50 Fun Facts About Paul Robeson

A dark red heirloom variety of which garden crop from the Soviet Union carries Paul Robeson's name?

The Paul Robeson tomato is a dusky Soviet heirloom, named in a country where the singer once drew a tumultuous stadium crowd in Moscow.

Which physicist came backstage after a 1935 Paul Robeson concert and stayed a friend for nearly twenty years?

Albert Einstein bonded with Robeson over music and a shared hatred of fascism, though their friendship was little publicized at the time.

Paul Robeson's 1941 recording helped spread March of the Volunteers, later which country's national anthem?

China adopted the march as its anthem after 1949, and Robeson, who sang it in Chinese and English, kept sending royalties to the family of its jailed lyricist.

In 1960, Paul Robeson became the first major artist to perform at which landmark, still under construction?

Sydney Opera House was years from opening when Robeson sang for its construction workers during a two-month tour of Australia and New Zealand.

Barred from leaving America in 1957, Paul Robeson sang live to a London concert hall using which technology?

An undersea phone cable, the newly laid TAT-1, carried Robeson's voice from New York to St Pancras Town Hall, where the tickets had sold out within an hour.

Paul Robeson was among the first artists to record at which London studio, weeks before its official 1931 opening?

Abbey Road, then called EMI Recording Studios, hosted Robeson for four songs in September 1931, almost two months before its formal opening.

Banned from foreign travel in 1952, Paul Robeson sang to a crowd in Canada from which border landmark?

Peace Arch stands right on the border, so labor unions from both countries staged the concert there in defiance of the travel ban, and Robeson came back three more times.

Which Show Boat song became Paul Robeson's signature after he played Joe in the musical's 1928 London premiere?

Ol' Man River became the benchmark for every later singer, and Robeson eventually rewrote its resigned ending into words of defiance for his concerts.

Paul Robeson urged commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis in 1943 to admit Black players to which sport?

Baseball's owners heard Robeson out, asked him nothing and changed nothing, and the major leagues stayed segregated for four more years.

Paul Robeson was born in 1898 in which New Jersey town, where a street is now named after him?

Princeton was home only briefly: after his mother died when he was six, the family ended up living in the attic of a store in Westfield.

Paul Robeson's father William escaped slavery as a teenager and later worked in which profession?

Minister of a Presbyterian church for two decades, William Robeson resigned after a dispute with its white backers and was left working menial jobs.

Which academic honor society admitted Paul Robeson at Rutgers, where he also won letters in four sports?

Phi Beta Kappa admitted Robeson, who also won the college oratorical contest four straight years.

Which honor did Paul Robeson's Rutgers classmates give him at graduation in 1919?

Class valedictorian Robeson used his commencement speech to urge his fellow graduates to work for equality for all Americans.

Rutgers, where Paul Robeson enrolled on an academic scholarship in 1915, sits in which New Jersey city?

New Brunswick voted in 2019 to rename Commercial Avenue as Paul Robeson Boulevard, a century after he graduated.

Paul Robeson put himself through which university's law school with his pay from professional football?

Columbia gave Robeson his law degree, but he quit the profession soon after, when a white secretary at his firm refused to take dictation from him.

Which football pioneer, selector of the All-America teams, called Paul Robeson the greatest end ever?

Walter Camp is known as the father of American football, and his praise came as Robeson earned All-American honors in both 1917 and 1918.

Rutgers benched Paul Robeson in 1916 when which Southern college refused to play against a Black athlete?

Washington and Lee refused to take the field during Rutgers' 150th anniversary celebrations, and the college left its sophomore star on the bench.

Which Rutgers honor society inducted Paul Robeson, who was also the college's first Black football player?

Cap and Skull inducted Robeson even though he was only the third Black student Rutgers had ever enrolled, and the only one on campus at the time.

Rutgers marked 100 years since Paul Robeson's graduation in 2019 by dedicating what in his honor?

An open-air plaza on the College Avenue campus tells Robeson's story on eight black granite panels, an idea championed by the Class of 1971.

Which football trailblazer, the NFL's first Black head coach, recruited Paul Robeson to the Akron Pros?

Fritz Pollard had befriended Robeson years earlier during a summer job in Rhode Island, and in 1976 he served as one of the pallbearers at his funeral.

Paul Robeson scored both touchdowns in a 1922 win over Jim Thorpe's Oorang Indians for which NFL team?

Milwaukee Badgers was Robeson's last stop in pro football: he retired after that 1922 season and finished his law degree the following year.

Which chemist, nicknamed Essie, married Paul Robeson in 1921 and later became his business manager?

Eslanda Goode was the first Black head chemist in a New York hospital's pathology lab, and her salary supported the couple until his career took off.

Which playwright wrote All God's Chillun Got Wings, the 1924 drama that gave Paul Robeson a lead role?

Eugene O'Neill's play, about a Black man married to a white woman, stirred such a nationwide controversy that its opening had to be postponed.

In which 1933 film did Paul Robeson play Brutus, a Pullman porter who jumps ship and takes over a remote island?

The Emperor Jones paid Robeson $5,000 a week, and his one condition was that nothing be filmed south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Which pioneering Black filmmaker directed Paul Robeson's screen debut in the 1925 silent film Body and Soul?

Oscar Micheaux made his films for Black audiences outside Hollywood, and the deal was negotiated by Robeson's wife, who had quit her job to act as his agent.

Which Show Boat composer said the organ-like tones of Paul Robeson's speaking voice inspired one of its melodies?

Jerome Kern then visited Robeson's Harlem apartment and played the piano while the singer tried out the brand-new song.

After starring in Show Boat in London, Paul Robeson gave a Royal Command Performance at which residence?

Buckingham Palace welcomed Robeson, yet around the same time London's Savoy Grill refused to seat him, an insult he made public in a press release.

Which future Dame played Desdemona opposite Paul Robeson's Othello at London's Savoy Theatre in 1930?

Peggy Ashcroft was astonished to receive hate mail for acting beside a Black star, and angry that the hotel next door to the theatre would not welcome him.

Paul Robeson's 1930 Othello was billed as the first by a Black actor in Britain since which 19th-century star?

Ira Aldridge, born in New York, left America in 1824 to escape discrimination and made his name on European stages.

Paul Robeson's 1943 Broadway run set the record for the longest-running production of a play by which dramatist?

William Shakespeare's Othello ran for 296 Broadway performances with Robeson in the lead, the first Black actor to play the part there with a white supporting cast.

Paul Robeson turned against which 1935 film after its final cut appeared to celebrate colonial rule in Africa?

Sanders of the River was re-edited after Robeson had played the chief Bosambo, and he complained that it showed Africans the way fascist states wanted them seen.

Paul Robeson's 1940 film The Proud Valley was shot among the coal miners of which country?

Wales gave the film its true story: Robeson's character was based on a Black miner from West Virginia who had drifted there looking for work.

Paul Robeson traveled to which country in 1938 to sing for wounded soldiers of the International Brigades?

Spain's civil war was the cause Robeson said turned him into a political activist, and he sang at a hospital in Benicàssim before visiting the battlefront.

Paul Robeson played which Haitian revolutionary in a 1936 London stage play written by C. L. R. James?

Toussaint Louverture came soon after Robeson resolved to be more politically careful about his parts, following protests over one of his films.

Paul Robeson sat for two hours every afternoon in which Los Angeles hotel's lobby so Black guests would be welcome?

Beverly Wilshire was the only major Los Angeles hotel that would take Robeson in 1940, at an inflated rate and under a false name; the others soon dropped their bans.

Which US president abruptly ended a 1946 meeting when Paul Robeson pressed him for a federal anti-lynching law?

Harry Truman cut the meeting short after Robeson warned that Black Americans would defend themselves, then declared the time was not right for such a bill.

Paul Robeson quit Hollywood after which 1942 film, calling its sharecropper sequence offensive to his people?

Tales of Manhattan left Robeson so unhappy with its stereotypes that he announced he would act in no more films while such demeaning roles were all that was offered.

Paul Robeson risked his safety campaigning across the Deep South in 1948 for which presidential candidate?

Henry Wallace, a former vice president, ran for the new Progressive Party, and within a year the FBI was having Robeson's American concerts canceled.

Which award did Paul Robeson accept in New York in 1952 because he was barred from traveling to Moscow?

The Stalin Peace Prize was later renamed for Lenin, and its earlier winners were asked to hand back their awards to be swapped for the new version.

Which arm of the US government revoked Paul Robeson's passport in 1950, keeping him at home for eight years?

State Department officials told Robeson his criticism of how Black Americans were treated should not be aired abroad, and his income fell from $150,000 a year to under $3,000.

Which part of the Bill of Rights did Paul Robeson invoke before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1956?

The Fifth Amendment let Robeson refuse to say whether he was a Communist, and he told the committee that no one would drive him from the country his people had built.

Which sports star was called before Congress in 1949 to rebut a speech attributed to Paul Robeson?

Jackie Robinson, two years after integrating the major leagues, told the committee the remarks sounded silly if they had been reported accurately.

Mobs attacked concertgoers at a 1949 Paul Robeson benefit concert near which New York town?

Peekskill saw one concert shut down by rioters and a second, days later, end with cars stoned as they left; Pete Seeger built a chimney from the rocks thrown.

Paul Robeson presented the 1951 petition We Charge Genocide, about lynching in America, to which organization?

The United Nations never formally acknowledged the petition, which argued that the federal government's failure to stop lynching amounted to genocide under the UN's own convention.

Which future Broadway playwright started as a subscription clerk at Paul Robeson's Harlem newspaper Freedom?

Lorraine Hansberry rose to associate editor at the paper before writing A Raisin in the Sun, the first Broadway play by an African-American woman.

Which manifesto-style memoir did Paul Robeson publish in 1958 while still confined to the United States?

Here I Stand went unmentioned even in the big newspapers' lists of new books, though it won favorable reviews in England, Japan and India.

Paul Robeson spent his last years in seclusion at his sister Marian's home in which city?

Philadelphia has kept the house as a landmark: Robeson lived there with his sister until his death in 1976, seeing few visitors beyond his closest friends.

Which actor played the title role in the one-man Broadway show Paul Robeson in 1978?

James Earl Jones repeated the performance for a 1979 television film of the play, which was directed by Lloyd Richards.

Which 1958 Supreme Court ruling on a painter's right to travel gave Paul Robeson his passport back?

Kent v. Dulles was decided 5 to 4, the majority ruling that a passport could not be denied without due process, and Robeson left for Europe almost at once.

Which actor narrated the Oscar-winning 1979 short documentary Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist?

Sidney Poitier narrates a film that tells Robeson's story through the way he kept changing the words of his most famous song as his politics hardened.