Paul Robeson

His father escaped a plantation in his teens and became minister of Princeton's Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church, then lost the pulpit in 1901 after a dispute with its white financial backers. The family fell to menial work and an attic above a store. Paul was six when his mother died in a house fire. In late 1915 he entered Rutgers as the third African American ever enrolled. Teammates broke his nose and dislocated his shoulder before the coach announced he had made the squad. He played end, took first-team All-American in his junior and senior years, and Walter Camp called him the greatest end ever. He was Phi Beta Kappa, class valedictorian, and a Columbia law graduate who renounced the profession because of the racism in it.

Brutus Jones in The Emperor Jones was practically a 90-minute soliloquy, and the reviews were unequivocal. In 1928 he sang Joe in Show Boat at Drury Lane, and his Ol' Man River became the benchmark every later singer was measured against. At the Savoy in 1930 he was the first Black actor to play Othello in Britain since Ira Aldridge. His 1943 Broadway Othello ran 296 performances, a record for a Shakespeare production on Broadway that still stands. In between came the films, the Victor contract, and Ballad for Americans, after which Collier's named him America's number one entertainer.

At a Paris peace congress in April 1949 he said Americans would not make war on the Soviet Union, and the Associated Press printed a false transcript in which he appeared to call America fascist. What followed was the Peekskill riots that August, a passport voided in 1950 at the FBI's request, an income that fell from about 150,000 dollars a year to under 3,000, and a HUAC summons in 1956, where he said his father had been a slave and no fascist-minded people would drive him out of America. Two months after Paris he had asked to see Itzik Feffer in Moscow, and the Soviets brought him from prison. Feffer told him Solomon Mikhoels had been murdered and that he expected to be shot, as he was in 1952. Robeson said nothing, then or ever.

In March 1961, during a party in his Moscow hotel room, he locked himself in the bedroom and cut his wrists. What caused it is still argued: his son blamed CIA and MI5 operations against his father, while his biographer Martin Duberman pointed to exhaustion, bipolar depression and 20 years of harassment. Nearly two years of electroconvulsive therapy and heavy sedation in London left him, his next doctors in East Berlin said, completely without initiative. He never publicly took back a word about the Soviet Union, and he died in Philadelphia on January 23, 1976. The College Football Hall of Fame took him in 1995, and his centenary in 1998 brought a Grammy and a star on Hollywood Boulevard.

Paul Robeson's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Ol' Man River song
  He later replaced the fatalistic last verse with a vow to keep fighting 1928
• The Emperor Jones film
  The first film to feature an African American in a starring role 1933
• Ballad for Americans song
  Broadcast live on CBS and a national seller 1939
• The Proud Valley film
  Set in a Welsh coal-mining town — his last British film 1940
• Othello other
  Theatre Guild production at the Shubert, with Uta Hagen — 296 performances 1943
• Here I Stand book
  His manifesto-autobiography, which no white commercial paper in the country reviewed 1958

• 1915 aged ~17 Enters Rutgers as the third African American ever enrolled He won an academic scholarship and was the only Black student on campus.
• 1919 aged ~21 Graduates class valedictorian after two All-American seasons at end Walter Camp called him the greatest end ever to play the position.
• 1928 aged ~30 Sings Joe in Show Boat at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane His Ol' Man River set the standard for everyone who sang it afterward. The run reached 350 performances.
• 1943 aged ~45 Opens on Broadway in Othello opposite Uta Hagen It ran 296 performances, a record for a Shakespeare production on Broadway that still stands, and won him a Donaldson Award.
• April 20, 1949 aged 51 Speaks at the Paris peace congress and is misquoted worldwide The Associated Press circulated a false transcript in which he appeared to equate America with a fascist state.
• August 27, 1949 aged 51 Mobs shut down his concert at Peekskill, New York The replacement concert eight days later ended in violence as well.
• 1950 aged ~52 The State Department voids his passport at the FBI's request Told he was denied a passport because his criticism of the treatment of Black Americans should not be aired abroad. His yearly income fell from about 150,000 dollars to under 3,000. The Supreme Court restored the passport in Kent v. Dulles on June 16, 1958.
• June 12, 1956 aged 58 Refuses to answer the House Un-American Activities Committee Asked why he had not remained in the Soviet Union, he answered that his father was a slave and his people died to build the country, and that no fascist-minded people would drive him from it.
• January 23, 1976 aged 77 Dies in Philadelphia of complications of a stroke He lay in state in Harlem and was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

• W.E.B. Du Bois 1868–1963
  Sociologist, historian, and civil rights activist who was the first African American to earn a Harvard doctorate. co-founded Freedom with
• Eugene O'Neill 1888–1953
  Playwright whose psychologically complex dramas established serious American theater on the world stage. made his name in the plays of
• Jackie Robinson 1919–1972
  First African American to play in Major League Baseball in the modern era, breaking the color barrier. rebutted before Congress by
• J. Edgar Hoover 1895–1972
  Longtime FBI director who built a powerful national police institution while conducting extensive political surveillance and abuses. surveilled by
• Langston Hughes 1901–1967
  Harlem Renaissance poet and writer whose work celebrated Black life and challenged racial injustice. Harlem Renaissance contemporary