Episode 18: Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson was born in New Jersey on April 9, 1898. His family was no stranger to hardship; his father had been subjected to slavery, and his mother originated from a family of abolitionist Quakers. However, determination also ran in the family. Robeson’s father had gone on to attend and graduate from university, and Robeson and his four older siblings had grown up with the lesson that it was possible to rise through hardship, no matter your disadvantages.
At the time when Robeson was growing up, life was hard for African-Americans. Racial segregation was both legal and widely accepted, and racial violence, including lynching, ran wild across America. Robeson was determined to follow in his father’s footsteps and succeed anyway.
His grades in high school meant that he was offered a scholarship to Rutgers University in 1915, where he excelled in a wide variety of spots: he was on the track team and played basketball and baseball. During his college career, he also became known for his singing voice—a beautiful, deep bass-baritone. He was able to informally sing with Rutgers’ Glee Club, but he couldn’t officially be a member because he wasn’t allowed to attend the club’s all-white social events. His classmates, and especially his sports teammates, were often racist or outright aggressive to Robeson, but he managed to be selected for the All-American Football Team and win 15 varsity letters despite this, eventually graduating from Rutgers as the class valedictorian.
To Robeson, the next step was clear. He was passionate about civil rights and standing up for others, so after his graduation, he attended Columbia Law School. It was here that he met a woman named Eslanda Cordoza Goode, known as Essie, who would one day make history as the first black woman to be the head of a pathology lab. The pair quickly fell in love and married in August 1921.
Robeson’s law career was unfortunately short-lived. He did get a job at a law firm, but his race made it an uphill battle to get anyone to respect him. When the firm’s white secretary was repeatedly racist towards him, he left the firm and his career entirely. His wife was happy to financially support him while he moved towards a different passion of his: the arts.
It was late 1924 when Robeson made his first big break in theater, landing a lead role in the expressionist play “All God’s Chillun Got Wings”. However, the play’s controversial plot, involving interracial marriage, meant that opening night was postponed. Instead of starring in Chillun, Robeson was given a leading role as Brutus in a revival of “The Emporer Jones.” The reviews of his performance were stellar; across the board, critics loved him. When he was finally able to perform his initial role in Chillun, reviews were more mixed, but this was possibly due to the controversy surrounding the plot rather than his performance itself.
As Robeson quickly shot to fame in the world of theater, there was nobody who supported him more than his wife, Essie. She was his biggest fan, quitting her job to work as his agent and eventually netting his first opportunity to appear on the big screen. Robeson’s first film role was in Body and Soul, a race film by director Oscar Micheaux. Alongside acting, Robeson kept his passion for singing alive, headlining a concert to raise money for single mothers.
Renowned singer and pianist Lawrence Brown met Robeson by chance one day in Harlem, and the two men collaborated to ad-lib spirituals. They enjoyed their performance together so much that they decided to perform a concert at the Provincetown Playhouse, where they sang spirituals and African-American folk music to a captivated audience. This chance meeting with Brown was how Robeson ended up signing a contract with Victor Records and went on to tour America performing with Brown for the next year and a half. It was on a hiatus from this tour that Robeson found out his wife was pregnant, and his son, Paul Robeson Jr., was born in November 1927, while Robeson and Brown continued their tour across Europe. When Essie’s health worsened after Paul’s birth, Robeson left his tour early to look after her while she recovered.
Robeson’s experiences singing and acting on stage in Europe showed him something he hadn’t expected: he experienced much less racism than he did at home in the USA. Despite his talent being widely recognized in America, his performances were often met with racist jeers and booing from the crowd. In Europe, he received standing ovations and encores.
The captivating power of Robeson’s baritone singing and enchanting stage presence allowed him to tour the world, sharing black spirituals and African-American folk songs with countries throughout Europe, Africa, and the Soviet Union. His mission was to support social movements with his music, promoting peace and justice, and he made powerful friends wherever he went. Among these friends were renowned writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Jomo Kenyatta, who would go on to become Kenya’s first president, and Russian political activist Emma Goldman. Robeson didn’t want fame or money; he wanted change across the world. All of the proceeds from All God’s Chillun were donated to help Jewish refugees during Hitler’s control of Germany, at Robeson’s request. He fought against fascism. He sang in the language of each country he visited. This was his mission, and he would ride the wave as long as he could.
The 1940s brought about a more organized era of Robeson’s activism. He fought for many causes: world peace, ending racism, and workers’ rights. One comment almost ended his career: Robeson asked why African American people would want to fight in the US government’s army when the government continued to be tolerant—or even supportive—of racism, including violence such as lynching. In response to this remark, he was accused of being a communist, and almost a hundred of his concerts were canceled, while others were interrupted by mobs of anti-black protestors. This was all Robeson had to say: “I’m going to sing wherever the people want me to sing, and I won’t be frightened by crosses burning in Peekskill or anywhere else.”
Robeson’s appearance on Eleanor Roosevelt’s television show was canceled by NBC. His name was omitted from records of college football achievements. The country wanted to silence Robeson, and then the United States government prevented Robeson from traveling for eight years by revoking his passport. Between 1950 and 1958, stuck in a country that tried to tear him down at every opportunity, Robeson didn’t stop fighting, even though his music and films were being systematically removed from distribution. He met up with renowned scientist Albert Einstein, whom he had been friends with for more than twenty years, and the two discussed world peace together. He held concerts right on the border between the US and Canada, performing to audiences of more than 30,000 individuals across the two countries. Robeson also published an autobiography, entitled Here I Stand, which is often described as being a hybrid between an autobiography and a manifesto.
When his passion was finally rediscovered, Robeson was finally able to travel again, but he was getting older. His final tour was to New Zealand and Australia in 1960, three years before he was forced to retire from performing due to his health. Paul Robeson passed away at the age of 77 on January 23, 1976, leaving behind an incredible legacy across the realms of film, theater, music, and activism.
Robeson is credited with being the artist who introduced the mainstream to African spirituals, as well as being one of the first performers in the United States to blankly refuse to perform in front of segregated audiences. After his death, his achievements in sports and academics were also recognized, and Rutgers University named a campus library, a campus center, and a cultural center after Robeson. He was finally named to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1995, and one hundred years after his birth, he was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as well as a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award.
Paul Robeson succeeded far beyond expectations at a time when any amount of success had to be fought for. He was a truly international performer, but for him, any amount of visibility that fame gave him was used as a stepping stone to further his activism and help as many people as possible. The words of his epitaph come from a speech that he gave in memory of Welsh citizens killed fighting for the Republicans, where he said:
“The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative.”