Actors - Paul Robeson

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	Actors - Paul Robeson

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 Princeton, New Jersey. His father William Drew Robeson I(1845-1918) ran away from a North Carolina plantation where he had been enslaved; he later graduated from Lincoln University, and became a church minister. His mother, Maria Louisa Bustill came from an abolitionist Quaker family . Paul's four siblings include: William Drew Robeson, a physician who practiced in Washington, DC; 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. Robeson and his father had wanted him to attend Princeton University, but Princeton did not admit blacks at the time. He is usually considered to be only the third African-American accepted at Rutgers, although there is reason to believe there were more than two before him. Robeson was one of only three classmates at Rutgers accepted into Phi Beta Kappa. He was valedictorian of his graduating class and was one of only four students selected in 1919 to Cap and Skull, the honor society at Rutgers. Robeson was also a noted collegiate athlete. He earned fifteen varsity letters 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 (1917 and 1918). Football coach Walter Camp described him as "the greatest to ever trot the gridiron." After he gained infamy for his Communist ties, his name was struck from the roster of the 1917 and 1918 college All-America football teams.

Columbia Law School

After graduation, Robeson moved to Harlem and earned a law degree at Columbia, graduating in the same law school class as United States Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. Between 1920 and 1923, Robeson helped pay his way through law school by working as an athlete and a performer. He played professional football in the American Professional Football League, served as assistant football coach at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and starred in the 1922 play Taboo in New York and in London. At Columbia, Robeson joined Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, 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 Eslande(Essie) Cardozo 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

Robeson found fame as an actor and singer with his fine 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. At the time, the Broadway run of Othello was 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.).

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