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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.

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
Still
Tried
States
Citizens
Right
Second
People
Class
Fighting
United
Stills
America

More quotes by Paul Robeson

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My future depends mostly upon myself.
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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.
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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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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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I am truly happy that I am able to travel from time to time to the USSR the country I love above all. I always have been, I am now and will always be a loyal friend of the Soviet Union.
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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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We must join with the tens of millions all over the world who see in peace our most sacred responsibility.
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At every step the vast majority have expressed horror at the idea of an aggressive war.
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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 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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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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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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Vast quantities of U.S. bombers, tanks and guns have been sent against Ho Chi Minh and his freedom-fighters and now we are told that soon it will be 'advisable' to send America GI's into Indo-China in order that the tin, rubber and tungsten of Southeast Asia be kept by the free world-meaning white Imperialism.
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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.
Paul Robeson
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The Korean war has always been an unpopular war among the American people.
Paul Robeson
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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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The intolerance of the few, or the risk of it, carries the day against the wider humanity of the many.
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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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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.
Paul Robeson