Paul Robeson research paper for African American Studies course: AASP 201 at UMUC

Race and Politics in Concert: Paul Robeson and William Warfield in Panama, 1947–1953

Katherine Zien

The Global South, Volume 6, Number 2, Fall 2013, pp. 107-129 (Article)

Published by Indiana University Press

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Race and Politics in Concert: Paul Robeson and William Warfield in

Panama, 1947–1953

Katherine Zien

ABSTRACT

In 1947, African American baritone Paul Robeson traveled to Pan- ama to give several concerts on behalf of a local West Indian Panama- nian labor union. Six years later, African American baritone William Warield gave a series of concerts in Panama to mark the iftieth an- niversary of the nation’s independence from Colombia. his article compares the production histories of the two tours, noting similari- ties and divergences, to illuminate their respective engagements with questions of labor rights, racial identity, and cultural diplomacy dur- ing the transnational Cold War.

Keywords: Panama Canal, Cold War, civil rights, labor history, Afri- can diaspora

While West Indian migrants had circulated throughout Central America and the Caribbean since the 1820s, Panama Canal construction (1904–1914) stim- ulated a major upsurge in regional labor migration.1 Jason Colby notes that “between 1850 and 1914, some 300,000 West Indians traveled to the Central American rimlands, providing critical labor to foreign enterprises, above all United Fruit and the French and American canal projects” (7). After the Pan- ama Canal’s completion in 1914, many West Indians settled in Panama with their families. By 1940, the West Indian-descended community reached 100,000, approximately one-sixth of Panama’s total population (Connif 106; U.S. Census Bureau 38). For nonwhite Panama Canal workers in the U.S.- administered Panama Canal Zone, Jim Crow segregation and housing short- ages reigned. Panama was little better; those of West Indian descent who worked and lived outside the Canal Zone often encountered racism, xenopho- bia, and social exclusion. To challenge Panamanian prejudice against their community, West Indian Panamanian leaders utilized cultural, social, and

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political resources. In what follows, I examine one method of political and social activism: the production of large-scale performance events by West In- dian Panamanian promoters at midcentury and thereafter. By organizing and promoting African diasporic artists’ performances in Panama, these groups sought to impress upon Panamanian society the positive contributions of West Indian migrants and their Panama-born descendants.

In the early to mid-twentieth century, Panama was a hub for traveling per- formers. Two organizing entities took advantage of the constant performance traic on the isthmus, sponsoring events that proved crucial sites for the trans- mission of social, cultural, and racial ideologies. In 1947, West Indian Panama- nian Union Local 713, in collaboration with labor unions and Pan-Africanist associations in the United States and Panama, sponsored the Panamanian tour of African American baritone Paul Robeson. Six years later, pivotal West Indian Panamanian political activist, scholar, editor of the West Indian newspaper he Panama Tribune, and concert impresario George W. Westerman organized Af- rican American baritone William Warield’s concerts in Panama. I juxtapose accounts of these two performance events to examine the concerts’ distinct methods of relecting and shaping representations of racial identity and political organizing that came about through transnational exchanges during the Cold War. While Robeson and Warield were not the only artists to perform in Pan- ama, a comparison of the two baritones’ concerts proves intriguing because they performed repertoires as striking for their similarities as for their divergences. Taken together, these concerts contributed to the consolidation of idealized rep- resentations of black cosmopolitanism, which West Indian Panamanians sought to refract onto their community in Panama and the Canal Zone so as to legiti- mize blackness within the Panamanian public sphere.2

My comparative analysis of Robeson’s and Warield’s concerts in Panama also reveals the implications of black celebrities’ international mobility after World War II. Iconic celebrities and performing envoys of U.S. culture, Robe- son and Warield mediated West Indian Panamanian interpretations of domi- nant societal norms. he two baritones embodied acculturated and worldly black masculinity, representing Panama’s West Indian descendants, by proxy, as valuable and actively contributing citizens. Channeling raced, classed, and gendered renderings of black identity through the prismatic igures of African American performing artists, West Indian Panamanian community organizers constructed new frameworks for black cosmopolitanism in Panama. Scripting blackness according to the models of respectability and uplift provided by Robeson and Warield, concert organizers Local 713 and George Westerman airmed both the transnational ties of West Indian Panamanians to the U.S. civil rights movement, and their contributive value as citizens of Panama.3

hese representations of social inclusion came at a time when the West In- dian Panamanian community was under siege. he xenophobic 1941 constitution

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of President Arnulfo Arias had threatened to deny Panamanian citizenship to individuals with foreign-born parents (Connif 98–103). Although the Arnulfo Arias constitution was abrogated in 1944, West Indian Panamanians were not granted full sufrage until 1952(Quinter). In light of West Indian Panamanians’ struggle for rights and recognition in Panama, the concerts of Robeson and Warield proved important sites for the coalescence of diverse audiences. hese audiences paid tribute to the baritones whilst implicitly or explicitly acknowl- edging West Indian Panamanian eforts to organize, publicize, and attend the unsegregated performance events.

Yet, whereas William Warield’s concert relected George Westerman’s goal of promoting artists whose individualized talents efected change in race relations, Paul Robeson’s concert was framed as a site for collective transfor- mation. Archival evidence indicates that Westerman, an avid fan of Robeson’s artistry, played no direct role in Robeson’s concert – a surprising detail given Westerman’s repeated attempts to engage Robeson in Panama only two years prior (Zien 123). he relationships that unfolded among Westerman, Robe- son, and Warield reveal the widening chasm between liberalism’s individual- ist emphasis and the radical collectivism that would characterize international manifestations of the Cold War.

TRAVELING BLACK PERFORMERS IN PANAMA

AND TRANSNATIONAL COLD WAR CIVIL RIGHTS

Westerman’s ambivalent support for Robeson indicates the tightrope many Af- rican diasporic public igures were forced to walk during the Cold War period. At midcentury, African American celebrities and leaders, including baseball player Jackie Robinson, performing artist Josephine Baker, and NAACP presi- dent Walter White, were pressed to delineate their political positionalities in relation to international specters of Communism (see Dudziak). As Tony Pe- rucci observes, “[m]adness, Communism, homosexuality, theatricality, and blackness and their articulation became key elements in a semiotics of disloy- alty” at this time (20). Such a climate negatively afected the lives, work, and mobility of African American artists, activists, and intellectuals, whose posi- tions in U.S. society were already compromised by their political and social marginalization. Visible and mobile African American celebrities were scruti- nized by a public gaze that applied strict parameters to their words and actions while profering adulation and the promise of economic gain. Select people of color were elevated as icons of “the race,” their movements mapped onto the pulse of national and international race relations. Some, like Robeson, wel- comed the attention, while others, like Marian Anderson, served as reluctant social symbols (Eidsheim 660; see also Batiste 229–254; Cripps 350–389). hose who served as social symbols felt their identities constricted, as the

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postwar climate’s “promise of integration” regimented the ideological and geo- graphical mobility of black artists, conditioning what Samuel Floyd labels a “retreat into a conformative mode that would last until the 1960s” (160–161).

While blackness proved polemical in the United States, the services of black entertainers were considered important components of the U.S. global campaign to eradicate Communism. Many scholars of the transnational Cold War note the entwinement of U.S. domestic race relations and anti-Commu- nism.4 In the age of “jazz diplomacy,” black entertainers functioned as cultural ambassadors, negotiating the dualities of their paradoxical status as disenfran- chised entities within the United States and beloved international cultural icons (Davenport; Von Eschen). African American entertainers promulgated U.S. cultural mores and anti-Communism abroad, often for U.S. government campaigns. Between 1954 and 1968, Lisa Davenport notes, “the cultural ex- pression of one of the nation’s most oppressed minorities came to symbolize the cultural superiority of American democracy” (5). he careers and personae of Robeson and Warield exemplify black celebrities’ tenuous position, expos- ing the fault lines of transnational black politics at midcentury. Between Robeson’s and Warield’s tours to Panama, shifting political and social condi- tions in the United States and Latin America produced new goals for traveling black entertainers and changing representations of international racial politics. While performing a similar repertoire in Panama, the cultural politics that shored up Robeson and Warield’s performances difered greatly.

Given global developments in antiracist and anticolonial politics, Pana- ma’s geopolitical proximity to both Cuba and the Canal Zone made the nation a critical juncture for manifestations of Cold War racial and political tensions. In the post-World War II climate of international decolonization, anti-Com- munism, and U.S.-driven development, “analysts began to speak of a bipolar world,” comprising the “First World” (i.e., capitalist nations allied with the United States) and the “Second World” (i.e., socialist nations allied with the Soviet Union) (Painter 5; Escobar). International decolonization and revolu- tionary nationalism laid the groundwork for the midcentury consolidation of the “hird World” from a loose conglomeration of newly independent nations in Asia and Africa (De Laet 60). In Latin America and the Caribbean, U.S. political and economic hegemony confronted the 1959 Cuban revolution to produce many “hot” sites, as the United States supported local allies who sup- pressed those labeled “Communist.” Rightly viewing the isthmus as a hub for both traveling transnational performing artists and ideological inluences, civil rights activists in Panama were heartened by the international presence of African American entertainers. Simultaneously constrained by anti-Commu- nist paranoia and inspired by African American civil rights discourses, West Indian Panamanians intervened in processes of Cold War cultural diplomacy, race relations, and labor rights, incorporating performance into their eforts to

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educate and entertain audiences. Concert promotion ofered a means of orga- nizing repertoires and networks around racial politics, U.S.-Panama diplo- matic ties, and (trans)national representations of citizenship and belonging.

POLITICAL VALENCES OF PAUL ROBESON’S 1947 TOUR TO PANAMA

African American performing artist, scholar, and activist Paul Robeson ini- tially trained to be a lawyer. In the 1920s, his legal career stymied by racism, Robeson changed tack and rose to prominence as a domestic and international ilm, theatre, and concert artist (Bourne). By the mid-1930s, he had become politicized and abandoned commercial activities, dedicating himself to per- forming and protesting globally on behalf of socially, racially, and economi- cally marginalized groups. In 1937, he famously declared: “Every artist, every scientist, must decide NOW where he stands . . . he artist must take sides. He must elect to ight for freedom or slavery” (quoted in Foner 118–119). Hazel Carby casts light on Robeson’s stance, noting:

In taking this stand Robeson . . . acted in deiance of all cultural aesthet- ics that denied or disguised their political implications. His heroic strug- gle in the cause of peace and freedom and his unwavering commitment

to an internationalist politics of social transformation eventually placed

Robeson uncompromisingly in opposition to the national discourse of

race, nation, and manhood in the United States (83).

Robeson was persecuted by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, inter- rogated by the House Un-American Activities Committee, subjected to media attacks, and depicted as a pariah in the United States (Duberman). Internationally, however, he remained a high-proile celebrity, his political declarations meeting with adulation from audiences around the world. Robe- son spent less time in Latin America and the Caribbean than Europe, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, but African-descended social and political groups across the Americas were inspired by his courageous exam- ple.5 While Robeson’s presence in Panama proved polarizing, as I outline below, West Indian Panamanians vocally supported him with tributes in many mainstream periodicals.

Like William Warield, Robeson performed “art music” (including songs from the classical Western canon) and Negro spirituals. Yet Robeson’s reper- tory selection and style purposefully forged musical expressions that embodied ideological linkages between U.S. black nationalism, Soviet internationalism, and the anticolonial hird World (Stephens, Black Empire 3). Kate Baldwin argues that “Robeson used ‘internationalism’ as a minority discourse to delin- eate as points of commonality the political exclusions created by slavery, segre- gation, and imperialism” (216). Carby cites reviews of Robeson that emphasize

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his earnest delivery and “universal humanism,” as well as his eforts to link disparate groups together through musical interpretation (92). Perucci further notes Robeson’s capacity for merging performance with political signiication:

In his concerts of Negro spirituals, Robeson’s voice was famous for its ability to evoke the violent sufering of bondage. he efect was much like what Frederick Douglass detailed in the act of listening to the “sor- row songs,” where “[e]very tone was a testimony against slavery” that

could transform the listener” [ . . . ] Some who heard Robeson claimed that he had a similar efect on them, since hearing him sing made them “feel a solution to the ‘negro problem.’” (2009: 36).

Robeson’s performances were viewed as treasonous during the Cold War, as if his afective intensity could infect listeners with Communist contagion. His renditions of Negro spirituals sought to rupture the “disengaged engagement” of “ethnosympathy” (Cruz 3–31). Instead of merely eliciting cultural apprecia- tion, Robeson’s concerts linked Negro spirituals structurally to international folk music to “excavat[e] a . . . politics of form in which the very desire to express a counter-narrative of racial and political oppression was part of the very struc- ture of human cultures” (Stephens, “I’m the Everybody Who’s Nobody” 172). Robeson reinvented folk music as a tradition of collective resistance, connecting disparate groups through that which he termed their “consciousness of an inner spirit,” made manifest in song (Baldwin 219–224). His ethnomusicological ru- minations applied the Russian concept of narodnost’ (folk-based nationality) to his study of Negro spirituals and other vernacular music to argue that musical production by oppressed peoples around the world possessed “common undertone(s)” anchored in shared histories of oppression (Baldwin 208). To reveal these common grounds, Robeson highlighted homologous tonal struc- tures and vernacular languages in his concerts (Stephens, “I’m the Everybody Who’s Nobody” 171–173). Robeson’s structural interpretations of multinational folk ballads embodied his audiences’ shared goals of civil rights and social jus- tice. Deploying his imposing physical presence and deep, multilingual voice to bridge the gap between the individual and the collectivity, Robeson toured widely until the U.S. Department of State seized his passport in 1950 (Perucci, Paul Robeson and the Cold War Performance Complex 16). His travel documents were revoked until 1958. Yet, his political interventions in musical interpreta- tion, which Lois Potter terms the “Robeson efect,” inspired generations of Af- rican American artists (cited in Perucci, “he Red Mask of Sanity” 19).

In 1947, Robeson traveled to Panama to give several concerts and press events. His tour to Panama was the result of collaboration among U.S. and Panamanian groups, including the Council on African Afairs, which Robeson co-founded with Pan-Africanist activist Max Yergan; the United Public Work- ers of America (UPWA), a U.S.-based labor union ailiated with the U.S.

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Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO); and the UPWA’s branch in Pan- ama, the West Indian Panamanian Local Union 713. hese groups deployed Robeson’s iconic presence to instigate dialogue in Panama and the United States around the Canal Zone’s racially segregated wage system, known collo- quially as the “gold and silver rolls” and renamed the “local rate” system in 1948 (Connif 31–35, 104–113).

Prior to their 1955 merger, U.S. labor organizations, including the CIO and the American Federation of Labor (AFL), competed for worker enrollment (Ryan). To gain leverage, the CIO styled itself as a union of civil rights, court- ing Canal Zone workers of color through the UPWA in the 1940s. While the CIO would expel the UPWA in 1950, labeling the latter a “Communist front organization,” in 1946 the UPWA appeared an ideal intermediary to link the CIO to the Panama Canal Zone, as its secretary-treasurer, Ewart Guinier, was West Indian Panamanian (Connif 115; Fraser). he UPWA called on U.S. President Harry Truman to establish a Fair Employment Practices Commis- sion (FEPC) to prosecute discriminatory employment practices in government labor (Dudziak 24–25, 88–89). Including the Panama Canal Zone under the umbrella of U.S. federal policy, the UPWA fought to extend FEPC jurisdic- tion to the Canal Zone (“Two Months’ Survey”). Delivering a petition signed by 20,000 “local rate” Canal Zone workers, the UPWA argued:

[T]he worst injustices committed on the Canal Zone are not due to

[Capitol Hill but] to the selishness and egoism of a long line of Canal supervisors  .  .  . vested with the power to make local regulations or to interpret them. [ . . . ] Obsolete-minded Americans, under the banner of the AFL, [are] determined to hold together the standards that made for

them a paradise out of the Canal Zone at the expense of the vast majority

of workers in the area (“Paul Robeson hrills Panamanians”). In 1948, Guinier and Robeson, along with UPWA secretaries homas Rich- ardson and Abram Flaxer and scholar-activist W.E.B. Du Bois, launched the Citizen’s Committee to End Silver-Gold Jim Crow in Panama (Guinier, Public Record). he committee’s publications stated that “the Jim Crow ‘silver-gold’ system on the Panama Canal Zone . . . discriminate[s] against large numbers of West Indian Negroes, Panamanians, Indians etc., who are employees of the United States government” (“Anti-Discrimination Comm.”) Ten months prior to Robeson’s tour, the UPWA’s ailiate in Panama, Local 713, was consoli- dated from the merger of three unions (Connif 112–114). Comprising roughly 17,000 workers (most of West Indian descent), Local 713 was the irst non- white labor union permitted in the Canal Zone since 1920 (“Paul Robeson hrills Panamanians”; Burnett).6 his permission did not ease restrictions, however; UPWA representatives Joseph Sachs and Max Brodsky were impris- oned and deported from Panama by order of the U.S. District Attorney, and in

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1949, other organizers were denied travel visas to Panama (Ickes). Sachs re- ceived a nine-month sentence in the Canal Zone penitentiary on “a practically unheard of charge of criminal libel” (United Public Workers of America).

Robeson left the United States for Panama on May 24, 1947, not long be- fore Panama’s crackdown on Local 713 and UPWA. His departure was feted by the United Sons of the Canal Zone, an Afro-Panamanian organization in New York, at the home of Cyril Marquez, a “Negro West Indian physician [who] has acted as host to various politicians and labor leaders from [the] West Indies, [including] Norman W. Manley, leader of Peoples Nationalist Party Jamaica” (United States 17). Robeson traveled to Colón, where he performed on May 27 at the Colón Arena before giving concerts in Panama City’s National Stadium on May 28 and returning to perform at the same venue in Colón on May 31 (Richardson to Yergan).7 Accompanied by pianist Lawrence Brown, Robeson sang before an opening-night audience of 10,000 (“Canal Oicials Conspicuous by Absence . . . ”). His concert program’s irst section consisted of songs in Old French, Italian, English, and German, while the second comprised classical pieces by Mendelssohn and Mussorgsky. In the third and inal portion, Robeson interpreted “Negro folksongs” (i.e., spirituals) arranged by H.T. Burleigh and Brown. He culminated his performance with an excerpt from Othello. Although Robeson’s concert program largely replicated the repertoire of the U.S. domestic concert tour he had completed just prior to his performances in Panama, he added a segment honoring local musicians, inviting Canal Zone violinist Carlos Grant to play during the second intermission. he Panama American reported: “he expected ‘propaganda’ which was to come with Robeson’s appearance under CIO sponsorship was included but not by speech-making. Most popular with the audience were Robeson’s encores, including ‘Water Boy,’ ‘Deep River,’ ‘he House I Live In,’ ‘Scandalize My Name,’ and ‘Let My People Go,’ which communicated his plea for peace and equality of human rights through the me- dium of the Negro spiritual” (“Canal Zone Oicials”).

Another highlight of Robeson’s concerts was the song “Ol’ Man River” from the musical theatre production Show Boat. Show Boat premiered on Lon- don stages in 1928 with Robeson in the role of Joe, a role Robeson reprised in the 1936 ilm version.8 With music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Ham- merstein II, Show Boat treated themes of interracial love, venturing into con- troversial terrain for musical theatre at the time. Despite the ilm’s thematic engagement with U.S. racism, Robeson found its representations of blackness demeaning. After becoming politicized, he transformed the tone (both liter- ally and iguratively) of “Ol’ Man River,” reclaiming the song by changing the lyrics (Warield). Robeson’s changes reversed the original song’s disempower- ing message, which advocated patience and portrayed African Americans’ passivity in the face of white supremacy and social injustice. His new lyrics made the song an anthem of black resistance and the global struggles of poor

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and oppressed peoples. he revised lyrics became irrevocably aligned with Robeson’s artist-activist persona. Portions Robeson changed include the fol- lowing lines (emphasis added):

• From “here’s an old man called the Mississippi,/hat’s the old man that I’d like to be/What does he care if the world’s got troubles/What does he care if the world ain’t free,” to “here’s an old man called the Mississippi/hat’s the old man I don’t want to be . . . ”

• From “get a little drunk and you lands in jail” to “show a little grit and you lands in jail”

• From “I get weary and sick of tryin’, I’m tired of livin’ and scared of dyin’” to “But I keeps laughin’ instead of cryin,’ I must keep ightin’ until I’m dyin’ . . . ” (Bourne; Robeson 2007).

he exact date of Robeson’s modiication of the lyrics is not known; he and other artists made successive alterations to the song over decades. It is proba- ble, however, that the version of “Ol’ Man River” sung by Robeson in Panama in 1947 contained at least some of the changes.

Newspaper accounts demonstrate Panamanian audiences’ awareness of the signiicance of “Ol’ Man River” to Robeson’s political transformation. During his irst concert in Panama, halfway through Mussorgsky’s “After the Battle” audience members loudly interrupted the song to shout requests for “Ol’ Man River,” which Robeson obliged by performing the song twice, to “thunderous applause” (“Canal Oicials Conspicuous . . . ”). For audiences, the song may have struck several chords. First, Robeson’s lyrical intervention signaled the empowerment of his social justice campaign in its inversion of pejorative repre- sentations. Second, the song’s riverine content and its narrator’s status as a dockworker may have resonated with West Indian Panamanian employees of the Panama Canal, who labored in the interstices between water and land. Like the Afro-Brazilian dockworkers and stevedores described by Carole Boyce Da- vies, West Indians’ proximity to the Panama Canal’s transnational traic placed them in contact with many cultural groups, which acted as conduits of infor- mation on international political and labor trends (Boyce Davies 49–55). Al- though Panamanian audiences were previously aware of the song’s importance, Robeson’s visit likely reinforced its centrality to local civil rights discourses in Panama.

Robeson refused to perform in the Canal Zone, stating, “I would not have [sung] on the Canal Zone to the white people there, no matter what they of- fered. I never have [sic] and never will sing as long as I live in places where my people are segregated in the audience” (“Robeson Sees ‘One Cause’ in World Struggle of All Peoples against Economic and Class Exploitation”). He did enter the Canal Zone to visit sites of West Indian Panamanian activity, how- ever. His visits focused on Panama’s northern terminus, expressing solidarity

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with the inhabitants of Colón.9 On May 28, Robeson gave an interview at Colón’s Atlántico Radio Station; on June 2, he addressed West Indian Pana- manian students at Hector Connor’s Dunbar School in Colón, singing “three of his favorite numbers” (Connor, “Facing Issues,” June 8, 1947; “Robeson Vis- its Schools on Atlantic Side”). He also sang for several hundred spectators at the Silver City School (a Canal Zone “silver-roll” school) and the West Indian Panamanian Christ Church School in Colón. hroughout, he was accompa- nied by Panama Tribune staf writers and local leaders. At the end of these ap- pearances, Robeson was honored with a reception at the home of Dr. Reginaldo Ford in New Cristóbal, an Atlantic-side “silver” Canal Zone township. On his departure from Panama on June 3, the People’s Voice reported: “He had en- deared himself to his mass of listeners. he path leading to the La Boca School [was] lined with school children, all of whom cheered lustily as he walked through the aisle” (“Paul Robeson hrills Panamanians”). In harnessing its anti-segregation campaign to Paul Robeson’s political aims, Panama’s Local 713 linked the Canal Zone’s unjust labor practices to the plights of colonial subjects and people of color worldwide.

he Canal Zone fought back by boycotting Robeson’s performances, with the U.S. ambassador, General F.T. Hines, General McSherry, Governor New- comer, “and many other leading dignitaries of the Army, Navy, and the Pan- ama Canal” reneging on their promises to attend (Cheresh to Richardson). Registering “warnings on Paul,” the People’s Voice reported that “no time was lost by anti-labor factions in hinting that Robeson has been dubbed a Com- munist and that as such he could be the most dangerous man on earth against the welfare of the worker” (“Paul Robeson hrills Panamanians”). Whereas the U.S. government in the Canal Zone boycotted Paul Robeson’s concerts, the Panamanian presidential cabinet turned out in full force, welcoming Robeson with cordial handshakes and escorting him on a municipal tour (“Diez mil personas oyeron a Paul Robeson anoche;” Hector Connor, “Facing Issues” June 15, 1947). Panamanian President Enrique Jiménez supported Local 713 by opening the capacious Olympic Stadium to Robeson’s concerts (Cheresh to Richardson). Jiménez’s cabinet in Panama City and Governor Navas in Colón were also present at Robeson’s concerts (Connif 106). he alliance between the Panamanian government and Local 713 was publicized in a UPWA lealet that included a photograph of President Jiménez “reviewing” Local 713’s Labor Day procession in Panama (United Public Workers of America). Because the major- ity of “local rate” Panama Canal workers were Panamanian citizens by the 1940s, the Panamanian government desired to ailiate with West Indian Pan- amanian union members in order to utilize these workers as bargaining chips in formal negotiations with the Canal Zone and the Department of War. At the time of Robeson’s visit, Panama and the United States were embroiled in a controversy over the extension of U.S. defense sites into Panamanian territory,

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which fostered diplomatic tension that lasted until 1949 (“R.P. Calm Again – So Hazel Scott Will Play Here;” Downes 229–248). Nevertheless, the Pana- manian government’s show of support for West Indian Panamanians did not substantively ameliorate the efects of the coming 1955 Remón-Eisenhower Treaty. he latter treaty made West Indian descendants’ Panamanian citizen- ship something of a liability, as they were burdened with the brunt of U.S.- enforced austerity measures in the Panama Canal Zone (Connif 112–119). Whereas Local 713 sought to leverage West Indians’ Panamanian citizenship status in the treaty negotiations, the Panamanian government represented its solidarity with West Indian Panamanians during Robeson’s concert, but did not follow through materially for several years.

Despite warnings by “a few of [he Panama Tribune’s] white acquain- tances . . . that [the Tribune’s] association with Robeson could possibly taint our reputation and our usefulness . . . in the ield of democratic action,” West Indian Panamanian educator and journalist Hector Connor reported that Robeson’s concerts were attended by “hundreds of North American individu- als on both sides of the isthmus who were broad-minded enough to give evi- dence of the true American way by attending the Robeson concerts and making themselves quite at home among us” (“Facing Issues” June 8 and 15, 1947). hese white U.S. citizens deied the Canal Zone’s orders to boycott Robeson’s concerts in Panama.

Connor noted that news of Robeson’s visit to Panama initially met with “mixed feelings of joy and of suspicion” on account of the singer’s “Commu- nist” views. Now that Panamanian audiences had “seen him in the lesh and heard his natural voice, in song, in addresses, in close personal conversation,” Connor asked, “how do we . . . feel about him?” He responded: “Robeson is more, vastly more, than we have ever thought of him. We . . . add to all the wonderful things . . . .the fact that he is a genuine patriot of our race, an excel- lent American, and a gentleman” (“Facing Issues,” June 8, 1947). Connor felt that “the recent visit of Paul Robeson . . . has given us an excellent opportunity of looking deeply into the minds of our Panamanian and Canal Zone Ameri- can brethren. [ . . . ] Paul Robeson’s visit was a signal triumph. He has left us with greater hope in the future of our democracy” (“Facing Issues,” June 15, 1947). Despite the severity of Robeson’s “uncompromising stand for the cul- tural rights of the Negro,” Connor felt that his concerts mellowed his contro- versial politics into the democratic uniication of diverse audiences. As such, his concerts served as “wholesome vehicle[s] of happiness and of contentment which [include] all men [sic], irrespective of race, of color, of creed, or of na- tionality,” aligning Robeson with “genuine democrats” like “Franklin, Jefer- son, Bolívar, Martí, Roosevelt, Garvey, Jiménez, and [former Canal Zone Governor] Mehafey” rather than with “Old Man Joe” Stalin (“Facing Issues,” June 8, 1947).

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SOLIDARITIES ON THE ISTHMUS: PAUL ROBESON AND GEORGE WESTERMAN

West Indian Panamanian concert impresario George W. Westerman was among those who lauded Paul Robeson’s concerts in Panama. Westerman deeply admired Robeson’s amalgam of politics and performance. Archival data reveals that he had attempted to engage Robeson in Panama on multiple occasions in the mid-1940s, but was prevented by Robeson’s busy touring schedule (I.N.Y.C. to Eslanda Robeson). Despite the Tribune’s open criticism of the UPWA and Local 71, when Robeson performed in Panama, Wester- man and the staf of the Panama Tribune gave him a warm reception, publish- ing poetry, acrostics, images, readers’ letters, and a lengthy interview (“A.F.L. Investigation Reveals the Obvious”). Westerman’s own tribute to Robeson as- serted: “he whole character, personality, and public life of Paul Robeson the athlete, scholar, actor, artist and unionist constitute a unit of service and achievement” (Westerman, “A Tribute to Paul Robeson”). Hailing Robeson’s visit, Westerman declared that “Paul Robeson’s people on the Isthmus of Pan- ama need a new orientation in culture and education. hey need to be inspired by the physical touch of great Negroes whose public career [sic] stands as a beacon to the youths of all nations:”

By his visit to Panama, Mr. Robeson has called to a high plane of self-reliance and activity the youth of Panama, at the same time that he has won greater estimation for the potential ability of the dark complexioned people of these parts. Now that we have seen and heard him the memory will be precious forever. Human broth- erhood, parched and barren . . . has been watered by the . . . art- istry of this massive, cultured, American personality.

Despite this praise, Westerman did not take an active role in organizing Robe- son’s concerts – strange, given Westerman’s renown as a programmer of cul- tural events and acquaintanceship with many of the Robeson tour’s organizers. It is likely that Robeson’s ailiation with Communism (whether declared by the baritone himself or alleged by the U.S. government) inluenced Wester- man’s decision not to take part in organizing the tour. Westerman stated his opposition to the “Red hysteria which is sweeping the United States,” which had direct repercussions in Panama (Westerman to Granger). Although he publicized his anti-Communist views, we must evaluate these statements with caution, in consideration of the context of anti-Communist purges that threat- ened the lives and livelihoods of black leaders in the U.S. and abroad (Wester- man, Blocking hem at the Canal). Westerman also managed to support Robeson in other ways. While distancing himself from Local 713, he met with Robe- son and wrote of the encounter, protesting Robeson’s persecution by the U.S. government:

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Because . . . Mr. Robeson, like many liberal-minded Americans, has been speaking out fearlessly against the oppression of under-privileged peoples all over the world, and against the denial of civic rights to members of his

race in his own country . . . he has been branded as a Communist and a ‘Red.’ It is a strange sort of democracy this world is having, when men may

not freely express their beliefs under a democratic regime. We may not

agree with Mr. Robeson’s political preferences or his economic ideologies,

but we cannot deny his right to his convictions. And, we vehemently doubt

that he is using his concert tours as a veil for subversive activities. Our community is willing to pay Paul Robeson a itting tribute as a great artist, a great American, and a great Negro. Everyone knows that our commu- nity is free of all taints of Communism and that our loyalties are embed-

ded in the democratic system. We shall, therefore . . . proudly go to hear Mr. Robeson and pay him the honor due a gifted artist and one of the

greatest singers of our race (Westerman, “Editor’s Note”). Despite his anti-Communism, Westerman was deeply afected by Robeson’s concert, which arguably added to his impetus to found the concert agency Westerman Concerts two years later.

Employing the case of Westerman’s management of the tour of African American baritone William Warield as a counterpoint to Robeson’s concerts, in the following section I argue that Westerman’s absence from Robeson’s tour is indicative of the politics of Cold War civil rights. Treating the intersection of Westerman’s and Robeson’s brands of political activism, I interpret the Af- rican diasporic concert circuit as an interface where distinct cultural and po- litical agendas converged during the Cold War.

WESTERMAN CONCERTS: PERFORMANCE AS A

PLATFORM FOR BLACK REPRESENTATION

A skilled concert impresario, George Westerman was highly regarded by many international promotion agencies. Yet, his concert promotion is often overlooked amid his extensive roster of social and political achievements. Au- thor, journalist, and editor of the West Indian Panamanian newspaper he Panama Tribune, Westerman took part in political and civic networks in North and Latin America, as well as in the United Nations, where he served as Pan- ama’s ambassador from 1956 to 1960. I treat Westerman’s concert production as a distinct type of activism—one that raised public awareness through the proximity and display of black excellence, or that which I call “civil rights spectacles.” Westerman deployed the transnational mobility and visibility of African American artists to foster new conjunctures of race relations in Pan- ama and the Canal Zone after World War II.

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After coordinating cultural programming for Panama’s Isthmian Negro Youth Congress in the early 1940s, Westerman formed the promotion com- pany Westerman Concerts in 1949 (Zien 121). Between 1949 and 1955, and likely up to the 1970s, Westerman produced the Panamanian tours of profes- sional African American concert artists, including June McMechen (1949), Camilla Williams (1949), Dorothy Maynor (1950), Carol Brice (1950), Mar- ian Anderson (1951), Ellabelle Davis (1951), and William Warield (1953). Highly selective, Westerman promoted only black artists, preferring those with classical operatic or musical training. While these artists may initially appear to be less overtly political than Robeson, we must acknowledge the cultural political ramiications of their complex positionalities amid a bifur- cated racial and political landscape that left little room for alternate views. I argue that appearances by the “Westerman artists” in Panama, while provid- ing an air of depoliticized cultural ediication, efectively challenged dominant racial, gendered, social, and political conceptions of Panama’s West Indian- descended community.

Whereas Robeson exposed the political crisis besieging black political leaders from the Harlem Renaissance to the Cold War era, the “Westerman artists” were inclined toward restrained, ‘high’ repertoire, comportment and delivery, emulating the career of African American tenor Roland Hayes. Trained in the interpretation of classical music and spirituals at Fisk Univer- sity from 1905 to 1909, Hayes styled himself a classical singer. Tim Brooks argues that “of all the ields of music and art in the early 1900s, none was so thoroughly closed to black Americans as that of classical music:”

Blacks could succeed in popular music and theater. Comedy was open to them, as was, to a certain extent, poetry and literature. hey could sing their spirituals. But the classical concert stage was the exclusive province

of America’s white elite. (436). In this inhospitable climate, Hayes struggled to perform the Western classical canon, but was repeatedly told “that while blacks might work around the fringes of classical music, and put on recitals for their ‘own people’ in churches and similar venues, there was simply no place for a black artist in a major concert hall playing to a white audience. It would never happen” (Brooks 440). Yet, after his successful classical concert debut on November 15, 1917, Hayes gained celebrity, and his international concert career became a template for profes- sional black singers performing programs of ‘art song’ and Negro spirituals in the U.S. and abroad (Brooks 449). Paul Anderson notes that “Hayes . . . helped to soften the barriers of segregation and discrimination in the American con- cert music world” (62). In the 1920s, Hayes was “the most famous African America recitalist in the world” (Anderson 81–86). Hayes’s performances con- veyed a spirit of “racial uplift through elite cultural vindication” (Anderson 65).

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Performing largely outside of the United States, Hayes privileged visibil- ity for professional African American classical performers over transnational political coalition-building. His goal was to achieve proiciency in Schubert’s lieder, ‘art songs,’ and operatic arias by Mozart and Tchaikovsky, which de- manded technical and stylistic conventions of interpretation unimpeded by the improvisations of the individual performer (Eidsheim 644). Because of Hayes’s racialized objectiication by whites, his performances of the Western canon initially encountered “considerable resistance” from white audiences (Eidsheim 659). However, after proving himself a proicient exponent of the racially unmarked, universalistic “classical voice,” Hayes gained widespread acclaim. “Emboldened by the European reception of his innovative recitals” and frustrated by the failure of the United States to protect its citizens, Hayes practiced the cosmopolitan ideal of “reciprocal exchange” to elevate the cul- tural contributions of black artists to an equal footing with those of other raced and ethnic artists (Anderson 81). He performed Negro spirituals as an extension of the classical canon in the solemn interpretive style of the Fisk Jubilee Singers (Anderson 7). he presentation of spirituals in tandem with lieder and arias deined spirituals as canonical black musical heritage, airm- ing an alternative vision of modernity (Radano 21–24). Embodying the expa- triate artist, Hayes breached national borders to transcend white U.S. hegemony. While Robeson’s performances highlighted his persona as the revolutionary and exiled “New World slave,” Hayes, and Warield after him, fostered black cosmopolitanism through their manifestations of the racially unmarked classical voice (Stephens, “I’m the Everybody Who’s Nobody”).

(TRANS)NATIONALIZING BLACK RESPECTABILITY:

WILLIAM WARFIELD IN PANAMA, 1953

In November 1953, African American baritone William Warield gave two recitals in honor of Panama’s iftieth anniversary of national independence from Colombia. Sponsored by Westerman Concerts, Warield performed on November 9 at the Central heatre in Panama City and November 11 in the Abel Bravo High School auditorium in Colón (“William Warield Program Notes”). he irst concert was dedicated to Bolívar Vallarino, chief of Panama’s national police force, while the second honored Colón’s Provincial Governor José María González, Mayor José D. Bazán, and Víctor Dosman, director of Abel Bravo (Ventocilla). Warield’s concert in Panama City was followed by the national anthems of Panama and the United States, performed by Pana- ma’s police band (Westerman to Vallarino).

A concert and oratorio artist, Warield had debuted in 1950 at New York’s Town Hall, performing as Joe in the 1951 ilm Show Boat and as Porgy in the 1952 U.S. State Department-sponsored international tour of the Gershwin

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folk opera Porgy and Bess (Coleman; Columbia Artists Management). In 1953 he embarked on a Latin American and Caribbean tour, stopping in Panama. Dressed in his World War II GI uniform, Warield delivered a ive-part pro- gram in Panama City comprising works by Handel, Bach, Hugo Wolf, De- libes, Debussy, two operatic arias, Aaron Copland’s irst series of Old American Songs (replaced by Celius Dougherty’s “Five Sea Chanties” in Colón), and ive Negro spirituals composed and arranged by Nathaniel Dett, Harry Burleigh, and Hall Johnson. Following the Hayes model, Warield presented classical compositions, U.S. composers, and Negro spirituals, interpreted as “art songs” rather than as the “folk songs” championed by Robeson. Perhaps unsurpris- ingly, Warield’s technically lawless delivery did not satisfy white audiences’ and critics’ desires to hear spirituals performed as raw and “authentic” folk products (Anderson 62–63, 81). hus, the mainstream Panama Star and Her- ald noted that Warield was not “the singer who tells the story of his sufer- ings, his pains and bitterness in his songs . . . [but] if you prefer the singer who possesses an unusually rich and mellow voice and who has reached his promi- nence strictly on his worth as a singer, then Warield is your man” (Oristil, “A Diference of Opinion”). Warield was invested in reined, proicient execu- tion, whereas Robeson imbued his songs with comparatively rough-hewn “folk-based performative praxis” (Baldwin 214–215).

As noted by a reviewer, Warield’s Panama City concert “was an Isthmian triumph and for the people of Panama, the crowning cultural efort in the if- tieth anniversary celebrations since the founding of the Republic” (“Warield Wins over the Capital; Colón Next”). hat an African American artist, rather than a Panamanian, was employed to commemorate Panama’s iftieth anniver- sary of independence underscored the cultural inluence of the United States on the isthmus. Yet Warield’s presence in Panama was more complex than propa- ganda: his tour also showcased Westerman’s strategy of creating inclusive events that drew multiracial, multinational audiences from Panama and the Canal Zone to inspire “cross-viewing,” an inclusive mode of spectatorship that encouraged audience members to engage with each other while collectively ob- serving a performance (Manning xvi-xvii). Cross-viewing helped to counteract racism and include West Indian Panamanians in the public sphere.

By contracting an African American singer to honor Panamanian political leaders, Westerman reinforced the centrality of transnational black cosmopoli- tanism to cultural diplomacy. Warield had acquired renown as a “musical am- bassador,” promoting U.S. cultural production in Europe and Australia (Columbia Artists’ Management, “William Warield – Musical Ambassador”). As with many tours by the “Westerman artists,” Warield’s visit became an in- tercultural press junket focused on race relations and geopolitics. he United States Information Service (USIS) celebrated Panama’s iftieth anniversary by releasing a booklet on Panama and the Canal Zone. Warield visited the

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Panamanian newspaper El Panamá América, publisher of the booklet, and posed for press photos with a representative of the Panamanian Benevolent Women’s Society and editors Julio E. Briceño and José A. Cajar Escala (“U.S.I.S. Publica- tion Illustrates Centuries-Old Panama History”). Warield also met with all concert honorees, Panamanian Police Lieutenant Colonel Carlos A. Arose- mena, and U.S. Army Colonel Robert Scott (“American Baritone . . . ”). hese visits reinforced his cultural ambassadorship, laminating diplomatic duties onto presentational aesthetics. Framing Warield as a cultural ambassador enabled Westerman to advance his social and political goals: racial integrationism, pro- motion of U.S. political and cultural forms, anti-Communism, and support for black artists.

During Warield’s concerts in Panama, his performances of “Ol’ Man River” drew special praise. After “ive bows and four encores,” Warield obliged Panama City audiences by singing “the request number ‘Ol’ Man River.’” His interpretation established him “as an artist of the irst category in the hearts of Isthmian music lovers.” Consider this reviewer’s words:

In singing Ol’ Man River at the request of the audience, Warield may not have known it, but it was the “test” number, used as a comparison with Paul Robeson’s rendition of the tune some years ago. And he left his

auditors without the slightest doubt of his unexcelled mastery (“Warield Wins Over the Capital . . . ”).

La Estrella de Panamá reported that Warield’s performance of “Ol’ Man River” had moved his Panama City audience to “praise him with thundering and pro- longed applause” for the “classic song” (Ventocilla). Another critic stated: “[T] hen came the song they had been waiting for – Ol’ Man River. Warield re- moved [the song] from its jungled [sic] nest and gave it a coat of melody suitable for the choir loft of any great cathedral” (Oristil, “People and Echoes”). In Colón, Warield closed with two bows and the encore song “It Ain’t Necessar- ily So” from Porgy and Bess, before turning once more to “the request number” “Ol’ Man River” for his inal encore (“Hundreds Attend Warield Concert De- spite Downpour”). In several recorded interviews, Warield states his refusal to sing the racial slurs in the original lyrics, and his later performances feature Robeson’s changes (Warield). Yet, because Warield did not adopt the full set of revisions in the song’s 1951 ilm version, it is likely that his rendition of the song contained more original lyrics than had Robeson’s. Regardless of the ex- tent to which Warield adopted Robeson’s revisions in Panama, Warield’s ren- dition cited Robeson as a key referent, while simultaneously repositioning “Ol’ Man River” within distinct political, social, and cultural frameworks from those which Robeson’s visit had conditioned. While Warield’s delivery of “Ol’ Man River” may have neutralized some of the political implications of the song’s inclusion within the musical repertoire of the Panamanian public sphere,

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his performance also constituted an indirect means of paying homage to Robe- son, one that skirted polarizing Cold War discourses and promoted (trans)na- tional black cultural and social contributions. Warield’s visit opened a space in Panama for the formation of new racial and cultural identities, political coali- tions, and diplomatic methods. By highlighting Warield’s dual identity as art- ist and cultural ambassador, Westerman promoted nationalist sentiments of positive West Indian Panamanian cultural contributions in Panama.

CONCLUSION: PERFORMING POLITICAL POLARITIES

Matthew Farish notes that after the Second World War “the entire planet became an American strategic environment” (1). In order to cultivate loyalty among decolonizing states and create “First World-hird World alliance[s],” the United States disseminated its national mores as barometer of human rights and racial equality, over and against the regimes of China and the So- viet Union (Borstelmann 3). While the Cold War lattened the uneven land- scape of cultural politics, West Indian Panamanian leaders seized strategic opportunities to gain international support for the improvement of local con- ditions. However, the limitations placed on black leaders and public igures during the Cold War also greatly hindered challenges to U.S. hegemony.

At the height of his popularity, Robeson took a stand against U.S. domes- tic racism and socioeconomic inequality. His commitment to antiracist, anti- colonial social justice tested the boundaries of black mobility, drawing battle lines that threw into stark contrast the positionalities of artists and intellectu- als. Nevertheless, many black public igures continued to navigate the transna- tional concert circuit, touching down between “high” and “low,” between the New Negro movement and the “jazz diplomacy” of the 1940s and thereafter. While few dared to follow Robeson’s political path, they did not disavow him. Rather, black artists found indirect ways to acknowledge Robeson, such as performing “his” songs, like “Ol’ Man River.”

As exempliied by Warield’s tour, Westerman Concerts engineered a sem- blance of uniication between U.S. and Panamanian oicials, while Robeson’s tour exposed conlicts that would worsen in the following decade. Indeed, the 1950s and 1960s were marred by riots that galvanized Panamanian opinion against the U.S. and anticipated the Canal Zone’s decolonization in the late 1970s. Westerman responded to the Cold War’s oppressive political climate by limiting his sponsorship of black artists to those who did not challenge U.S. po- litical hegemony but rather created cosmopolitan cultural networks. Westerman Concerts sought cultural and racial uplift by disseminating narratives of the tal- ented, transcendent individual, an approach informed by integrationist models and the New Negro movement’s discourses of respectability. By contrast, Robe- son’s performances forged links between racism and socioeconomic oppression,

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engaging the transformative power of the collective. Ultimately, argues Ander- son, “the success of individual artists could go only so far toward solving larger social problems and cementing intra-racial solidarity” (144; emphasis mine). he struggle between individualism and collectivism characterized geopolitical rela- tions throughout (and arguably beyond) the Cold War (Westad 11). Robeson’s Panamanian tour exposed the limitations of Westerman’s model of national rec- onciliation through the construction of an idealized individual black persona. Yet, Warield’s and Robeson’s concerts also opened distinctly productive spaces for black political activism in Panama.

At midcentury, diplomatic and material relationships between West In- dian Panamanians and the Panamanian nation-state were changing. Local 713 had sponsored the Robeson concert to connect the Panama Canal Zone to the United States and frame “local rate” workers as Panamanian citizens (Connif 112).10 Yet the 1955 Remón-Eisenhower Treaty forced “the descen- dants of West Indians [to pay] the cost of reconciling Panamanian demands and Zone resistance to them” (Connif 111–119). hese frustrations contrib- uted to the mass exodus of West Indian Panamanians to New York. hey also rendered Westerman’s concurrent ailiation with both Panama and the United States untenable. In attempting to stimulate diplomacy, Westerman may have underestimated the fragility of U.S.-Panama relations. After the 1964 Canal Zone lag riots, tensions simmered past the point of brinksmanship, and mixed-audience social events like those orchestrated by Westerman dwindled. he late 1960s saw the rise of Panama’s military dictatorship, curbing Wester- man’s ideals of political participation, liberal democracy, and clientelist politi- cal support, in which West Indians constituted a key voting bloc. Westerman was opposed to the Torrijos regime, which closed his newspaper (Quinter). While he was not penalized to the degree that Robeson was, Westerman’s concert promotion activities appear to have ended in the mid-to-late 1950s, perhaps afected by ensuing conlicts between Panama and the United States.11

he concerts of Paul Robeson and William Warield in Panama fostered cultural, social, and political concerns intersections in performance. While Robeson drew thousands to his concerts in Panama, he also attracted contro- versy on account of his position against the grain of U.S.-impelled anti-Com- munist eforts. By engaging less polemical African American performers, George Westerman negotiated a course that allowed him to pursue his cul- tural, social, and political goals for West Indian Panamanians while avoiding the blacklist. Although not all “Westerman artists” espoused political plat- forms, audiences in Panama deployed these iconic igures for local political ends. Importantly, the Westerman artists performed on the international con- cert circuit because racism excluded them from U.S. opera houses and stable contracts. As transnational performers, they made their own cultural political spaces of black cosmopolitanism and alternative modernity. By citing each

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other in song – in performances of “Ol’ Man River” and difering interpreta- tions of Negro spirituals – Robeson and Warield situated themselves within a dynamic spectrum of African American artistry and activism. he production histories of the two tours to Panama illuminate international and local conver- gences of political, social, racial, and cultural dynamics that undergirded transnational black performance practices at midcentury.

Notes

1. Connif 16–23; Colby; Frederick; Harpelle; Newton 3–27; Opie; Putnam. 2. he term “cosmopolitanism” has an extensive, and somewhat conlictive, genealogy (see Nowicka and Rovisco 1–16). By “black cosmopolitanism,” I refer to the ways in which black subjects created transnational networks, often converging in metropolitan hubs like Paris, to exchange and craft aesthetic and political ideas and build movements across national boundaries, often due to black marginalization within national contexts. Transnational travel provided alternative modes of imagining black subjectivity and creating black citizenship (see Edwards; Gilroy). Paul Anderson discusses the cosmopolitan visions of W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke, transmuting these philosophies into the transnational singing careers of igures like Roland Hayes during and after the New Negro movement. 3. Due to U.S. cultural inluence in the Panama Canal Zone, West Indian Panamanians who worked, lived, or studied in the Zone gained perspective on race relations in the United States. herefore, West Indian Panamanian leaders such as George Westerman and Sidney Young reached out to black leaders in the United States including Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Paul Robeson, and many other prominent black cultural and intellectual igures. Jim Crow segregation in the Panama Canal Zone also proved a rallying issue for African American civil rights activists in the twentieth century, as may be seen in the

work of the United Public Workers of America (UPWA), a labor union discussed below.

4. Baldwin; Borstelmann; Dudziak; Farish; Slate. 5. Philip Foner notes that Robeson gave a concert series in Jamaica and Trinidad after his tour to Panama (190). While I infer from the Panama materials that Robeson enjoyed a following among other African-descended groups in Latin America and the Caribbean, further research must be conducted on Cold War-era civil rights movements from the perspectives of extra-U.S. black communities in the Americas.

6. Local-rate labor organizing was allowed in the Zone partly because Canal Zone Governor Joseph Mehafey was concerned that Communist Latin American labor unions would attract Zone workers if the Canal Zone Government did not agree to some form of representation (Connif 114). 7. In archival records the Colón Arena is also called the Municipal Gymnasium, and the National Stadium in Panama City is also called the Olympic Stadium. 8. Due to the U.S. ilm industry’s penetration of Panama and Canal Zone markets, both ilmic iterations of Show Boat in 1936 and 1951 likely traveled to Panama. 9. Colón has historically represented Panama’s more politically radical and West Indian-descended constituencies, as opposed to Panama City, which is considered the nation’s more racially ‘white’ banking center. 10. After the forced disbandment of Local 713 in 1950, the more moderate Local 900 took over West Indian Panamanian labor representation during the 1955 treaty negotiations (Connif 115).

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11. Perhaps as a nod to non-alignment, Westerman served on the Committee of Non-Self Governing Territories and actively supported the independence movements of Namibia, Togo, and several Caribbean nations during his tenure at the UN (Quinter).

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