by
Susan
Robinson
Paul Robeson
1898
- 1976
Paul
Robeson was an extremely intelligent and talented man who achieved success
and acclaim as a scholar, an athlete, an actor, a singer, and an activist.
His refusal to abandon his unpopular political beliefs resulted
in derailment of his show business career.
Paul
Leroy Bustill Robeson was born on April 9, 1898, the youngest of the five
children of Reverend William Drew Robeson and his wife, Maria Louisa.
His father was a former slave who had escaped at the age of fifteen
and gone on to earn a theological degree from Lincoln University.
He was the pastor of a Presbyterian church in Princeton, New Jersey,
for twenty years, but was removed from his position in 1901 by church
officials for speaking out against social injustice.
He taught his son Paul the importance of standing up for his convictions;
Reverend Robeson worked at menial jobs for several years before becoming
a minister with the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Maria Louisa Bustill Robeson was a schoolteacher from a respected
family of free Black Quakers who had been involved in the abolition movement
during slavery times. She
was burned to death in a stove accident in 1904, when Paul was only six.
Paul
grew up in communities where African Americans were relatively few, and
discrimination was less entrenched than in some places.
He attended integrated schools and at an early age distinguished
himself by his academic achievements.
His father encouraged him to study and compete in oratory competitions,
and Paul also excelled in sports.
At his high school, he was popular and a top student.
He
entered a written competition and won a four-year scholarship to Rutgers
College (now Rutgers University).
Paul was only the third African American student to be admitted
to Rutgers. He was on the honor roll for all four years, and he won the
oratory competition every year as well.
In his junior year he was one of only four Rutgers juniors to receive
a Phi Beta Kappa key, and in his senior year, he was class valedictorian.
He was popular and recognized as a talented singer; as if all this
weren t enough, he distinguished himself in collegiate sports as well,
earning letters in track, basketball, and baseball as well as football:
after a rough start in which the all-white varsity team attempted
to intimidate him by injuring him quite seriously, Robeson returned with
vengeance and determination, becoming not only the first Black football
player at Rutgers, but a major football star of the college.
Robeson experienced discrimination once when he was benched because
an opposing team refused to compete against an African American, but the
coach was generally supportive of Robeson and the next time it happened,
he persevered until Robeson was allowed to play, like everyone else.
After
graduating from Rutgers, Robeson attended Columbia University Law School,
paying his tuition by tutoring the son of his Rutgers coach and by playing
professional football on weekends.
While in law school, Robeson met the woman who would be his wife
for forty-four years, Eslanda Cardozo Goode.
He had sustained a football injury and was admitted to the hospital
where Essie was a pathology technician.
The following year, in 1921, they were married.
They had one child together, a son named Paul Jr.
Essie
encouraged Robeson to take various parts in amateur theatrical performances. His acting ability was noticed, and he was soon offered professional
acting jobs. Acting appealed
to Robeson more than law, and his career as a lawyer was short-lived;
he accepted a position with a New York law firm after graduating from
Columbia, but resigned almost immediately, when a stenographer refused
to take dictation from a N-----.
Robeson instead signed up for an acting job with the Provincetown
Players, who performed the works of Eugene O Neill.
Robeson s performances in O Neill s All God s Chillun Got
Wings and Emperor Jones were met with enthusiastic critical
acclaim.
Robeson
became well-known for such stage performances as his leading roles in
Othello, Porgy and Bess, and Showboat.
In Showboat, he sang what was to become his signature piece,
Ol Man River , a song which highlighted Robeson s deep, rich, baritone
voice. It was immensely popular.
Robeson made eleven films at the height of his acting career, and
traveled extensively. He
was as popular in Europe as in the United States, if not more so.
During
their travels to Europe, the Robeson s noticed that discrimination was
less of a problem on that side of the Atlantic.
In England and the rest of Europe, the Robeson s could eat in
restaurants of their choosing and stay in the finest hotels.
There was one occasion when they were denied entrance to a posh
London restaurant on racial grounds, but such a public outcry ensued that
it did not happen again. In
the United States, such things happened all the time, with no public outcry.
In fact, in the U.S., African American public figures like Robeson
were constantly having to deal with protests and racist criticism of their
art, as happened when Robeson played the husband of a White woman in one
of O Neill s plays. Europe
was different, and the Robesons liked it.
Increasingly,
Robeson was discouraged by the lack of meaningful, non-stereotypical
roles he, as a Black actor, was offered.
He began to concentrate more on his singing career.
Touring eastern Europe around 1929, Robeson took an interest in
traditional folk music of the region, seeing some parallels between the
music of European peasantry and the Negro spirituals immortalized by African
American slaves. He began
to understand similarities in the lives of poor, working people in different
lands. He said that he learned that the essential character of a
nation is determined not by the upper classes, but by the common people,
and that the common people of all nations are truly brothers in the great
family of mankind."
The 1930s saw the rise of fascism and the Nazis. Robeson donated the proceeds from one of his successful stage performances to Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. In Europe he increasingly befriended people who were anti-fascist, including some who were pro-communist. When he and Essie were invited to Russia, they were received warmly and treated as dignitaries, and for the first time in his life, Robeson thought he had found a place where true equality was the status quo. He was very enthusiastic in his admiration for the Soviet system, and his outspokenness on the subject started his fall from popularity in this country.
He returned to the U.S. with a renewed determination to become active in the fight for equality and civil rights for African Americans and all working-class people. Robeson s activism continued throughout the 1940s, and he took part in protests against racism, organized a group to fight against lynching, and campaigned to end segregation of professional baseball. He frequently spoke at rallies and gatherings of labor unions. By the 1950s, America was in the middle of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. There was an occasion in which Robeson publicly questioned whether it was fair for African American youths to be required to serve in the military of a country which treated them as second-class citizens, and for this comment, seen as unpatriotic, Robeson was vilified.
Robeson
was monitored by the FBI, and the House Un-American Activities Committee
accused him of being a communist.
During the McCarthy hearings, when the U.S. government doggedly
tried to root out communists and communist sympathizers, Robeson was asked,
Why didn t you stay in Russia?
He replied, "Because my father was a slave, and my people
died to build this country, and I am going to stay right here and have
a part of it just like you. And no fascist-minded people will drive me
from it. Is that clear?"
Also
during the 1950s, Robeson s passport was revoked because of the allegations
that he was a communist, and he fought for years to have it reinstated.
The government kept telling him something like, Say you are not
a communist and we ll give it back.
Robeson refused, on the grounds that his political beliefs should
have had no bearing on his rights as a citizen.
More than once, Robeson, prevented by his lack of a passport from
attending some event in Europe or some other country, sang on the telephone
to his far-away audiences. On
one occasion, he sang at Peace Arch Park on the border between Washington
State and Canada, to a Canadian audience standing a few feet away on the
other side. In 1958 a similar
case went to the Supreme Court, which ruled that an American citizen s
passport could not be revoked because of their political affiliations,
and Robeson s passport was restored.
Mysteriously,
during the 1950s, wheels of various cars of Robeson s flew off while
he was driving, not once, but four times.
These were likely attempts on his life, but he never knew exactly
who did it.
Another
problem was, while all the controversy brewed, Robeson s career as an
entertainer withered. As
soon as his political statements were publicized, concerts were cancelled,
and Robeson s popularity quickly waned.
He wrote an autobiography, but some major newspapers refused to
review it. Although he had
been admired for his activism, (he was even awarded an NAACP Spingarn
Medal in 1945) by the 1950s, African American political leaders did not
want to be associated with him, and Robeson found himself unpopular in
more than just the entertainment world.
It took a tremendous toll on him and he suffered more than one
mental breakdown. His physical
health deteriorated as well, and in the early 1960s Essie developed cancer.
She died in 1965, and Robeson, who very rarely made a public appearance
by then, moved in with his sister, a retired teacher.
He suffered a series of strokes in the mid-1970s, and died on January
23, 1976.
Paul Robeson was a principled man who stood by his convictions, even though they cost him almost everything that was important to him. He wanted to use his talents to benefit oppressed or exploited people everywhere. During his travels, he learned as much as he could about other cultures, and learned to speak about twenty different languages. Every time he left this country for a while, he returned to try to apply whatever he had learned abroad for the benefit of his own people. Maybe he was a man who was ahead of his time. Certainly now, I cannot imagine a popular, professionally respected entertainer being ostracized to such an extreme for views like the ones Robeson endorsed. After many years of being ignored, recognition of Robeson s achievements have only recently been revived, and he was awarded a posthumous Grammy for lifetime achievement in 1998.[]