Recovering Paul Robeson

This lesson will recover the history of Paul Robeson and provide teachers with culturally responsive resources, activities, and innovative educational approaches to teaching. In teaching the life of Paul Robeson I use historical analysis and use his Here I Stand to teach his biographical background and his ideology concerning human rights. This lesson utilizes historical methods and texts including Nell Painter’s “Cold War, Civil Rights” to teach about the McCarthy Era/The Red Scare and Robeson’s historical milieu. I have students conduct a sociology of art analysis of Nikolas Muray’s “Nude Kneeling,” (1926) to discuss Robeson as a Hyper Masculine African American Übermensch. I also teach students music and textual analysis by listening to Robeson from Songs of Free Men. We also watch film clips from Song of Freedom (1936) and Big Fella (1937). These all work to illustrate Robeson’s career and stardom. This lesson also uses Lynn Nottage’s Crumbs from the Table of Joy, scene three which students stage and perform. The play teaches students U.S. governments conflation of civil rights activism with communism, the fear this era instilled in people and the era’s effect on everyday African Americans like the family in the play and Robeson.