BLACK HISTORY MONTH SERIES & BEYOND 2023
This year, the Paul Robeson House & Museum is celebrating the 125th birthday of Paul Leroy Robeson. Each weekday during Black History Month, we will offer a series of vignettes from Robeson’s life as a prelude to his birthday celebration from April 8-15, 2023.
The series will remind the country and the world of Robeson’s contributions, and the price he paid for speaking out against racism and oppression. Robeson was born on April 9, 1898.
Research for this series was compiled from several sources, including Martin Duberman’s “No One Can Silence Me” and “Paul Robeson: A Biography,” newspaper articles, books published about Robeson and other online resources. This vignette was researched and written by Robeson House volunteer Sherry L. Howard.
Honorary Co-Chairs for the 125th Birthday Celebration are Harry Belafonte and Danny Glover. For more information about special guests and events, visit bit.ly/125birthdayevents
To BUY TICKETS for the April 8, April 9 and April 14 event: bit.ly/125thbirthdaytickets
Our musical headliner for the April 15 Closing Gala is Sweet Honey in the Rock. Purchase tickets here: https://pennlivearts.org/event/paul-robeson
𝗣𝗮𝘂𝗹 𝗥𝗼𝗯𝗲𝘀𝗼𝗻’𝘀 𝗯𝗶𝗿𝘁𝗵 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆
Paul Leroy Robeson was born in Princeton, NJ, on April 9, 1898, the youngest child of the Rev. William Drew Robeson and Maria Louisa Bustill Robeson, a schoolteacher.
Robeson came from a family of Black Quaker abolitionists. His mother was the great-granddaughter of Cyrus Bustill, a baker who supplied bread to George Washington’s army during the Revolutionary War and founded a mutual-aid society for Blacks in the 18th century.
Her ancestors also included the artists David Bustill Bowser and Robert Douglass Jr., abolitionist/educator Sarah Mapps Douglass and Humphrey Morrey, a white man who was the first mayor of Philadelphia.
His father escaped slavery at age 15 via the Underground Railroad and settled in Philadelphia. He was a laborer in the Union Army during the Civil War, graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania with bachelor and theology degrees, and became a minister.
Robeson’s mother died when her clothes caught fire from a stove when he was 6 years old. He and his four siblings – including an only sister Marian – were raised by their father. Robeson attended high school in Somerville, NJ, where he was an exceptional student, and realized he had a natural and distinctive singing voice.
Rev. Robeson was a demanding father, expecting nothing less than perfection and hard work from his children. He taught them to be modest and polite, and to exercise self-control. He taught Robeson to use his gifts to benefit Black people.
“The glory of my boyhood years was my father,” Robeson wrote in his book “Here I Stand” in 1958. “I loved him like no one in all the world.” He told his intimates: “I respected my father, but I loved my mother.”
At one point later in his career, Robeson was asked about the pronunciation of his surname. “The name is: Robeson: Robe as in the ordinary word, robe, meaning dress, and son pronounced like the word son, meaning a male child,” he said. “The name is pronounced in two syllables only: Robe-son.”
𝗥𝘂𝘁𝗴𝗲𝗿𝘀, 𝗳𝗼𝗼𝘁𝗯𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗴𝗲
Paul Robeson received an academic scholarship to Rutgers College (now university) in New Jersey, the third Black student to attend the school.
He excelled in his studies, garnering a prestigious Phi Beta Kappa Key his junior year and being elected to the Cap & Skull honor society as a senior. He was chosen valedictorian of his graduating class in 1918.
He was noted, also, for his prowess on the football field, where he was the only Black player and suffered abuse at the hands of his teammates. When he tried out for the team at age 17, the players broke his nose, sprained his shoulder, and left him with cuts and bruises after they piled up on him.
His father told him to hang in there, that he wasn’t just representing himself on the field or elsewhere, but was standing in for all the other Black boys who wanted to play football or go to college.
Robeson went back out, and the torture continued. One time, a player stepped on his hand with his cleats, stripping away fingernails. Enraged, the 6-foot-3 Robeson picked up the player, raised him over his head and was close to crashing him to the ground before the coach intervened.
Coach G. Foster Sanford threatened to drop anyone from the team who injured Robeson. White teams from other schools refused to play against Rutgers because he was on the team. By his junior year Robeson was in the starting lineup and was named to All-America football teams for two years.
He was a catcher on the baseball team, center on the basketball team, and javelin and discus thrower in track. He won 15 varsity letters in all four sports. Robeson graduated from Rutgers in 1918, and in 1934 the school awarded him an honorary Master of Arts degree.
Robeson attended Columbia University’s Law School. In the early 1920s, he played professional football for the Akron Pros of the American Professional Football Association and the Milwaukee Badgers of the National Football League. He used the money to pay his way through law school.
After one game, he was taken to New York’s Presbyterian Hospital for an emergency operation on his thigh and was introduced to a Black female pathologist technician named Eslanda “Essie” Cardozo Goode, whose maternal grandfather was the first Black person to hold a statewide office in the country – secretary of state in South Carolina in the mid-19th century. Robeson and Essie married in 1921.
After graduating from Columbia in 1923, Robeson was hired at a white law firm, where he was again in a racially hostile setting. He quit after a secretary reportedly told him “I never take dictation from a n—r.”
Paul Robeson on stage
Paul Robeson’s new wife Eslanda persuaded him to pursue a career in acting, and she became his first manager. His stage debut was in “Simon, the Cyrenian” at the Young Men’s Christian Association in Harlem in 1920. He went after the role, he said, not because he was intent on becoming an actor but “to get her to quit pestering me.”
A year later, he performed in “Roseanne” at the Harlem Lafayette Theatre and a year later as Jim in “Taboo” on Broadway. He recreated the role in a London production renamed “The Voodoo.” In New York, he joined the Provincetown Players and its cofounder Eugene O’Neill in the production of “All God’s Chillun Got Wings” and “The Emperor Jones.” He was also cast in the London version of the “Emperor” play.
In London in 1928, Robeson had the leading role of Joe in “Show Boat,” where he sang what would become his trademark song “Ol’ Man River.” Also in London in 1930, he starred in a stage production of “Othello.”
He won high praise from critics for his London stage performances in “The Emperor Jones,” “Othello” and “Showboat.” He had won the hearts of Europeans with his singing and acting, and was becoming an international star.
William Shakespeare’s “Othello” was the most famous of Robeson’s appearances on stage. After one performance in London, opera singer Amanda Aldridge, daughter of the famous Black Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge, gave Robeson the earrings that her British father wore in the same role in 1825 in London.
Robeson played the Moor for the first time on London’s West End in 1930 with Peggy Ashcroft as Desdemona. “It is a tragedy of racial conflict,” he said. “Othello in the Venice of that time was in practically the same position as a colored man in America today.”
The play called for him to kiss the white Ashcroft, an act for which he could be lynched in his own country. Even in some British minds, including critics’, it was heresy. Back in the United States, there was much anxiety when he appeared in a production of the play on Broadway, this time with white actress Uta Hagen.
The play opened in October 1943, and Robeson was met with thunderous applause. The play ran for more than 300 performances over eight months, making it the longest-running Shakespearean play on Broadway. Afterward, it toured for eight months. Robeson put in his contract that he would not appear before segregated audiences.
A year earlier, in 1942, Robeson and the cast of Othello had tested out the show in Philadelphia at the Locust Street Theater before taking it to Broadway.
Paul Robeson in the movies
During the 1920s to 1940s, Paul Robeson was a busy and versatile entertainer – singing spirituals, and acting on stage and screen.
He appeared in more than a dozen films, starting with the silent movie “Body and Soul” by Black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux in 1925, his debut. Micheaux was the country’s first Black filmmaker, a former Pullman porter who had begun making movies in 1917. He would eventually make more than 40 films.
The 1930s were especially fruitful, with Robeson making almost one movie a year. In 1930, he and Eslanda appeared together in their first movie “Borderline,” a silent film made in Switzerland. They were together again, along with Robeson pianist Lawrence Brown, in the movie “Big Fella” in 1937. He made three other movies that year.
Robeson took on the character of a Pullman porter who becomes emperor of a Caribbean island in “The Emperor Jones” in 1933, his first talkie. The censors forced a reshoot of a kissing scene between Robeson and Black actress Fredi Washington because on film, they said, she looked like a white woman. So dark makeup was applied to Washington’s skin.
In 1934, he appeared in “Sanders of the River,” thinking that it would present a more positive view of Africans. It did not. He had no control over the final cut and was sorry that he had participated in it.
That was not the only one, though. In the 1942 film “Tales of Manhattan,” he played a sharecropper in a stereotypical role that was condemned by many Black people and the critics. He expected the movie to show the hardships of sharecropping. He held a press conference to announce that he would no longer make films.
Robeson is most recognized for “Show Boat,” made in Hollywood in 1936, in which he sang his signature song, “Ol’ Man River.” In 1939, he was in the independent movie “Proud Valley.” In the film, he was a Black American who worked in the Welsh coal mines.
Robeson’s relationship with the Welsh people had begun 10 years before, in 1929, when he was in London starring in “Show Boat.” He was heading out of an affair when he came across a protest march of miners who had come to the city seeking government assistance. Robeson joined the march.
When they stopped in front of a government building, he sang to them, and then donated money so they could get a train back home with food and supplies. Subsequently, he presented concerts in several Welsh towns and became a folk hero among the Welsh people.
Robeson was most proud of the movies “Proud Valley” and “Song of Freedom (1936),” the story of a Black London dockworker with a beautiful voice and ties to an African king. He felt that the film offered a view of Africans contrary to the stereotypical norm.
Paul Robeson the remarkable singer
Paul Robeson became best known around the world for his bass-baritone voice that made spirituals – many of them by the Black composer/arranger Harry T. Burleigh – a truly American standard and worthy of the concert stage. Thousands of people showed up to hear him reach deep into his soul to sing the songs of his people: “Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit,” “Go Down Moses,” “Sing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “The House I Live In” and “Deep River.”
“Yes, I heard my people singing! – in the glow of parlor coal-stove and on summer porches sweet with lilac air, from choir loft and Sunday morning pews – and my soul was filled with their harmonies,” he wrote in “Here I Stand,” published in 1958. “Then, too, I heard these songs in the very sermons of my father, for in the Negro’s speech there is much of the phrasing and rhythms of folksong. The great, soaring gospels we love are merely sermons that are sung; and as we thrill to such gifted gospel singers as Mahalia Jackson, we hear the rhythmic eloquence of our preachers, so many of whom, like my father, are masters of poetic speech.”
Robeson sang in parlors and churches, large music halls and small venues, in stadiums and on prominent stages, at colleges and in homes, and on the backs of flatbed trucks. He sang at the world-famous Carnegie Hall in New York – the first time in 1929, the last in 1958.
He not only sang the songs of his own people but also of peoples in other countries, sometimes in their own language. He could sing or understand more than 20 languages. He went to the Spanish front to inspire soldiers at war for their country, and he gave concerts to raise money for China’s fight with Japan, among other causes.
In Philadelphia, he presented concerts at Robin Hood Dell East and the Academy of Music in 1940. He appeared often at the Metropolitan Opera House: 1924, as part of an NAACP conference that was broadcast over the radio; 1931, in a program organized by Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, when he sang selections from “The Emperor Jones.”
In 1949, Robeson was in a concert at the Opera House with 4,500 in the audience and 200 people outside protesting his advocacy for Black people and his admiration for the Soviet Union in a time of McCarthyism.
Robeson sang at Harlem nightclubs in the early 1920s. The Provincetown Players, the group that produced his first play, sponsored his first concert of spirituals in 1925. He was accompanied by Lawrence Brown, who would remain by his side for 40 years (they met in 1922). He sang with the Philadelphia Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1940. He sang often at Mother A.M.E Zion Church in Harlem where his brother the Rev. Benjamin (Ben) C. Robeson was pastor.
He sang with the Treorchy and Pendyrus Male Choirs of Wales, and the Cwmbach Male Choir in London. (Current members of the Treorchy and Pendyrus choirs will participate in the celebration of Robeson’s birthday in April.)
Robeson used his voice to sing of pain and triumph, to connect to other cultures, to call out oppressive and racist governments, and to fortify labor and social justice movements. He saw a connection between the folk music of other countries and the spirituals of Black America.
He sang blues for the first time with Count Basie and his orchestra in Toronto, Canada, in 1941. Robeson collaborated with Basie, author Richard Wright, singer Jimmy Rushing and producer John Hammond on a song titled “King Joe,” about boxer Joe Louis and written by Wright. The song was released a year later.
Basie recalled how the recording came about: “We were in a club in New York City. I was talking to John Hammond, and Paul (Robeson) was in the same club dancing. I told John, ‘You know, I’d like to do a record with Paul.’ John said, ‘Why don’t you ask him?’ I said, ‘Oh no, you ask him.’ John asked him and Paul said, ‘Gee whiz, I’d like nothing better.’ We did it and, boy, it was a pleasure for me to do the record with him. For me, it’s an item.”
Robeson’s voice was captured on dozens of albums, most of them spirituals. In 1939, he sang an operatic folk cantata titled “Ballad for Americans” at the CBS Radio Studios in New York. Before a live audience for 10 minutes, he sang a song that celebrated a multi-racial, multi-cultural America. It was resoundingly applauded. “Ballad for Americans” was released as an album a year later.
You can listen to the original 30-minute “Ballad for Americans” broadcast here:
Robeson & his signature song “Ol’ Man River”
The composer Jerome Kern and songwriter Oscar Hammerstein II wrote “Ol’ Man River” for Paul Robeson to sing in the 1936 movie “Show Boat.” Kern had seen him in a play. “The melody of ‘Ol’ Man River’ was conceived immediately after my first hearing Paul Robeson’s speaking voice,” Kern wrote.
In his first casting of the character Joe in London in 1928, Robeson sang the song with Hammerstein’s lyrics. The song was written in Black dialect as perceived by Hammerstein, including use of the N word. In his concerts, Robeson rewrote the lyrics to remove the demeaning language.
In an essay in Newsweek in 1999, Paul Robeson Jr., Robeson and Eslanda’s only child, talked about the evolution of the reworked lyrics.
“The first recording that he did in 1927, he sang the actual lyrics, “n—” (Note: we omitted the full spelling from the original) and all. But when he listened to it, he said, ‘I’m sorry I did this.’ Then there was this opportunity to do the version in England. So he came to find a way to do it: he altered the first part of the song. Instead of saying ‘n—s all work on the Mississippi,’ he changed it to ‘Darkies all work on the Mississippi.’
“Next came the movie, in 1936, and there was nobody else to do Joe except Robeson. But Dad really didn’t want to do it. So Mother, who was very savvy and who was his manager and agent at the beginning of his career, asked for a price that was through the roof. And they said yes. So he had to do it. What he did, though, was change the lyrics again – and quite significantly to ‘There’s an old man called the Mississippi/That’s the old man that I likes to be.’
“As he got more powerful, he challenged the industry more and more. When he returned to the United States from Europe in 1939, the lyrics were completely transformed. He changed the ending from ‘I’m tired of living and scared of dying’ to ‘I must keep fighting until I’m dying.’ It literally became a song of resistance. It gave the song a different aura, almost like a lament or a spiritual, and it was absolutely stunning. So he was able to make it not only less stereotypical but to give it a kind of dignity.”
Here’s Robeson singing with his reworked lyrics:
https://scalar.usc.edu/works/pandemonium/paul-robeson-performing-ol-man-river-with-revised-lyrics
Tidbits from Paul Robeson’s life
Paul Robeson tomato
It’s unclear who developed this namesake tomato, but it originated in Russia. Robeson was as much enamored with the Soviet people as they were with them. So, it’s not surprising that some gardener or farmer would create an heirloom tomato in his name. The tomato was said to have been produced in Siberia and introduced in the United States by Marina Danilenko, who with her mother had founded the first private seed company in Moscow. She brought 170 new varieties of Russian tomatoes to this country.
The Paul Robeson tomato has a cult-like following in America. It is a beefsteak tomato, brick red with dark shoulders and a smoky taste.
Robeson in the nude
In the mid-1920s, photographer Nickolas Muray shot a series of nude photographs of Robeson in various poses in New York. Meanwhile, sculptor/painter Antonio Salemme created a life-sized nude of Robeson titled “Negro Spiritual.”
Salemme had seen Robeson perform in the play version of “The Emperor Jones” in 1924 and asked him to model for him. He produced a sculpture of Robeson in bronze-colored plaster. The piece was exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum and the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. Salemme submitted it for exhibition at the Philadelphia Art Alliance at its request, but the group refused to show it.
“The executive committee (of the Art Alliance) expressed their apprehension of the consequences of exhibiting such a nude figure in a public square, especially the figure of a Negro, as the colored problem seems to be unusually great in Philadelphia,” the alliance wrote to Salemme, as quoted in Time magazine in 1930.
The sculpture was sent to a foundry in Paris to be cast in bronze, but it disappeared during World War II.
Robeson playing softball
In 1943-1944, Robeson was appearing in “Othello” on Broadway. During some downtime in the summer of 1944, he joined members of the cast, including actor Jose Ferrer, in playing softball in Central Park. Softball teams from several Broadway shows turned out to rib each other and play against each other. One newspaper noted that several of them suffered injuries, including Robeson, injured knee; Milton Berle, sprained ankle, and Ferrer, fractured wrist. Comedian Jackie Gleason was also on a team.
“All seem more interested in batting averages and who’s beating who than in box office receipts at their respective theaters,” a writer for the New York Daily News wrote in June 1944.
A drawing in honor of Robeson
For Robeson’s 75th birthday in 1973, noted Black artist Charles White created a drawing of him. It was used on the cover of the program for the celebration “Paul Robeson: A Cultural Celebration of His 75th Birthday” at Carnegie Hall that drew friends and dignitaries. Robeson was unable to attend but sent a message of thanks.
Robeson’s favorite foods
These were mentioned as Robeson’s favorite foods:
Chocolate and vanilla ice cream
Peanut brittle
Chicken
Collard greens
Cornbread
Green beans
Tapioca pudding
Robeson stamp
The US Post Office issued a commemorative stamp of Robeson on Jan. 20, 2004, recognizing him as a “tireless and uncompromising advocate for civil rights and social justice.”
Robeson with a young Julian Bond
Robeson was among a large number of important guests who visited the home of Horace Mann Bond, first Black president of Lincoln University, located outside Philadelphia. (Robeson’s father the Rev. William Drew Robeson graduated from the school.) During a visit in 1949, captured in a photo by John W. Mosley, Robeson sat with Bond’s young son Julian, who would go on to become a civil rights activist and Georgia state senator.
“Well, I remember Robeson, probably because I have this picture to remind me,” Julian Bond remembered years later. “The picture is I’m sitting on his lap, and my sister and the young woman from next door are standing behind us. He’s singing a song. I remember the song. It was called “Four Insurgent Generals.” It’s a Russian folk song. He had this deep voice, and that voice vibrated through me. I can remember that he’s singing in my ear while the picture is being taken. It’s a fabulous experience.”
Political awakening of Paul Robeson
Even with his fame, Paul Robeson was still faced with racial discrimination in America. His celebrity status did not shield him from being told to use the servant’s entrance rather than the elevator or that he could eat in a restaurant but away from the white guests.
Starting in the 1930s, Robeson decidedly moved from being a performer to an activist, using his voice as a weapon. His travels for performances around the globe opened up the world to him, putting him in touch with other oppressed peoples. He spent most of the 1930s living in England and performing throughout Europe.
While in London, he became acquainted with African leaders and African students, and felt deeply the connection with people in the African Diaspora, as did his wife Eslanda. He was chair of the Council of African Affairs in the United States. He became friends with Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya and others who would go on to lead movements against colonialism and imperialism in Africa. Others of his African friends were Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria.
He was invited to the Soviet Union in 1934 and was warmly received. He was impressed by the Russian people, and what he saw as their embrace of equality and respect for different cultures, and rejection of fascism. He arrived in the country at a time when Soviet-US relations were cordial.
“I’ve learned that my people are not the only ones oppressed … I have sung songs all over the world and everywhere found that some common bond makes the people of all lands take to Negro songs as their own,” Robeson said.
Writer Claude McKay had also been warmly accepted by the Russian government and its people. Unlike Robeson, though, he soon saw behind the façade – Stalin’s genocidal murder of scores of his own people, both peasants and government higher-ups.
For years, Robeson was a supporter and advocate of the Soviet Union, although he never joined the Communist Party or became a communist. He had an affinity for the Russian populace, and he was singularly beloved by them. Never did Robeson express disappointment in the Russian leadership despite its aggressions – not even when his Jewish friend the poet Itzik Feffer was executed during one of Stalin’s purges.
While abroad and back in the United States, Robeson spoke out fervently and often against racism, oppression, Jim Crowism and the laws written to keep Black people in their place. “The artist must fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative,” he said at a rally in London in 1937.
In 1950, Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois, who was also persecuted by the U.S. government, founded Freedom newspaper. Lorraine Hansberry was one of its writers. Robeson spoke at her funeral in 1965.
Robeson was much beloved in the United States – his concerts were well attended or sold out, and he was lauded in the press. But as relations between the U.S. and Russia soured after World War II, the country also moved toward the right. Communism and socialism were seen as the enemies, and people such as Robeson who were Russia-friendly were terrorized. The Cold War was beginning.
Red Scare sweeps America and immobilizes Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson was very sympathetic to the Soviet Union and spoke admiringly in favor of socialism. In 1952, he was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize. Robeson was in the thick of the hysteria over the perceived threat of communism that was ruling the United States. The country – many in white America and some Black people – turned on him. The government was intent on wiping his name from American history.
Concert halls were closed to him, his contracts were canceled, his movies were no longer circulated, his albums were pulled, he was banned from appearing on TV shows. His income plummeted. He was burned in effigy, and was met with protests and boycotts when he was scheduled to appear anywhere.
In 1941, Edgar Hoover sicced his FBI on Robeson and Eslanda, putting them under surveillance until Robeson died in 1976. FBI agents followed him, wrote reports on whom he was meeting and planted informants. Hoover branded him a Communist – Robeson was not a Communist and he never joined the Communist Party. The State Department confiscated his and Eslanda’s passports in 1950.
Robeson had also caught the eye of Wisconsin Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who frightened American citizens into thinking that Communism was overtaking the country. To eliminate this so-called nemesis, McCarthy and his committee called before them any American suspected of being communist, from government officials to Hollywood insiders. He was notoriously feared. Eslanda was called before the committee, but she defied it.
Robeson never joined the Communist Party and was not a communist, but he was sympathetic to the principles of socialism. Subsequently, his name was removed from the College Football All-American roster at Rutgers, virtually eliminating him and his contributions to the team. He was reinstated in 1995 when he was inducted into the Rutgers College Football Hall of Fame.
Paul Robeson as activist protester
In the United States, Paul Robeson took up the cause for equality and freedom. He marched with local citizens in St. Louis to protest segregated seating at the American Theater in 1947. In Baltimore in 1948, he joined the NAACP to dislodge the Ford Theater of its policy of requiring Blacks to sit segregated in the balcony. He carried picket signs to protest unfair hiring practices at the U.S. Bureau of Engraving in Washington in 1949.
Robeson found lynching especially heinous. According to the NAACP, more than 4,700 people were lynched in the United States from 1882 to 1968. The organization hung a banner outside its New York building decrying “A Man Was Lynched Today.”
Blacks were lynched primarily in the South with no repercussions. Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois organized an anti-lynching rally in Washington in 1946, an action opposed by the NAACP because it considered both men too left-wing and too communist-friendly. Four years earlier, the NAACP had given Robeson its highest award, the Spingarn Medal.
Robeson and his contingent wanted the murderers prosecuted, and they wanted the government to institute an anti-lynching law. One of the supporters of the rally was Albert Einstein.
The contingent visited President Truman in the Oval Office to seek support of the law. Robeson started to read a statement, but Truman interrupted him. While he was concerned about lynching, the president said, the time for legislation was not right. When the group pushed back, Truman noted that the United States and Great Britain were “the last refuge of freedom in the world.”
Robeson disagreed, pointing out that Great Britain was “one of the greatest enslavers of human beings.” If the federal government would not protect Black people, he stated, they would have to defend themselves. Truman ended the meeting.
In 1951, Robeson led a delegation that submitted a petition from the Civil Rights Congress to the United Nations in New York titled “We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People.” The petition, signed by 100 people, accused the United States of genocide against Black people. It included documentation on lynching cases as well as other discriminatory practices in the United States.
William Patterson, secretary of the Civil Rights Congress, presented the document to a U.N. meeting in Paris. Patterson’s passport was revoked when he returned to the United States. Robeson’s passport, as well as that of W.E.B. DuBois, was also nullified by the State Department.
Rioting against Paul Robeson outside Peekskill, NY, 1949
In March 1949, Paul Robeson made a speech at the World Peace Conference in Paris about chilly relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. The conference was sponsored by the Soviets. For years, Robeson had spoken out against racism and Jim Crowism at home, colonialism abroad and oppression of people all over the world. Over the last two decades he had become an advocate for human rights and peace, and often praised the Soviet Union.
Robeson spoke extemporaneously at the conference. This is what he said:
“We in America do not forget that it was the backs of white workers from Europe and on the backs of millions of blacks that the wealth of America was built. And we are resolved to share it equally. We reject any hysterical raving that urges us to make war on anyone. Our will to fight for peace is strong. … We shall support peace and friendship among all nations, with Soviet Russia and the People’s Republics.“
This is how he was quoted by the Associated Press:
“We colonial peoples have contributed to the building of the United States and are determined to share its wealth. We denounce the policy of the United States government which is similar to Hitler and Goebbels. … It is unthinkable that American Negros would go to war on behalf of those who have oppressed us for generations against a country (the Soviet Union) which in one generation has lifted our people to the full dignity of mankind.“
Robeson had been misquoted. The AP report set off a flood of hatred and malevolence toward Robeson, with many calling him un-American and a communist traitor for stating that Black people would not fight in a war against the Soviet Union. Many across the country turned their backs on him, including Rutgers, the NAACP and some top Black leaders. He had many supporters in the United States, including W.E.B. DuBois, who was also being hounded by the U.S. government, and strong backing abroad.
In August 1949, he was invited to sing in a fundraiser to benefit the Harlem chapter of the Civil Rights Congress in a meadow near Peekskill, NY.
The people of Peekskill, including the American Legion and the Ku Klux Klan, were primed for his concert outside their town. The local newspaper urged people to boycott the event. On the day of the concert, a white mob in a deadly rage attacked Robeson supporters, dragging some from cars, busting windows and injuring Robeson supporters. The mob burned a cross and lynched Robeson in effigy. The local police stood by, watched and participated.
Robeson was on site but was whisked away in a car. Among those brutalized was Eugene Bullard, the first Black pilot to fly in combat and the only Black pilot during World War I. He did not fly for the United States, however, but for France. He tried to join the military in his own country in 1917 but was denied.
Hundreds were injured at Peekskill. The New York government blamed the riot on “communist sympathizers” of Robeson’s. No arrests were made.
The concert was postponed until Sept. 4, this time with labor-union members serving as Robeson’s bodyguards. Local protesters, including the VFW and American Legion, showed up again, swearing at Robeson supporters and calling them communists. Rocks were thrown, and windshields were broken.
The concert took place, though. Robeson sang before 20,000 people, Blacks and whites, sharing the stage with singers Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and other performers. He ended the concert with “Ol’ Man River.”
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Paul Robeson and Jackie Robinson
The House Un-American Activities Committee in 1949 called on Jackie Robinson to testify against Paul Robeson and comment on his speech at the peace conference in Paris as reported by the Associated Press (AP). In its report, the AP quoted Robeson as saying that Black people would not fight in a war with the Soviet Union. Robeson was denounced as un-American and a traitor, and was lambasted by many – Blacks and whites – in this country.
Before Robinson appeared before the committee, Robeson had told him that his comments were distorted. The ball player testified that if Robeson made those comments, it “sounds very silly to me.” America was a place where one could worship as they pleased, he stated, acknowledging that racial discrimination did exist and would be fought until “we’ve got it licked.” Some members of the committed applauded his speech, along with the New York Times, the Black New York Amsterdam News and Eleanor Roosevelt.
For his part, Robeson blasted the committee, but refused to tussle with Robinson, whom he described as “my brother.”
It was ironic that Robinson testified against Robeson, who had helped him to become the first Black ball player in Major League Baseball. Robeson was part of a delegation of Black newspaper publishers who met with Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis and club owners in 1943 to talk about opening up the sport to Black players. Robeson was the speaker and the owners welcomed him, but didn’t make a move to desegregate.
”The time has come when you must change your attitude toward Negroes,” Robeson told the owners. “Because baseball is a national game, it is up to baseball to see that discrimination does not become an American pattern. And it should do this this year.”
Two years later, in 1945, Robinson was hired by Branch Rickey onto the farm team of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Over the years, Robinson became involved in the civil rights movement. In his 1972 autobiography, he wrote that he had become disillusioned with the slow pace of equality for Blacks in the United States. He had developed more respect for Robeson, what he was trying to do and the sacrifices he made.
Paul Robeson’s passport confiscated
During the 1950s, America’s antipathy toward the Soviet Union was at its height. Many American citizens were branded Communists, most times without any proof. Mob mentality took over, and civil liberties were vanquished. It was the era of McCarthyism and the Red Scare.
With his admiration of the Soviet Union and his advocacy of rights for Black people, Paul Robeson was swept up by the national psychosis. In 1950, the State Department refused to renew his passport unless he signed an affidavit stating that he was not a member of the Communist Party and was a loyal American. He refused and was forced to surrender his passport. Eslanda’s passport was also confiscated, and the two were literally prisoners in their own country.
This federal government’s action prevented Robeson from traveling outside the United States for concerts to earn a living. His income dropped from $3,000 per performance to $500. In 1936, he had been paid $40,000 as the lead in “Show Boat.”
The Robesons fought back through the courts – as others who were similarly denied, including artist Rockwell Kent.
Meanwhile, Robeson did not remain silent. He continued to speak at rallies, participate in “peace crusades” to Washington, and organize campaigns against injustices in the separate cases of Willie McGee and the Martinsville Seven. In both cases, young Black men were convicted and executed on charges of raping a white woman, McGee in Laurel, MS, and Martinsville in Virginia. They were executed in 1951.
Robeson was still very popular with many Black people in the United States, and even more so with supporters abroad. The State Department took measures to quelch any contact between him and his international followers. The government would not allow him to cross the Canadian-American border in 1952 to give a speech. He sang across the border at Peace Arch Park in Blaine, WA.
In 1958, in the case brought by Kent, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the State Department, noting that the government could not take a citizen’s license because of their politics. As a result, Robeson and Eslanda’s passports were renewed.
𝗣𝗮𝘂𝗹 𝗥𝗼𝗯𝗲𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗛𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗨𝗻-𝗔𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗲
Paul Robeson sings across the US-Canadian border
With his passport confiscated, Paul Robeson could not travel abroad. In 1952, the State Department also banned him from traveling into Canada, where no passport was necessary. In defiance, he stood in Peace Arch Park in Blaine, WA, on the U.S.-Canadian boundary and sang across the border.
He had been invited to address a meeting of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers – or Mine Mill, as it was called – formed in 1893. The union decided to organize an outdoor concert at the border across from Vancouver so Canadians could hear him sing.
“I want to thank you for being here today,” Robeson said. “I want to thank Harvey Murphy and the Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers. I can’t tell you how moved I am at this moment. It seems nothing can keep me from my beloved friends in Canada.
“I stand here today under great stress, because I dare, as do you, all of you, to fight for peace and a decent life for all men, women, and children wherever they may be. And especially today, I stand fighting for the rights of my people in this America, in which I was born.
“You have known me through many years. I am the same Paul, fighting a little harder because the times call for harder struggles. This historic occasion today probably means that I shall be able to sing again as I want to, to sing freely without being stopped here and there. What is being done at this Peace Arch today will ring out, is already ringing out, around the world. I thank you deeply.”
Standing on a platform on the back of a flat-bed truck, Robeson, accompanied by Lawrence Brown on piano, sang for 45 minutes to up to 40,000 people – three-fourths of them Canadian and the rest American, among them the FBI, which had put him under surveillance. He offered up spirituals, folk and labor songs, including “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel”, “Water Boy,” “Ev’ry Time I Feel The Spirit,” “No More Auction Block” and the labor song “Joe Hill.” He also sang Beethoven, Schubert and Dvorak, and performed a passage from “Othello.”
Robeson sang in several languages: English, French, Russian, Chinese, Persian, and Yiddish. He ended with his trademark “Ol’ Man River” with lyrics he had rewritten. Robeson performed in three more concerts at Peace Arch until 1955.
The union recorded his remarks and the concert in a 78 rpm record titled “I Came Here to Sing.”
Transatlantic concerts via underwater telephone cable
On May 26, 1957, Paul Robeson made history by giving a live concert to 1,000 people in St. Pancras Town in London. But he wasn’t in that city. He was in a studio in New York. He sang via a new high-fidelity transatlantic underwater telephone cable, Transatlantic No. 1 (TAT-1), the first such transmission of its kind.
The concert was in defiance of the restriction that the U.S. government had placed on his travels. His passport had been revoked by the State Department, preventing him from traveling outside the country. The London Paul Robeson Committee organized the concert to protest the government’s action. The group purchased time on cable laid in shallow waters in the Atlantic Ocean, and listeners heard Robeson speak through loudspeakers on stage.
“American Telephone and Telegraph, in New York, and the General Post Office, in London, last night between them helped to make the United States Department of State look rather silly. … Last night some of (Robeson’s) words and music escaped, alive, through the new high-fidelity transatlantic telephone cable,” stated the Manchester Guardian newspaper.
The cable, jointly owned by the General Post Office of London and AT&T in the United States, was developed the year before, in 1956. Before then, phone calls across the ocean were made via radio waves, and were of poor quality and expensive. The creation of electronic amplifiers followed by the TAT-1 offered a way for long-distance signals to be heard as clearly as a local call.
In October 1957, the Treorchy Male Choir joined Robeson during his second transatlantic concert as he sang to an audience in Porthcawl, Wales.
This was not Robeson’s first experiment with sound technology. In 1940, he worked with Harold Burris-Meyer at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey on an “acoustic envelope.” The device mirrored the acoustics of a small room, surrounding the singer in an envelope so that he could hear himself – producing an experience of him being alone in a room even if he was in a large space. Robeson used the device in his concerts.
Listen to reports of Robeson’s experience with the TAT-1 cable, along with Robeson singing to the audience abroad:
“Witness History: Paul Robeson and the transatlantic phone line”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct3c6p
Science Museum’s “Paul Robeson and the first transatlantic phone cable”
Paul Robeson travels again & illnesses beset him
After Paul Robeson’s passport was returned in 1958, he resumed his singing career, traveling to Great Britain, the Soviet Union, Australia and New Zealand. He performed in “Othello” at the Shakespeare Memorial Theater in Stratford-upon-Avon, the hometown of William Shakespeare.
Throughout his ordeal in America, Robeson never lost his appeal and admiration from people abroad. On his 60th birthday in 1958, India was among the countries that held celebrations. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru feted him as “one of the greatest artists of our generation (who) reminds us that art and human dignity are above differences of race, nationality and color.”
Robeson sang at Carnegie Hall that same year to a sold-out house. He also published his book “Here I Stand.”
During the 1950s, his health began to deteriorate. Even before he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1956, he was in a state of depression. His wife Eslanda and friends were worried, but he stood up to the panel’s questioning and prevailed.
He was in and out of hospitals, primarily abroad. His decline was both physical and mental: He received electric shock treatments for depression. He attempted suicide by slashing his wrists. Paul Jr. accused the CIA of drugging his father. After more than 60 years, Robeson was a tired and sickly man.
Robeson told Eslanda that he had not fully mended since undergoing prostate surgery in 1956. “I am too tired. I haven’t got the energy. Maybe the voice is still there, but I haven’t the energy, and it takes energy and nerves. And I just haven’t got them anymore,” he said.
While playing Othello in Stratford in 1959, he told her, he was always afraid of forgetting his lines (which he did once). “Every performance was an ordeal,” he said. Eslanda and friends urged him to retire but he first resisted.
“He could not shake a lifetime of trying to live up to those perfectionist demands his father had placed on him in his childhood, and which he had long since internalized as his own, to live up to the dictum that he should always do better and more,” Martin Duberman wrote in “Paul Robeson: A Biography.”
“He could never quite believe that he had done enough to allow him to retire with honor from the field. Particularly, he could not shake the wish to rejoin in a significant way a black-rights movement he had done so much to inaugurate, could not give up the hope that the new generation of black activists would make some request of his services that he would be able to fulfill, that together they might establish some continuity of purpose, some mutual acknowledgment of interconnection between the generations.”
In 1963, Robeson decided to return to the United States, and he eventually retired from public engagements. Eslanda was coping with a major illness at the same time. She died of cancer in 1965.
Listen to Robeson in this Australian interview in 1960 as he talks about Africa, colonialism and the Black struggle in America:
Last 10 years of Paul Robeson’s life in Philadelphia
In 1966, Paul Robeson moved into the home of his sister Marian Forsythe and her daughter Paulina. Marian was his only sister and the second youngest of the children. Both Forsythe and Robeson’s son Paul Jr. were very protective of him, screening his visitors to permit only certain personal friends. One of those friends was Harry Belafonte, who considered Robeson his mentor.
“Shortly before he died, I visited him in Philadelphia,” Belafonte said in an address in 1997 before the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, a mixed-race eclectic group of Americans who fought to defend the Spanish government during its civil war in the 1930s.
“He was living at his sister’s. And I looked at this giant of a man who was, quiet frail in body, but still strong in spirit. And through all that had engulfed him – McCarthyism, the difficult times that he faced in this country because of his beliefs, because of his resistance to oppression – I looked at him, and I said, ‘Paul, I must know. Was all that you have gone through, really worth it? Considering the platform you had gained, and how easy life could have been for you, was it worth it?’
“And he said, `Harry, make no mistake: there is no aspect of what I have done that wasn’t worth it. Although we may not have achieved all the victories we set for ourselves – may not have achieved all the victories and all the goals we set for ourselves, beyond the victory itself, infinitely more important, was the journey.”
(Belafonte is the honorary chairperson of the Paul Robeson House & Museum’s 125th Birthday Celebration in April.)
Robeson was sickly, and had good and not-so-good days. His sister was his caretaker and doted on him. On good days, he sometimes sat on the porch of the twin house at 4951 Walnut St. in West Philadelphia (now home of the house & museum) and greeted neighbors who passed by.
One was a 21-year-old woman named Arcenia McClendon, a native of Laurel, MS. She recalled the joy at meeting him one day.
“I lived around the corner from this very spot right here,” she said in a 2018 interview for the Paul Robeson House & Museum’s “Where Art Lives” video for the Scribe Video Center. “When I would pass by and say good evening, she (Forsythe) would say good evening and he would just nod his head. One day I came by and he was not on the porch with her … and she said ‘he’s not feeling well.’ She said would you like to come in and see him.”
“When I got to the room, … this giant of a man was lying in the bed, still had that head, a huge head, because it had so much knowledge in it and brains in it. She said, ‘Paul this is the young lady that used to pass by and speak to you in the afternoons.’ I had told her previously why I was so interested in him, where I’m from. She said, ‘Paul, she’s from Laurel, Mississippi.’ And he said, ‘Leontyne Price.’ And I said he remembers that. She said, it’s nothing, he’s alright. …”
“To this day that has been the most glorious … that has been the most glorious experience I have had in my life, and I know this will go with me to the grave.”
The renowned opera singer Leontyne Price had studied under Robeson in a master class at Central State University in Wilberforce, OH, when she was a student there in 1948. Robeson admired her voice and hosted a benefit concert to raise money for her to attend Juilliard.
Vernoca L. Michael, former executive director of the Robeson House, and her family were close to Robeson and Forsythe. Her father Dr. E. Raphael Michael was a confidante, and her mother Elizabeth Arnold Michael vocalized with Robeson as he sang the songs that had touched the hearts of millions of people. Charlotte Turner Bell accompanied Robeson on piano in Marian’s parlor and wrote a book, “Paul Robeson’s Last Days in Philadelphia,” about her time with him.
Vernoca ran errands for Robeson and his sister, drove him to appointments and performed any duties asked of her. She knows them as her Uncle Paul and Aunt Marian.
He watched public affairs and British TV programs; sports, especially football, and read newspapers and books. He accompanied friends to the movies, plays and concerts, including performances by Marian Anderson in 1967 and Pearl Bailey in “Hello Dolly” in 1970.
“I think there has been some sort of media myth that he was a bitter and exiled man, “ his son said in 1977. “My father was never bitter or exiled. The only reason for his retirement was his health. He did not want to function in public as a sick old man.”
Thomas DeLoach, who rented Forsythe’s summer home in Pleasantville, NJ, remembered meeting Robeson when he returned a key in the 1960s. Forsythe had invited him in, and Robeson was sitting on the sofa.
“So he smiled and he stood up, he kept growin’ and growin’ and growin’ … and I said, ‘Whoa’ – and he extended his hand out, shook my hand,” DeLoach said in an interview for the 2009 book “Stories From the Paul Robeson House.” “He got a real big hand. He was so large. To me. I mean, sitting on the sofa in the living room, he didn’t seem that big. But when he stood up, he was like a tree growing. You know what I mean? He just kept getting’ taller and once he reached his limit, he was still stooped over. It was really something to see. I’ll never forget it.”
Paul Robeson’s 75th birthday celebrations & his death
By 1973, the country had reluctantly accepted some of the political ideals espoused by Paul Robeson. The civil rights movement of the 1960s had picked up where he had left off – and to a large degree had left him behind. The government had effectively erased him. As Coretta Scott King stated during a 75th birthday celebration at Carnegie Hall in 1973, he was “buried alive.”
The 75th event was called a “Cultural Celebration,” attended by dignitaries, friends and supporters. Robeson was unable to attend but he sent a taped message: “Though I have not been able to be active for several years, I want you to know that I am the same Paul, dedicated as ever to the worldwide cause of humanity for freedom, peace and brotherhood.”
“My heart is with the continuing struggles of my own people . . . (for) not only equal rights but an equal share,” he said.
Tributes were offered by a wide variety of people: Angela Davis called him “a revolutionary.” Dizzy Gillespie called him “my personal champion.” Gary, IN, Mayor Richard Hatcher called him “our own black prince and prophet.” Artist Charles White created a portrait of Robeson.
Organizers showed examples of his movies and stage performances, and his recordings were piped in, particularly “Ol’ Man River” from “Show Boat,” his 1936 movie. Pete Seeger led the audience in singing “Freiheit,” or “Freedom,” a Spanish civil war song Robeson often sang.
Back in Philadelphia, his sister Marian Forsythe and friends celebrated Robeson’s birthday privately in her home. She had held a birthday party for him every year.
Robeson died at age 77 on Jan. 23, 1976, at a hospital in Philadelphia. He was eulogized at Mother A.M.E. Zion Church in Harlem, where his brother the Rev. Benjamin (Ben) Robeson had been pastor and hosted concerts after other venues shut out Robeson in the 1940s and 1950s. Noted music and political figures attended, including Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier.
“He never regretted the stands he took because almost 40 years ago, in 1937, he made his basic choice. He said then: ‘The artist must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative,’” said his son Paul Jr. at the service. “He knew the price he would have to pay and he paid it, unbowed and unflinching. He knew that he might have to give his life, so he was not surprised that he lost his professional career.
“He was often called a Communist, but he always considered that name to be an honorable one.”
More than 5,000 people came out on a rainy day to give Paul Leroy Robeson an appreciative sendoff for the sacrifices he made in their name.
Paul Robeson’s biggest fan in Philadelphia
In 1967, Paul Robeson was admitted to the University of Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia for a skin ailment. No one was allowed to see him without permission from his sister Marian Forsythe or son Paul Jr. Charles L. Blockson was not on the permissions list, but he wanted to see the man who had long been his hero.
Growing up, Blockson’s father and grandfather played Robeson’s 78 rpm records. Born in 1933, he was a child and then a grown man when Robeson reached the highs and lows of his popularity. In the 1930s and much of the 1940s, Robeson was hitting the right notes – making movies, acting on Broadway, singing in the United States and abroad, and interacting with global cultures.
“I read about Paul Robeson being a patient at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital on a cold winter day,” Blockson said in a 2018 interview for the Paul Robeson House & Museum’s video “Where Art Lives,” produced with Scribe Video Center. “It said he wasn’t seeing any visitors, but something told me to get in my car in Norristown my hometown 18 miles from Philly and drive in to see him. Something kept telling me, ‘Who do you think you are. People from all over been trying to see him and they’re being turned away,’ but I persisted.”
“I went to the reception area. The African American receptionist said Paul Robeson is not receiving any visitors. She said, ‘Mr. Blockson, I know who you are, and I’ll permit you to see him for 10 minutes, he’s in room such and such upstairs.’ I went to his room. I saw flowers, I saw the book “Black Magic” (about the history of Black entertainers), Christmas cards. I didn’t see Paul Robeson. He was out receiving X-rays.
“Something said, ‘Be patient.’ A short time later, a young African American nurse came in the room wheeling Paul Robeson in a wheelchair. He had a blue checkered robe on, and he stood up. I introduced myself. He said, ‘Yes Charles, Marian was telling me about you, that you wanted to see me. Marian being his sister, Marian (Robeson) Forsythe. So I said I won’t stay long.
“I had two books: His book “Here I Stand” and another book of his came out, Paul Robeson “Othello.” So he autographed them to me. I kept my word and stayed 10 minutes and I left.” (Robeson published “Here I Stand” in 1958. “Paul Robeson: The American Othello” by Edwin Hoyt came out in 1967.)
“I’ll never forget this as long as I live,” Blockson told a newspaper reporter in 1987. “There was a magnetic force when he shook my hand, and we talked, and he told me the importance of collecting and that books were important to our history and the history of all people, and that we came from a proud heritage.”
Robeson moved to Philadelphia in 1966, a year after the death of his wife Eslanda, to live with his older sister Marian Forsythe and her daughter Paulina. They lived in a corner twin house at 4951 Walnut Street, which is currently the location of the Paul Robeson House & Museum.
Blockson had much in common with Robeson: Both were football players (Robeson at Rutgers University and Blockson at Pennsylvania State University), collected and enjoyed books, possessed a insatiable love for the history of African Americans, and descended from the Igbo people of Nigeria.
Blockson is the among the country’s foremost bibliophiles and collectors of Black history, amassing a collection of more than 500,000 materials pertaining to the experiences of Black people in this country and across the world. The collection consists of books, manuscripts, sheet music, pamphlets, journals, newspapers, broadsides, posters, photographs and rare documents. He donated the collection – the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection – to Temple University in 1984. He has also authored more than a dozen books.
Blockson has put his admiration for Robeson into tangible products: He was the impetus behind the placement of a state historical marker on the sidewalk in front of the house in 1991. With artist Frank Stephens in 1998, he curated a series of panels on Robeson’s life, achievements and contributions titled “From These Roots,” which are in the Paul Robeson House & Museum. Blockson said that he commissioned artist Cal Massey to create portraits of Robeson’s parents, the Rev. William Drew Robeson and Maria Bustill Robeson; Robeson’s sister Marian and Robeson. Blockson was a longtime patron of the house, starting with its purchase by Frances P. Aulston and the West Philadelphia Cultural Alliance in 1994.
His interest in the history of African Americans stretches far back. In fourth grade, a substitute teacher was reviewing American history, spewing out the usual names of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin. “I raised my hand,” Blockson recalled once in an interview. “I was curious. I always had an interest in humanity and history and art. I said, ‘Are there any colored people that we could emulate besides Paul Robeson, Jessie Owens, Marian Anderson?’
“She said, ‘No Charles. Negroes were born to serve white people.’ She wasn’t a bigoted person per se. But she was a victim of her environment. … About 20 years later, I met her. She said she was proud of what I was doing, and she apologized. She said she didn’t know when she told me that remark. She said she was always hurt, because this was the way she was taught. So it was like I forgave her. I didn’t hold any grudges.”
Stung by the teacher’s words but not trapped by them, Blockson spent years buying books, ephemera and artifacts about Black history. Among them were materials pertaining to Robeson.
He never expected to meet Robeson. But he did, three times in the late 1960s and 1970s, twice at Forsythe’s home. He was told each time not to mention his visit.
“We had an exhibition going on called the Black Film Exhibition about black movie stars. Something told me to take the poster around to 4951 Walnut Street and have Paul Robeson sign it,” Blockson said of a 1972 visit. “I was a little leery because so many people were turned away. Mrs. Forsythe wouldn’t permit them to see Paul because of the instructions from Paul Jr., didn’t want people bothering his father. But they knew of my love for him. She permitted me to come in and I did.
“I was sitting down(stairs) waiting for him to come down to sign the poster for the Black Film Festival. She said you have a lucky day. Paul is upstairs. He’s having one of his better days. So I waited patiently on the couch, and I heard BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM coming down the steps. Something told me that moment, he was okay, the strength in his steps.”
Robeson signed the poster, which hangs in the research room at the Blockson collection at Temple.
Blockson said he saw Robeson for the last time a few months before the great man died. He had brought with him a copy of his book to present to Robeson as a gift. It was the day before Blockson’s Dec. 16 birthday.
“’Pennsylvania’s Black History’ was published, so I took a copy around to Mrs. Forsythe his sister and knocked on the door,” he said. “Paulina his niece – Paulina was named after him – she came to the door, she said, ‘Charles, Uncle Paul isn’t feeling too well today.’ I said I won’t stay long. She cracked the door. She had Venetian blinds on the door. They would scrutinize anyone who came to the door before they let them in. She cracked the door enough for me to see him sitting at the dining room table holding his two hands to his head nodding back and forth.
“I had the strange feeling his time was near. … I left the book. Three and a half weeks later he died in Presbyterian Hospital.” Robeson died on Jan. 23, 1976.
Forsythe died the following year, and Paulina moved out of the house. Blockson made a final stop by the vacant house.
“In the closet upstairs in his room there was an overcoat and a suit, a pair of shoes,” Blockson said. “Paul Robeson and I were the same height, 6-3, 215 pounds. I started to put the overcoat on. I was going to take them as a museum piece, but a voice said, ‘Let those clothes be.’ And even today I wish I had taken those clothes and shoes.
“Then I went downstairs. On the floor there were three photographs of Judge (Raymond) Pace Alexander and his wife Sadie Alexander, attorney; Paul Robeson, Mrs. Forsythe and Paul in his robe – the same blue and white robe I saw in the hospital – taking a picture. There on the floor I found telegrams from all over. People who cleaned the place out, they left a lot of materials, so I got on my hands and knees and picked them up and I have them here today.”
Marian Forsythe, Paul Robeson’s big sister
Marian Forsythe’s life was as quiet as her brother Paul Robeson’s was spirited. She was a teacher in the Philadelphia public schools for more than 30 years, married a prominent Philadelphia doctor and engaged in charitable community work.
Robeson settled into the peace and tranquility of her home at 4951 Walnut Street in 1966, living there for the last 10 years of his life protected and nurtured.
Marian (or Marion) Marguerite was the second youngest of Rev. William Drew Robeson and Maria Bustill Robeson’s six children. She was born on Dec. 1, 1894, while her father was pastor at the Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church in Princeton. The only girl, Marian was four years old when Paul was born.
(Forsythe’s name was spelled two ways – Marian and Marion – in newspaper articles, Robeson’s 1958 book, U.S. Census records, and her newspaper obituary and funeral program.)
She was in a boarding school in North Carolina in 1904 when her mother died after her clothing caught fire at their home in New Jersey. Robeson spoke of his sister in his 1958 book “Here I Stand”:
“My sister Marion was not at home as much as Ben, but the thought of Sis always brings an inner smile,” he wrote. “She lives now in Philadelphia, with her husband, Dr. William Forsythe. If it turned out that it was to be Ben who followed my father’s calling as a minister, it was Marion who continued the teaching traditions of my mother’s family. As a girl she brought to our household the blessing of laughter, so filled is she with warm good humor. When she was at home from school, Sis did the cooking, but firmly believing that a woman’s place was not in anybody’s kitchen – at least not for long – she always left the big stack of dishes … for me! (We laugh about that, too, when we get together.)
“With all her happy ways, Marion was earnestly resolved to stand on her own feet and make a way for herself, aware, more keenly than the rest of us, the double burden that a Negro woman bears in striving for dignity and fulfillment in our boasted ‘way of life.’ As a young woman she became a school teacher in Philadelphia and remained in that vocation until recently. I recall with pride her dedication to work with (special needs) children, and her zeal to prove that devoted attention can bring these along with all others.”
From the age of 9, Forsythe attended the boarding school at Scotia Seminary in Concord, NC, founded in 1867 by the Presbyterian Church to educate southern Black women. It taught students in elementary, secondary and college classes. The school trained them for employment as social workers and teachers – career paths other than that of domestic worker, the job most often open to Black women. The school was among the country’s first historically Black educational institutions formed after the Civil War.
One of its graduates was Mary McLeod Bethune, who founded Bethune-Cookman College (now university) in Florida.
Scotia Seminary was renamed Scotia Women’s College in 1916, merged with Barber Memorial College in Alabama in 1930, and became Barber-Scotia Junior College for women. It is now Barber-Scotia College.
Forsythe received a diploma from the Cheyney Training School for Teachers in 1916 and attended the West Chester State Teachers College in West Chester, PA.
She became a special-education teacher in Philadelphia, working at Harrison, Durham and Wilson Elementary Schools. At Harrison in 1932, she was among a group of teachers who raised money to provide daily meals to needy children. In 1940 while at Durham, she was named among several outstanding women who represented the spirit of Elmwood, a section of Philadelphia where she lived.
“She was a good teacher,” recalled Reginald M. Thompson in the 2009 book “Stories from the Paul Robeson House.” “She was a quiet, good, patient teacher. … She always stood out as one who – I think her quietness and her patience really helped a lot of her students back then.”
Once, Forsythe invited her famous brother to visit Wilson school. The air sparked with excitement, said Thompson, then a fifth or sixth grade student. “All of a sudden, this man walked in, a big – I remember it because of his hat, the hat and the overcoat – and when he walked in, it was just like everybody just stopped. And he was with Mrs. Forsythe, and she introduced him as Paul Robeson, a famous actor. … It always made me think, I said, ‘Wow, she has a famous brother,’ but you would never have known it. “
Forsythe was involved in her community: member of the Lincoln Dames, an auxiliary group organized to support Lincoln University, from where both her father and brother William Jr. graduated; a member of the Association of Business and Professional Women of Philadelphia; the Rose Norwood Stewart Memorial Council of Heritage House, and the Philadelphia Cotillion Society, a philanthropic organization that promoted human rights and education.
She was a member of Reeve Memorial Presbyterian Church and its Ever Ready Club. In 1944, Eslanda Goode Robeson, Paul’s wife, spoke at the church’s Women’s Day Program.
“She was not a person who was out in the public eye,” noted Vernoca L. Michael, whose family was very close to Robeson and Forsythe. Michael calls him “Uncle Paul” and her, “Aunt Marian.”
In the summer of 1930, Forsythe was aboard the SS Paris headed back to the United States from France, likely after a visit with Robeson and Eslanda. That year, he performed before large crowds in Paris and other European cities, performing in “Othello” in London and starring with Eslanda in an independent film “Borderline, shot in Switzerland.
Forsythe remained independent and single until she was in her 30s. In August 1931, she married a prominent Black Philadelphia doctor named William Alexander Forsythe, who was 10 years older. He was born in Augusta, GA, in 1884 and graduated from Haines Normal and Industrial Institute. (Normal schools were formed to train teachers.) He received a degree from the Howard University College of Pharmacy and a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. He was a pharmacist in Atlantic City and at one point, worked at Douglass Hospital. He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity and the Pyramid Club, an organization of Black professional men in Philadelphia.
The couple had one child, a daughter Paulina, named after brother Paul. William Forsythe died in January 1959.
The following July, Marian Forsythe bought a house at 4951 Walnut Street for $13,000 and moved in with her daughter. It was in this house where Paul Robeson took refuge in 1966 after the death of Eslanda and with his health deteriorating.
Forsythe took him to her summer home at the Jersey shore in Pleasantville, NJ. In Philadelphia, she sat on the porch of her home with him as he nodded or waved to people who passed by. She and friends took him to appointments, shopping and to local live theater and the movies. Sometimes, they just drove him around town.
Forsythe tended to her brother’s every need, deciding with Paul Jr. who would be permitted to see him and who would not. “She did not just allow people to come into the house,” said Michael. “You would have the media showing up at the door. You would have other people just showing up at the door. This was her house. This was her refuge, too. So, she did not allow them to just come in.”
She did not necessarily like turning people away, according to Lloyd Brown, Robeson’s official biographer and friend. “It was a disagreeable task. She was a sweet, gentle, loving person. She was not the kind of person to say ‘no,’ but she had to protect him from people. Her home was, for Robeson, a spiritual haven. In the sense of family, she represented the only living link with his father.”
Forsythe died at age 82 in February 1977, a year after Robeson’s death. Robeson left one-fourth of his $150,000 estate to her.
Robeson said in his 1958 book “Here I Stand” that his sister like his brother Ben (the Rev. Benjamin Robeson) had their father’s temperament: “Reserved of speech, strong in character, living up to their principles – and always selflessly devoted to their youngest brother who cannot express in words his gratitude for their love. But in his heart there is a song, the most tender of songs – for them.”
