"Filling the Gap": Intergenerational Black Radicalism and the Popular Front Ideals of Freedomways Magazine's Early Years, (1961-1965)‪.‬

In 1965, two years after Paul Robeson returned to the United States from a five-year sojourn abroad induced by vicious red-baiting, Freedomways' managing editor Esther Cooper Jackson and associate editor Jack O'Dell helped organize a tribute for him at the Hotel Americana near Times Square in New York City. (2) Among the 2500 people who filled the hotel's Albert Hall that night was a diverse group of New York's black public figures, notably actors, musicians, artists, writers and intellectuals. Harlem's famous theatrical couple, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, were the M.C.s for the evening. They had been closely involved with Freedomways for much of its existence, generously donating their time and money and hosting numerous other events and fundraisers for the magazine; Dee would later become an editor. (3) At the tribute, Dee and Davis introduced high profile speakers such as writers James Baldwin (4) and John Oliver Killens, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) National Chair John Lewis, and Marxist historian Herbert Aptheker. (5) Progressive white folk singer Pete Seeger also gave a performance. The event's 171 sponsors were a "Who's Who" of famous black New Yorkers and included the likes of actress Diana Sands, musicians John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie and Billy Taylor, and comedian Dick Gregory. (6) Others, like John Lewis, were intensely involved in the day-to-day tasks of civil rights movement organizing. International sponsors also sent greetings to the Salute, including Jawaharlal Nehru of India, African American exiles in Ghana like Shirley Graham Du Bois and Alphaeus Hunton, and the artists and directors of the Moscow Art Theatre. (7) In short, the Freedomways tribute to Robeson included an extraordinary mixture of high profile liberal and leftist personalities given the Cold War context and the supposedly marginalized position of the guest of honour. (8) It was precisely this heterogeneity, articulated in the pages of the magazine, and featured at public events like the tribute to Robeson, that would demonstrate how prominent radical continuities could mirror the black Popular Front of previous decades and persist into this period of the African American freedom struggle.