After the Virginia-based Washington and Lee University threatened to pull its team from the game if he played, Robeson was benched.The team was right.
Playing against Newport Naval Reserve, an undefeated team comprising 11 All-Americans, Robeson scored one of the two Rutgers touchdowns while on offense. But he didn’t.
The son of a runaway slave, Robeson attended Rutgers College in New Brunswick on an academic scholarship, becoming the university’s third black student and its first black football … His experience on the field, however, offered just a sampling of his talents and only a hint of what he would face.It was a rough start.
The son of a minister who had fled slavery in North Carolina as a teen-ager, Robeson … Robeson was a powerful contributor to that record. “And the team realized, ‘OK, he’s a rugged guy, the kind of person we need.’”As a first-year student at Rutgers College during fall 1915, when Paul Robeson was the sole African-American student on campus and only the third to be enrolled in the 149-year-old school, he held a white classmate over his head in rage and thought he wanted to kill him. RUTGERS FOOTBALL HONORS PAUL ROBESON Paul Robeson was the first African-American football player at Rutgers University, and in celebration of Robeson's centennial graduation and the 150th anniversary of college football, the Scarlet Knights honored his legacy on—and off—the field. Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience and a professor in African-American and African studies at Rutgers University–Newark – notes, “What was going on throughout America, we were seeing people brutalized.
Among reporters’ descriptors were “superman,” “a football genius” and “the wonder of the age.”One game during his junior year was emblematic of Robeson’s prowess.
After Rutgers’ football head coach George Foster “Sandy” Sanford shouted, “Robey, you’re on the varsity!” Robeson placed his new teammate – the one who’d just stomped on his hand in an attempt to break it – on the ground unharmed.Only once did Rutgers capitulate – during Paul’s sophomore year, when the university’s 150th anniversary warranted avoiding controversy. Rutgers Football to Honor Paul Robeson on 150th Anniversary of Program 07/02/2019 The Scarlet Knights will honor their past teams, All-Americans and program icons Eric LeGrand and Paul Robeson during their seven games …
Although he also distinguished himself academically and in three other sports at Rutgers, Robeson’s gridiron experiences best demonstrate how his character matched his talents.It wouldn’t happen again. The Rutgers football team honored one of its most historic alumni, Paul Robeson, during a recent home game at SHI Stadium. And Robeson, warned by one white opponent not to touch him, knocked the player to the ground on the next play, then said, “I touched you that time. Robeson’s granddaughter and executive director of the Paul Robeson Foundation, Inc., Susan Robeson, served as an honorary football coach for the day.Watch as Susan Robeson motivates her team with a moving speech about her grandfather's perseverance.In 1938, after having spent months raising funds for the Republican forces fighting the fascist Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War, Paul Robeson went a step further. “Robey,” as he was known across campus, was a two-time All-American and hailed as the game’s best ever.
Paul Robeson with the Rutgers Football Team in 1918 It wouldn’t happen again. But, he was so dominant on defense, which held Newport to just one first down, that Newport felt like it was up against 11 Robesons, according to one reporter’s account.
Ten days before Robeson made the team, the 17-year-old had walked onto the Rutgers practice field, where he was assaulted by other players trying out for the team, breaking his nose and dislocating his shoulder. Robeson was one of their best players, but Washington and Lee University refused to play against a Black player.
Not only was the decision humiliating for Robeson, who was the first black athlete to play for Rutgers; it drew adamant protest from the college’s first African-American student, James Carr, who had graduated in 1892 and was a New York City attorney.
While recovering from his injuries, a shell-shocked Robeson questioned whether he should return.On the field, Robeson’s athleticism did the talking. After Rutgers upset Newport, 14–0, yet another reporter called him “a veritable Othello of battle” – a moniker foreshadowing the eponymous role he would famously play a decade later.Salamishah Tillet – associate director of the Clement A.
So, on the one hand, how he was treated is shocking. The dedication of the Paul Robeson Plaza on the College Avenue Campus in spring 2019 will pay tribute to his legacy.
On Oct. 14, 1916, sophomore Paul Robeson was excluded from the Rutgers Football team.
He was never penalized and built his already formidable strength, in part, by breaking orange crates with his forearms. In a letter to the university, he castigated his once-beloved alma mater for surrendering its principles to compromise.Then he remembered what his father, a former slave who had become a pastor, had told him – that on the field, in the classroom or anywhere else, “I wasn’t just there on my own,” Robeson told a reporter in 1944. When a West Virginia team threatened to boycott, Coach Sanford stood his ground and the game proceeded.
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