“Congress opened debate on passage of a new Internal Security Act, the infamous McCarren Act, which equated dissent with treason and established concentration camps to detain subversives in time of national emergency. When it passed in September, Truman vetoed it, at some political risk, but the House overrode him. The days when Robeson could count on at least minimal sufferance had passed.

Yet he refused to trim his sails to any degree. Speaking out at a Civil Rights Congress rally at Madison Square Garden at the end of June 1950 to protest Truman’s action in sending troops to Korea, Robeson excoriated the President for tying the welfare of the American people ‘to the fate of a corrupt clique of politicians south of the 38th parallel in Korea.’ The meaning of Truman’s order, Robeson predicted, would not be lost on Black Americans: ‘They will know that if we don’t stop our armed adventure in Korea today- tomorrow it will be Africa…I have said it before and say it again, that the place for the Negro people to fight for their freedom is here at home…’ When Robeson had ‘said it before,’ in Paris in 1949, he had brought on a national debate; those same words, repeated in 1950, marked its foreclosure. The climate had changed. The government decided to muzzle him.

He had planned to return to Europe at the end of the summer, but the State Department planned otherwise. It issued a ‘stop notice’ at all ports to prevent Robeson from departing, and J. Edgar Hoover sent out an ‘urgent’ teletype ordering FBI agents to locate Robeson’s whereabouts.” -“Paul Robeson: A Biography” By: Martin Duberman