I am more than a little puzzled that in all the hubbub about Don Imus and his crass insults of the Rutgers girls basketball team, the media, which wallows in digging up the past, has ignored one of the school’s most dismaying incidents of racism.
True, the girls were assailed by an outsider — lunkhead Don Imus — while the black student of this story entered Rutgers on an academic scholarship and immediately was attacked. That was back in the days when only a sprinkling of blacks was accepted by the then practically all-white American colleges.
The black student, a tall strapping, strong young man, showed up for football practice. The all-white Rutgers team immediately beat him up and, for good measure, pulled out some of his finger nails.
The boy picked himself up, wiped the dirt off his clothes, ignored his abused fingers and went on to become one of the best football players in the history of the college sport. Walter Camp of Yale, the coach who crafted the rules for modern football, described him as "the greatest to ever trot the gridiron." He led Rutgers in a crushing defeat of Princeton on the way to becoming a two-time all-American. He won 15 varsity letters at Rutgers in football, baseball, basketball, and track and field.
As if that wasn’t enough, he also was the valedictorian in his all-white graduating class.
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Then Paul Robeson went to Columbia University, and earned a law degree. He joined a law firm in New York but left a short time later because a white secretary wouldn’t take dictation from a black man.
After leaving the law, Robeson had an amazing career in entirely different fields.He was one of America’s most celebrated actors and singers — but he was dogged by racism all his life. And it had sad consequences, sad for him and sad for a country where lynching was still a common Southern pastime.Getting started as an actor wasn’t easy. Where in the North he had only lost his finger nails, not his life, he wasn’t accepted by the Hollywood establishment. For his early career in movies, he had to go to England where he appeared in 11 films between 1925 and 1942, all but four of them shot in Great Britain.
Later, when his enormous talents were recognized in his mother country, he created memorable roles in Shakespeare’s "Othello" and Eugene O’Neill’s "Emperor Jones." His renditions of "Ol’ Man River" in the film "Show Boat" and his "Go Down Moses" are benchmarks for anyone singing these classics. And he played Crown in the stage version of "Porgy," t he basis for George and Ira Gershwin’s "Porgy and Bess."
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But Robeson is also well-remembered for his support of the Soviet Union during the ’30s. It was a time, political analysts have written, when many intellectuals and artists of the time were intrigued by what they believed was a system of government free of racial prejudice. And people of the day were disillusioned because of the Great Depression that saw 20 percent of America’s workforce unemployed.
Later, Robeson and others who had flirted with communism learned of the horrors of Stalin’s Gulag and realized that he was just another fascist dictator who routinely slaughtered or imprisoned his own people.
For a period, Robeson’s U.S. passport was taken away from him. In time, he was recognized as a troubled genius who made lasting contributions to art and culture and was an effective activist on behalf of black people.
In 1988 Rutgers University posthumously inducted him into its sports Hall of Fame. Three Rutgers buildings are named after him.
In 1998 he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He was the first singer to bring old spirituals to the concert stage. His beautiful and powerful voice descended as low as a C below the bass clef.
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When I was a young reporter for the late "Hartford Times," Robeson came to Hartford to address the students at my alma mater, Weaver High School. The city editor assigned me the story, and what question was I directed to ask? What else, "Mr. Robeson are you still a communist?"
I wanted to beg off the interview, or at the very least, not have to ask a question which by that time was irrelevant. But reporters didn’t talk back to tough city editor Frank Ahearn.
After Robeson’s talk, I went backstage and asked my question. Towering over me (and I was 6’1"), he looked down with fire in his eyes. He stamped his foot in anger and just missed my toe. An inch more and I would have returned to the newsroom in a wheelchair.
So what is the point of all this? Basketball ladies of Rutgers, be of good cheer. Racism is still with us, but let the memory of another Rutgers student be a source of inspiration to you.
Curmudgeon Barnett Laschever of Goshen still has all his toes. He is a freelance writer and co-author, with Andi Marie Cantele, of "Connecticut, An Explorer’s Guide."
Donald Polk learned circular breathing by watching a YouTube video.Photo by Sava Marinkovic
