie, she imagines Africa like a noble, distant, old country, even though she'd never been. She's like, it's just, it's such a, like a promised land for black people, like the ultimate promised land for them at this time. But that's not the Africa that these dinner party guests would have been referring to. - The transatlantic slave trade-ins. And in 1884, European nations gathered in Berlin to begin the scramble for Africa. They descend on the continent claiming land, extracting resources and crushing resistance. The shadow of Europe stretches over the vast majority of Africa. In lands colonized by Britain and France, workers are encouraged to form trade unions and focus on still building. The belief is that this will distract Africans from political organizing. America does not join the scramble for Africa. Back in the States, they're expanding into the West and making plans to conquer South America. But they still want wild animal skins, African artifacts and scary stories from the dark continent. - So it's like kind of sitting, listening to people talk about that, they're like, okay, whatever. And then I'm picturing Paul and Essie running out of the door as soon as they could to get to a party that is more their speed. The new Negroes have been staging themselves a little Renaissance up in Harlem and between Paul's acting skills and Essie's PR brilliance, they score invites to party with the big dogs, like Louis Armstrong and Josephine Baker. Say like, let's go. 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 stop 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. Historical record keeping and the importance of archiving. I was going to say jazz, I was going with jazz, but you know. (laughing) So close. So in the scene, a young man named Arturo Alfonso Schomburg is asking the group if they have any old books or letters that they can add to his collection. Somebody says, Arturo, while I was collecting all this old stuff, why is such a nerd? And he says, I'll tell you why. Arturo Alfonso Schomburg is an Afro Latino kid from Puerto Rico. When he was in school on the island in the 1890s, this is 30 years after slavery. His teacher tells him black people don't have any heroes or history or culture. A Jim Crow era belief was that maybe black people were more impoverished and imprisoned and cast out of society because we weren't real Americans and we weren't real Africans. We weren't from anywhere and because of that, we lacked a history and a culture to inspire us to do better. Racism had nothing to do with it. It's just on us. Arturo's like, I don't think so. So he moved to New York City. Now some black people are studying who we are, culture and our history through anthropology. Other people are doing it through sociology. Cardigee Woodson had just started Negro History Week, so he would encourage people to do gatherings like this and share their histories with one another. Arturo's like, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna just start saving stuff. We begin saving with unbelievable and meticulous detail every artifact he can find having to do with black history and culture. The New York Public Library will eventually buy his collection and today the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is the Mecca. When I finally went there to like do my research and stuff, I had to like microfiche, everyone was like, oh my God. You went to the Schomburg, I was like, I did it. It's the best. You know the opening and the opening entryway of the Schomburg, there is the cosmic graph and underneath that and the floor of the cosmic graph underneath that stone are the ashes of Langston Hughes. - Stop, I didn't know that. - Yeah. - So Essie and Arturo become friends and Essie gets into history and scrapbooking. Essie and Paul move to another circle. It's led by activist, author and African royalty prince Kojo Tuvila, who will be played by Idris Elba. I've already cast him, so just finish it. (audience laughing) - Paul thinks he's brilliant, Essie does too. He's talking about all our other favorite Harlem Renaissance erotopic. I think we can all say it together. It's so obvious, we all know it, here we go. - Rosky, Rosky. (audience laughing) - One, two, three, the Russian Revolution and the rise of communism. (audience laughing) Yeah, what's it? We were almost there, yeah, yeah. (upbeat music) - Four centuries, Russia's labor system of choice was surfed them. Everyone always points out that it's not slavery. Peasants were just legally bound to the land. They were born on to 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. Russians are, kept this up until around the time of America's Civil War. Then they freed the serfs, who were not slaves, but left them with no resources and forced them to live under Jim Crow's restrictions. Black people around the world began to identify with Russian serfs. Communist revolutionaries cite the plight of the African-American worker under Jim Crow as an example of the evils of capitalism, leading Russian serfs to take an interest in black Americans. In 1917, Communist Party leader Vladimir Lenin, with the help of the serfs, 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 builds itself as a worker's utopia without capitalism, colonialism or racial hierarchies. Black people across the diaspora, including Paul Robison, are so into this. In the movie, Essie and Paul leave the party. They're so excited about all these new people and places and ideas. For the sake of his career, they say they're gonna avoid politics for right now. But someday, when they're rich and famous, they will visit Africa and the Soviet Union. - More, when our ancestors were messy, continues. - Okay, if you love history, culture, beautiful storytelling set to the best music and Puerto Rico, I've got a podcast for you. Allow me to recommend the critically acclaimed bilingual series La Brega. This show introduces listeners to the fighters who've represented Puerto Ricans everywhere from the courtrooms to the boxing rings, in their music and on their jerseys. I would recommend starting La Brega with the episode titled "Preciosa," which tells the story of the Afro-P Puerto Rican legend, Rafael Hernandez, and the song that he wrote in 1937, which went on to become the unofficial anthem of the island. Now, does Rafael travel from Puerto Rico to Harlem in the 1930s and end up playing jazz at the same time as a bunch of the other ancestors that I talk about? Listen and find out. Subscribe to La Brega everywhere you get your podcast. - We now return to our ancestors were messy. - Okay, act two. How we came to love the represents. For the next four years, our twenty-something-year-old ancestors grind. Paul's profile and his star rise and rise until everyone is talking about Paul Roebson. In 1925, he lands his first film role in a movie called "Body and Soul" directed by the hardest-working man in cinema, Oscar Michele. Yeah. A lot of these people are from previous episodes. Look, he's the raw guy for this trick. Paul appears in Eugene O'Neill's play "Emperor Jones". This is a weird play and this play is weird. He blows up in Europe his profile rises in the U.S. when the play is adapted into a movie Paul stars in it becoming America's first black movie star. The couple moved to London and S.E. 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. Oh! That's the only part I remember. That's how it started. That's the melody. You know what I mean? "Old Man River, you must know something, but don't sing up it, just keep rolling, it keeps on rolling." People cannot believe his voice. Now the song is problematic, but inward is in there for no reason, and the dialect is not that of a Columbia law school grad, but black folks are working with what they can at the time. America's number one black newspaper, the Chicago Defender, celebrates him as a generational talent, as he's like, "I already knew that." One day after a performance in London, Paul hears a bunch of people singing in the street. He said it sounds like Negro spirituals, but it's why people, and he's like, "What's going on?" He goes down and finds a group of Welsh miners, and they are doing a protest parade, and holding signs demanding better wages and safer working conditions in the mines. So he's like, "They want your labor for as close to free as possible, and they want to treat you like second-class citizens, just like black Americans, and Russian Serfs." That's interesting. He starts donating to their cause and reading up on labor rights. S.E. and Paul spend the rest of their 20s traveling Europe first plays and experiencing being black outside of America. They say that it's divine. S.E. is obviously an amazing agent, but she is trying to do her own thing. She wants to find her own creative outlet. She starts reading up on Africa and African history, she's scrapbooking. When they visit Vienna, she meets up with a young black American chemist named Percy Julian, also on the internet for some reason. Maybe they talk chemistry things, but she is looking for something new. She writes a couple plays, people think they're mid, but that is okay. In letters home, she's like, "We're seeing the world we're having so much fun, but in letters to people like her girl Minnie, she's like, "Girl, Paul's cheating on me." S.E. sort of knew that there were always other women, but he'd been keeping it on the low before, but now he's the star. Plus they are in Europe, so S.E. is trying absent in Paris, Paul is studying every language he's posing nude for magazines in Germany with their Bohemians. So one day he comes to her and he's like, "S.E., I love you so much. We both said we want an unconventional relationship, why don't we open up our marriage?" The room has feelings. The way he puts it is, why don't we have our freedom? S.E. is like hard pass. So they're back and forth about that, and S.E. has a habit of hiding bad medical news that sounds troublesome. This is one time she went to the hospital and she was having her appendix removed, but she'd booked Paul this really, really good gig overseas, so instead of telling him that she was in the hospital, she pre-wrote 21 letters and then had her friends mail them each week so that he would stay on his gig. Exactly, I know it's not an episode of Scooby Doo, so he figures it out. He rushes home, he's like, "S.E., what's happening?" And she's like, "It's fine, how's the show?" In 1927, S.E. gets pregnant. She delivers an 11 pound baby boy. They name him Paul Robeson Jr., S.E. calls him Paulie for short, she's in love. At the time, Paul Sr. is making his Paris concert debut, so she writes to him and she says, "Paulie is perfect, the delivery was perfect, good luck with the show." Our mom writes him and tells him, "S.E. is bedridden because she delivered an 11 pound baby. She's not okay, you need to get home." He rushes home, he's like, "S.E. what are you doing?" She's like, "It's fine, how's the show?" So this is like a problem for them. They have this open marriage debate for years, and in that time, Paul becomes the first black man to play the role of Othello in a major American production before that it's like white guys in blackface. His love interest in the play is a white woman named Peggy Ashcroft. This is hugely controversial, and it would have been even more controversial if people knew that the two were seeing each other behind the scenes. This may have been dead forever. It's not happening right now. He's also seeing a monk other. He's also seeing, among others, a wealthy white British party girl named Yelon Jackson. Between the women and the fame and his growing activism, Paul is getting sloppy, and now S.E. is finding love notes, and she's pissed. Her and her best friend Mini decided to have a girl's weekend at one of Madam CJ Walker's family villas, so that's like a girl's retreat, and S.E. is like, "Mini, what am I going to do? I don't want to get a divorce, but I can't keep putting up with this." Mini's like, "You should do like me." Mini had teamed up with a private eye, and caught her husband in bed with a notorious Nora Holt. Private detectives broke into a furnished room, and exposed a tiny William L. Patterson, and Mrs. Nora Holt's ray, according to the 12-amal witnesses, excuse me, in the raiding party, including a tiny Patterson's wife. So now they're getting divorced, but S.E. does not want a divorce, so what would be your advice to our on C.S.E. as a man about how she should navigate this conversation with Paul? I feel like this is a setup, I'm like, "Who would be my advice as a man to tell this woman who knows her husband is cheating on her, and is getting messy with it?" He's getting messy, yeah. But she doesn't want a divorce. She does not want a divorce. And I'm supposed to give advice on the conversation that they're going to have. Okay, so you get to talk to S.E. you can take the man, I'm part of him being them, after. But you're going to go back in time, you're going to talk to S.E. we're in the future, people are having these conversations much more openly. So what kind of advice would you give her? She doesn't want to leave her husband? She does not want to leave him. She built him. She did. I only got toxic advice in this moment, normally not, but in this moment, I'm like, "Go get you some more on the side." I don't know what else they finish, like, I don't know what, you're going to have to go and figure out how to find your own peace and happiness. If you're going to keep this marriage together, you're going to have to go find some outside happiness unless you get a divorce. If you don't want to get a divorce, I don't, to me, I don't know what the other option, you don't deserve to suffer. So you're going to have to go find you some happiness on the outside. I don't know what else I'm supposed to, like, what's the better piece of advice? What would you tell her? I mean, I'm already questioned, baby, Paulie. Oh no. Well, that's a boy. You said she already did it, see? I think. Not me. That's not magical. First of all, that baby is ginormous. He's definitely Paul's baby. That baby looked just like Paul Robes. That's an eight-foot baby at Paul Robes. Look, that's my, honestly, as jammed up as it all is, that you don't want to leave him and she don't, and it's not changing, that I'm, unfortunately, I would tell her to choose herself. Okay. I don't know what else we, I could say. I feel like it's messed up that you would ask me to say such a thing on a podcast as millions of people are going in here, but okay, there's that answer. That was beautiful. That was beautiful. How about that? I would tell you what happened. No, no, no, no, no. I would tell her to do what you said. Okay. I'm going to tell you what she does. She is still searching for her creative outlet. Plays were not it, so she decided to try her hand at nonfiction. She decided to write a biography about Paul. She names it Paul Robeson Colin Negro. He's like, "It's a day, sir. It's the third person to make it seem more scholarly. The surface it reads like a loving tribute to his life and accomplishments, but if you read between the lines, she's calling him lazy. She's calling him lazy. She says that she has to constantly chase after him to get him to rehearse and be a professional. She says that he is barely interested in Paulie. She calls him a massive flirt who is not cheating on her, but if he did she don't hurt her. He would never leave her. She sends it to Langston Hughes. He's like, it's kind of mid. And the public agrees and Paul is like, I want to divorce right now. He's tired of fighting about having his freedom. He announces that of all his girlfriends. He's decided to marry Yalan Jackson. That's the party girl. As his wife, Essie is devastated. She writes this in her diary. Can you read her entry? Yeah. That's Emma Stone, by the way. Oh! Okay. I am surely a jackass if ever there was one. I should have seen the handwriting on the wall. Fancy believing his lies right up till the last. He was a smooth one though. He must have been lying to me for five years steadily. Paul has told me I refused to face things, but now I know. And I shall face things squarely. But she can't face things right away. She starts having what sounds like panic attacks and is even hospitalized at one point. And Paul is worried, but he's still marrying Yalan. She tries dating, like Paul suggested. She hooks up with the white doctor and she does accidentally get pregnant. I mean, you know, she didn't mean that it happens, like, nearly all the time. It wasn't on purpose. She has to have an abortion. Paul is upset, but he's still marrying Yalan. The papers catch wind of the drama, but they think the story is that Essie is leaving Paul because he's having an affair with the white woman. Someone wants to know who it is. The press guesses that the woman must be really accomplished to have lured him away from Essie. No one guesses Yalan, who is respectfully not a serious person. And I'm not just being a hater. I will tell you. Her biographer tells the story about how one time her and Paul were in the back of a limo and she wanted to know him biblically. And he was like, no, there's a driver right there. And she goes, oh, he's just a driver, he's not a real person. This is who Essie's getting left for. This is who he's getting left for. So now, Essie's manager, Essie knows that this marriage will end his career. It's the 1930s. There are laws against black and white people marrying and vigilantes who can kill to enforce those laws. Paul's boys go to Essie and they're like, please do not tell the press. We might be able to talk Paul out of this. We just need time. Please don't name Yalan and make it real. You have navigated the press. What would be your advice to Essie when she, like the press is howling her. They're like, who is it? Who is it? No. No talking. No talking. No talking. Even though she wrote that book. No talking. I think no, I think press is the moment you give them an inch, they'll take a mile and they'll create narrative. Right? No talking. Mom's the word. Okay. While Essie and Paul were beefing a young, more-house grad named William Scott II started a newspaper down in Georgia. It's called The Atlanta Daily World and it was now the first successful daily black newspaper in America. The others were weekly. A 24-hour news cycle requires reporting on everything from civil rights to celebrity divorces. So, Scott sends a report to New York to interview Paul and Essie who are both in town for one of his performances. We're going to do a dramatic reading of the article that is written about this encounter. I'm going to have Nicky play the part of Essie you're highlighted. I'm going to be the intrepid reporter and playing the role of lying cheating Paul Rowson. Wow. It's Jason Riddle. [laughter] This was a mistake. Okay. So, I'll start. Paul Paul, Essie's divorcing you because you're cheating on her with a white woman, is that true? Tell us the white lady's name. There's not been much of a secret we were seeing together much of the time. I can't mention her name now. It's not the actress who played opposite me and Othello. Then the reporter is like Essie, Essie, you're divorcing Paul. How much do you hate him right now? Also tell us the name of the white lady. Is it Becky with the good hair? [laughter] I've been in proceedings in New York courts about a month ago and hope to have my divorce soon. It is perfectly friendly and we will keep being friends. We're just tired of each other and want our freedom. I'm not giving the name of the woman because I don't know and I don't care. Paul, what do you think of that? I've been expecting this. I'm sorry, but I guess it had to be. I desire above all things to maintain my personal dignity. If this stirs up race prejudice, I am prepared to leave this country forever. I am studying Russian, German and French. I am assured of a following in England. Somebody comes out and tells Paul they got a phone call. He takes the phone call and then he comes back to the reporter. That was my lawyer. He ordered me not to talk. You'd probably better go. I think he handled that particular interview terribly and I think she handled it like a G. Right? Hey, I don't know. I don't care. It's a rat. It's not the one man. We've seen together. But I'm going to tell you one thing. Who it's not. It's not the woman. It's not the woman. It's like it is. Of course it is. I think he played it like a sucker and I think she did. I think when it comes to the press, that's the way you do it. I don't know. I ain't seen nothing. Get out my face. I said, okay. You two are on the same page, you asked me, you asked me, you asked me, you asked me. It's the DC connection. Oh, hold on, I'm breaking my heart. I'm asking. So it's the 1930s so you can't just get divorced because you want to. You have to prove that it's someone's fault. So Paul's like Essie. Why don't you leave Paulie with our nanny who is Essie's mom and then go to one of these hotels in Paris where I took Yelonne, get some proof that I was cheating on you, take that to a lawyer, boom, we're divorced. And Essie's like, okay. She heads to Paris and she's picked up by her escort and confinant on this weird rude mission. Prince Kojo, to the low play by Idris Elba, yeah, I don't want you to forget. They get proof of Paul's cheating and then Prince Kojo is like, let me hope you get your e-Pray love one girl. He takes her out shopping, drinking, dancing, it sounds very flirty. He introduces her to his ex-pat homies, people like Ada Bricktop Smith from Chicago, owner of Paris's legendary nightclub, Bricktops in Montmartre. The two expect to hate each other but actually they end up best friends. Prince Kojo introduces her to the women of the Negritude movement, which was what the black French started after witnessing the Harlem Renaissance. Essie interviews these women about their culture and about their history and about Africa, where the trade unions that the French and British had introduced to be social distractions, everybody evolved into powerful organizing bodies for the fight to end colonialism on the continent. And Essie's like, that's very interesting, she starts writing all this down. When she gets back to London, she enrolls in the London School of Economics to study anthropology, Zora Nielherson tells her like, yes girl, I told you she should do that. In the movie, in the next scene, Essie's coming home from school, she's got all these books in her arms, she's humming to herself, she's so happy, and who should she find, waiting on her doorstep? It's Harlem's darling, Paul Robesons. He says, "essie, I've made a terrible mistake." Paul and Yelon had broken up Essie writes why in her diary, this is you. Yelon lost her nerve, it would be too risky an experiment to give up all her friends and her stupid social life to Mary Paul. Plus it sounds like she was not into the open marriage thing, so he comes back home and he and Essie essentially sit back down on the floor and start dating again. In 1933, the two make each other some promises. They will never get divorced or discuss divorce again, they will be together for the rest of their lives. There will never be headlines or gossip about them again, no more Yelons, they will have an open marriage. After they come to this understanding, Essie writes this in her diary, "I'm 36 years old and I'm happier than I've ever been in my life. Paul and I understand each other, this is the beginning of a new phase of life." As these two were dealing with all their drama, the world around them was changing. Over in Italy, Benito Mussolini is running the world's first fascist dictatorship. Mussolini invades Ethiopia, forcing the country's emperor into exile. Ethiopia, the only nation in Africa that hadn't been colonized, is of enormous symbolic importance to the Black diaspora. In response, Black men across America train in hopes of joining the Ethiopian Resistance. W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Robison hold a rally at Madison Square Garden and 25,000 New Yorkers marched through Harlem to show their support for the African nation. the Lenis fascist movement spreads. In 1933, Hitler rises to power. The British and the French choose a policy of appeasement, hoping everyone will get what they want and chill out. America chooses isolationism. The robocens do not. "You have to fight against people who are very powerful. People who might seem are pretty hard to bring down from those tough places. But they can be brought down." Next time, on Our Ancestors, we're messy. This episode was written research to produce and perform by Minicol Hill. Thank you to my guest, the incomparable, ever-thoughtful Jason Reynolds. You can find more information about him in the show notes, along with sources for this episode. I do want to specifically shout out and highly recommend Barbara Ransby's biography on Essie, called, "Aslanda, Colin," "The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson." The book is excellent. I have referenced it heavily and a link to it is in the show notes. Thank you to my A team, executive producer, Adriana Ambries, sound designer, Kyle Murdock, research producer and voice talent, Shio Giansen, story producer, Martina Abraham-Zilunga, with show art by Asylica Smith. Thank you, Thomas Liu, for being our day of audio engineer and a theme Shapiro and John DeLoe for your support behind the scenes, those mics were set up. Thank you to my friend and our host for the evening night, Wong, with the most soundproof home ever. Thank you to my friends and their friends that made up the live studio audience you heard in the background of this episode. Y'all made all my 1990s, nick-and-night dreams come true. Thank you to my best friend, co-event planner, social media manager, stylist, Cassandra Sepha. She's literally a brilliant attorney who could be doing anything with her time, but she's on this ride with me, and I appreciate that. Thank you to everyone that attended all the table reads for this episode, and sat through my compulsive updates about the Russian Revolution. Thank you to my mom and sister for letting me commandeer Thanksgiving to play you early drafts. We are a completely independent podcast, and donor support is what keeps us free and in your feed. We're fundraising to bring you a whole slate of stories for season two, so please consider supporting us by making a monthly or one-time donation at our ancestorswormessy.supercast.com to learn more about the show you can visit our ancestorswormessy.com to those of you that listen all the way to the end. I want you to know that I was going to cut this part, but then I heard that you'd been clocking the evolutions in title, so before I go, I'll just say this. I'm a storyteller by training now a historian and an archivist, in part because of quotes like this from Harry Truman. The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know.