Paul Robeson - (Library of African American Biography) by Lindsey R Swindall (Paperback)

About the Book

Paul Robeson: A Life of Activism and Art is the biography of an African American icon and a demonstration of historian Lindsey R. Swindall's knack for thorough, detailed research and reflection.

Book Synopsis

Paul Robeson: A Life of Activism and Art is the biography of an African American icon and a demonstration of historian Lindsey R. Swindall's knack for thorough, detailed research and reflection.

Review Quotes

In Paul Robeson, Lindsey R. Swindall. . . . 'aims to demonstrate how the African diaspora, its culture, people, and politics, was at the heart of his artistic career and political activism'. . . .Throughout the book we are also confronted with portraits of the man, who struggled to balance a career, his marriage, and his health. The most compelling elements of Swindall's narrative are in the details -- the moments that provide little-known pieces of Robeson's character or struggle, such as his attendance at concerts by Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, or the requests made by Fidel Castro, Kwame Nkrumah, and Malcolm X to meet with him after his retirement in 1963.


Swindall does not shy away from dealing with Robeson's extramarital affairs, the tensions in his marriage with Eslanda Goode Robeson, and the disagreements that Eslanda and her son Paul Robeson Jr. had over Paul Senior's psychological treatment. She counters any portrayal of Robeson as a dupe of communist leaders by insisting that he strategically withheld criticism of the USSR, because he did not want to aid the agenda of right wing conservatives. . . .Swindall has given those who are unfamiliar with Paul Robeson a very readable introduction to the life of a man who, because of his politics, is too often silenced from the American mainstream.

Swindall's concise biography is a great introduction to this iconic African American artist, athlete, and activist. Swindall (Sam Houston State Univ.) contextualizes Robeson's life within larger global, political, and racial spheres, stressing that "the African diaspora, its culture, people and politics, was at the heart of his artistic career and political activism." The author draws heavily on existing secondary sources, including biographies by Martin Duberman (Paul Robeson, 1989) and Paul Robeson Jr. (The Undiscovered Paul Robeson, CH, Sep'01, 39-0207), as well as from earlier works and primary sources, but does not footnote in a traditional academic way. This is problematic at times. Swindall relies heavily on the Daily Worker and other communist or communist-influenced publications, yet fails to identify this political affiliation. While Robeson was certainly the target of rabid political attacks and the mainstream media contributed to this pillorying, a more balanced primary and secondary form of documentation would have added to the work. However, Swindall aptly demonstrates Robeson's remarkable multifaceted career, including politics and his stage and field successes. The author does not shy away from Robeson's psychological problems in the final quarter of his life. Overall, a fine introduction to Robeson that stresses his life as a public figure. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries.

About the Author

Lindsey R. Swindall earned her doctorate in Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is a teaching assistant professor in the College of Arts and Letters at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. She has also written: The Politics of Paul Robeson's Othello and The Path to the Greater, Freer, Truer World: Southern Civil Rights and Anticolonialism, 1937-1955. She is co-editor of American Appetites: A Documentary Reader.