Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson excelled as an athlete, actor, singer, and activist, qualifying him as a contemporary renaissance man. His early accomplishments as a professional football player, Columbia law school graduate, and an actor on Broadway in the 1920s seemed but a prologue to even greater achievements to come. Involvement with the political left in the 1940s, however, led to a confrontation with the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in the late 1940s. He was blacklisted, his passport was revoked, and his career came to a halt. Robeson was born on April 9, 1898 in Princeton, New Jersey. His father had been a runaway slave who became a Methodist minister, and his mother died from a stove-fire accident when he was six. At the age of 17, Robeson became the third African American to enter Rutgers College (now University) where he made All-American in football and lettered in four varsity sports. Many of these achievements were nonetheless overshadowed by racism: his teammates often harassed him and he was barred from the school's glee club. After Rutgers, he played professional football on the weekends to support his studies in law at Columbia University. Following graduation he obtained work at a New York law firm, but quit when a stenographer refused to copy a memo, telling him, "I never take diction from a nigger." Since Robeson already had experience in theater, his wife, Eslanda Cardozo Goode, encouraged him to pursue acting. In 1922 he appeared on Broadway, playing Jim in Jim H. Harris' Taboo, and then traveled to England where he revised the role. He joined Eugene O'Neill's Greenwich Village Provincetown Players on his return, and appeared in All God's Chillun Got Wings. He also won critical acclaim for his starring role in The Emperor Jones in 1925. Robeson...