Robeson, Paul (1898–1976)

Paul Leroy Robeson was born on April 9, 1898, to William (a Presbyterian minister) and Maria Robeson in Princeton, New Jersey. The youngest of seven children, Paul grew up as one of a handful of African Americans in a white community, where he excelled in sports and academics in high school. He entered Rutgers University in 1915, where he lettered in four sports and was twice named to Walter Camp's All-American football team. He also had time to make Phi Beta Kappa, was a member of the debating team, and performed in the glee club. On graduation, he entered law school at Columbia University and continued playing professional football on the weekends. He married Eslanda Goode in 1921, and they had one son, Paul Jr., born in 1927. Robeson and Goode would stay together despite difficult times until her death in 1965. He graduated from Columbia in 1923 and briefly tried a law career but soon turned to the theater, charting a new career that would radically change his life.

In 1924, he starred in Eugene O'Neill's All God's Chillun Got Wings as well as in The Emperor Jones for the Provincetown Players and earned rave reviews. He soon became close to the leading figures in the burgeoning Harlem Renaissance, as well as to the leadership of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He continued his theatrical career, performing in Body and Soul by black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. He also began to sing spirituals, accompanied by pianist Lawrence Brown, who would remain with him for many decades. He pursued acting and singing careers, earning rave reviews in both. Robeson began to travel to England and the continent in 1925, which he found most congenial and much less prejudiced. He would soon appear in the musical Show Boat in London, a great success, a role he would reprise in the 1935 film version. The high point in his acting career was the starring role in Othello in 1930 in London, which role he often repeated, once on Broadway in 1943.

By the mid-1930s, Robeson was continually busy acting and singing and gave another outstanding portrayal in Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape, but he would soon become active in radical politics. His movie career had not been successful, particularly since he was continually playing stereotyped, degrading roles, such as in Sanders of the River, while his anger at American segregation and racism grew. He began to study various languages, including many from Africa, at the School of Oriental Studies at London University; later he studied Chinese, Russian, [Page 1224]and others. He was particularly interested in understanding African cultures, which he closely identified with and met the future African leaders Jomo Kenyatta and Nnamdi Azikiwe in London. He took on a more explicitly black identity, although he would soon also become committed to revolutionary internationalism. In any case, his political sensitivities, supported by his wife Essie, continued for much of his life. He made his first trip to the Soviet Union in late 1934 and was highly impressed with his warm reception and the gains of the revolution. He remained in England for much of the rest of the decade, where his concert career flourished, but he still had difficulty with his movie roles, with a few exceptions, such as The Proud Valley, filmed in Wales in 1939.

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