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PAUL ROBESON (1898 – 1976) was an actor, athlete, civil rights activist, singer and one of the most gifted men of the 20^th century.

Born on April 9, 1898, in Princeton, New Jersey, Paul was the eighth child of Quaker abolitionist Maria Luisa Bustill and former slave and minister William Drew Robeson.

In 1915, Robeson graduated high school and received a scholarship to Rutgers College. He was the third black student accepted and the only black student during his time on campus. He excelled academically, becoming a junior-year Phi Beta Kappa, a champion debater, class valedictorian and gaining admission into Cap and Skull, Rutgers’ honor society in 1919. He also triumphed on the athletic field, earning 15 varsity letters in football, baseball, basketball and track and field. He was named All-American twice in football (1917 and 1918).

While trying out for the football team, Robeson faced savage physical punishment when a senior member of the team crushed his hand with a cleated foot, tearing off fingernails. Coach Walter Camp later described Robeson as “the greatest to ever trot the gridiron”. Later in his life, though, when the U.S. government stopped him from traveling abroad, Robeson’s name was retroactively struck from the roster of the 1917 and 1918 All-America football teams.

Following graduation, Robeson moved to Harlem and entered Columbia Law School. He worked to pay his way through law school by playing professional football in the American Professional Football Association (now known as the National Football League) with the Akron Pros and Milwaukee Badgers. He served as assistant football coach at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where he initiated the Nu Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha, the oldest intercollegiate fraternity for blacks. He also played for the St. Christopher Club traveling basketball team during the 1918-1919 season. In 1922, he starred in the play Taboo in New York and London. He graduated from Columbia the following year and was hired at the law firm of Stotesbury and Miner in New York. However, he quit after a white secretary refused to take dictation from him because of his skin color.

Robeson found fame as an actor and singing star. He was one of the few true basses in American music and won acclaim for his renditions of old spirituals; Robeson was the first to bring them to the concert stage. In 1924, Robeson received acclaim for his performance in the title role of Eugene O’Neille’s The Emperor Jones. He was also noted for his performance in All God’s Chillun Got Wings in which he portrayed the black husband of an abusive white woman who, resenting her husband’s skin color, destroys his promising career as a lawyer. In 1930, he starred in the title role of Shakespeare’s Othello in England, where no U.S. company would employ him for the part. He reprised the role in New York in 1943 and toured with it until 1945. His Broadway run of Othello is the longest of any Shakespeare play. He won the Spingarn Medal for his performance in 1945.

Robeson played the role of Joe, which was written for him, in the 1928 London production of Show Boat and repeated his performance in the 1932 Broadway revival of the show, the 1936 film version, and a 1940 Los Angeles stage production. His rendition of “Ol’ Man River” is widely considered the definitive version of the song. He also played the role of Toussaint L’Ouverture in a 1936 play by C.L.R. James. Robeson’s repertoire of African-American folk songs helped bring these to much wider attention both inside the U.S. and abroad — in particular his rendition of “Go Down Moses.” Robeson also became interested in the folk music of the world; he came to be conversant with 20 languages, fluent or near fluent in 12.

Robeson spoke out against racist conditions experienced by Asian and black Americans. He condemned segregation in both the North and the South and spoke out against lynching. In 1946, he founded the American Crusade Against Lynching. In 1948, Robeson was active in the presidential campaign to elect Progressive Party candidate Henry A. Wallace, who had served as Secretary of Agriculture, Vice President, and Secretary of Commerce in the administrations of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

At a Bill of Rights Conference in New York City in July 1949, a resolution was introduced calling for the freeing all 19 Trotskyists convicted in 1941 under the provisions of the Smith Act, being used at that time against the leaders of the CPUSA. Robeson gave a speech denouncing this idea, saying that the imprisoned Socialist Workers Party members were “the allies of Fascism who want to destroy the new democracies of the world. Let’s not get confused, they are the enemies of the working class. Would you give civil rights to the Ku Klux Klan?” The resolution was defeated and Robeson’s speech is credited with its defeat. Robeson biographer Martin Duberman commented that this “was not Robeson’s finest hour”.

As the United States entered the Cold War, the FBI placed Robeson under surveillance as early as 1941 and compiled a massive dossier on his activities. In 1949, the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) announced that it would hold hearings to investigate Robeson and the loyalty of black Americans. In 1950, the State Department rescinded Robeson’s passport, preventing him from performing or traveling abroad. He found himself blacklisted by Broadway and Hollywood, by concert halls and record companies, radio and television. In 1957, after a seven-year delay, the State Department finally granted him a hearing on the revocation of his passport.

The result was a six-hour grilling, but brought no change in the government’s policy. Robeson fought his lonely battle at great personal cost. In 1958, he published “Here I Stand,” a trenchant autobiography. A Supreme Court decision once again permitted him to travel abroad. Robeson dropped out of public awareness and was largely ignored by the leadership of the Civil Rights Movement, except for the militant young leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

In 1961, Robeson attempted suicide in a Moscow hotel room. His son claimed this was precipitated by a CIA agent who placed some synthetic hallucinogens into his drink under a covert program called MK Ultra. Two years later, Robeson returned to live in the United States. For the remainder of his life he was plagued by ill health, and his appearances were relatively few. In 1976, at the age of 77, Robeson died of a stroke in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he had been living with his sister. He was interred in the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.