Paul robeson biography summary format

Paul Leroy Robeson was born in Princeton, NJ, on April 9, 1898. His mother was a schoolteacher, and his father was a runaway slave who became a Presbyterian minister. Robeson graduated from Rutgers University, where he excelled in athletics and held a Phi Beta Kappa key. Afterwards, he played professional football and graduated from Columbia University School of Law.  

Although he worked briefly as a lawyer, Robeson turned his back on a legal career due to issues of racism. Instead, he turned his attention toward acting and singing. During the Harlem Renaissance, he starred in the Broadway productions of The Emperor Jones and All God’s Chillun Got Wings. He performed renditions of African American folk songs and spirituals alongside musician Lawrence Brown at Provincetown Playhouse in Manhattan. Later, his popularity rose when he starred in a production of Show Boat at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London. He became increasingly well-known for his rendition of the song “Ol’ Man River.” His most notable film roles were in Body and Soul (1925) and Show Boat (1936).  

Robeson was also involved in politics, receiving the 1953 Stalin Peace Prize for openly supporting the Soviet Union. He gained a reputation as an outspoken Black Nationalist who criticized the U.S. government’s perpetuation of racism and imperialist activities. This stance earned him scrutiny from Senator Joseph McCarthy in the days of the Red Scare. In 1950, his passport was revoked as a result of being deemed a threat to national security, but his travel ban ended in 1958. He continued to perform concerts in Europe until he became ill and returned to the U.S. In 1976, he died of cerebral vascular disorder at the age of 77 in Philadelphia. To this day, he remains a symbol of pride and consciousness to many African Americans.

Paul Robes

Paul Robeson was the world’s most famous African American in the first half of the twentieth century. Part I of this series looks at Robeson’s background and his meteoric rise to international fame as an incomparable bass-baritone singer and pioneering African American actor for stage and screen.

At age 15 in 1860, Paul Robeson’s father, William Drew Robeson (1844–1918), was a fugitive from enslavement on a farm in Martin County, North Carolina. William trekked north to Pennsylvania, found work as a common laborer in the Union Army, and after the Civil War, undertook theology studies at the all-Black Lincoln University, near Philadelphia. In 1878 he married Maria Louisa Bustill, a teacher at Philadelphia’s Robert Vaux School and a member of a prominent family of mixed African, Delaware Indian, and English Quaker descent. By the time their son Paul Leroy Robeson was born on April 9, 1898—the seventh of nine children, five of whom survived infancy—William was pastor of the all-Black Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church in Princeton, New Jersey. In spiritual matters, Princeton was a Jim Crow town, formed by the all-white university that shared its name. In 1846, whites in the First Presbyterian Church had forced their Black members to form their own church, which William subsequently led.

Judged insufficiently servile by Witherspoon’s white sponsors, William was forced to resign his pastorate in 1901. Another tragedy struck three years later: his wife, Louisa, an invalid in poor health, died from burns endured when a stove coal set her dress aflame. At age six, Paul Robeson was a motherless child.

Paul and his older brother Ben were the only Robeson children to accompany their father to Westfield, New Jersey, where William worked for a time as a coachman and ash hauler. In 1907, at age 62, he managed to organize an A.M.E. Zion church in Westfield, whose white citizens were kinder than Princeton’s a

Accomplished as a scholar, athlete, actor, singer, and global activist, Paul Robeson is one of Rutgers University's most distinguished alumni and the quintessential 20th century Renaissance man.

The son of a runaway slave, Robeson attended Rutgers College in New Brunswick on an academic scholarship, becoming the university’s third black student and its first black football player. At Rutgers, "Robey"—as he was known at school—showed his prowess on the athletic field as well as in the classroom. An extraordinary athlete, he won 15 varsity letters in football, basketball, baseball and track. He was a two-time All-American in football who is in the College Football Hall of Fame. His scholarly accomplishments included being inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Society and Rutgers' Cap and Skull Honor Society. At Rutgers, Robeson, who spoke more than 20 languages fluently, honed his oratory skills as a member of the Intercollegiate Debating Association. He was valedictorian of his graduating class in 1919.

After graduation, Robeson earned a law degree from Columbia Law School but decided to use his artistic talents in theater and music to promote African and African-American history and culture. Over nearly four decades, he achieved worldwide acclaim as a vocalist and actor on stage and screen. A towering figure in the African-American struggle for human dignity and democratic rights, Robeson connected this struggle with people around the world who also were fighting for political rights, cultural recognition and economic justice.

The spotlight that shines on Robeson on the centennial of his graduation from Rutgers illuminates the rich legacy he left at the university and the world.

The Life of Paul Robeson

Watch a timelapse of Paul Robeson Blvd sign being erected on Route 18

Paul Robeson is Honored at the 2019 Rutgers University Commencement
Susan Robeson received a replica doctor of humane letters degree bestowed to her grandfather Paul Rob