Paul Robeson Centennial Celebration
Resources About Paul Robeson (1898-1976)
Robeson History in Your City
Build a Timeline for Paul Robeson's Involvement in YOUR City
KNOWING YOUR CITY'S ROBESON HISTORY
This will be very valuable. On one level, it will help add to the full
history of Paul Robeson. Most important, for young people, it will
give them knowledge that this great man performed in my city--that he
played football in a field near my aunt's house--that he came to my city to
speak on a certain issue or raised money for this or that cause. For
teachers, it will be a lot easier to teach about Paul Robeson if there are
one or more local angles. And, of course, the press always wants a
local angle.
BEGIN THE SEARCH
In Chicago, we thought maybe Robeson had been here for a dozen events--for
Othello, for example. To find Robeson/Chicago history, we went to folks
who had some involvement with Robeson; maybe they hosted an event or put him
up overnight or were bodyguards for him at a public event. We got a number of
people saying that they saw Robeson at such and such an event, but in many
cases, they couldn't pin down dates.
WHERE TO DIG
We started with about a dozen dates and events and went to the books we had on
Robeson. Literally, we went to the index of each book and looked up Chicago
and the Chicago Defender and struck gold. The Martin Doberman book
Paul Robeson was useful. A difficult book to find is A Paul Robeson
Research Guide by Lenwood G. Davis. This was great, and the thesis,
Paul Robeson: His Career in the Theatre, in Motion Pictures and on the
Concert Stage, by Anatol Schlosser was full of great leads.
After looking into these three books on Robeson, Chicago chronology exploded
with dates and events. Next, we began to match those dates with articles and
reviews gathered from microfiche of several newspapers, the Chicago
Defender, the Chicago Tribune, and the Daily Worker.
What happened was that we could now know the content of an event --
maybe we could find sponsors of the event-- maybe some of these sponsors are
still alive!
Often, in reading an article carefully, we found that it referred to another
event that Robeson appeared at--or another lead to follow up on.
You can look for information at the local library or at a historical society
or a Black history museum. In our digging, we searched the records at the
Chicago Park District and Orchestra Hall. The person heading up our Robeson
Chronology is Joe Powers, and on his last vacation, he went to the Football
Hall of Fame and came out with a listing of numerous cities where Robeson
played football during his time at Rutgers and on weekends while in graduate
school. With that information and a bit more digging, we added three dates
where Robeson played football in Chicago in 1921 and 1922 (see
Sports). We even found new dates while looking over the now-public
records of the Chicago Police "Red Squad" (how ironic!).
HOW DEEP TO DIG
If there are folks around who enjoy this digging, you can dig as deep as you
want. We will state over and over again that April 9, 1998 won't be the end
of interest in Robeson, but the beginning of a renaissance of interest
in him. Students and teachers and sports writers and researchers will
continue this research. We will have provided a great "jumping off" point for
them!
Besides the listing of events, it would be great to back up the dates with
file folders organized by date to contain photocopies of news articles,
reviews, speeches, and so on.
LOCAL AND NATIONAL RESOURCE CENTERS
A full Robeson/Chicago chronology had never been done, and probably, it's the
same for most other cities. It's usually the huge or special events that make
it in the books. Eventually, though, this valuable documentation needs to be
placed in public places.
For the sake of students and others who express interest, this material must
be kept locally. But--because most of this documentation is in the
form of photocopies--you can make many copies, and they can be placed
in many places locally and in one or more national archives.
SCHOOL PROJECTS AND HISTORY FAIRS
This local digging can provide great material for school assignments. Because
so little of this local history has been documented, students can come up with
valuable original research. Over 300 cities have citywide history
fairs. Given the fact that Paul Robeson performed in over 160 U.S. cities,
there could be tons of topics for research. Even if he came only once
to your town, there could be much exciting research to be done.
&schools; Also SCHOOLS our: classroom page
Other resources:
EVENTS/EXHIBITS
BOOKS
ARTICLES
COLLECTIONS
MUSIC&RECORDINGS
FILMs&VIDEOs
PHOTOS
POSTERS...
PLAYS
SPORTS
QUOTES
SCHOOLS
INSTITUTIONS
CITIES
OTHER
HELP?
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- Paul Robeson Centennial Celebration
- E-mail to:
robeson.centennial@pobox.com
- (please also include your postal address)
- Web site:
http://pobox.com/~robeson/
