Paul Robeson

From Philosopedia

Robeson, Paul (9 April 1898 - 23 January 1976)

Robeson, the American actor, bass, and controversial humanitarian, was an All-American football player at Rutgers (1919; he was a valedictorian in what then was a Jim Crow-era white college), after which he went to Columbia University law school (1923) and began an acting career with the Provincetown Players in 1924. In 1925 he made his debut as a concert singer. With a resonant voice and the ability to project a humane spirit, he won acclaim by creating the title role in Eugene O’Neill’s Emperor Jones (1925; film, 1933).

Known popularly for his rendition of “Ol’ Man River” in Jerome Kern’s Show Boat (1928; film, 1936) and for his interpretations of Negro spirituals, Robeson was assumed to have continued the Protestantism of his youth. However, after his association with Communist causes and his winning of the International Stalin Peace Prize (1952), he was suspected of being a non-theist and became a pariah in his native country. To avoid trouble after being blacklisted by Hollywood because of his political leanings, he moved to England in 1958 and continued appearing in concerts in Europe and the Soviet Union. George Orwell, alleging that Robeson was “very anti-white” and a Henry Wallace supporter, questioned whether or not Robeson actually was a member of the Communist Party.

A polyglot (ten languages, from Chinese to Swahili), he spoke out against man’s inhumanity to man and utilized naturalistic rather than supernaturalistic terms in arguing his outlook. His outspokenness, however, left him not only defiant but also frustrated and disillusioned. Like the Emperor in O’Neill’s play, he became a take-no-shit Negro who was lucky enough to obtain the empty title of King of Jamaica but also who, as critic Gary Dauphin has noted, “hit a ceiling” and “settled uncomfortably in a throne that did not quite fit, his crown slightly askew and his eyes gone a little desperate from the need for constant vigilance.” In 1961 when found in a Moscow hotel bathroom after having slashed his wrists, he was said to have made a “suicide attempt,” a charge Paul Robeson Jr. has always denied.

Robeson's first movie job was given to him by Oscar Micheaux, who became the dean of black filmmakers with his Within Our Gates (1919), which had a controversial lynching scene. Micheaux frequently pitted two characters against each other, such as the morally upright and well-educated minister against Old Ned, the illiterate country preacher who extracts lots of money from his parishioners. Robeson made his film debut in Michaux's Body and Soul (1924), playing a con man preacher who steals money and rapes a woman.

Judith Weisenfeld describes Micheaux and Robeson's first movie role:

• With regard to his analysis of the impact of religion in African-American communities, Micheaux has two pivotal characters in this film. One is a minister who founded a school in the south and is trying to raise money to keep the school going. He is a morally upright and well-educated man trying to uplift the race. Micheaux sets him against Old Ned, an illiterate country preacher, who delivers a sermon in a wonderful scene that Micheaux recapitulated a number of times in different ways in other films. He delivers a sermon on "Abraham and the fatted calf" and, in the course of preaching, he extracts a great deal of money from the congregation. In another scene we see Old Ned operating as the stooge of some wealthy white men in this Southern town. So he has betrayed the race many times over in different ways. In the film it's all tied to the way he manipulates the congregation through his own manipulation of the little he knows of Bible. Micheaux is known as a critic of the church, but once you get into the real content of the film you can see how he positions characters against one another to say, this is when the church does the best for the community and this is what we should avoid. You find this pattern in a number of his films and others as well.

• [Micheaux] is an advocate of Booker T. Washington, whose portrait appears on the wall in Michaux's 1924 film Body and Soul. This was Paul Robeson's film debut, in which he plays a con man preacher who steals money and rapes a woman. There's an intense scene in the film in which Robeson’s character visits a congregant to find the money; in the background is a portrait of Booker T. Washington, again, as a counter example to the minister’s actions. We see this theme in many other race films, across genres, including comedies. The Black King (1932) is a spoof of Marcus Garvey in which a church deacon leads people on a back to Africa movement. His eventual downfall, the result of his own stupidity, provides a negative model of black religious leadership.

Called by some “the Black Colossus,” Robeson has received more favorable attention now that the Soviet Union has fallen. At a private party, searching for someone to sing like her husband some years after his death, Mrs. Robeson chose Gilbert Price, Langston Hughes’s protégé. Price, a Catholic and winner of four Tony Award nominations, idolized Robeson as well as knew of his non-theism. Robeson sent his son to the Fieldston Ethical Culture High School, and although Paul Jr. knew of his father's freethinking he also knew that his dad would never have his name removed from the African Methodist Episcopal Church rolls.

In 1998, Robeson was granted a lifetime achievement award as part of the Grammy Awards ceremony, being honored along with musicians Roy Orbison, Bo Diddley, and the Mills Brothers.

(See entries for George Orwell and Paul Robeson Jr..)

{CE; Gary Dauphin, The Village Voice, 20 January 1998; Gilbert Price to WAS, numerous conversations, 1980s}