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Robeson and leading lady in Jericho

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The Newark (NJ) Black Film Festival, in its 24th year, has screened all of Paul Robeson's films except for Sanders of The River, including a double feature and a mini-marathon during its 1998 run. Host Dr. Clement Alexander Price, a history prof at Rutgers' Newark Campus, introduced Paul Robeson, Jr. to a near full house in the Billy Johnson Auditorium of the Newark Museum. Robeson's son, archivist and biggest champion talked about the two films to be screened, Song of Freedom and Proud Valley, as well as others.

To put things in context, Robeson quoted from Ashby's Tales Without Hate, a memoir by the founding director of the Newark Urban League written in 1980. Ashby recalled escorting the young star to the YMCA on Halsey Street around 1918. Robeson had been in demand for appearances in Newark before. After all, he was - even as a student - the kind of dynamo the term "Renaissance Man" was invented to describe: athlete, artist, scholar.

This time things were different. Robeson was about to be the first invited non-white speaker to appear before this segregated group. Ashby met Robeson at Penn Station and they walked up Market Street together, a scene Ashby wrote as being an "indescribable thrill." However, 60 years later, it was impossible to refrain from noting an irony. The guys at the Y were exploiting someone who could speak there with special permission, but who was also still unwelcome to stay overnight.

Paul Robeson, Jr. linked that irony to today's. His father is a "symbol of the nation's culture wars" fueled by our "politics of multiculturalism." Having just curated the NY Historical Society's show Bearer of a Culture, Robeson felt the need to clarify that "people like my father don't need any special protection" regarding the vagaries of public image and stereotyping.

The elder Robeson had recognized the talking film as a powerful mass vehicle. With it he proposed to overcome the racist caricatures entrenched in turn of the century American culture. He did this by committing to independent films. He chose roles in which he was not wasted as comic relief, noble savage, or tragic hero; those that allowed him a "humanized, black, male image." It was necessary even then to deflect criticism from the Black community, and defend the need to take small steps towards cultural self-determination.

-- reported by J. Kramer

Last updated June 23, 1998.
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