April is the cruelest month, wrote poet T. S. Eliot, and it certainly was when you consider the deaths of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. However, the month is also glorified by the birth of Paul Robeson on April 9, 1898.
Capturing the essence and majesty of Robeson’s remarkable life requires a voluminous tome, one that his son Paul Robeson Jr. began with thoroughness for the years 1898 to 1939. Unfortunately, Paul Jr., who died in 2014, did not live long enough to finish a full biography of his father’s life, but he left behind personal information that few biographers would ever disclose or discover.
What I remember most about my many discussions with Paul Jr. was his emphasis on the contradiction between his father’s relative obscurity in the 1980s, when we spent our time together, and his vast achievements during his 50-year activist and performance career.
In his book “The Undiscovered Paul Robeson,” Paul Jr. wrote that his father is the only African American charter member of the National Theater Hall of Fame, “but his name does not appear in the index of ‘Notable Names in the American Theater,’ and has no entry of his own in ‘Famous Actors of the American Theater.’”
Paul Jr. said these omissions were the result of his father’s “relentless challenge not only to anti-Black stereotypes but also to the cultural foundations of American racism,” but with the rise of the Black liberation movement, and to some extent, the Civil Rights Movement, Robeson’s contributions have received wider recognition. That exhaustive coverage has included the fact that he was not only a legendary actor of stage and film but also a scholar, activist, former professional athlete, vocalist, and graduate of the Columbia University Law School. A full exposition of Robeson’s life has been attempted on several occasions, but it was something that Paul Jr. shied away from, deciding that a personal memoir would have to suffice.
Although Paul Jr. had serious reservations about Martin Duberman’s lengthy study of his father’s life, it contains a wealth of important information worth debating. During my years with Paul Jr., on dinner dates with him and his wife, Marilyn; sharing the podium with him in my classes at Wayne State University and Oberlin College; and generally being in his company, were moments when I was able to glean aspects of his father, whom I never met.
Each year, when we take time out to recollect on Robeson’s genius and political commitment, we gain a deeper insight into his international stature, his gift of song and language, and how much more there is to learn about him long after his death in 1976. I miss the phone calls and fine repartee with Paul Jr., particularly about Russia during the Gorbachev years.