Robeson, Paul

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ROBESON, PAUL

Paul Leroy Robeson (April 9, 1898–January 23, 1976), a world-famous singer, actor, and political activist, was born in Princeton, New Jersey. The son of a runaway slave who became a Presbyterian minister, Robeson received a scholarship to Rutgers College in 1915. Only the third black student to be admitted, he starred in four sports, was twice named an all-America football end, and become valedictorian of his class and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the national college honor society. To fulfill his class prophecy to be "the leader of the colored race in America," Robeson earned a law degree from Columbia University in 1923, supporting himself by playing professional football on the weekends.

At the urging of his wife, Eslanda Cardozo Goode, a fellow Columbia Law School student whom Robeson had married in 1921, he turned from the law to the stage. Beginning with the Provincetown Players in 1924, he eventually gained international acclaim for his performances in the title roles of Shakespeare's Othello and Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones, and as Crown in DuBose Heyward's Porgy. Robeson also won praise for his moving interpretations of black spirituals and the folk music of many countries. Possessed of a magnificent bass voice, Robeson became known especially for his rendition of "Ol' Man River" in Jerome Kern's Show Boat. Despite his fame, Robeson could not escape the indignities of racism in the United States, and he was frequently denied service at hotels and restaurants, even in the North.

From 1928 to 1939 Robeson lived and worked primarily in London. There he became acquainted with leaders of the British Labor Party and with pan-Africanists such as Jomo Kenyatta and C. L. R. James. He came to see the connection between the struggles of the working class and those of oppressed colonial peoples, and he studied Marxist texts and the major ideas of communism. Increasingly, Robeson viewed his art as serving the fight for economic and racial justice.

In 1934 Robeson made the first of a series of visits to the Soviet Union. For the first time in his life, he would later claim of his time in Moscow, "I walk in full human dignity," entirely free from racial prejudice. This, and the Soviet Union's support of anti-fascist and anti-colonialist struggles, led to his close ties with American Communists, although he never formally joined the party. Having returned to the United States in 1939, Robeson became a leading spokesperson for a variety of left-wing causes, especially equal rights for African Americans. The first major artist to refuse to perform before segregated audiences, he urged Congress to end of the color bar in major league baseball. Robeson also helped lead voter registration campaigns in the Deep South and the efforts to enlist black workers in the Congress of Industrial Organizations union-organizing drives in the 1940s.

Reacting to President Harry Truman's refusal in 1946 to sponsor legislation making lynching a federal crime, Robeson shocked many Americans by asserting that black Americans would exercise their right of self-defense. Then, attending a peace conference in Paris in 1949, Robeson expressed a widely publicized prediction that African Americans would not fight in a war against the Soviet Union.

Refusing on constitutional grounds to answer any questions from congressional committees concerning his Communist Party membership or affiliation, Robeson felt the full weight of McCarthy-era repression come crushingly down upon him. Branding him "one of the most dangerous men in the world," the State Department revoked his passport, and would not restore it until 1958. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency hounded and harassed him until his death, and the entertainment industry blacklisted him, preventing Robeson from appearing in television, radio, and the concert stage until 1957. Most African-American organizations no longer wanted any association with him, and when his autobiography was published in 1958 most newspapers and magazines in the United States did not review, or even mention, the book.

The once eloquent and powerful performer and radical, depressed at the loss of audiences and friends, suffered a series of mental breakdowns and tried twice to commit suicide. Largely forgotten in the 1960s and 1970s, Robeson died after suffering a stroke in 1976.

See Also: AFRICAN AMERICANS, IMPACT OF THEGREAT DEPRESSION ON; CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES; DU BOIS, W. E. B.; RANDOLPH, A. PHILIP.