Paul Robeson: ‘Unity for Peace’ — Speech at Chicago Peace Congress, 1951

We are republishing Paul Robeson’s speech at the American People’s Congress and Exposition for Peace, held in Chicago in June 1951. Between 5,000 and 7,000 people attended the Congress, traveling from all parts of the United States at a time when a ceasefire had just been announced in the Korean War. Among the featured speakers were Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Du Bois. On May 25, 2023, the people of Chicago will honor the legacy of Paul Robeson and his tireless fight for peace and justice with an event organized by the Saturday Free School for Philosophy & Black Liberation at the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center. RSVP for the event here.

We are here for action, for the business of winning the peace. So I will take but a few moments.

The hope of the world has been alerted to the opportunity for peace afforded by the proposal for a cease-fire in Korea coming from Jacob Malik, U.S.S.R. representative to the United Nations. This hope also stirred in our hearts with the introduction of the Johnson Resolution in the U.S. Senate, which recognized the futility of continuing the carnage of the past year and proposed to do the only sensible thing about it—stop fighting and start making peace.

There is no doubt in my mind but that it is possible to find ways of agreement between nations of different economic and social systems. The peoples of the world clearly want this agreement. It rests with us here in the United States to do our share, to give the final popular push which will let our government know that the people of this great country, in their vast majority, also want peace in the world—not destruction.

We have come from all over America, representing various views, differing views of all kinds, flowing from the great diversities in our American life. But, however varied our backgrounds, we are united in the task of working out common grounds for action—action for peace, plenty, co-operation and friendship.

It is not only important, it is absolutely essential, that if we are to achieve our ends we must put aside everything which tends to divide the ranks of the peace crusaders, and accentuate the common thirst for peace—no more war—which is the universal urge in our hearts and minds.

We may not see eye to eye on all the problems of this troubled world, but we know that unless we unite in a single-minded determination to win the peace, we may soon have no world in which to exercise our differences.

As for me, I see war as the major evil of our time. It is a monster which solves no problems and aggravates all. The present conflict and its danger of expansion have placed the burden of mounting armaments on the backs of the working masses of our land, have accentuated the obvious and cancerous disparity between the ill-gained profits of the wealthy few and the meagre subsistence of the multitude of producers—farmers and workers. Labor, confronted by spreading lay-offs in auto, railroad and other industries, finds that not only is there no bonanza in war but that the guns-instead-of-butter program results in lowering, not raising, standards of living. And as a labor leader warned the other day, the hopped-up war economy is hastening this nation through the preventable cycle of boom-and-bust!

In addition, our civil liberties are one of the main casualties of the war, as is already clearly evident. The First Amendment today lies temporarily gutted as a result of the validation of the Smith Act and the jailing of the Communist dissenters from American foreign policy. No other dissenter, whatever his politics, can feel safe in the exercise of the historic American right to criticize and complain so long as the Smith Act stands on the statute books and the Supreme Court decision remains unreversed.

From all parts of the land there is clear evidence that the people will respond to this challenge in the true tradition of American liberty. The heartening opinions rendered by Justices Black and Douglas; the protests voiced by many newspapers, Negro and white; the paid advertisement opposing the decision signed by Roger Baldwin, Stringfellow Barr, Zechariah Chafee and others; the formal dissent of the American Civil Liberties Union and other organizations all reflect the growing and healthy alarm among the most representative circles of the American people.

In my thinking this is a peace question, for the inevitable conclusion of these persecutions, should they be allowed to continue, will be the silencing not only of the Communists but indeed of all Americans who subscribe to the principles of the New Deal and the Roosevelt grand design for peace through friendship with the socialist nations.

Just as in Europe, on the eve of World War II, we see today in America the persecution of political dissenters coupled with mounting terror against minority groups. In Europe it was the Jewish people. Here it is the Negro—with foreign language groups, the Jewish people, Mexican-Americans and other minorities numbered also among the victims.

This, too, is the price we pay for the war drive, for Operation Killer against the long-suffering peoples of Asia who are determined to be free at whatever the cost.

And as with the billion people of Asia, so with the hundreds of millions more in Africa, the West Indies and our own Americas—including the subject millions of our own colonial Southland.

The fight for peace—resistance against the exploiters and oppressors of mankind who want war to further their greedy ends—the fight for peace is today the center of all these struggles, of all the aspirations of working people, artists, intellectuals the world over who form the world movement for peace.

We here in America have the central responsibility to build, as the peoples of Europe and Asia have built, a powerful movement representative of every section of our country, which will develop from the cease-fire in Korea into a genuine and lasting peace—and freedom—for all mankind.

These are some of the reasons I am for peace, reasons which grow out of my life, my travels, my experiences with many people in many lands. They may not be—all of them—your reasons, and you undoubtedly are stimulated by experiences I have not shared. But, for whatever reasons, whatever our background, we are united here, colored and white, worker, farmer, professional and businessman, youth, men and women, in the sacred search for enduring peace.