ABSTRACT
Paul Robeson, one of five children of a Negro minister who had been a runaway slave, was born in Princeton, New Jersey. He received his pre-school and grammar school education in Princeton and his high school education in Somerville, New Jersey. Because of his athletic and scholarly abilities, Robeson was awarded a scholarship to Rutgers University, from which he was graduated in 1911 as an All-American and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He then entered Columbia University Law School. He began his theatrical career in an amateur production of Simon, the Cyrenian, a production of the Provincetown Players at the Little Theater on MacDougall Street in Greenwich Village. In 1925 Robeson and his long-term associate, Lawrence Brown, gave the first professional concert of all-Negro music ever given.
