Context: Racial Oppression |
Image: Columbia Law School Library, 1923
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The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line. Paul Robeson was born into an era of oppression for black Americans. In 1896, the Supreme Court upheld Plessy v. Ferguson and established the separate-but-equal doctrine, legitimizing the discriminatory Jim Crow laws. Of the 120 lynchings in 1898, the year Robeson was born, 101 victims were black.
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Childhood
Paul Leroy Robeson was born in Princeton, New Jersey, on April 9, 1898. Growing up in segregated Princeton, Robeson frequently encountered racism.
Somewhere in my childhood these feelings were planted. Perhaps when I resented being pushed off the sidewalk, when I saw my women being insulted, and especially when I saw my elder brother answer each insult with blows that sent would-be slave masters crashing to the stone sidewalks, even though jail was his constant reward. He never said it, but he told me day after day: “Listen to me, kid… Don’t you ever take it, as long as you live.”
––Paul Robeson, “For Freedom and For Peace,” 1949
The Reverend Robeson
Paul Robeson's father, William Robeson, was a distinguished reverend and former slave who instilled in his children a sense of dignity, “a love for learning, [and] a ceaseless quest for truth in all its fullness.” Above all, he stressed loyalty to convictions.
The text of my father’s life [was] loyalty to one’s convictions. Unbending. Despite anything. From my youngest days I was imbued with that concept. Paul grew closer to his father after his mother died in 1904. In the aftermath of her death, Paul developed a lasting appreciation for working-class people.
There must have been moments when I felt the sorrows of a motherless child, but what I most remember from my youngest days was an abiding sense of comfort and security. I got plenty of mothering… from the whole of our close-knit community. |
High School
Although Paul was an excellent high school student, he often encountered “the color line.” Paul's principal, Dr. Ackerman, was particularly antagonistic, singling him out for punishment and withholding information about a scholarship competition. Paul eventually discovered the opportunity and in 1915 he won the competitive four-year scholarship to Rutgers University.
Here was a decisive point in my life… Deep in my heart from that day on was a conviction which none of the Ackermans of America would ever be able to shake. Equality might be denied, but I knew I was not inferior.
––Paul Robeson, Here I Stand, 1958
Robeson of Rutgers
As I went out into life one thing loomed above all else: I was my father’s son, a Negro in America. That was the challenge.
––Paul Robeson, Here I Stand, 1958