1898-1976
Paul Robeson, an African American actor, singer, and social activist, was born on April 9, 1898, in Princeton, New Jersey, and died on January 23, 1976, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During the 1930s and 1940s, Robeson gained international renown as a concert singer and stage actor. His embrace of the Soviet Union and communism, however, especially during the formative years of the Cold War and the backlash against left-wing causes during the 1950s, effectively ended his artistic career and contributed to his physical decline.
Robeson was the youngest of five children. His father, William Drew Robeson, was born a slave in North Carolina, but he escaped and went on to become a Presbyterian minister in New Jersey, until he was forced to leave his congregation over a major dispute. Robeson’s mother, Maria Louisa Bustill, hailed from a prominent Philadelphia family and became a schoolteacher. She burned to death tragically in a house fire when Robeson was only six years old, an experience that undoubtedly affected the youngster.
Between 1916 and 1919, Robeson attended Rutgers College in New Jersey as the only African American student. While there, he gained both academic and athletic distinction, being elected to Phi Beta Kappa and twice named an all-American football player. Between 1920 and 1923, he attended Columbia Law School in New York City, playing professional football on weekends and acting to pay the bills.
It was at Columbia University that Robeson met chemistry student Eslanda Cardoza Goode (1896-1965). Her grandfather, Francis L. Cardozo (1837-1903), was trained as a teacher, minister, and carpenter, and served between 1868 and 1872 as the first black person elected to state office in the history of South Carolina. Robeson and Eslanda married in 1921 and had their only child, Paul Robeson Jr., in 1927. Eslanda went on to become an anthropologist and journalist, as well as her husband’s manager and life-long partner until her death.
After graduating from law school, Robeson turned his back on a legal career because of the limited opportunities afforded qualified African Americans. This decision was to prove momentous because it resulted in the launching of one of the most gifted and committed artistic lives of the twentieth century. Robeson’s career embraced theater, music, and film. During the early 1920s, he worked with the Provincetown Players based in Greenwich Village and earned praise for his roles in playwright Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones (1920) and All God’s Chillun Got Wings (1924). In 1930 he appeared opposite renowned British actress Peggy Ashcroft (19071991) in a London production of Shakespeare’s Othello and in 1932 a Broadway version of Jerome Kern’s musical Show Boat (1927). Despite his glittering stage success, not everyone was impressed. The Trinidadian writer and activist C. L. R. James (1901-1989) saw Robeson play Othello on Broadway in 1943 and declared: "Robeson was rotten. He is a magnificent figure, a superb voice, and, as usual with him, at moments he is overwhelming. But in between his lack of training, his lack of imagination, were awful" (1996, p. 90).
Robeson also gained fame as a concert singer and recording artist. Both Robeson and his longtime pianist and arranger Lawrence Brown (1893-1972) played an important role in performing and disseminating African American spirituals and folk songs throughout the United States and Europe. As such, the duo belongs to a black Atlantic musical tradition stretching back to the Fisk Jubilee Singers of the 1870s. It is important to note, however, that their recorded spirituals revolutionized such music by allowing the voice to be free from the performer.
Robeson’s third artistic arena was film. During the 1930s, the film industry embarked upon a major transformation with the advent of sound and mass audiences. Robeson appeared in about a dozen American and British films between 1933 and 1942, including The Emperor Jones (1933), Sanders of the River (1935), Show Boat (1936), and The Proud Valley (1941). Although his characters often challenged existing racial stereotypes portrayed on the silver screen, these films also reinforced stereotypes about subservient and comedic black people and the benefits of Western colonialism. Robeson later expressed regret over some of these films, a regret the modern viewer can appreciate.
Between 1927 and 1939, Robeson and Eslanda sojourned in Europe. These were important years for Robeson’s development as a black artist because they exposed him to the international communist movement, as well as Pan-African and anticolonial politics. While living in London, Robeson and his wife undertook the study of African history, politics, and languages. At the same time, Robeson participated in the West African Student’s Union and became acquainted with a younger generation of Caribbean and African leaders, such as C. L. R. James and George Padmore (1903-1959) of Trinidad, Jomo Kenyatta (1890?-1978) of Kenya, and Nnamdi Azikiwe (1904-1996) of Nigeria. It was this milieu that encouraged Robeson’s "return" to Africa. This spiritual rather than physical return encouraged Robeson to espouse a set of universal values that included, rather than derided, the importance of African culture to world historical development. It was a position familiar to many black abolitionists of the nineteenth century and recognizable in some of the more sober statements of modern Afrocentrists.
The other important component of Robeson’s political development concerned international socialism. The Great Depression had destroyed many people’s lives and corroded their faith in capitalist democracies. In contrast, the new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) promised a more equitable distribution of resources, constitutional guarantees of the equality of all people regardless of nationality or race, and international solidarity. In 1934 Robeson made the first of numerous visits to the USSR, eventually learning Russian and schooling his son there for several years. At the same time, Robeson became involved in socialist and pacifist causes, including performing benefit concerts for Republican troops fighting against the fascist takeover in Spain. Although some black radicals, such as Padmore and Richard Wright (19081960), saw irreconcilable differences between communism and Pan-Africanism, others like C. L. R. James and Robeson envisioned new connections between the two ideologies.
On his return to the United States, Robeson continued his artistic endeavors, as well as his commitment to numerous left-wing and antiracist causes. In the gathering hysteria of the cold war, however, Robeson was to experience serious state and civil obstacles. Although never a member of the Communist Party, officials in both Sacramento and Washington, D.C., accused Robeson of being a communist. In 1950 the U.S. State Department revoked his passport, keeping it until 1958. An invitation for him to appear at a musical festival in Peekskill, New York, sparked white vigilante violence and resulted in scores of injured people, while both Broadway and Hollywood blacklisted him. Despite this, Robeson continued performing at black churches and small functions sponsored by radical groups. He also continued his radical politics. In 1951 Robeson, on behalf of the Civil Rights Congress, submitted a petition to the United Nations titled "We Charge Genocide," detailing 153 killings, 344 crimes of violence, and numerous other human rights abuses against black citizens in the United States during the previous six years. This tactic of exerting international pressure on the United States stretched back to the proposed building of an antislavery wall, a project advocated by Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) and others during the mid-nineteenth century.
After regaining his passport, Robeson and his family moved to Europe. The persecution and blacklisting, however, began to take its toll. Robeson moved in and out of hospitals in the Soviet Union and Europe, and in 1961 he had a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide. In 1963 the Robeson family returned to the United States. After Eslanda’s death in 1965, Robeson moved to Philadelphia to live with his sister. A year later he made his final public appearance at a benefit dinner for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. During a seventy-fifth birthday tribute at New York’s Carnegie Hall, which he could not attend because of ill health, Robeson sent a message declaring that he was as "dedicated as ever to the worldwide cause of humanity for freedom, peace, and brotherhood."
Scholars have debated Robeson’s historical significance. Was he an idealist whose adherence to the Communist Party made him, in the words of critic Harold Cruse, "a great potential spokesman with a misdirected and ineffective political line" (1967, p. 297)? Or was he an important radical social democrat who played a critical role in propagating popular front culture from the 1930s through 1950s as argued by Michael Denning (1996)? Or was he, as Sterling Stuckey (1987) claims, primarily a black cultural nationalist who brilliantly fused African and black American cultural activities? Interested readers, especially young artists, should read, hear, and see more about Robeson’s remarkable life and make up their own minds. Paul Robeson’s true significance concerns his obvious artistic talent; his consistent support for antiracist, anticolonial, and international liberation struggles; and his commitment to a radical political and cultural tradition. In today’s world, we can imagine Robeson challenging the iniquities of globalization, demanding peace in the Middle-East, and insisting on racial justice for all.
