On June 24, 1937, during a mass rally held at London’s Royal Albert Hall in support of Basque children made refugees by the Spanish Civil War, the black American singer and star of stage and screen Paul Robeson powerfully warned of the rising danger of fascism across Europe:

Every artist, every scientist, every writer 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 heritages, through the propagation of false ideas of racial and national superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear. . . .  The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery.

Robeson’s long career is itself a testament to this injunction for artists to choose a side. The son of William Drew Robeson, who in 1860 — when only fifteen years old — escaped via the Underground Railroad from enslavement in Martin Country, North Carolina, Robeson would time and again give eloquent words to the struggle for freedom against slavery.