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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.

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
World
Learned
Sung
People
Land
Lands
Common
Negro
Song
Bond
Makes
Oppressed
Found
Everywhere
Music
Songs
Take
Ones

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The faces and the tactics of the leaders may change every four years, or two, or one, but the people go on forever.
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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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The talents of an artist, small or great, are God-given. They've nothing to do with the private person they're nothing to be proud of. They're just a sacred trust... Having been given, I must give. Man shall not live by bread alone, and what the farmer does I must do. I must feed the people - with my songs.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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The talents of an artist, small or large, are God-given... They are a sacred trust.
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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.
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But the deep desire for peace remained with the American people.
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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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Could I say that the reason that I am here today, you know, from the mouth of the State Department itself, is: I should not be allowed to travel because I have struggled for years for the independence of the colonial peoples of Africa.
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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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Artists are the radical voice of civilization.
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You know I am an actor, and I have medals for diction.
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Sometimes great injustices may be inflicted on the minority when the majority is in the pursuit of a great and just cause.
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Through the years I have received my share of recognition for efforts in the fields of sports, the arts, the struggle for full citizenship for the Negro people, labor's rights and the fight for peace.
Paul Robeson