Dimitri and Khalid discuss the extraordinary career of Paul Robeson and the psychopathologizing of his Communist convictions, his struggles in 1930s Hollywood and revolutionary expropriation of “Old Man River”, getting erm-listed by white liberals from The Nation to KPFK, the HUAC hearings as Cold War Theatrical Warfare, his championing of the pentatonic scale, and his WW2-era framing of socialism/communism as “20th century Americanism”. Part I of II.