Great singer, great actor, great athlete, and above all, great human being—Paul Robeson has been one of the best known and most universally admired figures in America. He was born in Princeton, New Jersey, during the Spanish-American War. His father was a hard-working, tough-minded preacher who had been born a slave. Paul was the third Negro ever to be admitted to Rutgers College. When he graduated in 1919, he had won his Phi Beta Kappa key, had been chosen end on the All-American football team, had won his R in four sports, delivered the commencement oration, and had been elected to Cap and Skull—the society made up of the four men most fully representing the ideals of Rutgers.

After a disappointing start at the study of law, he decided—with the urging of his young wife—that he ought to be an actor. He joined the Provincetown Players, where he worked with Eugene O'Neill (in whose Emperor Jones he starred), Robert Edmond Jones, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and others destined to become famous.

Robeson's first concert was really a lark, an informal gathering at which he sang nothing but Negro spirituals. But it launched him on his two careers—concert tours in America and Europe, stage plays that brought acclaim from critics and public alike. He made more that a thousand recordings, several motion pictures, and worked in radio. And all this time Paul Robeson was curious about the whole world, about the fight of all oppressed people for freedom and better lives. He traveled in the Soviet Union where his son also went to school for some time, he supported the Spanish Loyalists in their fight against Fascism; and he was always found in the front of every battle for a better life for ordinary people. "Through my singing and acting and speaking," he said, "I want to make freedom ring. Maybe I can touch people's hearts better than I can their minds."

From the book