Word: robeson
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John Updike's Self-Consciousness is a wry autobiography. -- Paul Robeson portrays a triumph over racism and a fatal attraction for the U.S.S.R...
...PAUL ROBESON...
...Rutgers class of 1919 had big plans for its valedictorian: by 1940 he would be Governor of New Jersey and "leader of the colored race in America." As Martin Bauml Duberman observes in his compassionate biography, extravagant predictions were still being made for Paul Robeson 21 years later. The son of an escaped slave had already risen to international celebrity as a singer, actor and public speaker, and no limits were set on his future. Hardly anyone foresaw that he was standing on the edge of an irreversible decline...
...roots of this catastrophe can be traced to the moment that Robeson fell in love. The affection was not for his forbearing wife Essie, or for Peggy Ashcroft or Uta Hagen, or for any of the other strong-willed women with whom he had affairs. Robeson was smitten with the Soviet Union. During a 1934 visit, the singer proclaimed that in the U.S.S.R. he felt "like a human being for the first time since I grew...
...then Robeson had collected enough grievances to fuel a revolution. In high school one of his teachers thought Paul "the most remarkable boy I have ever taught, a perfect prince. Still, I can't forget that he is a Negro." Neither could the college football players who reviled him, or the secretary who warned the young law student, "I never take dictation from a nigger...