Black History Month Notables of New Jersey: Paul Robeson

Original Article from the Paul Robeson House & Museum social media

(Author unknown)From this year, the Paul Robeson House & Museum is celebrating the 125th birthday of Paul Leroy Robeson. Each weekday during Black History Month, we will offer a series of vignettes from Robeson’s life as a prelude to his birthday celebration from April 8-15, 2023. The series will remind the country and the world of Robeson’s contributions, and the price he paid for speaking out against racism and oppression. Robeson was born on April 9, 1898.𝗥𝘂𝘁𝗴𝗲𝗿𝘀, 𝗳𝗼𝗼𝘁𝗯𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗴𝗲 Paul Robeson received an academic scholarship to Rutgers College (now university) in New Jersey, the third Black student to attend the school. He excelled in his studies, garnering a prestigious Phi Beta Kappa Key his junior year and being elected to the Cap & Skull honor society as a senior. He was chosen valedictorian of his graduating class in 1918.He was noted, also, for his prowess on the football field, where he was the only Black player and suffered abuse at the hands of his teammates. When he tried out for the team at age 17, the players broke his nose, sprained his shoulder, and left him with cuts and bruises after they piled up on him. His father told him to hang in there, that he wasn’t just representing himself on the field or elsewhere, but was standing in for all the other Black boys who wanted to play football or go to college. Robeson went back out, and the torture continued. One time, a player stepped on his hand with his cleats, stripping away fingernails. Enraged, the 6-foot-3 Robeson picked up the player, raised him over his head and was close to crashing him to the ground before the coach intervened. Coach G. Foster Sanford threatened to drop anyone from the team who injured Robeson. White teams from other schools refused to play against Rutgers because he was on the team. By his junior year Robeson was in the starting lineup and was named to All-America football teams for two years.He was a catcher on the baseball team, center on the basketball team, and javelin and discus thrower in track. He won 15 varsity letters in all four sports. Robeson graduated from Rutgers in 1918, and in 1934 the school awarded him an honorary Master of Arts degree. Robeson attended Columbia University’s Law School. In the early 1920s, he played professional football for the Akron Pros of the American Professional Football Association and the Milwaukee Badgers of the National Football League. He used the money to pay his way through law school. After one game, he was taken to New York’s Presbyterian Hospital for an emergency operation on his thigh and was introduced to a Black female pathologist technician named Eslanda “Essie” Cardozo Goode, whose maternal grandfather was the first Black person to hold a statewide office in the country - secretary of state in South Carolina in the mid-19th century. Robeson and Essie married in 1921.After graduating from Columbia in 1923, Robeson was hired at a white law firm, where he was again in a racially hostile setting. He quit after a secretary reportedly told him “I never take dictation from a n---r.” 𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗲: Research for this series was compiled from several sources, including Martin Duberman’s “No One Can Silence Me” and “Paul Robeson: A Biography,” newspaper articles, books published about Robeson and other online resources. This vignette was researched and written by Robeson House volunteer Sherry L. Howard.For more information about the 125th Birthday Celebration, visit paulrobesonhouse.org.

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