On January 23, 1976: Paul Robeson, a runaway slave’s son who became a two-time All-American defensive end at Rutgers, dies at 77 in Philadelphia. He suffered a mild stroke last month and had been suffering from cerebral vascular disorders. Robeson won a scholarship in 1915 to Rutgers, where he was the third African-American to attend the then-private New Jersey college. Besides starring in football, he also earned letters in baseball, basketball and track. He won wider fame as a powerful stage actor (perhaps best remembered in the role of Othello) and concert singer (belting out such songs as “Ol’ Man River”). He also was an outspoken activist on behalf of African-Americans, defiantly fighting racial bigotry. The State Department revoked his passport in 1950, charging him with Communist sympathies. A winner in 1952 of a Stalin Peace Prize, he was a prime target of the McCarthy era’s anti-Communist witch hunts.
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