Paul Robeson: Black America’s Greatest Combination of Entertainer and Activist
By Robert James Taylor
When Black America thinks of entertainers who were also great social activists, the names Harry Belafonte, Ossie Davis and even Bill Cosby perhaps come most readily to mind. But the greatest combination of entertainer and social activist ever produced by the African American struggle for justice in this country is seldom mentioned today. His name is Paul Leroy Bustill Robeson.
Born in Princeton, New Jersey on April 9, 1898 and the product of a father who was a strict disciplinarian (his mother died when he was only six), Robeson was the epitome of excellence: a superb student; an exceptional athlete, a powerful entertainer and a dedicated activist against racism and social injustice.
Robeson graduated from high school with honors in 1915. He was so academically impressive that he won a full academic scholarship to Rutgers University becoming only the third Black student accepted to the prestigious predominantly white institution. As would become his legacy throughout life, Robeson excelled at Rutgers. He was one of only three members of his class accepted into Phi Beta Kappa in his third year.
In the “Class Prophecy,” members of his graduating class were so impressed by his intelligence and bearing that they predicted he would “become leader of the colored race in America.” After graduating from Rutgers, Robeson moved to the then “Capitol of Black America” – Harlem, New York – and entered the Columbia University Law School (1920-1923). Again, he excelled while working his way through school as an athlete and performer.
He later became a star for the Akron Pros and the Milwaukee Badgers of the American Professional Football Association. This is the Association which would later become today’s National Football League.
His next arena of conquest was entertainment. He would become a world renowned bass-baritone concert performer as well as stage and movie actor. He was able to avoid the stereotypical and often demeaning roles which Black performers were limited to in the 1930s and 1940s. Instead, he was the first major performer to popularize Black gospel music and the first 20th Century Black actor to portray William Shakespeare’s Othello on Broadway and across Europe.
But as Roberson traveled the world, he saw and experienced a lot which angered him. He was most outraged by the racism and fascism (government dictatorships and the lack of democracy) of the period. It was this anger and a personal sense of social justice which led to his political activism. But his speeches, protests and organizing went beyond issues of race.
He began to feel that much of the problems facing the world, especially the poor and working classes, resulted from capitalism. While America and Europe referred to the capitalist economic system as “free enterprise.” Robeson saw mounting evidence that the system was actually predatory in nature and tended to produce the super-rich at one end and the extremely poor at the other. Thus, he turned to socialism and began a political love affair with the early Soviet Union which was promising workers of the world liberation from capitalist exploitation.
But being Black and socialist were perhaps the two most dangerous states of being in America in the 1940s and 1950s, especially with a man known as J. Edgar Hoover heading the FBI. Hoover and other right-wingers began a campaign against Robeson which was clearly designed to portray him in the worse possible light, deny him work and if possible culminate in his death.
Hoover succeeded! Broadway and Hollywood turned against Robeson. Ever NBC television refused to allow Robeson to appear on a talk program to discuss his views. In the “Red Scare” periods of the 1950s when the nation was on a witch hunt against suspected communists, the FBI was even successful in getting NAACP head Roy Wilkins to take part in a slander campaign against Robeson alleging that he was un-American. Finally, in the early 1950s, the State Department succeeded in revoking Robeson’s passport. This prevented him from earning a living by traveling to Europe where he was hugely popular.
Finally, there is highly suggestive evidence that the U.S. government, via Hoover’s FBI, engaged in efforts to undermine Robeson mentally and get him to commit suicide. By the mid-1950s his health began to deteriorate dramatically. Paul Roberson, Jr. has said his father feared what may be “done to” him by the U.S. government. Robeson, Jr. remains convinced that a 1961 suicide attempt in Moscow (the travel ban was lifted in 1958) resulted from an agent working for the FBI placing an hallucinogenic drug in Robeson’s drink while he was at a party.
Regardless, despite a brief period of recovery after treatment in then communist-ruled East Germany, Robeson spent his last years on this earth a sick and broken man. He would die in Philadelphia on January 23, 1976. His funeral was held in New York City and drew thousands of supporters.
Regardless, available records now show that the FBI campaign against Robeson ran from 1947 to 1974. Nevertheless, the Robeson legacy is one of excellence in virtually everything he ever attempted. It was an excellence accompanied by a dedication to the struggles against racism, oppressive government and for the political and economic rights of the average person. It was a struggle, however, which ran against vested interests in this country. And for that he suffered.
[The Black History Feature is compiled by Robert Taylor. He welcomes comments at his website: http://BlackHistoryClub.ning.com or you can leave a brief message at 202-657.8872.]