Paul Robeson: A Biographical Sketch
Paul Robeson (1898-1976) impacted American life and culture by breaking ground for the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties movements. The Robeson scholars at the Lafayette conference have worked hard to understand this man, who—as scholar, actor, athlete, concert artist, and political activist—was among the most talented people in American history. He was the youngest of the five children of the Reverend Drew and Maria Louisa Robeson. Robeson attended elementary and high school in Westfield and Somerville, N.J. He won a four-year scholarship to Rutgers College in 1915, where he excelled as scholar, debater, and athlete. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa during his junior year and to the Cap and Skull Honor Society. As a public speaker, he won first prize as orator for four consecutive years, winning the coveted Ann Van Nest Bussing Prize for extemporaneous speaking.
Robeson's athletic achievements included
selection by legendary Yale coach Walter Camp for his 1918 All-America team
and being the consensus first-team All-America end for 1917 and 1918. Robeson won a total of 15 varsity letters in football, baseball, basketball, and track. He graduated valedictorian of the class of 1919 and received a law degree from Columbia University in 1923. He married Eslanda Cardozo Goode, an analytical chemist at Columbia Medical Center, in 1921. A son, Paul Jr., was born in 1927.
Robeson excelled in theater, the concert stage, and film. He made his acting debut at the Harlem YWCA in 1920 in Ridgely Torrence’s Simon the Cyrenian and his first professional appearance in Mary Hoyt Wiborg’s Taboo (1922). He appeared in scores of plays, including Eugene O’Neill’s All God’s Children Got Wings (1924) and The Emperor Jones (1924), Porgy (1928), and Showboat (1928), capping his stage career in 1942 in the longest-running Broadway production of Shakespeare’s Othello. The significance of his participation in theater was (a) that he first appeared in a play only because it was a challenge and (b) that theater later became a tool for gaining political and social equality.
Robeson’s concert career began in 1926 at New York’s Town Hall. Robeson, accompanied by Larry Brown, presented a program of Negro spirituals, some of which became his standards: “Go Down, Moses,” “Joshua Fit De Battle Of Jericho,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Balm In Gilead,” and “By ‘n’ By.” The importance of this tour was that it, according to Boyle and Bunie, “forced a serious appraisal of the artistic value of this long-demeaned music.”
Robeson appeared in 13 films between 1924 and 1943. With the exception of Oscar Michaux’s silent film Body and Soul (1924), which shows the devout battling the corrupt in the African American community, the films used cutting-edge methodologies to exploit Robeson’s physique, as well as his vocal talents. Robeson appeared in them in order to show that Africans on the continent and in the Diaspora—if given the opportunity—could match any other race.
Racism to Robeson was as unforgivable as wars that used minorities as expendables. It was understandable, therefore, that he would heatedly demand in 1945 that President Harry S. Truman support an anti-lynching law, and in 1949 tell the World Peace Congress in Paris that African Americans “shall not put up with any hysterical raving that urges us to make war on anyone. Our will to fight for peace is strong. We shall not make war on the Soviet Union” (Martin Duberman, Biography, 341). He probably had not anticipated, however, that the Associated Press would grossly misquote him: “It is unthinkable that American Negroes would go to war on behalf of those who have oppressed us for generations against a country [the Soviet Union] which in one generation has raised our people to the full dignity of mankind . . . ” (Duberman, 342). The American press seized the opportunity to rein in this “undesirable citizen.” The House Un-American Activities Committee demanded that African Americans prove their loyalty, which was followed in 1950 by the U.S. State Department’s revocation of Robeson’s passport. His income dropped dramatically. He was saved in part by the African-American church. The U.S. Supreme Court restored his passport in 1958, allowing him to resume his career. He retired from public life in 1963.
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