Paul Robeson - Legacy and Honors

Legacy and Honors

After his death, "he white press, after decades of harassing Robeson, now tipped its hat to a 'great American,' paid its gingerly respect to him and the vituperation leveled at to the Bad Old Days of the Cold War, and implied those days were forever gone, they downplayed the racist component central to his persecution, and ignored the continuing inability of white America to tolerate a black maverick who refused to bend. The black press made no such mistakes. It had never, overall, been as hostile to as the white press, (though at some points in his career, nearly so)." Robeson was a "Gulliver among the Lilliputians always be a challenge and a reproach to white and Black America." Poitier proclaimed, "When Paul Robeson died, it marked the passing of a magnificent giant whose presence among us conferred nobility upon us all..."

Several public and private establishments he was associated with have been land marked, or named after him. His efforts to end Apartheid in South Africa were posthumously rewarded by the United Nations General Assembly in 1978. In 1995, he was named to the College Football Hall of Fame. In the centenary of his birth, which was commemorated around the world, he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award, and his name was placed on a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2004, a US postage stamp was created to recognize his dignified stance against the "conventional wisdom" of the United States Government during the Cold War.

Early in his life, he was one of the most influential participants in the Harlem Renaissance. Few, if any, have achieved the level of excellence in athletics and academics which he accomplished. His achievements were all the more incredible given the barriers of racism that he had to surmount. Early in his theatrical career, his drawing attention of the extant racism in England brought public awareness to a problem that had been thought previously solved and his re-emphasis on the Negro spirituals was influential in the music of Great Britain. Robeson brought Negro spirituals into the center of the American songbook His portrayal of leading roles, without the requisite subservience typical of African-Americans at the time, were later acclaimed by James Earl Jones, Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte as the first to display dignity for black actors and pride in African heritage.

"After McCarthyism, the two towering figure of anti-colonialism in the 1940s, Robeson and W. E. Du Bois, would never again have a voice in American politics, but the of the late 1950s and 1960s, would vindicate their anti-colonial analysis..." However in light of Khruschev's revelations of the atrocities committed by Stalin during his regime, his unrepentant support of Stalin was a stain on his lifelong human rights activism.

As of 2011, Robeson's run of Othello was the longest of any Shakespeare play on Broadway, running for 296 performances.

On September 20, 2006, Professor Philip Jaggar organised a celebratory tribute at SOAS.

Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist won an Academy Award for best short documentary in 1980.

Beginning in 1978, Robeson's films were finally shown on American television, with Show Boat debuting on cable television in 1983.

The Welsh people maintained their loyalty to Robeson and in Cardiff in 2001, the exhibition Let Paul Robeson Sing! was unveiled.

American Jews continue to celebrate his memory as an ally.

He was the first artist to refuse to play to segregated audiences.

Robeson archives exist at the Academy of Arts; Howard University, and the Schomburg Center. In 2010 Susan Robeson launched a project by Swansea University and the Welsh Assembly, to create an online learning resource in her grandfather's memory.

"Robeson connected his own life and history not only to his fellow Americans and to his people in the South but to all the people of Africa and its diaspora whose lives had been fundamentally shaped by the same processes that had brought his foremothers and forefaters to America." However, a consensus definition of his legacy remains controversial, but to deny his courage, in the face of public and governmental pressure, is to defame his courage.