Birth of Paul Robeson (April 9, 1898)

Paul Robeson was born on April 9, 1898, in Princeton, New Jersey, in a house serving as the manse of Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church, where his father, the Reverend William Drew Robeson, a man who had escaped slavery in North Carolina as a teenager, served as pastor. Robeson grew up in the Witherspoon-Jackson neighborhood, one of the oldest continuously occupied African American communities in New Jersey, before going on to Rutgers University, where he became valedictorian and a two-time All-American athlete.