{"value"=>"<p>The sub-series includes incoming letters and copies of outgoing letters. The incoming mail primarily concerns his artistic career, invitations to perform, letters of appreciation and support, hate mail, requests for financial assistance, and business proposals. With a few exceptions, these letters were answered by <span class=\"persname\">Louis Burnham</span>, <span class=\"persname\">John Gray</span>, <span class=\"persname\">George Murphy</span>, <span class=\"persname\">Edith Roberts</span> or <span class=\"persname\">Thomas Richardson</span>, all of whom who served, at one time or another between 1949 and 1956 as secretary to <span class=\"persname\">Robeson</span> or the <span class=\"corpname\">UFF</span> and its participating organizations.</p> <p>Although not voluminous, <span class=\"persname\">Eslanda Robeson</span>'s correspondence reveals many interesting items, including an eight page letter to <span class=\"persname\">William Patterson</span>, chairman of the <span class=\"corpname\">Civil Rights Congress</span>, (5 April 1938) in which she details the difficulties of travelling through Nazi Germany with her husband, and her encounter with one of the Soviet physicians implicated in the \"Trial of the White Blouses\" on charges of plotting to poison Stalin. Another of <span class=\"persname\">Eslanda</span>'s letters in this file was sent to her <span class=\"corpname\">Delta Sigma Theta</span> sisters (4 Aug. 1949) to \"set the record straight\", regarding the negative distortions generated in the United States by her husband's famous speech at the Paris Peace Conference in April 1949.</p> <p>Also included in the sub-series are: a copy of a letter from <span class=\"persname\">Paul Robeson</span> to <span class=\"persname\">Norman Manley</span> (21 July 1951) soliciting his participation in the legal defense of <span class=\"persname\">Benjamin Davis</span>, one of the eleven Communist leaders arrested under the Smith Act, and a letter to <span class=\"persname\">Carl Murphy</span>, Editor of the <span class=\"title\">Afro-American</span>(9 Aug. 1951), in reference to an editorial claiming that racial discrimination in the United States armed forces was no longer an issue. Other correspondents in this series include: <span class=\"persname\">R. Palme Dutt</span>, editor of the British <span class=\"title\">Labour Monthly</span>and officer of the <span class=\"corpname\">Cominform</span> (n.d.); <span class=\"persname\">Gaston Monmousseau</span>, editor of <span class=\"title\">La Vie ouvriere,</span>the organ of <span class=\"corpname\">French Confederation generale du travail (CGT)</span>; <span class=\"persname\">Arnaud d'Usseau</span>, <span class=\"persname\">Ruby Dee</span>, <span class=\"persname\">Ossie Davis</span> and <span class=\"persname\">Peter Lawrence</span>; <span class=\"persname\">Hope Foye</span> (1953); <span class=\"persname\">Mary McLeod Bethune</span> (1954); <span class=\"persname\">Boris Polevoy</span> and <span class=\"persname\">Alexandr Fadeev</span>, two well-known Soviet writers (1954).</p>"}