Bishop J. Clinton Hoggard

Beloved friends, I am a little at sea in the situation of a funeral, that we have such immediate response from an assembled gathering. It makes me know that the world is present within the walls of the church. We rejoice that people are moved to this kind of accolade, but I would remind you that my presentation is in the form of a message both from family and in the life of the church.
In the book of Galatians—the sixth chapter, 17th verse—is written: “Henceforth, let no man trouble me; for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.”

Paul Robeson—singer, actor, peacemaker, human rights activist and minority peoples’ friend has joined the immortals.

My own association with the Robeson family goes back to 1904. In 1912 my father, now of sainted memory, was assigned to the pulpit in Westfield, New Jersey where the late Rev. W. D. Robeson, father of Paul and four other children, had built the new edifice for the St. Luke A.M.E. Zion congregation. My father carried his bride, my mother, to the Westfield congregation while the Robeson family moved to Somerville, New Jersey for the Rev. W. D. Robeson to pastor the St. Thomas A.M.E. Zion Church.

It was here in Somerville that Paul began to discover his singing ability as he sang with the church choir on Sundays. He also would be called upon to fill his Dad’s pulpit from time to time as his father’s health began to deteriorate. While in high school in Somerville, N.J. he competed in an oratorical contest with professors from Rutgers University serving as judges. His forensic skill won him a scholarship to Rutgers which resulted from the persuasion of the late Dr. Charles S. Whitman, who sometimes served as the head of the English Department at Rutgers. The hard rough road of life began.

Encountering racial slurs, gridiron attacks, social ostracism and some campus exclusions, Paul tightened his belt and determined to achieve what his father had taught all of his children, to wit: excellence is the only rating a Robeson should have in scholarship, competition of athletic powers or cultural performances. This is evidenced by him being elected to the highest academic honor society in America, Phi Beta Kappa, in his Junior year at a college where he could not live on campus in a dormitory, because, “There was no room for him in the inn.” Living in a residence on Morrell Street in New Brunswick, New Jersey with Mrs. Cummings and family, Paul used his strong body in athletic engagement which led him to become a 15-letter man in four major sports, football, baseball, basketball and track.

Our scriptural text is very appropriate at this point. On Paul’s first day of scrimmage at college, he told many times that, “One boy slugged me in the face and smashed my nose, and then I was down. Another boy got me with his knee. He managed to dislocate my shoulder.” He further stated that he had 10 days in bed and then out for another scrimmage. He made a tackle and was on the ground. A boy came over and stepped hard on his hand. The bones held, but the cleats took every single one of his finger nails off his right hand. He said, “That’s when I knew rage.”

St. Paul of the early church bore marks on his body from conflict with the pagan and non-believing world. Beaten with stripes and shipwrecked many times, he concluded his letter to the church at Galatia: “Henceforth, let no man trouble me, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.”

Part of the social exclusion that Paul experienced led him from “white” fraternities at Rutgers to initiation into the grand old original Greek letter fraternity among American blacks—the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity. This fraternity initiated, with the support of the president of Rutgers, the effort to have his name and his football record inscribed in the Football Hall of Fame.

Paul Robeson, at the time of graduating from college, could rightfully say that he bore on his body marks of vengeance placed there because he tried to live as a person who was created by God with dignity and a potential for fulfilling life’s dreams. These battle scars did not deter him from pursuing studies of law at Columbia University.

After marriage to his wife, Eslanda Cardozo Goode Robeson in 1921, he launched into the career of drama. His acclaim was nationwide, then worldwide. Finding a climate for “being a person” in Europe sooner than he experienced being a free man in America, he began to use his platform of dramatic performances as a launching pad for crying out against the oppressor of race in the economic and political arenas of life.

As a child, I remember hearing his first records being played on the victrola in our home:

My soul is a witness for my Lord,
My soul is a witness for my Lord.
Who’ll be a witness for my Lord?

and:

I got a home in-a-dat rock, don't you see?
I got a home in-a-dat rock, don't you see
Between de earth an sky, that I heard my Saviour cry,
I got a home in-a-dat rock, don't you see?

As Paul saw more of the world and compared life in countries other than the United States, he invoked hostility, governmental vindictiveness which led to the lifting of his passport, and personal harrassment of the McCarthy era which subjected him to inquisition and interrogations. But the courage of his ex-slave father, who ran to freedom, spurred Paul on to no compromise with any man on the matter of conscience, human rights, civil rights or personal dignity. Ultimately he was vindicated by the U.S. Passport Office which returned his passport under mandate from a ruling of the Supreme Court in a case that was precedent setting for the rights of citizens to travel at home or abroad without penalty being inflicted on persons due to political persuasions contrary to the majority opinion.

It happened that fifteen years after he graduated, my father was assigned to the church in Somerville, New Jersey where Paul had lived when he went to Rutgers; and I went to Rutgers from the same parsonage and occupied the same room at 81 West Cliff Street in Somerville when I began my experiences as a college student.

Paul was denied the opportunity to sing in the Rutgers University Glee Club and Choir, the prestigious organization on Queen’s Campus. When I became the first black member of the Glee Club in the fall of 1934, Paul returned from Europe and gave a concert in Princeton, New Jersey. Several of the Rutgers men attended the concert. When it was over, we went backstage to talk with Paul. He greeted us, remembered my family and inquired of them, and asked how I was getting along “On the banks of the Old Raritan.” I told him of my activities including membership in the University Choir and Glee Club. He offered his massive hand to shake my puny hand which was almost lost in search of his hand and said, “Congratulations Clinton. I never was able to make the Glee Club.” I then said, “Well, you can make a good living at concert singing now, but I had not better try.”

This reflected some change in the climate of Rutgers University from 1915 to 1934. Today. students have a Center on campus named for Paul, and the president, Dr. Edward Bloustein, is active with Alpha men and college presidents seeking to have Paul enshrined in the Football Hall of Fame.

It seems right so to do, that this service of celebration of a great personality should be enacted within these consecrated walls of Mother A.M.E. Zion Church. His brother, Benjamin Congleton Robeson, pastored this congregation from 1936 to 1963. For twenty- seven years the Robeson tradition of character, individualism and stalwart determination was manifest here on Manhattan Island. I served as a student minister in this church in 1939 and 1940 while pursuing theological studies at Union Theological Seminary. This caused me to have even closer contact with the family. When Paul was in the United States, he worshipped regularly in this sanctuary as a modest, humble, unobtrusive member. He did not enjoy being a celebrated personality when he came to worship. His brother carried the pastoral leadership of the congregation which was under a heavy mortgage responsibility. Many times, Paul gave his service to this church in the form of a concert which would pack this building. as it is tonight, and all proceeds went to the liquidation of the debt— $160,000 on the church and $40,000 on the organ—which occurred in 1945.

A great number of you who are here tonight may be in Mother Zion Church for the first time in your life. The family is to be commended for making the decision to bring Paul home.
There is a current climate around New York City that seems to say that all blacks who have attained any distinction in our society have to be taken out of Harlem to be buried. Paul lived with the people. He never surrendered his identity with the race; and he went full circle—being born in a parsonage and coming back to the place where he labored and served and helped to keep this church going, remembering that this congregation is the oldest organized black congregation on Manhattan Island. It was organized in 1796 and this congregation has never been without a worship service for one hundred seventy-nine years. It was built on the basis of freedom!

Paul understood from his father’s knee the genius of the black church. His father had been a member of the Presbyterian ministry, and, finding it more congenial to serve in a black church, he became a member of the A. M. E. Zion ministry; and all of his children were raised in it. And Paul knew that the spirit of Varick and of Thompson and of those who came out of the John Street Methodist Church on this Manhattan Island meant that at no time would they bow to the domination of any man on earth.

Before I’d be a slave,
I’d be buried in my grave,
And go home to my God, and be free.

When this congregation was down on Church and Leonard Streets, moved up to 89th Street and came on up to this present location—Harriet Tubinan came through these walls. Frederick Douglass came through these walls. A host of bishops have passed through the portals of Mother Zion Church as members of the local congregation and as members of the National Church. Douglass was in New Bedford, Massachusetts; Harriet Tubman in Auburn, New York and throughout the length and breadth of America. The black church has borne its fair share of leading the people of America to the understanding of justice and freedom for all. Paul sang gloriously within these walls:

Freedom, Freedom, Freedom over me,
And before I’d be a slave,
I’d be buried in my grave.
And go home to my God, and be free.

Paul potentially withdrew from the active arena of life in 1965. A widower, his last brother, Rev. Robeson, having died in 1963, Paul chose to live with his good and faithful sister, Marian, in her home in Philadelphia, where she, a widow, retired from the Philadelphia School System, made pleasant the latter days of her brother. She blessed our race by helping to lengthen his days, so he could be with us who were close enough to visit with him, receive counsel and learn from him that he was no ways tired of travelling to Mt. Zion, for he was on his journey home.
In moments of quiet, my brother, a pastor of St. James A.M.E. Zion Church in Philadelphia, the Rev. Aaron Hoggard, would visit Paul (as did my brother, Dr. Philip Hoggard, also of Philadelphia) have prayer with him, take him for automobile rides and find complete happiness in his presence. He reports that never did there seem to be a deterioration of mind, but a determination not to talk about current affairs.

Since in one’s patience, one possesses his soul, it can truly be said that Paul learned how to be patient in adversity. He lived a long active life until the penalty of harrassment began to take its toll on his physical frame. Even so, he was comforted by words of long ago from his all-famous performances of Othello:

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; ‘tis something, nothing,
‘Twas mine, ‘tis his, and has been slave to thousands,
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.

The legacy of a good name is bequeathed Paul, Jr. and his family; Paul’s sister, Marian Forsythe, and her daughter; the nieces, the nephews, the grandnieces, the grandnephews. Keep it good for justice and freedom, for character and culture, for racial pride and religious commitment. If we do this, then, as Paul would close a concert before labor unions by singing Joe Hill (a song about a union organizer executed for an alleged murder) and would sing the final line as a challenge—”Don’t mourn for me—Organize;” let me paraphrase it—”Don’t mourn for me, but live for freedom’s cause during this Bicentennial of America, and say to any and all who may urge you to leave America that: because our ancestors were slaves, and our people died to build this country, we are going to stay right here and have a part of it, just like you. And no Fascist-minded people will drive us from it. Is that clear?”

I bear on my body the marks of Jesus—but I also say—it’s worth it! No cross; no crown!

Paul, Jr. paid the finest tribute a son could give to his father when at the 75th anniversary of Paul, Sr.’s birthday at Carnegie Hall, he concluded his presentation by this paragraph, and I use it in closing:
“The most important thing my father has done for me does not derive from his unprecedented achievements, or from his great fame, or even from his magnificent intellect. What means most to me is the fact that from as far back as I can remember, he has, in his own special way, helped me to be a better human being. One cannot thank a father for such a gift—one can only treasure it and carry it always in one’s heart.”
Keep on traveling—there’s a great camp meeting in the promised land!

(The RT. Rev. J. Clinton Hoggard is Presiding Prelate of the Sixth Episcopal District of the A.M.E. Zion Church.)

FURTHER READING