The Robeson story begins in Somerville

By EDWARD JARDIM

Some time ago, a reporter walked into the Somerville public library and asked to see the clippings on Paul Robeson, the singer who became one of America's most controversial figures in the 1950s.

"Oh my God!" said the library employee. "Did HE live here?"

The Soviet Union named a mountain after him, and a leading magazine named him one of the 10 most influential blacks in American history. Yet the public library in the town where Robeson grew up and where he made his mark early -- graduating as a top student and class orator from Somerville High School in 1915 -- had not, at the time, any Robeson memorabilia.
Toast of the Town
Perhaps no one laments this situation more than Samuel I. Woldin, who lived across the street from the Robesons in those days when young Paul was the toast of Somerville.

Robeson died Jan. 23 in Philadelphia at the age of 77.

Woldin, who lives now in a retirement community in Cranbury, reminisced last week about his onetime neighbor who became his idol.

"There was no more likeable person who ever lived in Somerville," he said. "He was such a good-natured, amiable person."

Woldin is Robeson's junior by four years. But Woldin's father was friendly with Robeson's father, who was minister of St. Mark's AME Zion Church on nearby Davenport St. Sam Remembers the two old gentlemen sitting on the front porch of the Woldin home on many evenings, smoking Sweet Corporal cigarettes and taking about the affairs of the day.

Those long-ago days in New Jersey were a lot more peaceful than the turbulent times of the 1940s and 1950s when Robeson became embroiled in the bitter passions of the Communist scare and the Cold War.

Robeson lived first in Princeton, where he was born, and then in Westfield, in a tiny flat over a grocery store at Rahway Ave. and Spring St. that is now the site of Holy Trinity School. The Robesons moved on to Somerville in 1910, and Paul became a very popular figure in town.

Woldin remembers young Paul walking across the field between his house and the old Somerville High School on W. Cliff St. every day, usually with book in hand, reading in preparation for class.

"He was some outstanding student," Woldin said. "And what an athlete."
Greetings From Pal
Robeson went on to greater things at Rutgers College and Columbia University Law School. And Woldin says the last time he saw his neighbor was when they "bumped into each other" on a subway platform in New York one day while Robeson was at Columbia.

Several weeks ago, Woldin became ill and had to undergo an operation at the Medical Center at Princeton, and while he was recuperating there, he received a letter from Robeson wishing him good health. The hospital, incidentally, is on Witherspoon St., where Robeson was born in a parsonage in 1898.

Two weeks ago Woldin wrote Robeson thanking him for his greeting. It was the last letter of several exchanged over the years.

"He's the greatest American of the 20th century, in my opinion," Woldin said at his Cranbury home, where he has a large collection of Robeson memorabilia that has been utilized by biographers.
A Place in History

"He deserves to be recognized as a pioneer of civil rights for his people, one who was fighting long before Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther King," Woldin said. "There are 30 million blacks who should feel indebted to Paul Robeson for what he did. He really belongs in the history books.

Woldin recalled one unhappy incident that was a precursor of others which occurred in Robeson's career.

The senior class at Somerville made plans for a class trip to Washington back in 1915. Paul signed up, and arrangements for a hotel stay were made. Somehow, the Washington hotel learned that the class included a black pupil, and the school was informed that no reservation could be accepted for him.

"The class was angry," Woldin said "and wanted to call it off unless Paul could go, too. But he said, 'No go ahead. I really don't want to go.' But underneath, he was hurt. It was a big disappointment to him, and I think the first one that hurt him."