Paul Robeson, an esteemed alumnus of Columbia Law School, was one of the most gifted men
of the twentieth century and is the namesake of Columbia BLSA's annual conference. His resonant bass and commanding presence made him a
world-renowned singer and actor and proved equally valuable when he spoke out
against bigotry and injustice.
Robeson's father, William Drew Robeson, was a North Carolina slave who
escaped to freedom at age 15, graduated from college, and entered the ministry.
Robeson's mother was Maria Louisa Bustill, a teacher and member of one of
Philadelphia's leading black families. The youngest of five
children. Robeson was only six years old when his mother died. His father
set high expectations for his children and sent them to high school in the
neighboring town of Somerville, New Jersey, because Princeton's segregated
system offered no secondary education for blacks.
Robeson won a scholarship to Rutgers College,
where he excelled academically, becoming a junior-year Phi Beta Kappa, a
champion debater, and class valedictorian. He was equally triumphant on the
athletic field. Twice named an All-American in football, Robeson also lettered
in baseball, basketball, and track. He graduated in 1919. Two years later,
while a student at Columbia University Law School, he married Eslanda Goode.
Their only son, Paul Robeson, Jr, was born in 1927. In 1923, after earning his
law degree and joining an otherwise all-white firm, Robeson decided to leave
the legal profession. He had found his true calling as a performing artist.
During the 1930s Robeson also emerged as a film star. His first role was
in the black director Oscar Micheaux'sBody and Soul (1925), but he was most
active on the screen between 1933 and 1942, a period in which he was
prominently featured in Hollywood versions of The Emperor Jones (1933) and Show
Boat (1936), Tales of Manhattan (1942), and several British films. Robeson,
however, was dissatisfied with his work in motion pictures. He came to believe
that - with the exception of Song of Freedom (1936) and The Proud Valley (1940)
- his characters reflected current racial stereotypes, or what Robeson derided
as "Stepin Fetchit" comics and savages with leopard skin and
spear." Working in films like Sanders of the River (1935), which sang the
praises of British imperialism, became particularly distasteful as Robeson
discovered his African heritage.
He supported the United Auto Workers and other unions of the
Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO); he served on the board of the new
Negro Playwrights' Company; and he became chairman of the Council on African
Affairs, an American-based organization that provided information on African
struggles for freedom and lobbied African concerns. During the Second World
War, Robeson committed his prodigious energies in support of the Allied war
effort and in protests against the poll tax, the segregation of America's armed
forces, and the segregated venues for some of his own concerts. After the war,
Robeson, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Bartley Crum, a liberal lawyer of a European decent called for a national conference to secure a federal
antilynching law. Robeson also protested the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act and
campaigned for the Progressive Party in the 1948 election. Robeson highlighted
the black struggle for equality in all his campaign speeches, even those he
delivered - at considerable risk - in the Deep South.
