Paul Robeson was a famous African-American athlete, singer, actor, and
advocate for the civil rights of people around the world. He rose to
prominence in a time when segregation was legal in the United States,
and Black people were being lynched by white mobs, especially in the
South. 

Born on April 9, 1898 in Princeton, New Jersey, Paul Robeson was the
youngest of five children. His father was a runaway slave who went on to
graduate from Lincoln University, and his mother came from an
abolitionist Quaker family. Robeson's family knew both hardship and the
determination to rise above it. His own life was no less challenging. 

In 1915, Paul Robeson won a four-year academic scholarship to Rutgers
University. Despite violence and racism from teammates, he won 15
varsity letters in sports (baseball, basketball, track) and was twice
named to the All-American Football Team. He received the Phi Beta
Kappa key in his junior year, belonged to the Cap & Skull Honor Society,
and graduated as Valedictorian. However, it wasn't until 1995, 19 years
after his death, that Paul Robeson was inducted into the College Football
Hall of Fame. 

At Columbia Law School (1919-1923), Robeson met and married Eslanda
Cordoza Goode, who was to become the first Black woman to head a
pathology laboratory. He took a job with a law firm, but left when a white
secretary refused to take dictation from him. He left the practice of law
to use his artistic talents in theater and music to promote African and
African-American history and culture. 

In London, Robeson earned international acclaim for his lead role in
Othello, for which he won the Donaldson Award for Best Acting
Performance (1944), and performed in Eugene O'Neill's Emperor Jones
and All God's Chillun Got Wings. He is known for changing the lines of the
Showboat song "Old Man River" from the meek "...I'm tired of livin' and
'feared of dyin'....," to a declaration of resistance, "... I must keep fightin'
until I'm dying....". His 11 films included Body and Soul (1924), Jericho
(1937), and Proud Valley (1939). Robeson's travels taught him that racism
was not as virulent in Europe as in the U.S. At home, it was difficult to find
restaurants that would serve him, theaters in New York would only seat
Blacks in the upper balconies, and his performances were often
surrounded with threats or outright harassment. In London, on the
other hand, Robeson's opening night performance of Emperor Jones
brought the audience to its feet with cheers for twelve encores. 

Paul Robeson used his deep baritone voice to promote Black spirituals,
to share the cultures of other countries, and to benefit the labor and
social movements of his time. He sang for peace and justice in 25
languages throughout the U.S., Europe, the Soviet Union, and Africa.
Robeson became known as a citizen of the world, equally comfortable
with the people of Moscow, Nairobi, and Harlem. Among his friends were
future African leader Jomo Kenyatta, India's Nehru, historian Dr. W.E.B.
Du Bois, anarchist Emma Goldman, and writers James Joyce and Ernest
Hemingway. In 1933, Robeson donated the proceeds of All God's Chillun
to Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler's Germany. At a 1937 rally for the
anti-fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War, he declared, "The artist must
elect to fight for Freedom or for Slavery. I have made my choice. I had no
alternative." In New York in 1939, he premiered in Earl Robinson's Ballad
for Americans, a cantata celebrating the multi-ethnic, multi-racial face
of America. It was greeted with the largest audience response since
Orson Welles' famous "War of the Worlds." 

During the 1940s, Robeson continued to perform and to speak out
against racism, in support of labor, and for peace. As a passionate
believer in international cooperation, Robeson protested the growing
Cold War and worked tirelessly for friendship and respect between the
U.S. and the USSR. In 1945, he headed an organization that challenged
President Truman to support an anti-lynching law. In the late 1940s,
when dissent was scarcely tolerated in the U.S., Robeson openly
questioned why African Americans should fight in the army of a
government that tolerated racism. Because of his outspokenness, he
was accused by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) of
being a Communist. Robeson saw this as an attack on the democratic
rights of everyone who worked for international friendship and for
equality. The accusation nearly ended his career. Eighty of his concerts
were canceled, and in 1949 two interracial outdoor concerts in Peekskill,
N.Y. were attacked by white mobs while state police stood by. Robeson
responded, "I'm going to sing wherever the people want me to sing...and
I won't be frightened by crosses burning in Peekskill or anywhere else." 

In 1950, the U.S. revoked Robeson's passport, leading to an eight-year
battle to resecure it and to travel again. During those years, Robeson
studied Chinese, met with Albert Einstein to discuss the prospects for
world peace, published his autobiography, Here I Stand, and sang at
Carnegie Hall. In 1960, Robeson made his last concert tour to New
Zealand and Australia. In ill health, Paul Robeson retired from public life
in 1963. He died on January 23, 1976, at age 77, in Philadelphia. 

Passage from: http://www.cs.uchicago.edu/cpsr/robeson/bio.971016.html

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