Paul Robeson

Other names: 

Paul Leroy Robeson

1
Date of birth: 
09 Apr 1898
City of birth: 
Princeton
Country of birth: 
United States of America
Date of death: 
23 Jan 1976
Location of death: 
Philadelphia
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Jan 1922
Precise 1st arrival date unknown: 
Y
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1922, 1925, April 1928 - 29, 1930-9 (mostly in England and continental Europe)

Location: 

12 Glebe Place, Chelsea, London

Carlton Hill, St John's Wood, London

2
About: 

Paul Leroy Robeson was born in 1898 in Princeton, New Jersey, to  William Drew Robeson and Maria Louisa Bustill. In 1915 he enrolled at Rutgers College, New Jersey, and in 1920 he entered Columbia University Law School. In 1922 he married his life-long partner Eslanda 'Essie' Cardozo Goode, and the following year he graduated from Columbia. Robeson launched his acting career in 1920 - a career that brought him to London in 1922, and again in 1925 to star in the Eugene O'Neill Play, The Emperor Jones.

Robeson returned to London in April 1928 and spring 1930 to act in Show Boat and Othello, respectively. After a visit to Moscow in 1934, his political views became increasingly influenced by socialist and Communist ideals. He also started associating with key African figures such as Jomo Kenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah. In 1934, he acted in Alexander Korda's Sanders of the River, a performance he later repudiated as glorifying British imperialism. His repudiation of British imperialism and growing support of the working class was applauded by Stafford Cripps, the leading Labour politician. There is also evidence that Robeson attended a League of Coloured Peoples meeting, led by Harold Moody, in 1934 (Duberman, p. 624, n. 38).

In the mid-1930s, Robeson met Cedric Dover who broadcast on Robeson for BBC Radio to India. The talk is published in George Orwell's collection Talking to India (1943). In Half-Caste (1937), Dover lauded Robeson: 'To know him, to feel his charm and unusually wide culture, is a privilege; to hear him sing at a packed Albert Hall recital is a spiritual experience' (p. 226). In the late 1930s, Robeson met Krishna Menon, Secretary of the India League. Menon enlisted Robeson's support in the struggle for Indian independence. In January 1938, Robeson visited Spain to support the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. In June of that year, Robeson acted in Plant in the Sun. In the audience were Jawaharlal Nehru, his sister Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit and Krishna Menon who had just come back to London after touring Spain; the four of them became friends, and Robeson and Nehru met on several other occasions. On 27 June 1938, at the India League meeting in Kingsway Hall, Nehru and Robeson spoke on internationalism and the need for unified action against Fascism. Among the other speakers were Stafford Cripps, Harold Laski, Ellen Wilkinson and Rajani Palme Dutt.

Robeson's left-leaning politics were put to the test at the outbreak of the Second World War and the Nazi-Soviet agreement. He had discussed his views on the Soviet Union with other English socialists such as Harold Laski and George Bernard Shaw. Now in the United States, Robeson continued his socialist agitations and with the onset of the Cold War he was under surveillance, his passport was revoked and he was called before the Un-American Activities Committee. When his passport was returned in 1958, he immediately travelled to Europe again. In the 1960s, he went into semi-retirement and he died of a stroke on 23 January 1976 in Philadelphia.

Connections: 

Stafford Cripps, Cedric Dover, W. E. B. Du Bois, Rajani Palme Dutt, C. L. R. James, Jomo Kenyatta, Harold Laski, Krishna Menon, Jawaharlal Nehru, Ellen Wilkinson.

Network: 
Rajani Palme Dutt
Krishna Menon
Organizations: 
India League
League of Coloured Peoples
Left Book Club
Left Review
New Statesman
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Published works: 

Forge Negro-Labor Unity for Peace and Jobs (New York: Harlem Trade Union Council, 1950)

The Negro People and the Soviet Union (New York: New Century Publishers, 1950)

Here I Stand (London: Dennis Dobson, 1958)

Paul Robeson Speaks: Writings, Speeches, Interviews, 1918-1974 (London: Quartet Books, 1978)

Contributions to periodicals: 

Daily Worker

Secondary works: 

Adi, Hakim, 'Robeson, Paul Leroy (1898-1976)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/67911]

Balaji, Murali, The Professor and the Pupil: The Politics of W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson (New York: Nation Books, 2007)

Boyle, Sheila Tully, and Bunie, Andrew, Paul Robeson: The Years of Promise and Acheivement (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001)

Brown, Lloyd L., Lift Every Voice for Paul Robeson (New York: Freedom Associates, 1951)

Brown, Lloyd L., Paul Robeson Rediscovered (New York: American Institute for Marxist Studies, 1976)

Brown, Lloyd L., The Young Paul Robeson: On My Journey Now (Boulder and Oxford: Westview Press, 1997)

Chambers, Colin, Here We Stand: Politics, Performers and Performance: Paul Robeson, Isadora Duncon and Charlie Chaplin (London: Nick Hern, 2006)

David, Lenwood D., A Paul Robeson Research Guide: A Selected Annotated Bibliography (Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood Press, 1982)

Dorinson, Joseph, and Pencak, William, Paul Robeson: Essays on His Life and Legacy (Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland, 2002)

Dover, Cedric, 'Paul Robeson', in George Orwell (ed.), Talking to India (London: Allen & Unwin, 1943), pp. 17-21

Dover, Cedric, Half-Caste (London: Martin Secker & Warburg, 1937)

Duberman, Martin B., Paul Robeson (London: Bodley Head, 1989)

Dyer, Richard, Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986)

Fryer, Peter, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London: Pluto, 1984)

Gerlach, L. R., 'Robeson, Paul', in J. A. Garraty and M. C. Carnes (eds) American National Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 629-31

Gilliam, Dorothy Butler, Paul Robeson: All-American (Washington: New Republic, 1976)

Graham, Shirley, Paul Robeson: Citizen of the World (Westport, CT: Negro Universities Press, 1971)

Hamilton, Virginia, Paul Robeson: The Life and Times of a Free Black Man (New York: Harper & Row, 1974)

Horne, Gerald, The End of Empires; African Americans and India (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008; Chesham: Combined Academic, 2008)

Hoyt, Edwin P., Paul Robeson: The American Othello (World Publishing, 1967)

Kwayana, Eusi, Paul Robeson, 9 March 1898 - 23 January 1976: Tributes (London: Paul Robeson Society, 1990)

McKissack, Patricia, Paul Robeson: A Voice to Remember (Hillside, NJ, and Aldershot: Enslow, 1992)

Nazel, Joseph, Paul Robeson: Biography of a Proud Man (Los Angeles: Holloway House, 1980)

Paul Robeson: The Great Forerunner (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1978)

Ramdin, Ron, Paul Robeson: The Man and His Mission (London: Owen, 1987)

Robeson, Eslanda Goode, Paul Robeson: Negro (London: Victor Gollancz, 1930)

Robeson, Paul, Jr, The Undiscovered Paul Robeson: An Artist's Journey, 1898-1939 (New York and Chichester: Wiley, 2001)

Robeson, Susan, The Whole World in His Hands: A Pictorial History of Paul Robeson (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1981)

Seton, Marie, Paul Robeson (London: Dennis Dobson, 1958)

Stewart, Jeffrey C., Paul Robeson: Artist and Citizen (New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Rutgers University Press, 1998)

Stuart, Marie, Paul Robeson (Bristol: West Bristol Adult Education Centre, 1993)

Thompson, Allan L., Paul Robeson: Artist and Activist: On Records, Radio and Television (Wellingborough: A. L. Thompson, 1998)

Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto, 2002)

Von Eschen, Penny M., Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997)

Wright, Charles H., Robeson: Labor's Forgotten Champion (Detroit: Balamp Publishing, 1975)

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Archive source: 

Robeson Family Archives, Moorland-Spingarn Research Centre, Howard University, Washington, DC

New York Public Library

Archive, Berlin, Germany

'Paul Robeson', BBC, 26 November 1978, National Film and Television Archive, British Film Institute, London

Black on Black, LWT, 23 April 1985, National Film and Television Archive, British Film Institute, London

'Songs of Freedom: Paul Robeson and the Black American Struggle', Mirus Productions, 3 June 1986, National Film and Television Archive, British Film Institute, London

'Speak of Me as I Am', 7 June 1998, National Film and Television Archive, British Film Institute, London

'Paul Robeson: Here I stand', WNET, 1999, National Film and Television Archive, British Film Institute, London

Advertising film footage, National Film and Television Archive, British Film Institute, London

Current affairs footage, National Film and Television Archive, British Film Institute, London

Documentary footage, National Film and Television Archive, British Film Institute, London

News footage, National Film and Television Archive, British Film Institute, London

Performance footage, National Film and Television Archive, British Film Institute, London

Performance recordings, National Sound Archive, British Library, St Pancras