Robeson’s name enters Hall, at long last
You will recognize many of the names on this year’s list of
inductees for the College Football Hall of Fame.
That list, made public yesterday, includes college and NFL
greats Jim Brown, Billy Sims and Mike Singletary. Those names you
will recognize.
But you will not recognize the name Paul Robeson.
And the simple fact that Robeson’s name escapes you remains one
of the sad facts of American history.
Yesterday  happily, thankfully, finally  the
National Football Foundation took an important step toward
correcting that fact by making a special exception to include
Robeson among their list of inductees.
You see, the Foundation had bypassed Robeson not because he
wasn’t qualified as a football player  they’ve never denied
that. Instead, they looked the other way, allowing Robeson’s name
to toil in the shadows.
His crime? "Communist sympathies." His punishment? Banishment.
The truth? Robeson was a political agitator that demanded rights
for African Americans at a time when this country wasn’t ready to
hear such demands.
The result was simple: Robeson’s life and legacy were deadened.
His pleas fell on deaf ears, and until yesterday, others who took
up his fight remained muted.
***
Robeson grew up the son of an escaped slave in New Jersey and
went on to an academic and athletic career you would be hard
pressed to overstate. One of the most accomplished athletes in NCAA
history, Robeson won 11 letters in four years at Rutgers, playing
baseball, basketball, track and football.
It was on the gridiron that Robeson is most renowned  he
was a two time All-American at end and the star of the defensive
backfield for the Scarlet Knights. The late Walter Camp called him
"a veritable Superman" before naming him to his 1918 All-America
team  a team that included just 11 players in all.
Robeson went on to graduate from Rutgers Phi Beta Kappa and the
valedictorian of his class. He took his football exploits to the
professional level and his classroom skills to Columbia Law School,
where he again graduated at the top of his class  the only
African-American student at the school. But neither pro football
nor the law suited Robeson.
Instead, he "happened" into a career as a singer and actor. His
deep, resonating voice was hailed  very literally Â
worldwide. But after starring in several feature films and plays,
Robeson became disenchanted with the stereotypical roles he was
being forced to play. His desire for intelligent African-American
characters forced him to threaten Hollywood with a refusal to
continue to act. They tested his threat, and he walked.
It was then that Robeson began truly to travel the world. He
spoke nearly 30 languages, and his concerts were sung in the
language of the audience, an effort which endeared him both to
royalty and peasantry.
It was in fact the underclass that called to Robeson. His
singing career evolved into a career of political activism and
fights for human rights around the world. He demanded, long before
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. came to prominence, equality
in the United States. And his tongue, responsible for the sounds
that made him an acting and singing star, proved his downfall.
His past sympathies with Russia and his refusal to bend on civil
rights issues for African Americans, landed him in front of the
House Un-American Activities Committee.
Robeson refused to back down. His testimony was defiant. And for
it, he was blacklisted. Stripped of his passport, banned from radio
and music halls, and relegated to a life of obscurity, Robeson
experienced mental and physical health problems.
When he died in 1976, the National Football Foundation was among
those who refused to acknowledge not only Robeson’s
accomplishments, but the wrongs that stripped others of ever
learning them.
***
Their decision to make him an inductee is at once a happy and a
sad occasion.
Do you rejoice that Robeson’s legacy is being re-introduced, or
do you lament that it took so long for the NFF to find religion? I
suppose the answer is easy to come by.
"I’m ecstatic," said UCLA Professor Paul Von Blum, who teaches a
seminar on Robeson for the Afro-American Studies Department. "This
is the beginning of restoring historical justice."
Von Blum points out how deep the ignorance is of a man who did
so much.
"I gave a lecture yesterday in Fullerton, about 100 people were
there," he says. "Not one knew who Paul Robeson was  not one.
I’m touched by the symbolic significance of this. It shows America
is capable of correcting the wrongs of its not-so-recent past."
As for the Foundation’s Honor Court, which cleared the way for
Robeson’s exemption and subsequent nomination, the past is just
that  the past.
Dr. Prentice Gautt, an Associate Commission of the Big-Eight
conference and a member of the Court for two years, said it was
merely Robeson’s "time." Gautt, like other members, was careful not
to malign past Court members, but the South Carolina Athletic
Director was at least more direct.
"We got some additional information that gave balance to
Robeson’s early years," he said. "It brought up the fact that his
activities were really civil rights activities. And it was also
pointed out that he was not a member of the American Communist
Party. Paul Robeson was a great football player who was hurt by
some misinformation."
At last, his name is free of such misinformation. Now, please,
spread the word.