The injustices endured by enslaved African Americans in the United States between the 17th century right up until the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery in 1865, but then also the residual racism and segregation that simmered after its abolition well into the twentieth century, makes for difficult reading. A podcast I have been listening to about the history of slavery in the US opens with a slave song, I’m Goin’ To Tell God All O’ My Troubles, sung by Paul Robeson in that famous baritone of his, and it’s worth looking at the life of the man Paul Robeson, whose story is really about how you can’t keep a good man down, against all the odds.
Robeson was both an academic and an athlete, and won a scholarship to Rutgers College in 1915, the only black man there at the time. He excelled for the Rutgers football team, the Scarlet Knights, although at one point he was benched because a Southern football team refused to take the field because the Scarlet Knights were fielding a negro. But he kept going and flourished both athletically and academically, ending up finishing university with flying colours and accepted into the prestigious honour societies Phi Beta Kappa and Cap and Skull.
He went on to study law at Columbia University, whilst simultaneously playing professional American football for the Milwaukee Badgers and promoting his fine singing by acting in off-campus productions. After graduating, he became a figure in the Harlem Renaissance with performances in the Eugene O’Neill plays The Emperor Jones and All God’s Chillun Got Wings, and gave up both his football and his fledgling law career. He was later to find worldwide fame from performances such as his “Joe” in Show Boat at London’s Drury Lane Theatre, featuring the benchmark song Ol’ Man River, and as Othello in three separate productions of that play.
Robeson soon found himself welcomed and courted by elite social circles, but this did not turn his head, and he was to become a prolific political activist for civil rights and other social justice campaigns throughout his life, as well as supporting the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War. His sympathies for the Soviet Union and communism caused him to be blacklisted during the McCarthy era, but his reputation as a strong and respected voice for justice had already been sealed, and he never gave up.
Between 1925 and 1961, Robeson recorded and released some 276 distinct songs, spanning many styles, including spirituals, popular standards, European folk songs, political songs and poetry. I’m Goin’ To Tell God All O’ My Troubles was released as the B-side to Deep River in 1927, and is a deeply felt expression of life under the yoke.
