Anthony Brown, artist in residence at Hesston (Kan.) College, will bring 20th-century athlete, artist and activist Paul Robeson to life in two programs at Bluffton University Nov. 3 and 4.
Brown, a baritone vocalist, will perform “I Go on Singing: Paul Robeson’s Life in His Words and Songs” beginning at 7 p.m. Nov. 3 in Bluffton’s Yoder Recital Hall. The following morning, at 11 a.m. in Founders Hall, he will discuss “The Education of Paul Robeson” in a Bluffton Forum. Both programs are free and open to the public.
“I Go on Singing” is a 90-minute performance, written by playwright Andrew Flack and presenting, through song and narrative, Robeson’s integration of art and activism. The narrator will be Everett Collier, a 1975 Bluffton graduate who has performed in local and regional theater for 40 years. Accompanying Brown, who is also a sociology faculty member at Hesston, will be Ken Rodgers, a member of the college’s music faculty.
In his Forum presentation, Brown will describe how Robeson’s educational background led to his success to various fields, also including law.
Born in 1898, Robeson attended Rutgers University on a full scholarship, becoming a popular singer, an all-American football player and valedictorian of his graduating class. He went on to earn a law degree from Columbia University and embarked on a singing and acting career that made him, at the time, the best-known African-American entertainer in the world.
In England to star in a play in 1922, Robeson became involved in the plight of Welsh coal miners who were working in poor conditions for low pay. That was the beginning of a social activism that would persist through his blacklisting by the U.S. entertainment community and revocation of his passport by the government, owing to his social ties in the Soviet Union.
“Despite having grown up in ‘Jim Crow’ America, Paul Robeson spoke out against injustice and championed the cause of peace and freedom,” Brown writes. “He paid a dear price for his actions, but his courageous life would pave the way for the emergence of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and many others.”
