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In Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being. No color prejudice like in Mississippi, no color prejudice like in Washington. It was the first time I felt like a human being.

Paul Robeson

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Paul Robeson
Age: 77 †
Born: 1898
Born: April 9
Died: 1976
Died: January 23
Actor
American Football Player
Basketball Player
Film Actor
Lawyer
Musician
Politician
Singer
Stage Actor
Writer
Princeton
New Jersey
Paul Leroy Robeson
Humans
Washington
First
Prejudice
Time
Russia
Like
Color
Full
Felt
Firsts
Human
Mississippi

More quotes by Paul Robeson

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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.
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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.
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This United States Government should go down to Mississippi and protect my people. That is what should happen.
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If the American Negro is to have a culture of his own he will have to leave America to get it.
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I stand here struggling for the rights of my people to be full citizens in this country. They are not-in Mississippi. They are not-in Montgomery. That is why I am here today. . . . You want to shut up every colored person who wants to fight for the rights of his people!.
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I've learned that my people are not the only ones oppressed... I have sung my songs all over the world and everywhere found that some common bond makes the people of all lands take to Negro songs as their own.
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But the deep desire for peace remained with the American people.
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Whether I am or am not a Communist is irrelevant. The question is whether American citizens, regardless of their political beliefs or sympathies, may enjoy their constitutional rights.
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If the United States and the United Nations truly want peace and security let them fulfill the hopes of the common people everywhere - let them work together to accomplish on a worldwide scale, precisely the kind of democratic association of free people which characterizes the Soviet Union today.
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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.
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In fact, because of this deep desire for peace, the ruling class leaders of this land, from 1945 on, stepped up the hysteria and propaganda to drive into American minds the false notion that danger threatened them from the East.
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The Korean war has always been an unpopular war among the American people.
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With Othello, Shakespeare posed this problem of a black man in a white society in the role that he's playing. And Shakespeare gave Othello such dignity - he came not from - as he said - not from hate but from honor, from a sense of his own human dignity. And to me, to my mind, there could be no greater character played.
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I found a special eagerness among the younger, and I am sorry to say, the more intelligent Negroes, to dismiss the spiritual as something beneath their new pride in their race. It is as if they wanted to put it behind them as something to be ashamed of.
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Art is not just to show life as it is, but to show life as it should be.
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I feel closer to my country than ever. There is no longer a feeling of lonesome isolation. Instead-peace. I return without fearing prejudice that once bothered me . . . for I know that people practice cruel bigotry in their ignorance, not maliciously
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I am being tried for fighting for the right of my people, who are still second-class citizens in this United States of America.
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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.
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Freedom is a hard-bought thing and millions are in chains, but they strain toward the new day drawing near.
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My father was a slave and my people died to build this country and I am going to stay here and have a part of it just like you.
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