Robinson’s Soviet co-workers in the factory, as well as supporters across the Soviet Union, called for justice. “The Negro worker is our brother like the white American worker,” read a statement released to the public. “American technique: yes!” went one rallying cry, “American prejudice: no!”
The outrage led to the formation of a prosecution panel made up of nine elected workers of different backgrounds, two of whom were women. The result was a trial conducted not by the government but rather by representatives of the factory acting as a quasi-judiciary — a procedure made possible by the Soviet emphasis on the power of workers. Whether driven by values or propaganda, the trial was not really about Robinson, nor even about Lewis and Brown. It became about the USSR versus America: communism versus capitalism. The panel’s duty was to conclusively prove the attack on Robinson was racially motivated, which in turn would be an indictment of American culture and a distraction from the faults of the USSR, including the tragic consequences of Stalin’s rapid collectivization of agriculture — widespread famine and increasingly brutal repression as the new dictator consolidated power.
On August 22, 1930, the makeshift courtroom in the Tractor Works Club buzzed with excitement with more than a thousand people in attendance. They were all there to see Robinson, who sat amid supporters, uncomfortable with his overnight celebrity. In the streets, passersby praised Robinson for his heroism and apologized for what happened to him. A teacher approached him before the trial on his walk to the front of the courtroom and pleaded with him to come speak to her 7-year-old students. Robinson was stunned, but he walked over to the children and shook their hands. Rallies in support of Robinson were held in public spaces, decrying the evils of American racism. In the factory, Robinson was greeted with nods and words of approval by his Russian cohorts.
Back in the States, there were powerful people who had reason to try to turn the tide against justice. The acting chief of Eastern European Affairs for the State Department sent information to the Bureau of Investigations (the forerunner of the FBI), led by a 35-year-old J. Edgar Hoover. If Soviet officials saw a chance to elevate Robinson, Americans saw an opportunity to tear him down. An assortment of surviving documents and correspondence held in the National Archives reveals a plot to intervene by the diplomats, who sought evidence that could depict Robinson as an anti-American subversive.
The clock was ticking. If Hoover’s agents could find or manufacture dirt on Robinson, they could leak information to try to sway the public, both Soviet and American. Congress was gearing up for hearings about the dangers of communism, which included discussion of Robinson’s case. The U.S. government had not yet opened an embassy in Moscow, but declassified State Department documents reveal that American diplomats in Latvia, who handled diplomatic matters with the Soviet government, insisted that the trial for “beating an American Negro” was engineered “for communist and revolutionary propaganda purposes” rather than genuine justice, implicitly mocking the “determination of Soviets to have no race prejudices.” One of the envoys dismissed as a “comic interlude” a statement by a man sympathetic to the attackers that all Blacks “should be lynched.”
Meanwhile, Soviet newspapers continued to frame the attack on Robinson as an attack on the Soviet way of life, and in turn, a capitalist attack on the working man. But the Party carefully shielded the fact that had Robinson fought back against his attackers, casting him as a pure victim.
Meanwhile, Lewis and Brown’s defense, provided by the Soviets, framed them as brainwashed by American capitalist racism, which resonated with the Soviet public. Lewis was urged to write an apology to the Soviet proletariat for failing to understand the consequences of national and racial dissension. But this fell flat, since it was discovered that his response was crafted by others, and prior to that, that a line had been scratched out. When later questioned by a journalist as to why, Lewis’ explanation for the change was that the omitted phrase had been a “direct apology to the ni—-.”
“I did not think I would be brought to trial,” Lewis reportedly commented. “In America, incidents with negroes — this is simply considered a street fight.”
“In America,” Brown said, “this would be treated as a joke.”
Brown and Lewis were outgunned from the outset, though, with witnesses across various spectrums coming to Robinson’s defense. Lewis in particular became the focal point of the factory court’s ire. Brown pointed the finger at him, trying to distance himself. Lewis was described by witnesses as a “drunken rowdy” and a fascist.
When it was his turn on the stand, Robinson had to be exceedingly careful. He did not want to vocalize politics he did not believe in, even though he knew that Blacks who failed to support the party could face consequences. The Communist Party power structure that protected them could be turned against them. Singer Paul Robeson ultimately would be exiled and blacklisted in the USSR after questioning domestic policy on Jews. No matter how he handled himself at trial, Robinson could expect aftershocks from either American or Russian operatives. He defended his actions but managed to avoid articulating a political framing of his situation.
After six days of speeches and witness testimonies, the verdict was handed down: Lewis and Brown were sentenced to two years of imprisonment. One of the nine members of the prosecution panel summarized their position: The perpetrators of the attack “contaminated” their community. However, their sentences were commuted to 10 years of exile from the Soviet Union, because they had been “inoculated with racial enmity by the capitalistic system.” In the eyes of the Russian public, there was no harsher penalty than banishment.
An American living in the Soviet Union who observed the trial recalled that “the Russian workers were so indignant at white men treating a fellow worker in that fashion simply because of his race that they demanded their immediate expulsion from the Soviet Union.” America was rattled by the Great Depression, and to Soviet citizens, a forced return there amounted to being abandoned in a wasteland of unemployment and sparse food.
American press coverage in the wake of the verdict fractured. Several mainstream outlets exhibited less interest in the outcome than they had in the trial itself, while multiple Black newspapers commended the stand against racism.
Robinson was offered a position elsewhere but decided to stay at the Stalingrad Tractor Factory. His growing fame from the trial may have been undesired, but it also empowered him. The public focus on Robinson seemed to stall further attempts at sabotage by American intelligence operatives, who would not want attention on their tactics.
