Communist sympathies and a knife by the bedside
In Enfield’s Historic District, on Route 5, there’s an elegant, white, colonial-style house with four imposing Ionic pillars. With its wrought-iron balcony and giant lawn, it looks stately and serene.
Strange to think that for years it was under FBI surveillance and that its then-owner slept with a knife next to her pillow to fend off possible home-invading vigilantes.
From 1941 to 1953, the house was owned by Paul and Eslanda “Essie” Robeson. Paul Robeson, of course, was a celebrated AfricanAmerican actor, singer, civil rights champion and radical leftist political activist. His wife, also African American, was a journalist, author, anthropologist and lecturer. Like her husband, she was a radical leftist.
Through much of the Cold War, and especially during the McCarthy era, the Robesons were persecuted for their outspoken support of the Soviet Union and worldwide communism. They believed communism meant egalitarianism; their leftist views were born of their hatred of racism.
The Enfield house, known as “The Beeches,” was more Essie’s than her husband’s. The two had an open marriage. In response to Paul’s serial extramarital affairs, leading more than once to the brink of divorce, she made a life for herself in Enfield largely independent of his.
He visited her and the couple’s son, Paul Jr., regularly, spent some vacations there and even gave benefit concerts for the teachers’ union at Paul Jr.’s high school in town. But Paul didn’t live with them, and both he and Essie were by agreement free to pursue their own romantic interests. The Beeches was for Essie, who had a degree from Columbia University Teachers College and a portfolio of intellectual interests, an oasis in which she could do her own work without distraction.
And work she did. Using the Enfield house as her base of operations, she wrote extensively, participated in a bevy of political organizations, traveled to Africa, the Soviet Union and China, studied anthropology at the Hartford Seminary (as she had a decade earlier at the London School of Economics) and gave lectures. Her main interest was the liberation of black Africans from colonial rule, writes Barbara Ransby in her biography “Eslanda.” Essie’s anti-colonialism extended to India; she was good friends with Jawaharlal Nehru. She had other friends in high places all over the world, including Jomo Kenyatta, who became the first president of Kenya.
Her first project after moving to Enfield was writing a book, “African Journey,” about a trip to Africa she had made in 1936. While in Enfield, she also cowrote “American Argument” with Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl Buck.
She campaigned in Connecticut for Franklin Roosevelt in 1944 and the Progressive Party’s Henry Wallace in 1948. She herself ran for office twice, unsuccessfully, on the Progressive ticket, in 1948 for Connecticut’s Secretary of the State and in 1950 for the U.S. House of Representatives.
Her husband, in the meantime, was at the high point of his career, playing Othello on Broadway and on tour and giving scores of concerts. Like Essie, he was becoming ever more politically outspoken and controversial.
By the early ’40s, both Robesons were on the government’s radar because of their communist sympathies. The FBI put the Enfield house under intermittent surveillance and snooped among Essie’s neighbors, asking about her visitors and activities. They came up empty: Essie was well liked in Enfield.
The surveillance didn’t bother her much. But one incident did. When her husband tried to give a concert in Peekskill, N.Y., in 1949, right-wing groups attacked the crowd, 12 of whom were hospitalized. The rioters destroyed the stage and burnt the seats. The concert was postponed for a few days. When it ended, right-wing protests again escalated into a riot, and 150 people needed medical treatment. Robeson escaped only by lying on the back floor of a car, protected by two men covering him.
Fearing that vigilantes would come to Enfield, Essie installed an alarm system at The Beeches and slept for a time with a hunting knife by her side, writes Paul Robeson biographer Martin Bauml Duberman.
Three years later, another Robeson concert threatened riots closer to home, at Weaver High School in Hartford. It was preceded by weeks of public argument about whether Robeson should be allowed to give it. Some feared he would use the stage to spew propaganda; others objected to his mere presence in the state. Everyone worried about a repeat of the Peekskill riots.
Ultimately, the Hartford Board of Education voted to allow the concert. It took place without incident.
In 1950, the government confiscated the Robesons’ passports. With Paul unable to tour overseas, their income plummeted. Three years later, they sold the Enfield house.
Paul Robeson had never liked it. He thought it pretentious and once compared it to a Southern mansion. Essie, though, adored it. She had hit her stride there; reluctantly, she moved back to New York, where she’d lived before buying The Beeches, and carried on her battles.