Americans in Paris: Artists Leaving the United States for Europe
Ira Aldridge was one of many African American artists who left America to seek opportunity in Europe.
When Ira Aldridge left the United States in 1824 for Europe, twenty years before the Civil War, he was certain that American audiences would not accept a black actor as the great tragic heroes. What he found in London is the subject of Red Velvet. Despite the resistance he faced in London, though, he never returned to the United States — and he was not alone in that choice. The same climate that convinced Aldridge he would not be permitted an artistic career also sent other African American artists across the Atlantic in later generations, including Paul Robeson and Josephine Baker.
After Aldridge, it would be another 100 years before another black actor would take on Othello on a major British stage. Paul Robeson (1898–1976) was an American athlete, singer, actor, and activist. Though he did not leave the United States for good as Aldridge did, Robeson did settle in London early in his career, finding Europe less virulently racist than the United States. It was there that he starred in Show Boat at Drury Lane and in a 1930 production of Othello in the West End, becoming the first black actor since Aldridge to do so. When he played Othello on Broadway in 1943, he was the first black actor to take on the role on a major U.S. stage, 110 years after Aldridge broke that boundary in the UK, proving correct Aldridge’s concerns about the limitations of American acceptance.
Throughout his long career, Robeson shuttled between the U.S. and Europe, consistently highlighting the racist treatment he encountered and witnessed, most pervasively in the United States. Despite finding a somewhat friendlier climate in London, it wasn’t until he visited Moscow that he said, “Here I am not a Negro but a human being for the first time in my life… I walk in full human dignity.”
Hear Robeson perform as Othello in 1959 at the Royal Shakespeare Company»
Robeson wasn’t the only singer-actor-activist to leave his home country for artistic work. Josephine Baker (1906–1975) also left America for Europe, seeking a more open atmosphere. Born in Missouri, Baker became a nightclub sensation in Paris, where she settled at the age of 19. Her singing, dancing, and acting were celebrated in Europe, but savaged by critics whenever she returned to her home shores to perform. Ultimately, she renounced her American citizenship and worked as a resistance agent for the French during World War II. Despite basing her life and career in Europe, Baker was a staunch supporter of the American Civil Rights Movement, refusing to perform for segregated audiences and calling out discrimination in clubs and hotels. Her vocal activism resulted in her work visa being revoked; she was barred from the country of her birth for ten years before she could return.
“One day I realized I was living in a country where I was afraid to be black…So I left. I had been suffocating in the United States…. A lot of us left, not because we wanted to leave, but because we couldn’t stand it anymore…. I felt liberated in Paris.” — Josephine Baker in 1973, two years before her death
As Baker noted, many other artists made their way to Europe to shake off the racist constraints they lived under in America. Like Baker, many gravitated to Paris. Jazz musicians of mid-20th century such as Dexter Gordon, Bud Powell, Kenny Clarke, and Don Byas relocated to France, inspired both by the lower level of racism and the appreciation of French audiences for jazz. For many, the move was unplanned; musicians would tour Europe and find that both their art and the color of their skin was more accepted in Paris than back home, and many chose to stay, living and recording in France. Some lived out their days in Europe, like Don Byas, who said, “When I play, I can allow myself to get mad. This cat asked me the night before I left [the United States], ‘When are you coming back?’ I said, ‘When they build a bridge.’”
For others, even poor treatment and threat of physical violence at home was not enough to hold them in Europe. For Dexter Gordon, who eventually returned to the States, “The happiest moments in Europe were when you’d run into other cats and bands and someone would say, ‘Hey, you long, tall. . .’ Or the get-togethers when someone would get a care package from home — red beans and greens and grits. Just that taste of home.’’
Like Ira Aldridge more than a century before them, African American artists arrived on European shores in search of freedom, both artistic and cultural. For some, like Aldridge and Baker, the call of home was fainter than the roar of the European crowds. But for others, the creative fulfillment and social freedom they found in Europe was too far away from their imperfect home.
Join us for Red Velvet at Lantern Theater Company, Sept. 7 — Oct. 15, 2017. Visit our website for tickets and information.
