125 years of remembering Paul Robeson, renaissance man

By Rebekah Schroeder

Paul Robeson is the quintessential Princeton man. The “native son” of the town with talents spanning artistry, athleticism, and advocacy will be recognized for the quasquicentennial milestone of his birth as someone whose influence endures at the 110 Witherspoon Street house where he was born on April 9, 1898.

For decades, the site has served as a centerpiece of community activities and action in Princeton’s historically Black Witherspoon-Jackson neighborhood. Robeson’s imprint on the local scene lives on in an upcoming 125th anniversary celebration that honors the stories he left behind and what he stood for.

The Paul Robeson House of Princeton, a nonprofit organization dedicated to memorializing Robeson and his humanitarian mission, will be joined by affiliated organizations for two weeks of programming through April 15. The focal point for these festivities is the Robeson House, which is owned by the Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church, where Paul Robeson’s father, Reverend William Drew Robeson, was a pastor.

As an actor, singer, entertainer, and activist who would take on Broadway with his distinct bass-baritone voice, Robeson became a performer with credits like Shakespeare’s “Othello” and balanced many passions from scholarly pursuits to sports. The late Rev. David McAlpin was a founding member of the PRHoP board who saw the Robeson House as an opportunity to educate people on Robeson’s achievements and make him “a household name.”

The events are supported in part by the two-year Mellon grant period shared by the PRHoP and its “sister organization,” the Paul Robeson House and Museum of Philadelphia, also known as the West Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, which will be hosting events on its own and with Princeton to “bookend” Robeson’s life from birthplace to his death, according to Denyse Leslie, the Robeson Board vice president and managing director.

The Mellon Foundation awarded both groups $1 million to support the “Paul Robeson 125th Birthday Celebration” initiative, which also funds the construction and restoration of each of Robeson’s homes, as well as programming and preservation. These efforts continue into next year, but in 2023, Robeson shares a birthday with Easter Sunday, so many of the activities will be taking place on or around Saturday, April 8.

“We are very excited about it, because it focuses primarily on the historic aspect of Paul’s life and the fact that we have this wonderful edifice in Princeton that deserves to be rehabilitated,” said Ben Colbert, the president of the PRHoP board.

“We developed a reputation for excellent programming, both focusing on Paul’s musical career and also on his initiatives as a student, as a lawyer, as a person who had an opinion about how he would be presented in life, and we are fortunate to have inherited that legacy.”

On Wednesday, April 5, the PRHoP will release two videos on the organization’s official YouTube channel, youtube. com/@paulrobesonhouseofprinceto6380.

According to Dr. Joy Barnes-Johnson, the group’s chair of programs and a 15-year veteran educator for Princeton Public Schools, one of these will “invite stakeholders to talk about the legacy of Paul

Robeson,” similar to the style of the two prior years.

The other is a commissioned documentary film, “Black on the Outside,” which promotes the organization’s recent “Robeson Freedom Garden” campaign by using the Paul Robeson Tomato as the “storytelling vehicle” for his life.

The “Paul Robeson Tomato,” an heirloom beefsteak variety known for its strong, juicy nature and distinct color— a darker green decorates the top of each before transitioning into the signature red of the robust fruit—was created in Siberia, Russia, by an unknown grower who coined the name before Moscow seed seller Marina Danilenko brought the crop to the U.S. in 1992.

The project shares these seeds to promote community gardening through “Freedom Gardens,” which feature one of New Jersey’s most famous types of produce. Anyone with interest can join what the PRHoP hopes to one day be a global endeavor, and they are collaborating with organizations like the Princeton School Gardens Cooperative to spread the message.

“What we’re excited about is the participation of the community in what we hope will be Robeson Tomatoes growing all over Mercer County this summer,” Colbert said. “The local schools, community organizations, individuals, and garden clubs are all growing tomatoes this summer, and we hope that we can have a fall festival in which we feature their products.”

On April 8, the main event starts at 10 a.m. with a memorial wreath-laying ceremony near the bust of Robeson in the courtyard at the Paul Robeson Center for the Arts building, where the Arts Council of Princeton is based. In a tradition several years in the making, Princeton Mayor Mark Freda will then declare the following day “Paul Robeson Day” in Princeton.

The scholar program, which started last year, honored six students thus far in a mentoring and leadership initiative open to public high school students from Robeson’s affiliated areas of Princeton, Trenton, and New Brunswick in just as many categories signifying Robeson’s life as an artist, athlete, and activist.

The Robeson Fellows program has expanded to include adults this year, BarnesJohnson said, and will honor three people whose contributions are reminiscent of Robeson’s legacy by providing them with the opportunity to share their works and scholarship: Serina Montero of Hamilton; Leonie Houndode of Irvington; and Emily Morton of Vineland.

But Princeton is proud to be sharing this slate of events with others, as the Philadelphia Robeson group has organized a round-trip bus ride to attend the April 8 programming.

“We have invited members from the Paul Robeson House of Philadelphia to join us in a program where we will deliver awards to our Robeson Fellows, review the charge to make Robeson a household name, and invite new fellowship as we do a tour of the Witherspoon-Jackson neighborhood Robeson sites,” Barnes-Johnson explained.

Shirley Satterfield is a historian and the board secretary for PRHoP. Her grandmother taught Robeson when he attended the Witherspoon Street School for Colored Children prior to the district’s integration, and Satterfield will conduct a walking tour through five “significant Robeson sites” in the Witherspoon-Jackson area.

Kevin Wilkes, the founder of the Princeton Design Guild and the architect-contractor in charge of the Robeson House remodeling project, is set to then discuss the construction process outside the threestory building. Visitors are not currently permitted inside the structure, but Wilkes intends to provide detailed descriptions of the work done thus far.

The renovation, he explained in a 2021 Princeton Design Guild YouTube video, has been more than a decade in the making. According to Leslie, its tentative completion date is sometime in 2025.

Colbert added that Wilkes was interested in lending his services for free very early on in the endeavor, doing so with copious amounts of research. Wilkes has been able “to find and resurrect evidence of the past 150-odd years it has been in existence,” Colbert said, then create plans to bring back elements of its original 1840s design. Years of fundraising, now with the Mellon grant, have made the construction possible and will continue to do so.

“We think we’re going to have a wonderful example of not only the architecture of the period, but also a place of pride that can be there forever as a tribute to the African American community in Princeton,” Colbert said.

After the Robesons moved, the Robeson House served as a temporary residence for African American migrant, domestic, and service workers who came to Princeton in search of work or more opportunities, according to the PRHoP website, thepaulrobesonhouseofprinceton.org.

“It was the place to stay when you came to seek a job or to work temporarily [on] some of the farms during the summer,” Colbert explained. The Robeson House gave students from the Princeton Theological Seminary who could study but were not permitted to live on campus, for example, “not only a place to stay, but meals and a sense of community,” he noted. “We will continue that tradition.”

The property will return to offering emergency, transitional housing, especially for newcomers to the area, Colbert said, “who are eligible for, but not able to get into, the low-income housing that is available.” Because those properties require a waitlist, Colbert added, PRHoP “can fill that void by reserving some space in the house for that kind of resident.

To revise its original accommodations, the second floor is planned to have three bedrooms and a shared kitchen for “immigrants, service workers, visiting scholars, missionaries, and students,” according to the PRHoP renovation brochure.

The first floor will be used as a meeting, office, and programming space for nonprofit organizations and similar groups. Aside from the new addition of a rear courtyard, there will also be a ground floor gallery dedicated to showcasing Robeson archival materials and memorabilia. The exterior of the house will feature white clapboard siding and a front porch. These earlier events will run until noon, whereafter a hybrid event with artist and scholar Dr. Jessica Jamese Williams, “Becoming Gatekeepers of Our Truth,” will take place at the Princeton Public Library from 2 to 3:30 p.m.

Williams will discuss resilience in regard to Robeson before the lecture branches off into a panel discussion in partnership with the Paul Robeson Cultural Center of Rutgers University. Registration is not required for the in-person event, but to attend virtually, sign up through the PPL event page’s Crowdcast link, crowdcast. io/e/paul-robeson-house/register.

Thisdiscussion will be moderated by Jakora Thompson, the director of Rutgers University’s Paul Robeson Cultural Center, and feature guest panelist Geralyn Williams, assistant director of student engagement and leadership at Princeton University’s Pace Center for Civic Engagement. The Princeton Historical Society’s conference space at PPL, “The Princeton Room,” will also exhibit Robesonrelated artifacts that describe his time in Princeton.

On Sunday, April 9, there will be an Easter Sunday sunrise worship service between the Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church and the Nassau Presbyterian Church, which begins at the Princeton Cemetery at 6:30 a.m. with services led by Rev. David Davis of Nassau Presbyterian. Afterwards, the Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church will host a “Robeson Breakfast” for the figure’s birthday at 7:30 a.m.

The following week’s “Robeson Film

Festival,” which consists of free screenings and moderated discussions from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. on April 10 to 12, is co-hosted by PRHoP and the Arts Council of Princeton.

Monday kicks off with “The Tallest Tree in Our Forest” (1977), a documentary about Robeson that was directed and written by television reporter Gil Noble with PRHoP board members as discussants, the event page states.

On Tuesday, April 11, filmmaker and professor Lorna Johnson-Frizell, the Interim Dean of the School of Arts and Communication for the College of New Jersey, will be present for her documentary “Seven Square Miles” (2020), which addresses issues such as the criminal justice system, poverty, race, and policing, according to the TCNJ Art Gallery description.

“Seven Square Miles” is “set in between” the first and last movie, Barnes-Johnson said, because it is “this other story that incorporates the Trenton narrative.” Because of segregation, Paul Robeson’s brother Bill had to take a trolley to school in Trenton instead of a bus, and his transit pass will be on display in the “Princeton Room” at PPL.

“Hidden in that artifact is this greater story about how connected the social justice mission of the house in Princeton is to this region, and Trenton in particular, and so it’s very nice that we get to have filmmakers help us tell the story and retell the story in slightly different ways,” BarnesJohnson added.

The final screening on Wednesday, April 12, is St. Clair Bourne’s documentary for the PBS series “American Masters,” titled “Paul Robeson: Here I Stand” (1999).

Other contributions covered by the Mellon grant include Robeson-themed commissions such as an original poem from Princeton University faculty member Patricia Smith and a quilt made by the Princeton Sankofa Stitchers.

The full itinerary for the Paul Robeson House and Museum of Philadelphia/ West Philadelphia Cultural Alliance can be found online at paulrobesonhouse.org, but the Robeson Alliance reunites for the grand finale of the 125th birthday celebration on Saturday, April 15.

In a night of performances featuring choirs and jazz groups, musical headliner Sweet Honey in the Rock, a triple Grammy Award-nominated acapella ensemble, takes the stage at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Gina Belafonte is the guest speaker at the closing gala. She is the president of Sankofa.org, a social justice organization founded by her father, Harry Belafonte, a personal friend of Robeson, who is an honorary chair of the Robeson group alongside actor Danny Glover.

PRHM Philadelphia will host an Easter morning trip of their own to the Mother AME Zion Church in New York City, where Paul often sang and his brother, the Rev. Benjamin Robeson, was a pastor. As Colbert stated, future collaborations will mean identifying institutions across the country that are associated with Robeson’s life, work, and legacy. Fortunately, “a lot of that activity does involve this particular region—that is, Rutgers, Philadelphia, and parts of New Jersey—and so we’re excited about including them in these celebrations, and we look forward to this alliance,” he added. “Our overall goal is to focus on the contributions that Robeson and his family made to Princeton, to the community, and to the world.”

Another aspect of their mission, Colbert said, is talking about the influence that Paul’s father had on him.

“Reverend William Drew Robeson was a real advocate for equal rights and equal treatment of the Black community in Princeton, and he made several sacrifices and assertions so that people could be served. He is the inspiration for his son,” Colbert explained. “He was quite a dynamic figure in the community and a strong [advocate] for the African American community there.”

At the age of 15, William Robeson escaped slavery with his brother through the Underground Railroad and settled in Pennsylvania before joining the Union Army as a laborer during the American Civil War.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in sacred theology from Lincoln College, which is now a university, and met his wife, teacher Maria Louisa Bustill. William Robeson became an ordained minister whose influence, in both the immediate community

See ROBESON, Page 14 and region, would shape his legacy, Colbert said.

But in 1901, the Presbytery of New Brunswick dismissed the Robeson family patriarch from his duties at Witherspoon Presbyterian. William Robeson, who had joined community efforts with fellow Black residents in Princeton to rally against the inequality they experienced in the highly segregated region, never returned to Witherspoon Presbyterian despite the nearly 80 congregation members who signed a petition in support of him.

The Robeson family moved around the corner to Green Street before leaving Princeton for Westfield and finally Somerville, where Paul graduated from high school in 1915. Paul Robeson earned a full academic scholarship to Rutgers University at age 17 and made history as the third African American person to ever attend the then-private institution.

At Rutgers, he was the valedictorian for the class of 1919, a four-time champion orator, and won 15 letters in four different varsity sports like basketball and football.

After leaving New York University’s law program, Robeson met his wife, anthropologist Eslanda Cardozo Goode, while studying at Columbia University. Goode graduated with a chemistry degree and, according to their son Paul Robeson Jr.’s “The Undiscovered Paul Robeson: An

Artist’s Journey, 1898-1939,” was the first Black person to become the “head histological chemist in the Surgical Pathology Laboratory of Presbyterian Hospital.”

Robeson began practicing law at a New York firm in 1923 but resigned. Putting a pause on his legal career paid off for Robeson, as he was ready for the spotlight of the screen, studio, and stage. Robeson’s casting as the lead in the 1925 revival of Eugene O’Neill’s play “The Emperor Jones” led to him reprising the role in the subsequent London production.

With Goode as his business manager, Robeson continued to gain fame in two tours of the stage musical “Show Boat,” gaining praise for his now-classic rendition of the song “Ol’ Man River.” In the 1936 film version, director James Whale even wrote the character “Joe” explicitly for Robeson.

Robeson’s possibly most iconic role, though, was as the titular Moor in William Shakespeare’s “Othello,” which he performed both abroad and on Broadway.

Years earlier, Robeson had become known not just as a star but as a strong proponent for civil and labor rights. He protested segregated seating policies in theaters and turned down the chance to perform in venues that adhered to them. Robeson was outspoken in his efforts, even urging President Harry Truman to support anti-lynching legislation in the aftermath of increased incidents targeting Black veterans following World War II.

But what thwarted Robeson’s continued success was his blacklisting during the onset of the Red Scare in 1950, during which he was labeled a “traitor” for the support he expressed over several aspects of Soviet Union communism.

In earlier visits to the controversial nation, Robeson had admired the society for appearing to be free of the anti-Black racism that was so prevalent in other countries. Following condemnation in the press — which included the circulation of a misquote — and the political sphere, the United States government revoked Robeson’s passport. This took away his ability to work and travel, forcing him to cancel upcoming concerts and bringing his career to a halt.

Eight years later, the Supreme Court ruled his passport should be returned. He and Eslanda left for Europe before they returned home and retired from public life. After his wife’s death from breast cancer, Paul moved in with his sister Marian at her 4951 Walnut Street property, which Colbert referred to as Robeson’s “base of operations” during the end phase of his life before he died on January 23, 1976, at age 77.

As the PRHoP prepares for the organization’s future programming and longterm goals, Colbert expressed how the man at the center of it all can stand for more than his own history — Robeson, as a person and publicly powerful voice, still speaks to the lived experiences of many others in the historic Princeton neighborhood.

“We have been very fortunate to be able to attract and get the support that the community deserves, and so we are very encouraged by our progress, and remember, this is an initiative that began primarily not so much to renovate a house. What we thought we would be doing is just using the Robeson legacy and a memorial to him as a way in which we could continue the progress that the African American community, especially in Princeton, has made,” Colbert said.

“It is a rich community of people who have long histories of [working] on behalf of the betterment of the larger community, and that tradition is one that we are hoping to preserve forever because the demography of the community is changing, the community itself is becoming a little smaller, and it does enjoy a great deal of history that should be preserved, and the house is going to be that vehicle for doing some of that.”

Barnes-Johnson added that another important aspect is how Robeson, who was fluent in multiple languages and sang in even more, saw himself “as a global citizen.”

“Given the changing demographics, as well as the sort of global nature of this community where we are in central New Jersey, I’m looking most forward to inviting a diversity of voices and perspectives into this celebration,” she continued. Barnes-Johnson explained that when she moved into Princeton professionally, the educator looked for a sense of community to connect with and saw how that was more than apparent in the WitherspoonJackson neighborhood.

“The reality that we are using the Robeson Tomato as an anchor point for community conversations and festivals that we hope to advance in the 125th is really interesting, because when I think about the ‘three corners,’ if you will, three points of the Witherspoon-Jackson neighborhood that are anchored, the Arts Council is there, the library is there, Dorothea’s House is there, the churches are there, and there is this beautiful space that is just so unique, nestled down the street from Princeton University.”

“I’m very much looking forward to the conversation with Dr. Williams because I think it will represent a youth that we currently don’t see. As a professor coming from the West Coast and the work that she does, it’s exciting to see because she’s bringing with her in discussion friends from Princeton University and from Rutgers, so I am excited about that because I think that one of the ways to preserve history is to seed new stories with young people,” Barnes-Johnson continued, noting that she has been previously asked about the thought process behind using the Robeson Tomato as a focus.

“I said, ‘I love it because it starts with seeds, and you plant seeds, you watch them grow through nurturing and care, then you come to the table for fellowship around whatever fruit is produced from that effort, and then from that, you grow new meals and new opportunities. I’m excited that this might be the thing that we can use to draw in local restaurants to have gardens and local businesses to feature some of that fruit and really just wrap arms around this project,” she said, which “is going to be more than just a house— it is designed to be an interpretive center and a library, a place where scholars can come to lectures, and a sanctuary for people who need it in the same way that in many historic buildings in historic neighborhoods, they serve multiple purposes.”

For Barnes-Johnson, a thought that grows just as fast and vibrant as a Robeson Tomato is the fact that this narrative—of inspiration, culture, and coming together—is one that Robeson would have been proud to stand behind.

“That is such a rich tribute to a great human, and I’m excited that we get a chance to be a part of that storytelling process,” she said.

More information: thepaulrobesonhouseofprinceton.org