1898–1976
○ Natural causes
The artist who turned 'Ol' Man River' into a hymn of struggle
In 1937, moved by the Spanish Civil War, he permanently changed the lyrics of 'Ol' Man River': 'But I keep laughin' / Instead of cryin' / I must keep fightin' / Until I'm dyin'. In Wales he declared: 'The artist must take sides. I have made my choice. I had no alternative.'
A world-renowned bass-baritone and actor whose 'Ol' Man River' and Othello carried him to the summit of his art even as he devoted that art to the Black freedom struggle and global anti-colonialism. After backing the Spanish Republicans and the 1949 Paris Peace Congress, he refused to renounce the Soviet Union and endured passport revocation and blacklisting through the McCarthy years, regaining his passport by Supreme Court ruling in 1958.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1915–1919Rutgers College: twice All-American, class valedictorian
- 1919–1923Columbia Law School (LL.B.) while playing in the NFL
- 1924–1928Starred in The Emperor Jones; became Harlem Renaissance star
- 1928–1939Global fame with Show Boat; first Black Othello in Britain (1930)
- 1934First USSR visit: 'Here I am not a Negro but a human being'
- 1937–1939Supported Spanish Republicans; visited International Brigades; Council on African Affairs
- 1943–1945Broadway Othello: first Black actor with white cast; record 296 shows
- 1949Paris Peace Congress speech; Peekskill riots; blacklisting began
- 1950–1958Passport revoked; HUAC; founded Freedom; Stalin Peace Prize (1952)
- 1958Passport restored (Kent v. Dulles); published Here I Stand
- 1958–1960Comeback tours: Europe, USSR, Australia, NZ; Othello at Stratford
- 1961–1963Health breakdown; recovered at Buch Clinic, East Berlin
- 1963–1976Seclusion in U.S.; died of stroke complications in Philadelphia
Related historical events
Anti-Colonial Internationalism and the Council on African Affairs
Robeson's politics rested on an internationalism that saw Black liberation as one front of a global anti-imperialist struggle. After co-founding the International Committee on African Affairs with Max Yergan in 1937, he became the guiding figure of its successor, the Council on African Affairs (CAA), whose self-described year-round task was 'providing Americans with the truth about Africa.' The CAA published the monthly newsletter Spotlight on Africa and acted as a channel for concrete American assistance to African liberation, sending funds to support the struggle against Malan's apartheid government in South Africa. With W. E. B. Du Bois joining as chairman in 1949 and Alphaeus Hunton as executive secretary, the CAA concentrated on exposing colonial exploitation in South Africa and Kenya.
This internationalism was inseparable from the fight at home. In 1946 Robeson founded the American Crusade Against Lynching, and in 1951 he and William L. Patterson presented the Civil Rights Congress petition We Charge Genocide to the United Nations, arguing that federal inaction on lynching constituted genocide under the UN Genocide Convention. He recorded the Chinese resistance anthem 'March of the Volunteers,' condemned U.S. support for Chiang Kai-shek, and denounced America's nuclear threats against China during the Korean War. When the CAA and the Civil Rights Congress were placed on the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations in 1947, this internationalism became a direct target of the Cold War state: the FBI treated the CAA as substantially Communist-directed and surveilled its branches, and the revocation of Robeson's passport was aimed at silencing his advocacy for the independence of colonized peoples.