Enter the doors of the charming rowhouse at 4951 Walnut Street, be still for a moment and feel the presence of Paul Robeson nestled in its walls, its floorboards and the second-floor bedroom where he rested.

For a decade, it was his place of respite from years of triumphant and pain. He found solace here in the caring embrace of his sister Marian. For 40 decades before, he had sung his way into the hearts of people in America and all over the world. They loved him. The U.S. government did not. His passport was seized; his records were removed; rioters attacked him and his supporters.

A man who had been favored for his beautiful voice as champion of oppressed people was silenced – merely because he demanded that the United States live up to its ideals of freedom. He didn’t lay low, though. He returned with the resilience of the people from whom he had come.

America was always home to him, regardless of its shortcomings. He said it plainly to members of the House Un-American Activities Committee when he told them that his family had deep roots forged in slavery and that he intended to stay. 

The Robeson House & Museum is a testament to the man and his cause for justice. It bears witness to his relentless drive to make people “see” what America and the world were destined to be:

“Through my singing and acting and speaking,” Robeson said, “I want to make freedom ring. Maybe I can touch people’s hearts better than I can their minds, with the struggle of the common man.”

PAUL ROBESON: HIS MUSIC, HIS MOVIES, HIS MESSAGE

This exhibit explores how Robeson deliberately used his bass-baritone voice to broadcast his message. Through photographs, visitors will see how Robeson connected to people, packing venues around the world. The government ban did not deter him: From New York, a defiant Robeson sang through a transatlantic cable to excited audiences in London and Wales. Five years earlier, at Peace Arch Park in Blaine, WA, he sang to thousands over three years in British Columbia across the Canadian border.

The exhibit shows Robeson the artist as political and social activist. One of the best examples was “Showboat,” where he played the character Joe as a man of dignity. He sang “Ol’ Man River” on stage in London and on Broadaway, and in the 1936 movie with so much soul and integrity that it became his trademark.

Robeson sang the lyrics as they were written in the song but changed some in subsequent recordings. He made them into words of resistance rather than compliance. It was Robeson at his truest.

Read about the opening of the new exhibit.