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Speaker 3I'm Dave Zirin. I've been circling around this interview since I picked up this book. I'm so excited he's going to be on the show, talking about the author. Let me tell you who this guy is. He was a regular writer and television opinionist on ESPN. He's the author of a beautifully eclectic series of books called The Edge of Sports. Books like Juicing the Game, which is the best book about steroids and baseball. The Heritage, which is the best book about the intertwining of sports and black history. And best-selling biographies of Henry Aaron and Ricky Henderson. His new book is a triumph. It's called Kings and Pawns, Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America. He's done a lot of press, and I've promised him that this will be an interview that at the very least has him answering questions so he doesn't have to be on autopilot. Because I've been there. I've been there. You're giving a brilliant answer, and half your brain is wondering what you're going to have for dinner. Let me tell you what his name is. It's Howard Bryant. Howard, how you doing, sir?
Speaker 4I'm good, Dave. How are you? That was an unexpected intro. Was it okay? It was great.
Speaker 3Okay. It was great. Thank you. Unexpected is a great adjective. Before we talk about the book, and believe me, you say the words Robeson and Robinson, and you're on a nationwide magazine podcast, it's at the top of the vertical. Pure catnip for the nation audience. But before we talk about the book, we got to talk about something from the headlines today, because from 2005 to 2007, you wrote for one of the greatest brands in sports media at the time, and that's the Washington Post. Easily, I think, the most famous group of columnists at any paper in the country. Wilbon and Kornheiser, people know, but also legends, like Shirley Povich and Dave Kindred. You mentioned Dave Shinin. I could go on and on. David Aldridge, Sally Jenkins, John Feinstein, Christine Brennan, my friend Michael Leet. And Boz. The great Boz. Thomas Boswell, great baseball writer, and another great baseball writer, Richard Justice. Awesome. Yeah, just an incredible crew of people. And it's 19 years later from your last day at the Post, and now there is no Washington Post. So, sports page. Killed by Jeff Bezos. I just wanted to get your thoughts, man. And then we'll go right into Robeson and Robinson.
Speaker 4Yeah, well, I mean, I actually don't think that these two things are unrelated. It's the same thing. You know, we're under assault right now. There's no question that this is the – one, it's devastating. And I can tell you just from a personal standpoint, you know, a lot of us dream of, you know, hitting home runs in the backyard, you know, being in game seven in the World Series. I wanted to work at the Washington Post. That was my goal. I didn't – I never thought about working at the New York Times. I never thought about working at ESPN. I never – that wasn't the goal. There were two places that I really wanted to be at. I wanted to work in Boston. I ended up working at the Herald and not the Globe, but I ended up turning down the Boston Globe. But then I wanted to work at the Washington Post. And the Post was the top. And the Post was the top for everything that you mentioned, but none of that for me because I didn't want to write about sports. I was about the Washington Post op-ed page. I was David Broder and Ellen Goodman and William Rasberry and all of those guys. Eugene Robinson later on. That was really where I came from in terms of thinking about that paper. And, of course, it's the Watergate paper. I mean, for all of us, our generation, we didn't get into this to do the, you know, around the horn, bar stool, let's just yap about sports. This was an accountability. This was the reason why we all got into journalism. For my generation, it wasn't to be on PTI. It was to be Woodward and Bernstein. And that was the goal, that it was the highest point of American journalism, that this industry, it's not just a job. This job is in the Constitution, you know, to hold institutions accountable. And between the combination of Vietnam and Watergate, it was the highest calling. It was the highest form. It was the highest of our ideals. And it drove a generation of us to want to be part of this. And so when I got the call in 2005, when I was at the Boston Herald to come join the Washington Post, it was literally a dream come true to go to Washington, to be around, you know, in that center of power, to be down there on 15th Street. You know, you could see the White House from the Post building and to walk into that building is the high point of my career. I mean, I've always said ESPN was the best, the best job I've ever had because it allowed you to do more than you were ever, you know, than you've ever been allowed to before because of all of its reach. But the Washington Post was the dream. I would have stayed there my entire, I would have stayed there until yesterday. It was everything that I wanted to be part of when it came to journalism.
Speaker 3Wow. And, you know, I think we're going to circle back to this at the end so people have a real sense of Kings and Pawns and why it relates to everything you just talked about. Okay, let's start with a very basic question. For the audience, so they can get a real sense of the book, which for us, people listening right now, I'm holding it up right now. It's already dog-eared. It's pretty rare, Howard, you get a dog-eared hardcover. That's hard to do. It's hard to do.
Speaker 4That's hard to do, especially because the book's only been out two and a half weeks, I think.
Speaker 3Well, when you fall asleep with your face on a book, it's going to happen. So first, and that's not a comment on the book. That's because I'm reading this until I can't keep my eyes open. So look, the book is a dive like I've never read into the lives of the great activist, singer, actor, and star football player Paul Robeson and the trailblazer of trailblazers, Jackie Robinson. And I learned a ton. And the entire book, a lot of which is not just about them as individuals, but also how they circled each other at different points in the first half of the 20th century. But even though it swirls, around that relationship that wasn't a relationship, but just the places that they inhabited on the U.S. landscape, you spin off the whole book from a moment during the start of the Cold War and the Red Scare in 1949, when Jackie Robinson voluntarily and quite briefly, actually, spoke in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, as the paper said, condemning Robeson. And please talk about why you decided today, to take that moment and use that as the starting point to spin the whole book out from there.
Speaker 4Well, because that is the moment, that's the only real interaction between these two men. And when you think about what they represented, when you think about their individual achievements, Paul Robeson is one of the greatest talents this country has ever produced. And you can go down his resume, look him up, right? I mean, concert singer, one of the greatest football players of all time, one of the greatest college football players of all time, singer, actor, stage actor, all of it. I mean, he's Renaissance and lawyer. I mean, so many things. He doesn't have any relationship with Jackie Robinson. Jackie Robinson has no relationship with him. You know, even though they did sort of circle each other in terms of the ground that they covered, that Jackie Robinson made Ebbets Field famous, but so did Paul Robeson back in 1917. He played, his breakout game was at Ebbets Field. - That's great, I learned that, that was crazy. - That was insane. And so you're looking at these characters and you're saying these two guys who had never met and yet are in each other's orbits indirectly. But the reason why the moment was so important to me really does go back to 1919. It really does go back to 2018 and the introduction of my book, "The Heritage" that you mentioned, because "The Heritage" is all about this continuum and this lineage of athlete activism. Where was the, what is the story of the black voice in sports? Why is politics so important to the black voice? Or why is the black voice, why is the black athletic voice so important to our story when it's not to anybody else's? And it does go back to, it goes back to Robeson, who was a great college player, but it also goes back to Robinson because that's the moment where he is, one, he doesn't wanna be there. He's essentially coerced by his employer to do it, but he also had a personal responsibility. But the other, the other thing was that's the moment, and it didn't get covered in the press, but that's the moment where he talks about, "Listen, you can talk about communism all you want, but what about wealth inequality and job security and unfair treatment and police brutality and all of the second-class citizenship issues that we go through?" That's the voice right there. When you think about Muhammad Ali and Jim Brown and Bill Russell and Colin Kaepernick and Tommy Smith and John as you think about everything that those guys all had to say later Jackie says this in 1949 and
Speaker 3I would not just them but I've read you know and working on my own book about Howard Zinn quotes on every from everybody from Martin Luther King to Bob Moses and the young people of SNCC who were probably five years old when Robinson did this testimony and they say so it echoes like we don't need communists to rile us up against lynching we don't need communists to tell us that we're oppressed and it's insulting that you think we do I mean that's right that's said throughout the civil rights movement and and it's a gaslight as well yeah absolutely
Speaker 4it's the gaslight that that you people are really really happy you don't know how good you've got it or you do know how good you've got it it's the communist the outside agitator the phrase you know essentially the equivalent of the paid protester who is really upset about this you and that is the piece of it where um for me thinking about this because you know you and I do the same thing we've been doing this for a long time and we look at these stories and the number of times that I would just glide past the question of Robinson and Robeson that this moment is an incredibly important moment um that these two people were placed in an arena um that never really got the sort of attention it deserves I think obviously can you imagine today today can you imagine that would be the equivalent of of you know of LeBron James testifying against Denzel Washington in Congress you know what I mean like that's the equivalent of people that big that accomplished can you imagine what that would
Speaker 3be like today it would be titanic and yet yet back then um and as you said at the in the history book since then it's been basically treated almost like a curio a side note something you notice and you described it in one conversation we had as like a a root in the ground almost that you you kind of trip over and you're like what the heck was that oh Robinson testified against Robeson and yet the effect of it even though it's little known now hopefully not anymore because of your book but it's little known now yet at the time the effect of it is that it's a little known now but it's a little known now because of your book but it's a little known now because of your book was incredibly strong can you can you speak about the the ripple effect the shock waves that occurred from that what what it allowed this government to do what it gave license for them to do particularly in regard to black politics
Speaker 4yeah well what it what it did was it gave license to the real right-wing anti-Robeson factions to really unleash even more violence on him I've made it very clear that Paul Robeson's career was not destroyed by Jackie Robinson's testimony because Robeson's career was already in trouble he had been in trouble the previous three years after the after the end of World War II now that these two superpowers are our adversaries they're no longer World War II allies that Robeson was having his concerts canceled and he was having his public appearances he was having all those things canceled as early as 1946 so if it hadn't been Robinson it would have been something else or something else because Paul was already in the crosshairs of the country he had testified to the House and American Activities Committee in California the Tenet Committee in 1946 so it you know he had been he had met with the president with President Truman and you know had really made it clear that he was going to be a dissenter so Robinson didn't do this but what Robinson did do because of the tactics and because of the politics of having one black voice destroy another black voice or criticize another black voice it unleashed the anti-Robeson factions in the VFW and these veterans groups to really go after him and the government as well five weeks after after Jackie's testimony there's a riot in in Peekskill and Peekskill New York they're at back-to-back you know consecutive really bloody attacks on Robeson who was trying to to give a concert up in May I interrupt you
Speaker 3Howard please of course I want to tell you something I've got a lot of people in my family who are familiar with this he's history and you say Peekskill they're not thinking of the the setting of the show facts of life they're thinking of Paul Robeson and and I said to them reading your book did you know there was a second Peekskill concert and almost invariably they've been like what there was a second one and the second one was bloodier than the first it's unbelievable though that the way history gets told or doesn't get told but that's an important story because that was about Robeson going back to Peekskill
Speaker 4out of defiance and
Speaker 3because he
Speaker 4decided to go back he was blamed by both Democrats and Republicans for being the instigator and that's why there were no charges filed against anybody there that it was that it was the communists and the Robeson faction that went up there looking for trouble that they went up there to start the fight simply because they went back because they felt like they had a a constitutional right to perform so let's
Speaker 3talk about Robeson this is one of the thing I wanted to drill down and talk to you about because you're you're a sports historian names like Paul Robeson and Jackie Robinson these were hardly uh blank slates in your mind as you start to do this research but I'm really interested in let's start with with Paul Robeson if we could about what you learned about him in doing this research that you did not know before and did your view of Paul Robeson which you came into this process uh to write about did your view of Robeson it doesn't matter positive negative whatever did your view of Robeson change through the research
Speaker 4that you did yeah my view it it only grew to be honest and it grew even during times when I when I disagreed with him but it grew to be honest I didn't agree with him because here's a man that people spent so much time calling un-American he was actually the most American person I think I've ever written about because of his belief one of the things that I've said to him I had an event at the Jackie Robinson Foundation last week that you were unfortunately unable to attend because of the weather sir blame the weather of course but the trivia question that I asked the audience was what is the first sentence of the godfather
Speaker 3I know it well do you want me to say it yes of course god if I get it wrong by one word I'm editing this podcast but I believe it's I love America I
Speaker 4believe in America I believe in America that stings okay that is that is both Paul Robeson and Jackie Robinson but the belief if Robeson didn't believe in America he would have never gone back to peak skill he might not have ever gone to peak skill his belief you know he might have caved and said okay well my political beliefs at this time are extremely unpopular and but no it's it is written in this constitution in this document that you are allowed to have the beliefs that you have you have this free speech I mean his belief in America was so deep as if to be naive in a lot of ways that that how that's how deep the belief this is who we are and for somebody who believed that deeply in this country's potential and in this country's obligation despite everything that he knew about it was incredibly inspiring to me and and the fact that he was willing to back it up you're the non-patriots you're the un-Americans and you ought to be ashamed of yourself when he says that when he faces HUAC in 1956. that to me uh I think the other thing about Robeson that that really increased my feeling toward him was that he wasn't naive about it because of his you know his father was born into slavery and the love that he had for his dad the defiance the belief the self the utter self-belief to be born in 1898 but to know who you are when you look in the mirror and that he had no he wasn't by white behavior the way that he would say things like um when you grow up in Princeton which of course was the southern ivy right the the outpost where you could students could they could bring their slaves to class which they did for Robeson to know that hey that this country had never intended for equality and that when he would talk about the the the most resentment that he received that he was in school in Somerville New Jersey was when he succeeded that the resentment was that you know even when he was elevating his school when he was making everybody proud when they were trading off of his name because of his individual success he still felt the resentment and it told him that these people did not believe in equality they believed in benevolence but not equality
Speaker 3you know what you just said reminds me of a part of your book that I'd never thought of before when said that probably the most dangerous way to be a black man in America after during and after World War II was to walk around in your military uniforms wear a uniform yeah this this symbol this totem of patriotism is actually incredibly dangerous because it's like you're telling white America I am I'm not only your equal I'm fighting for you that's right and you're fighting for me
Speaker 4but we're fighting together you're not fighting for me we're fighting together and that is the thing that I I found most during the book to be really sort of illuminating was this idea of benevolence versus equality that that the majority loves charity they love to dole out charity and and you feel that in the language today um we gave you your opportunities we gave you your jobs we gave you a chance we're not giving me anything you know we we gave you a chance to play baseball no I earned my chance to play baseball and so to me that was the the the tension in the book that I really enjoyed the most which was this rock of Robeson the tallest tree in the forest that he stood on business so clearly that um he was willing to fight for you know for principles that were long gone like I mean that's the whole thing about holding up your end and and I think that that it just made me feel even more uh sort of attached to him in some ways go ahead go ahead no please no I was just going to say but I what I really sort of enjoyed about the construction of this book was the fact that you've got these two Giants who are on their two separate pathways they're going to end up some ways emotionally in a similar place but because they're 21 years apart the journey is different um and and it was fascinating to me that you would have the older man Robeson have even more sort of militants than the younger man Robinson simply because Robeson already he's already been there I know what's going to happen and I just I just found that sort of juxtaposition and you know and for anyone that was really you know wondering about the construction of the book the reason why the book is in alternate chapters is because they never met no so you've got one chapter that's Robinson one chapter that's Robeson and they sort of alternate back and forth because they never intersect and
Speaker 3yet it doesn't read that way Howard yeah to your credit as a writer it doesn't read that way it doesn't read like vignettes of each person one after the other because they are swirling around each other you know in the same political soup because if you're black in this country at that time and your dreams are of upward mobility and you're trying to hold on at the same time to a sense of principle yeah then you will swim in those same waters so the the ways in which okay y'all are in the same pool you're just not yeah bumping heads I mean that that I that was something I learned from the book I I want to ask you the question I just asked you about Robeson but about Jackie Robinson which is somebody who I can just about guarantee you knew more about than Paul Robeson when you started this project because you're you and you write about you've written about baseball you know your whole professional life uh what but did you learn anything about Jackie you didn't know doing this particular deep dive and did your opinion of Jackie for better or worse change by the time
Speaker 4thousand percent thousand percent the number one thing I learned about Jackie was how was how much uh was how how reluctant he was I'd always been fascinated by this story from the standpoint of how did Jackie end up in front of me like well how did this happen I mean earlier when we spoke you said it was voluntary he was pressured into this I mean it was it was it was literally voluntary but it wasn't I mean he felt like he he was in a bind his employer was telling me to go telling him to go to Congress to testify against an other so and that other being being Robeson and what I really sort of enjoyed about the research and the learning of this uh in this story was how complicated Jackie was um and how conflicted Jackie was and how compromised Jackie was and and and how by the end of the story um that Robinson was every bit as militant and as tough and as determined and we leave him um at almost a at almost a binary oh well he he you know he he supported Nixon and was it no it's there's more to it than that oh well he's you know because the feud he had with Malcolm X um and Malcolm X said you know you let your white bosses sick you on Paul Robeson so these are the things that that Jackie is carrying and then by that point you've got this new generation you were talking about Howard Zinn and talking about snick and and Diane Nash and and and all the the children all the new ones that are coming up and still Carmichael and and and those guys they're looking at Jackie Robinson like he's the Uncle Tom when actually his heart is breaking actually he's the one who is like they're both men without a country at the one point on the one hand you've got Robeson who believes in the Soviet experiment and then finds out that Stalin has killed 20 million people you know you've got Jackie who believes in the American experiment and then by the end of his life says you know when I I don't salute the American flag and and when I see a guy driving a car with a with American flag pasted on it I figure the guy behind the wheel is not my friend that's the story how do these two Giants who as we go back to the Godfather who believe in America how do they end up where they end up and what is the story and how did this one day in July inform
Speaker 3that it's it's a it's a great I guess it's a book for me reading it that was a condemnation of the American experiment in so many respects or what is I should say what is known as the American experiment because it with the benefit of hindsight their heartbreak you read it and it's preordained so you're reading
Speaker 4about yeah yeah
Speaker 3you're reading about Robeson coming up Rutgers the belief is still there even though he's you know assaulted by his teammates on the field the belief is there and you're just like this is gonna die because of this country not because of John Rankin not because of you act and that's what's so good about the book is that you don't and I'm wondering how conscious this was you don't go for easy enemies you know Jim Crow racist Southern Democrats you're like let's talk about Harry Truman not Strom Thurmond
Speaker 4100 and that is the reason why by the time I get to the um to the aftermath I go back into the past and bring up Moses Fleetwood Walker the one of the first if not the first black baseball player in 1884 plays one season and then is the black players are expelled until Jackie Robinson is signed and so he had ended up writing his own memoir called our home colony in 1906 and I never knew this I've never heard of this before I mean I knew of Moses Fleetwood Walker but I didn't know I didn't know that after he had been expelled from the major leagues you know he had determined that the only way to survive was to leave he became a Garveyite he was like we need to we need to repatriate we need to go we do need to go back to Africa this doesn't work this can't work it's not going to work he never left but he he identified that this was doomed and I saw and and that was the whole you know when I started you know really started to tie all these things together you realize that all of this it's actually in some ways it's really part of the Heritage it's this continuum it's you know that maybe the Heritage should have actually begun with Moses Fleetwood Walker and so you start to feel that um that this has been the question all along can you um can can you be part of this while at the same time knowing that you're in full critique of it and that is when you talk about easy enemies that leads me immediately or not having easy enemies that leads me immediately into branch Ricky and here's here's a guy who whose integration story has been treated and positioned as the only integration story you know branch Ricky's version of how it all went down has been the accepted version for 80 years and there is no discussion of his anti you know this is anti-communism but the fact that he's an anti-new dealer really he's a he's a a right-wing conservative who is has an obsession with Paul Robeson in this very strange sort of paternalistic way as well that Robeson had an opportunity that that that if if if America hadn't been so uh set in its racism that maybe Robeson wouldn't have turned to the Soviet Union it's a really fascinating it's one of the arguments that I make in it is that from a political expansion from a political voice trying to expand his own political voice Ricky had been looking for his Robeson all along and in it and I think he was looking for Jackie Robinson you know you're not going to be able to to turn Robeson you're not going to be able to he was not malleable but Jackie was. And so you saw Jackie's politics obviously culminating in 1949 when he testified as an extension of Branch Rickey's politics.
Speaker 3I got to tell you, the part of the book that a situation I just did not know that set my eyelids back was the 1943 meeting of Paul Robeson with the people you call the Lords, the Major League Baseball owners. Give that to Dick Young,
Speaker 4it's not mine.
Speaker 3Oh, that's right. That's right. We'll give Dick Young that. I'll condemn him on a future episode for saying- 100% well-deserved. Well-deserved as a 10-year-old or reading that he said everybody should stand up and boo my hero, Dwight Gooden, for coming back from drug rehab. That was it for me, age 10 to now. He's on my list.
Speaker 4Goodbye, Dick. All right.
Speaker 3So the Lords, as it were, I was hoping we could talk about what we can learn from that meeting. I don't want you to have to tell the story, but they invite Robeson to address them about the question of segregation. The black press is there. It's just a hell of a scene. Could you talk about what impact, if any, Robeson's presence there had in the moment and then spun forward?
Speaker 4Well, in the moment, he's the pawn. In the moment, Paul Robeson is the most famous black person in America. Two months earlier, he integrates Broadway with Othello. And that's happening at the exact same time as the Double V campaign, where the black press is really trying to pressure white institutions to integrate, especially baseball. And so Robeson is used essentially by the Lords, by Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, as a shield against black protest. He's always positioned this moment of Robeson speaking to the baseball owners as this moment of defiance, when actually he was the one who tamped down, his presence tamped down the black vigilance, it tamped down the protest. It was a flanking move by the baseball owners to have Robeson speak, to say, well, look at our great friend, Paul Robeson. We're not racist. We have nothing against black players. And Robeson, of course, in a lot of ways, was used to say, well, look at our very moment. Hence, this is why the title is always so fluid about who's the pawn and who is being manipulated and for whose purposes. And so what history ends up doing to that meeting is it forgets it for a while, and then it returns as the integration story unfolds, as Jackie comes up and as this new wave of black players is integrated into the league. The Robeson meeting is now touted as one of the earliest signs of black protest. Robeson was the first black player to be invited by Landis to shut down protest. Because the baseball, because the black press had decided to boycott baseball. They were going to go pick it out in front of the Roosevelt Hotel.
Speaker 3And that's another part of the book. Two parts of the book are the black press and the communist press. Almost like the black press, the black press at each other's throats. But also like the chorus in a Shakespearean way. Like they're giving the comments from the sidelines that really illuminate what the central players are doing. Can you speak very generally, if you don't mind, about the black press in this period? Particularly some of these writers who, I mean, this was one of the things for me, like I was taught to revere Wendell Smith. You know, these are the people that I've known for a long time. And I've known them for a long time. The people that I looked up to and I read compilations of their writings and the black press sports page and how political and important it was. That wasn't really that nice to them. Was it a learning process for you to go through all those old archives? Huge. What did you learn in terms of your own thoughts and opinions?
Speaker 4Well, what I learned was that these guys were all stuck. There's no question that Wendell Smith and Sam Lacy and the rest of them were stuck. They were stuck. They were stuck. They were stuck. And the rest were on the right side of history in terms of trying to get the sport integrated. It's also no question that they had no power. They had no leverage. They were trying as hard as they could to create pressure. And it's really, really hard to create pressure when you have no leverage. You're just making noise. They can do and say whatever they want. And they're just trying to cajole and find ways to sort of mollify you when what you really need is power. You need something to compel the owners to integrate. And that something that compelled the owners to integrate did not come from the black press, regardless of all their pressure. It really came from a lot of the communist press pushing and really sort of threatening the legacy of Branch Rickey as the sole figure to integrate because of the Quinn Ivey. The Ives-Quinn Act that was coming. And because it was very, very clear coming out of World War II, integration was happening. It was only a matter of time. And it was really going to be a question of whether or not who was going to be on the right side of it and how fast.
Speaker 3No, that's the way to put it. I also was really struck by your use of communist party newspapers in explaining this and really talking that they were not. Not just sort of shouting people like Lester Rodney, Nat Lowe. They weren't just shouting from the sidelines for their own audience. There was real impact.
Speaker 4There's real impact. And there was also. But we don't. We can't. What's the best way to put it? It's very difficult to go back into history and realize that in Brooklyn, you had a very heavy activist Jewish population. You had a very active. Eastern European population. You had a very active electorate that was willing to elect progressives and left-wing and socialist city councilors. So this is the reason why Brooklyn, it's not just Branch Rickey going, oh, I've got a moral compass here and I'm going to see that moral compass through. He was under pressure in a way that the Yankees weren't in the Bronx, in a way that the Giants weren't in Harlem, in a way that the Cardinals weren't in St. Louis, in the way that none of the other owners were in other cities. Because of who. Of what Brooklyn, was. And so that created a pressure in of itself that this one place was extremely unique. And in fact, if you read some of the racist columns in the Washington Post back then, Westbrook Pegler, and these guys really saw New York as this other. You talk about the way we talk about immigration today and integration today and the border and all of these things. This is the way that Westbrook and Washington wrote about Philadelphia and New York, that it's this melting pot of undesirables.
Speaker 3It all sounds very familiar. It does. Quick side note that Mayor Mamdani in New York actually did better in Brooklyn than in his home base in Queens, which is just, it's that legacy.
Speaker 4It's that old legacy. And that's one of the things about the book that I really wanted to lean in on, which is, and unfortunately, one of the people who I really, really love talking. who passed away right before the book came out, a month before the book came out, a man named Victor Grossman. And Victor Grossman, who had abandoned his post as a member of the army because he had been discovered that at Harvard, he was a member of the Communist Party and had never registered, which was against the law back then. And so instead of facing any sort of punishment, imprisonment, judgment, he jumped into the denouement and swam over to Soviet-controlled East Germany, where he. Where he lived for the rest of his life.
Speaker 3Amazing. Yeah. So you spun it forward to today, and you've been really generous with your time. And I don't, I really want to ask you this, because you talked about right now in terms of how we talk about immigration and how, you know, the echo is cacophonous. Even down to the things that, I mean, to spin it to just Black politics. I mean, I kept thinking about what Trump said about Colin Kaepernick. I was thinking about what he said to Colin Kaepernick in 2016 about, you don't like it here, leave. Leave, yeah. And it's like, I was like, what is this, the Robeson test? I remember that when I, as soon as I read that, I was like, shouldn't, you know, we hear, you know, because my people built this country, and I'm not going to let any fascist-minded people tell me otherwise and push me out. I mean, it's just, the echo of that today is so strong. I mean, you've got the, I mean, they're talking loyalty oaths now. People are being called upon to snitch on them. I mean, it's just, it's just, they're calling upon their neighbors in return for housing loans. So what is the enduring lesson of your book for 2026? Well, to me, it's what has
Speaker 4passed as prologue. It's the old Shakespeare line. And I think that the reason why every time I was working on a paragraph on this book, I would say to myself, well, this feels like today, or this feels like today, because it is. It's the exact same playbook. It's not just the exact same playbook. It's the same playbook with a legacy of the same playbook. It's the exact same playbook with a legacy of the same playbook. Donald Trump learned from Roy Cohn, who was Joseph McCarthy's attorney during the McCarthy period. And so you look at the playbook, the assault on higher education, check. The assault on the arts, check. The defunding of the arts, check. The closing of the borders to predominantly non-white countries, that's the same thing as the Munt Act and the McCarran Act, the Security Act of 1950. It's the same legislation. It is exactly the same playbook. It's the same language. The enemy within, the enemy of the state, the enemy of the people. It's the same talk. And this is the thing that I try to say to people. You asked me about the legacy of Robinson's testimony against Paul Robeson. It also enabled the government to take Paul Robeson's passport to not renew a passport for him for another eight years, for nearly a decade. And how different is that than the language we hear about? The assault on citizens. We'll take your citizenship away. We'll do all of these illegal, these legal and extra legal things. It's a similar playbook. And I try to tell people when I do some of these talks, just imagine you being a Democrat, a leftist liberal scum or whatever, whatever words he uses, and you want to take a trip to Europe with your family and you're not allowed to leave. Because of your politics, that the government is not going to allow you to fly to Hawaii, even though it's an American territory, but you're not allowed to leave the contiguous 48. Paul Robeson was not even allowed to drive into Canada, which you don't need a passport to do. There was an orchestrated campaign, no different than the orchestrated campaigns right now, just far more extreme, to undermine the Constitution and to destroy individual citizens. And that is happening today, just like it happened then.
Speaker 3And then last question, I did want to end where we began. You look at an institution like the Washington Post, which for all of its problems and contradictions that exist in all mainstream media, was a kind of place for a unified truth about corruption, about power, when they would delve into those issues. If you ever saw John D. Rockefeller buy the New York Times for the purposes of destroying it and shutting it down, what does the past tell us about what Jeff Bezos just did to the Washington Post?
Speaker 4Well, it tells you this is what happens when you celebrate your victories instead of protecting them. And I think that we did not spend a lot of time protecting those victories. And I think that there's a. There's a delusion that takes place in this country that these forces are not constantly coming after you. It is literally one battle after another in terms of the thing that I learned most on this, you know, about this turn from this book, was that they've been attacking the New Deal since 1932. That every piece of. Every piece of what you're seeing now, it is the continuum of the same things that were happening then. And it made me ask a question while I was working on these chapters. It made you think about a question. Does the federal government have a responsibility to educate and to keep its citizens out of poverty? This is the gap between the two. Robeson is talking about the same. He's using the same language then as a Henry Wallace man that we use today about the 99% and the 1%. He's talking about. He's talking about universal health care the same way we're talking about it today. We're talking about the same questions and the same value systems and who gets to be American and who doesn't. It's the same fight. And when you think about these moments in history, I think we spend far too much time thinking about the fights being over. It goes back to. Both of our mentors, Harry Edwards. What does Harry always. There are no final victories. It's a continuum. It keeps going. And that's the message. And I think there's one other thing here, too, which is why the title is what it is. I mean, not just the fact that I'm a chess fan and I love to play. I'm a chess player. It was also this idea of the chessboard and communism. But it was also these people that we have elevated. Jackie Robinson. The DeBoises. The Paul Robesons. These are our kings. But yet each of them had been manipulated. They'd been manipulated and in a lot of ways seduced into believing a system that would ultimately wound them. And I think one of the things that I was really, really interested in in terms of this. Maybe it's just a romantic notion, but we didn't get a real chance to talk about it. Was this idea of the Cold War. The effect of the Cold War. The effect on this little period in time. Not only did it push back the Civil Rights Movement by a decade, but it also undermined the possibility for a true Pan-African movement. That when you look at what was happening around the world, the same independence movements in India, in Africa, are happening at the same time of the Civil Rights Movement. But because of this pressure, this Cold War pressure, this J. Edgar Hoover pressure. But because of this pressure, this J. Edgar Hoover pressure, these struggles were decoupled. That the Black Civil Rights Movement was considered a domestic thing. Same thing's happening in Africa. The same thing is happening with Kenyatta in Kenya. The same thing is happening with Lumumba. The same thing is happening in Congo. It's happening everywhere. The same thing is happening with Nehru in India. And DeBoise and Robeson knew that. But the Black establishment wanted nothing to do with it. Because they were so cowed and didn't want to be called communists. And so what do they do? They turn on Paul Robeson. And I get it. And this is what I mean about these questions, right? I mean, I'm starting to get off topic. Not off topic, but I'm getting on a roll right now. But the number of people, when I was working on this book, the number of the old Jewish progressives. And I didn't get a chance to talk about this in the book. I didn't feel like I had the chops of the time to really get the chapter that I wanted. There was a section in the book that I abandoned. And so. So many of the old Eastern European Jews told me that. Because I was asking the question, well, what happened to that anti-capitalist, labor-based activism? And they said, well, 1948 happened. I was going to say. And I was like, damn. They're like, yes, 1948 happened. And I'm like, this has to be in the book. And I just didn't feel like I was on solid enough footing to get there. There's a couple of mentions in the book. But I didn't feel like I could get there. That was the one thing. Then the other question that I had talked about in there, too, was what had happened to the Occupy anti-capitalist element of Robeson's critique of the United States? This idea that capitalism and democracy are identical. And they're not, as we're finding out today. So all of these different questions. You know, are really informed the foundation of the book. And it was the things that hit me, especially when we think about it from a black standpoint, was because of this Cold War anti-communist Red Scare piece of it, both the first Red Scare and the second, we have decoupled this, you know, the Robin, you know, the Robin Kelly, his scholarship has been decoupled. We have decoupled from the Great Migration. It's the same sentiment. Looking for a place where we get to live. Looking for, I mean, how is the idea of going to Russia any different than leaving Clarksville, you know, leaving Clarksville and going Mississippi and going to Oakland or going to Los Angeles or Detroit? It's all of the same continuum. And the international politics. So it decoupled this piece when actually the battle is the same. And the reason why that's so important is because what is the very first criticism? What is the very first attack that that is levied upon the black establishment the minute they want rights? You're the communist. Integration is communism. And so the point of this and working on this throughout each of these different chapters was it's all the same fight.
Speaker 3Wow. It's all the same fight indeed. The book is Kings and Pawns, Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America. It's it's the best nonfiction book I've read in memory. Howard Bryant, thank you so much for joining us here on the Edge of Sports podcast.
Speaker 4My pleasure. Looking forward to having the same conversation with you in just a few months.
Speaker 3yeah we'll see about that oh my i think reading you know that that is i'm reading your book and i'm like oh man can i go back to my book and up my game 10 because it's it's that good uh yo i just want to give a shout out to my man uh magic mike nacello rest in peace for everybody out there listening please stay frosty we are out of here peace you you you you you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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