The Young Paul Robeson: on My Journey Now [Paperback]

Lloyd L Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 6, 1998

Famous as a football star and prizewinning student, then acclaimed as a world-class concert singer and record-breaking actor on stage and screen, Paul Robeson became one of America’s most controversial figures during the Cold War. Hailed by many as a forerunner of the civil rights movement, he was denounced by others and seen by the U.S. government as a threat to the nation’s security at home and abroad.Now for the first time there is an illuminating, firsthand view of this remarkable African American by a writer who is uniquely qualified to tell the story. A close friend and coworker of Robeson’s for twenty-five years, Lloyd L. Brown assisted in the writing of Robeson’s book Here I Stand. Now he has combined painstaking research with personal observation in his own book, The Young Paul Robeson. He brings to the work a graceful and engaging literary style developed over his many years as an essayist and critic on African-American literature and culture.Reflecting on interviews with Robeson’s schoolmates in elementary school, high school, Rutgers University, and Columbia Law School and drawing on original information from other sources, Brown provides a well-paced narrative of Robeson’s life, from his birth in Princeton to the budding of his artistic career in Harlem. Because Robeson always attributed his achievements to the guiding hand of his slave-born father, the Reverend William D. Robeson, Brown traced Robeson’s ancestral roots to North Carolina, where he found and interviewed cousins of Robeson as well as descendants of the family that had owned his father and his grandparents. Brown’s discovery of how William Robeson escaped to freedom and gained academic excellence is one of the many aspects of the Paul Robeson legend told here for the first time.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Not so much a biography as some of the material for one, Brown's memoir, prefaced by a probing for Robeson's ancestral roots, makes the reader long for the real thing, such as Martin Duberman's Paul Robeson. Only a few engaging lines reach beyond pedestrian level. The rest of the book furnishes information based on Brown's long friendship with Robeson, who died in 1976, especially his collaboration on the gifted actor-singer-activist's own Here I Stand (1957). Family history is followed by a recounting of Robeson's New Jersey school days, especially his athletic exploits, culminating with his becoming an All-American end at then-tiny (and private) Rutgers, and a pioneer professional in the ramshackle precursor to the NFL. Never intending to stay with sport and bored by Columbia Law School and the prospects of a racially limited legal career, Robeson was already developing his stage talents. Both as actor and singer he would become one of the best in the business in the 1920s and 1930s, yet he was frustrated by the color bar. The political radicalism toward which his beleaguered life, burdened by Jim Crow limitations, was building and that would lead to his becoming one of J. Edgar Hoover's Cold War targets, is only glanced at in this fragment of a life-a small work about a very large figure. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

This slim, workmanlike account of Paul Robeson's early years becomes fascinating by dint of its subject's remarkable achievements. Brown, a longtime friend and collaborator of Robeson's (he was, among other things the coauthor of Robeson's book Here I Stand), writes with little embellishment about the life of one of our most impressive Americans. Robeson, born in 1898, was the son of Maria Louisa Bustill, an educated black woman from the North, and William Robeson, a runaway slave who eventually became a minister. Paul, the couple's youngest child, accumulated numerous honors in high school for his scholastic, debating, and athletic prowess, and won a prized scholarship to Rutgers University. There he again made high honors, was chosen best speaker in his class four years in a row, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year, lettered in four sports, and twice won All-American status in football (at the same time playing semi-professional basketball with the prestigious St. Christopher social club team in Harlem). Upon his graduation, he was accepted into Columbia University Law School, from which he graduated successfully, though this time without academic honors. Perhaps that was because, while in law school, he was also playing professional football, making his Broadway acting debut, pursuing a successful singing career, touring England with a theatrical troupe, and getting married. Brown ends this brief book with Robeson just about to hit his stride as an actor and singer, and with the great controversies in his life still ahead of him. Given Robeson's amazing talents, it's hardly surprising that this often sounds more like a litany of his accomplishments than a biography. It's only in his afterword that Brown injects a more intimate note, offering some wonderful anecdotes about Robeson's personal life, as opposed to his public persona. (20 b&w photos) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (February 6, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813331773
• ISBN-13: 978-0813331775
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,848,907 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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