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Presenting "A True Idea of the African of To-day": Two Documentary Forays by Paul and Eslanda Robeson

This essay examines two inter-related documentary projects, which were both begun in 1936: the documentary film My Song Goes Forth (1937) and the travel book African Journey (1945). Collaborating with director Joseph Best on the film, Paul Robeson ultimately created a one-reel prologue in which he sang and provided an on-camera commentary. Eslanda Robeson, who went to Africa with their son Paul, Jr., in the midst of this production, wrote an account of her travels that revealed a racial politics shared by South Africa and the Southern United States. Both works also upend too familiar views of the primitive "Dark Continent" perpetuated by Osa and Martin Johnson and others. From an African American perspective, these works challenged well-established generic conventions for the depiction of Africa, even as they operated within the book/film, husband/wife production ethos that characterized the genre in the 1920s and 1930s. Both achievements articulated an achievable utopia through their cinematic and literary forms.