Paul Robeson [SEP] mother
of his life privately in Philadelphia.
Early life.
Early life 1898–1915: Childhood.
Paul Leroy Robeson was born in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1898, to Reverend William Drew Robeson and Maria Louisa Bustill. His mother, Maria was from a prominent Quaker family of mixed ancestry. His father, William, was of Igbo origin and was born into slavery, William escaped from a plantation in his teens and eventually became the minister of Princeton's Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church in 1881. Robeson had three brothers: William
Mother Zion, and several black and white churches were set ablaze. The July 12, 1834 "New York Evening Post" newspaper denounced the attacks as a "disgrace".
Mother Zion also became an important cultural center for the city's African-American community. Paul Robeson, brother of Pastor Dr. Benjamin C. Robeson, spoke from the pulpit. Dr. Robeson's activism for civil rights led him to work with prominent Harlem Renaissance members such as Langston Hughes and W. E. B. Du Bois. From the 1920s into the