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Paul Robeson ( April 9 , 1898 – January 23 , 1976 ) was a multi-lingual American Actor , Athlete , Bass-baritone concert singer, Writer , and Radical Civil Rights Activist . BIRTH AND SIBLINGS Robeson was born in ; Benjamin Robeson, a minister; Reeve Robeson (called Reed), and Marian Robeson, who lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania . In 1915, he graduated with honors from Somerville, New Jersey High School where he excelled academically, and participated in singing, acting, and athletics. EDUCATION Rutgers Robeson won an academic scholarship to Rutgers University . "When he went out for the Rutgers University football team, other players beat him up and pulled out his fingernails; he bore the abuse to prove his worth, and when he graduated he was a two-time All-American and the school valedictorian, exhorting his classmates to "catch a new vision." " {Link without Title} Robeson was one of three classmates at Rutgers accepted into s in Football , Baseball , Basketball , and Track And Field . For his accomplishments as an end in football, he was twice named a first-team All-American in ( 1917 and 1918 ). Football coach Walter Camp described him as "the greatest to ever trot the gridiron." During the period the United States stopped him from traveling outside the country, his name was struck from the roster of the 1917 and 1918 college All-America football teams. [September 26, 1982, The New York Times Columbia Law School After graduation, Robeson moved to , the oldest intercollegiate Greek-letter Fraternity for African Americans. He graduated in 1923 and was hired at the law firm of Stotesbury and Miner in New York City but quit after a white secretary refused to take dictation from him because of the color of his skin. Robeson later studied at the School Of Oriental And African Studies at the University Of London . MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN He married Eslanda (Essie) Cardoza Goode (1896-1965) in August of 1921. She headed the pathology laboratory at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City . Cardozo Goode was related to the U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo . Robeson and his wife had one child: Paul Robeson II, born in 1927. ACTOR AND SINGER , 1938.]] Robeson found fame as an actor and singer with his fine Bass-baritone voice. In addition to his stage performances, his renditions of old Negro Spirituals were acclaimed. His first roles were in 1922 playing Simon in ''Simon the Cyrenian'' at the Harlem YMCA and Jim in ''Taboo'' at the Sam Harris Theater in Harlem. ''Taboo'' was later re-named ''Vodoo''. He was acclaimed for his 1924 performance in the title role of Eugene O'Neill 's '' The Emperor Jones '' - originally performed, also with great success, by Charles Gilpin in 1920. Next he played Crown in the stage version of DuBose Heyward 's novel "Porgy", which provided the basis for Gershwin's opera "Porgy and Bess", and, in 1930, he played '' Othello '' in England , when no US company would employ him for the role. He reprised the role in New York in 1943-1945. His Broadway run of ''Othello'' is still, as of 2006, the longest of any Shakespeare play. He won the Spingarn Medal in 1945 for this performance. Uta Hagen played Desdemona, and José Ferrer played Iago. Robeson's repertoire of African-American folk songs helped bring these to much wider attention both inside the US and abroad — in particular his rendition of " Go Down Moses ". Robeson also became interested in the folk music of the world; he came to be conversant with 20 languages, fluent or near fluent in 12. His standard reportoire after the 1920s included songs in many languages (e.g., Chinese, Russian, Yiddish, German, etc.). Between 1925 and 1942 Robeson appeared in eleven films - all but four of them British productions - after he and his wife moved to England in the late 1920s. He remained there, with long periods away on singing tours, until the outbreak of World War II . At the height of his popularity in the 1930s , Robeson became a major box office attraction in British films such as '' Song Of Freedom '' and '' The Proud Valley ''. Briefly returning to the US he reprised his title role in the film version of '' The Emperor Jones '' in 1933. He was also cast as Joe in the 1936 film version of '' Show Boat '', another box office hit for Robeson, and the most frequently shown and highly acclaimed of all his films. His performance of " Ol' Man River " for this film was particularly notable. He was Umbopa in the 1937 version of '' King Solomon's Mines ''. In films such as "Jericho" and "Proud Valley," he portrayed strong black American male leading roles. Activism and advocacy in 1983 to honor Paul Robeson.]] Robeson was among the first performers to sing in concert on behalf of the U.S. World War II war effort. 26, 1982, The New York Times He sang and spoke out against racist conditions experienced by Asian and Black Americans; he condemned segregation in both the North and the South. In particular, Robeson spoke out against Lynching and, in 1946, he founded the American Crusade Against Lynching . In 1948, Robeson was active in the presidential campaign to elect Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace, who had served as Secretary of Agriculture, Vice President, and Secretary of Commerce in the administrations of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. On the campaign trail in June of that year, Robeson came to Georgia, where he sang before "overflow audiences... in Negro churches in Atlanta and Macon." Source: The Atlanta Journal 6/21/48. According to Progressive Party organizer Rev. I. J. Domas, Robeson rode a flatbed truck through the streets of the Black neighborhoods singing. When people came out of their homes to hear him, he urged them to register to vote. Source: Rev. Domas, whose role in church integraton in Atlanta is told in a history on file at Emory University. Robeson and the Soviet Union Like many intellectuals and artists of the time, Robeson supported the Soviet Union . On July 8, 1943, at the largest pro-Soviet rally ever held in the United States, an event organized by the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and chaired by Albert Einstein , Robeson met Solomon Mikhoels , the popular actor and director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater and the Yiddish poet Itzik Feffer . Mikhoels headed the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in what was then the Soviet Union; Feffer was his second. After the rally, Robeson and his wife Essie entertained Feffer and Mikhoels.Stewart, pg. 225. Six years later, in June 1949 during the 150th anniversary celebration of the birth of Alexander Pushkin , Robeson visited the Soviet Union to sing in concert and was given a warm public welcome. But Robeson was troubled because the Jewish pianist who had accompanied Robeson's concerts was denied a visa by the Russians, and their closest Russian Jewish friends were conspicuous by their absence. Concerned about their welfare, Robeson demanded of his Soviet hosts that he see Feffer. When they met, an obviously tortured Feffer indicated that Mikhoels had died in a suspicious motor vehicle accident. Unbeknownst to Robeson, Feffer -- who had been working as a Soviet agent -- might have set up the execution of Mikhoels himself. (Louis Rappaport's book ''Stalin's War Against the Jews'' is the source of the unconfirmed claim that Feffer, a Jew, took part in the murder of Mikhoels, the famous director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater.) Not knowing of Feffer's role in Mikhoels' state-sponsored murder, Robeson paid tribute to both Feffer and Mikhoels during his concert in Tchaikovsky Hall, June 14, 1948. After a spirited speech on their behalf in defiance of Soviet authorities, he sang the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising song "Zog Nit Kaynmal" in both Russian and Yiddish Duberman, pg. 352-354. and in solidarity with artists and writers then being persecuted by Stalin. , In 1952, Robeson was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize . Robeson wrote a tribute in April, 1953 shortly after Joseph Stalin's death entitled To You Beloved Comrade, in which he praised Stalin's "deep humanity", "wise understanding", and dedication to peaceful co-existence. Because of the segregation African Americans faced in the United States, Robeson said he admired Stalin for the decisive role the Soviet leader played in encouraging national minorities. Robeson said, "I was later to travel - to see with my own eyes what could happen to so-called backward peoples. In the West (in England, in Belgium, France, Portugal, Holland) - the Africans, the Indians (East and West), many of the Asian peoples were considered so backward that centuries, perhaps, would have to pass before these so-called "colonials" could become a part of modern society." "But in the Soviet Union, Yakuts, Nenetses, Kirgiz, Tadzhiks - had respect and were helped to advance with unbelievable rapidity in this socialist land. No empty promises, such as colored folk continuously hear in the United States, but deeds." {Link without Title} . International Travel Ban In 1950, after he refused to sign an affidavit swearing that he was not a Communist {Link without Title} the U.S. Government took away Robeson's passport and, with it, his freedom to travel outside the United States. When Robeson and his lawyers met with officials at the U.S. state department August 23, 1950 and asked why it was "detrimental to the interests of the United States Government" for him to travel abroad, "they were told that his frequent criticism of the treatment of blacks in the United States should not be aired in foreign countries—it was a "family affair." (Duberman, p. 389) In the travel ban, Robeson joined other radicals whose right to travel was prohibited, including the writers Howard Fast and Albert Kahn , and Richard Morford who headed the National Council of America-Soviet Friendship. In his detailed biography of Robeson, Duberman sought and received answers to his requests under the Freedom Of Information law. One such answer came in the state department's 'memorandum for file' summarizing the August 23, 1950 meeting between U.S. officials and Robeson and his attorneys. (Duberman, p. 389, 411). The internal state department memorandum reveals that U.S. government officials asked Robeson to sign a statement guaranteeing not to give any speeches while outside the U.S.. When Robeson refused, the State Department declined to reconsider his passport application. His attorneys protested that this amounted to an unconstitutional violation of the right of free speech.(Duberman, p. 389) While no U.S. citizen needed a passport to travel to and from Canada, the State Department also took steps to prevent Robeson from leaving the U.S. to sing at a concert in Vancouver , British Columbia in January 1952. Falling back on legislation passed during World War I "during the existence of a national emergency"—to prevent the entry or departure of its citizens, U.S. officials stopped Robeson from singing in Canada. In an act of defiance against the travel ban, labor unions in the U.S. and Canada organized a concert at the International Peace Arch on the border between Washington State and the Canadian Province of British Columbia on May 18, 1952. (Duberman, p. 400) Paul Robeson stood on the back of a flat bed truck on the American side of the U.S.- Canada border and performed a concert for a crowd on the Canadian side, variously estimated at between 20,000 and 40,000 people. Robeson returned to perform a second concert at the Peace Arch in 1953. (Duberman p. 411), and over the next two years two further concerts were scheduled. In 1956 , Robeson left the United States for the first time since the travel ban was imposed, performing concerts in two Canadian cities, Sudbury and Toronto , in March of that year. The travel ban ended in 1958 when Robeson’s passport was returned to him after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Secretary of State had no right to deny a passport or require any citizen to sign an affidavit because of his political beliefs.(Duberman, p. 463) However, because of the controversy surrounding him, all of Paul Robeson's recordings and films were withdrawn from circulation. From then until the late 1970's, it became increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to hear Robeson sing on records or on the radio, or to see any of his films, including the highly acclaimed and successful 1936 film version of "Show Boat". As far as audiences of the late 1950's (and all of the 1960's) knew, there was only one film version of the show, the MGM Technicolor version of 1951. Wales Robeson's association with National Memorial in Mountain Ash, to commemorate the 33 men from Wales killed while fighting on the side of the Republic in the Spanish Civil War . In 1940, he appeared in '' The Proud Valley '', playing a black laborer who arrives in the Rhondda and wins the hearts of the local population. Between 1952 and 1957, Robeson was invited to sing at the Miners' Eisteddfod , an arts festival, in Porthcawl . He was unable to attend because the United States government had confiscated his passport and banned him from traveling. In 1957, he spoke and sang to the Eisteddfod over a secretly-arranged transatlantic telephone link, beginning with a greeting to those in attendance: "My warmest greetings to the people of my beloved Wales, and a special hello to the miners of South Wales at this great festival. It is a great privilege to be participating in this historic festival. All the best to you as we strive toward a world where we all can live abundant, peaceful and dignified lives." {Link without Title} Welsh miners' organisations were among the most prominent international supporters of the campaign calling for the restoration of his passport and to ''Let Paul Robeson Sing!''. When his passport was returned in 1958 as a result of a United States Supreme Court decision in a related case, Robeson traveled to Wales as a guest of the MP Aneurin Bevan to appear at the National Eisteddfod in Ebbw Vale . He then performed at the Miners' Eisteddfod, fulfilling a promise he had made while prevented from traveling. In 1960, Robeson's final performance at the Royal Festival Hall in London included choral accompaniment from the Cwmbach Welsh male voice choir. {Link without Title} Robeson remains a celebrated figure in Wales. The exhibit ''Let Paul Robeson Sing!'' was unveiled in Cardiff in 2001, going on to tour several Welsh towns and cities. A number of Welsh artists have celebrated Robeson's life: The Manic Street Preachers ' song " Let Robeson Sing " appears on the album ''Know Your Enemy''. The band also covered "Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel?"— the spiritual sung by Robeson as part of his 1957 telephone performance. The play ''Paul Robeson Knew My Father'' by Greg Cullen, set in the Rhondda during the 1950s, features a character with a childhood obsession for Robeson's music and films.[http://www.gregcullen.com/1165.html LATER LIFE He moved to the United Kingdom . He spent five years touring the world, playing Othello again in Tony Richardson 's 1959 production at Stratford-upon-Avon , singing throughout Europe as well as Australia and New Zealand . It was on his visit to England that he befriended actor Andrew Faulds and inspired him to take up a career in politics. Robeson's health began to break down and he spent some time in Russian and East German hospitals. In 1961, Robeson attempted suicide in a Moscow hotel room. His son claimed {Link without Title} this was preciptated by a CIA agent who placed some synthetic hallucinogens into his drink under a covert program called MK Ultra . Paul Robeson returned to live in the United States in 1963. For the remainder of his life he was plagued by ill health, and his appearances were relatively few. His 75th birthday was celebrated in Carnegie Hall , where his taped message was played. In 1976 , at the age of 77, Paul Robeson died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania , where he had been living with his sister. He was interred in the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York . LEGACY
QUOTES
''I have done the state some service, and they know’t. ''No more of that. I pray you, in your letters,'' ''When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,'' ''Speak of me as I am. Nothing extenuate,'' ''Nor set down aught in malice. . .'' from Shakespeare's Othello, the final monologue which Paul Robeson frequently performed SOURCE NOTES BIOGRAPHIES OF PAUL ROBESON (INCOMPLETE LIST)
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