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Biography: Life of Paul Robeson
Born 1898, Died 1976
Paul Robeson, the famous black athlete, singer, actor and civil rights activist, was born on April 9, 1898 in Princeton, New Jersey.
Intellectually and athletically gifted, in 1915 Paul Robeson received a four year academic scholarship to Rutgers University. At Rutgers, Robeson received twelve varsity letters in baseball, basketball, football and track. He was valedictorian of his class in 1919.
Robeson went on to attend Colombia University Law School. After receiving his degree in 1923 he took a position with a law firm in New York. When a white secretary refused to take dictation from him, Paul Robeson left the firm and looked for a new career.
Paul Robeson chose to use his talents in acting and singing. He starred in Eugene O’Neill’s play All God’s Chillun Got Wings and the musical Emperor Jones. He is noted for his performance in Showboat and his changing of the lines of the song “Old Man River”.
Robeson was a highly acclaimed actor and singer throughout the 1920s and 1930s. He was one of the first black men to play serious roles in the theater and performed in eleven films. His “Othello” ran on Broadway for nearly 300 performances.
Paul Robeson’s concert tours took him around the world. As with other black Americans of his time, he was enthusiastically received in Europe, without the racial discrimination he faced at home. Singing in twenty-five languages, Robeson used his concerts to promote understanding of cultural differences and social justice. He felt this was a personal responsibility as a performer.
Robeson’s success as an actor and singer continued in the1940’s. While he had many influential admirers, his outspoken defense of civil liberties made him enemies as well. Robeson began to protest Cold War hostilities and questioned why blacks should fight in an army that did not treat them as equals.
In 1947 his dissent brought Paul Robeson to the attention of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He was accused of being a Communist and a threat to democracy. Robeson’s passport was revoked in 1950 by the State Department.
When his passport was reinstated in 1958, Paul Robeson began to travel again. He made his last concert tour in 1960. The years had taken a physical toll on him and he retired from public life in1963.
Paul Robeson died on January 23, 1976 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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