Old Hollywood films made young Black viewers feel ashamed of themselves
“I remember the first time I noticed that I didn't want to see a black person in the films because of the way they were gonna show up, which was Gone with the Wind. I just remember feeling really ashamed of, like, that's what I would have been. I was going to these movies as a form of escapism. And then whenever black people showed up in the movies, they were always serving. They were always poor. They were always versions of myself that maybe I feared.”
Essie convinced Paul Robeson to quit law for acting stardom
“Paul lands a job at a law firm where he's subjected to all kinds of racism, all kinds of indignities. They hate that. So Esi is like, Paul, you know what you should do? You should quit being a lawyer and you should become a full time actor. Paul is like, what are you even talking about? She's like, no. No. No. I think you're a generational talent. I see something here. And so she stays on him for years until he does it.”
Russia's serfdom history made the USSR appealing to Black thinkers
“For centuries, Russia's labor system of choice was serfdom. Everyone always points out that it's not slavery. Peasants were just legally bound to the land they were born onto. And they had to work that land and couldn't leave or change jobs or travel or marry without the landlord's permission. Russian czars 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 esque restrictions. Black people around the world began to identify with Russian serfs.”
Essie wrote a biography that publicly dragged her cheating husband
“I would I would tell you what happened. She decides to write a biography about Paul. She names it Paul Robeson, comma, Negro. It's written in the third person to make it seem more scholarly. And on 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 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 Pauley. She calls him a massive flirt who is not cheating on her, but if he did cheat on her, he would never leave her.”
Paul Robeson was once as famous as Abraham Lincoln
“Now Paul, at this point, is so wildly famous. I saw this quote that said that he was as well known during his lifetime as Abraham Lincoln. He was an athlete, an actor, a singer. It's like he would have sung the national anthem at the beginning of the Super Bowl, played in the football game, and then performed the halftime show. He was also a lawyer and spoke a bunch of languages, including Russian, Greek, Swahili, and French.”
“But that's the thing. Right? You say we forgot. We didn't forget. We never knew. The information like, his life had been redacted. And and I think and this is the thing that I I think about all the time, is that if you can't beat me at any of the things, right, if I am objectively better at at all of the things, my my intellectual capacity, my athletic capacity, my my creative capacity, my fervor and spirit. The only thing left to to get me is is to make it so that I never existed. Right? It's to turn me into a ghost.”
Robeson may have been drugged via the CIA's MK Ultra program
“Paul is in Moscow. He's entertaining in his hotel room, and some uninvited guests arrive. Then Esi, who's back in London, gets a call telling her that Paul is in the hospital. She rushes to Paul's side and is told that at some point during or after this party, Paul went into his bathroom and slit his wrists. He says that he finds compelling evidence that the CIA and British intelligence may have conspired to administer LSD and mind control and chemical interrogation research program known as MK Ultra.”
Jordan Anderson billed his former enslaver for 32 years of unpaid wages
“I served you faithfully for thirty two years and Mandy, twenty years. At $25 a month for me, $2 a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to $11,680. Add this, the interest for the time of our wages have been kept back and deduct what you paid for our clothing and three doctor visits for me, pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. If you fail to pay us for our faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future.”
Authoritarianism arrives as small steps, not a slide
“The way history is being reshaped in this moment, it's about power. It's about how The United States is changing. I think I've read the phrase sliding towards authoritarianism countless times this year. But it's not a slide, is it? It's more like steps. Steps we the people are taking. Not just politicians, all of us. We're changing too. Taking steps so small you can miss them.”
