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The packed 1996 Darwin funeral service for journalist James Frederick Bowditch, former fearless editor of the Centralian Advocate and the Northern Territory News, began and ended with the recorded songs of the famous American Negro human rights campaigner , Paul Robeson, regarded by the Bowditch family as containing themes that symbolised Jim's lifelong struggle for the underdog , including Aborigines .
Robeson passed through Darwin in 1960 on his way to Sydney, spent several hours in the city at the airport and it is not known if Bowditch met him . However Robeson spoke to union activists Mr and Mrs Des Robinson .
The NT News announced a committee had been formed to try and get Robeson to perform in Darwin on his way back to America. In Sydney, Robeson was met at the airport by Faith Bandler , a longtime campaigner for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, who died this month at the age of 96 . She showed him a film of life on a mission station and Robeson was shocked and angered . He promised to come back to Australia and help in the struggle for racial equality, but failed to do so, dieing in 1976.
While in Sydney he sang to workers on the Opera House building site and is shown above, a towering figure, back to camera . Comments he made about the plight of Australian Aborigines were run in the NT News.
In the past week this blog secured a number of Paul Robeson items ranging from the 1937 sheet music for the film King Solomon's Mines in which he starred ; an LP containing his famous rendition of Ol' Man River and other greats such as Ma Curly Headed Baby, Shenandoah, My Old Kentucky Home ; two collections of spirituals on 45s.
The information on the back of the records , sold in Australia , indicate differing attitudes to Robeson . After stating that Robeson had received a good education , entered university, studied law , one states he became keenly aware of the "colour situation" in the United States..."He became a fervent champion of Negro rights , but misguidedly went too far in his political associations." (This , in part , may be a reference to his visit to Russia seeking a united humanity, resulted in him being branded a Communist . Speaking out about racism and fascism, he was targeted by the FBI and his passport to travel was revoked by the US government in 1950 ; his records were also taken from shop shelves there .)
Continuing, it said Robeson's politics" do not concern us here" -the fact remains he had become one of the most remarkable basses of his time . After giving up law in his early twenties , he became an actor and Eugene O'Neill , the foremost American playwright, gave him the leading role in All God's Chillun Got Wings (1924).
A prominent singer of Negro spirituals, he appeared in Porgy and Bess and Show Boat. He wowed audiences in London and New York as Othello and became a film star , King Solomon's Mines one of a number .
On the sleeve of another record, Alexis Korner , British musician and broadcaster, describes Robeson as one of our greatest and most courageous humanists. "He has , without respite , fought for the rights of his people ; often at considerable cost. Most people will feel that he has been right to do so, to fight for the proper acceptance of the Negro in society. But Robeson does not restrict his fight to the acceptance of his own race alone, he fights for the complete integration of all races in one world-wide community."
During WWll , author Jean Devanny spent time in Cairns and associated with American troops, including Negroes. According to a document in the Devanny papers held in the Special Collections section of the Eddie Koiki Mabo Library , James Cook University , Townsville , when Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt , wife of the American president , visited Cairns , Devanny openly heard white Americans "express positive hatred " for Mrs Roosevelt for her insistence that Negroes were fellow humans ; now known as Afro-Americans .
Australia has just marked the 50th anniversary of the Sydney University Student Action for Aborigines freedom drive against racism in a bus through NSW, led by Charles Perkins and Gary Williams, inspired by the American freedom rides against segregation in the early 1960s .
FAITH BANDLER STATE FUNERAL
Her coffin was carried from the church to Paul Robeson singing Going Home .
FAITH BANDLER STATE FUNERAL
Her coffin was carried from the church to Paul Robeson singing Going Home .
