Could you imagine being a child and your parents having Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., or Jazz and Blues great Billie Holiday, or the amazing Paul Robeson, at the dinner table?
Most of us would never have experiences like that in a million years. But for Vernoca Michael that was the norm. In my first column for Black History Month, I’m shinning the spotlight on Paul Robeson, through the eyes of Vernoca Michaels who is the Executive Director of the Paul Robeson House and Museum, located 4949-51 Walnut Street in West Philadelphia. As the story goes, Paul Robeson became a member of Vernoca Michaels family. He moved to Philadelphia in 1966 and lived in Philadelphia until his death in 1976. How fitting that so many years later, Vernoca Michael would end up overseeing the operation of his home, which was turned into a museum. “I knew Paul Robeson from birth on. My family and I moved to Philadelphia in the 1960’s and Uncle Paul, soon after, came to live across the street from us. Because my parents, Dr. Raphael Michael and Elizabeth Michael were friends of the family, I knew him as Uncle Paul. As a result of that, my mother who had been a concert artist and my father who had been an international diplomat, my father insisted that when I bought my own car, in particular, that I would be able to chauffer Uncle Paul and Aunt Marian, (Paul Robeson’s sister), around. We also did a lot of other things together in terms of activities in the house. But to me, he was just Uncle Paul, someone who was a relative.”
One of the things I always found interesting when I was younger was Uncle Paul would always stand and bow to me when I would come in the house and I used to laugh at that time, thinking it was a funny routine. In addition to that, I used to enjoy our rides together. Little did I know that one day he would become so popular and famous. I grew up with everything being so secretive, around Uncle Paul. We were not to talk about him outside of the house or outside of the family. But it was very interesting to hear some of the things he did talk about. One of the things he talked about that I had an interest in, were his days in Russia. Little did I know that in subsequent years that I would also be in Russia and have a chance to live and work there.”
Vernoca Michaels described her Uncle Paul this way. “He was a very quiet man at that time and a very kind man. He and I and Aunt Marian got along extremely well. She considered him her baby brother and she took very good care of him. He was an actor, singer, orator, intellectual, he was really an American hero. For those who don’t know, Paul Robeson was one of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s confidants.”
There are many things that have been written about Paul Robeson. If you really have a mind to, you can go online and google Paul Robeson’s name and tons of information will come up on him. I’ll leave you with this about him for now. Paul Leroy Robeson was a Renaissance man who spent most of his life fighting injustice, for which he was roundly persecuted. He was all the things that Vernoca Michaels said he was, an actor, orator, athlete, lawyer, singer, author, scholar, activist and linguist. Most of all, the “tallest man in the forest” – he stood 6-foot-3 – was an authentic American Hero.
He was born April 9, 1898, in Princeton, NJ, the son of a former slave who became an educated minister and a Quaker mother – the Rev. William Drew Robeson and Maria Louisa Bustill. The Bustills were a prominent Philadelphia family with a storied history: Maria’s great-grandfather, a baker, supplied bread to Washington’s army during the Revolutionary War and founded a mutual-aid society for blacks.
To really learn more about Paul Robeson, you need to come to his house. To learn more, log on to the web site www.paulrobeson.org, or call the museum at 215-747-4675. Due to the pandemic, they are not doing tours right now. However they still have some creative programming happening via zoom. Check out their Facebook page and their web site for updates.
In closing, Vernoca Michaels commented, “I welcome people after the pandemic is over, to come to the Paul Robeson House and see where he lived and how he lived and enjoy the activities of our house.
