The great football player, singer, actor and activist Paul Robeson was born on this day in 1898. Like legions of other Americans, he made the mistake in the 1930s of thinking that Communism had the solution to problems of inequality in the United States. He went to the Soviet Union to investigate the system and for the rest of his life paid for the trip by being made the target of relentless surveillance by the government. Dr. Chilledair (Bill Reed) posts a recollection of Robeson’s ingenious, courageous and humorous 1949 end-run around McCarthyite witch-hunters. Go here to read the piece and follow Reed’s link to a sound bite of saxophonist Buddy Collette’s eyewitness account of the event.