Words matter. These are the best Paul Robeson Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
This United States Government should go down to Mississippi and protect my people. That is what should happen.
Like any other people, like fathers, mothers, sons and daughters in every land, when the issue of peace or war has been put squarely to the American people, they have registered for peace.
You know I am an actor, and I have medals for diction.
We must join with the tens of millions all over the world who see in peace our most sacred responsibility.
Why should the Negroes ever fight against the only nations of the world where racial discrimination is prohibited, and where the people can live freely? Never! I can assure you, they will never fight against either the Soviet Union or the peoples’ democracies.
But the deep desire for peace remained with the American people.
You want to shut up every Negro who has the courage to stand up and fight for the rights of his people, for the rights of workers, and I have been on many a picket line for the steelworkers too.
At every step the vast majority have expressed horror at the idea of an aggressive war.
The Korean war has always been an unpopular war among the American people.
And, gentlemen, they have not yet done so, and it is quite clear that no Americans, no people in the world probably, are going to war with the Soviet Union.
I know that if the peace movement takes its message boldly to the Negro people a powerful force can be secured in pursuit of the greatest goal of all mankind. And the same is true of labor and the great democratic sections of our population.
I said it was my feeling that the American people would struggle for peace, and that has since been underscored by the President of these United States.
As an artist I come to sing, but as a citizen, I will always speak for peace, and no one can silence me in this.
I do not hesitate one second to state clearly and unmistakably: I belong to the American resistance movement which fights against American imperialism, just as the resistance movement fought against Hitler.
Four hundred million in India, and millions everywhere, have told you, precisely, that the colored people are not going to die for anybody: they are going to die for their independence.
