Paul Robeson Country Quotations

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!.

This is our home and this is our country. Beneath its soil lie bones of our fathers; for it some of them fought, bled, and died. Here we were born and here we will stay.

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.

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

Every artist, every scientist, must decide now where he stands. He has no alternative. There is no standing above the conflict on Olympian heights. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction, in certain countries, of the greatest of man's literary heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of racial and national superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. The struggle invades the formerly cloistered halls of our universities and other seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear.

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.