PAUL ROBESON (1898-1976) was the most talented person of the 20th century. He was an internationally renowned concert and opera singer, film star and stage actor, college football star and professional athlete, writer, linguist (he sang in 25 languages), scholar, orator, lawyer, and activist in the civil rights, labor, and peace movements. In the 1930s and 1940s, Robeson was one of the best-known, and most admired, Americans in the world. Today, however, he is almost a forgotten figure. Few Americans know his name or accomplishments.

We are familiar with authoritarian governments that seek to “erase” the memory of prominent critics, but how can it happen in a democracy like the United States? Starting in the late 1940s, as the Cold War escalated, America’s political establishment began an assault on Robeson’s career and reputation because of his political activism and outspoken radicalism. He was blacklisted, his concerts and recording contracts canceled, and his passport revoked. By the mid-1950s, he had become a marginal figure — emotionally depressed, physically exhausted, and politically isolated.

Every so often it looks like Robeson might be getting the revival that is long overdue. Since his death in 1976, his admirers have attempted to restore his visibility. They’ve produced biographies, plays, and documentary films exploring Robeson’s talents and examining his legacy. Each of these efforts has made some progress in lifting Robeson out of obscurity, but his reputation still has not recovered from its political silencing.

Other public figures who challenged the political status quo — including Albert Einstein, W. E. B. Du Bois, Eleanor Roosevelt, Muhammad Ali, and Martin Luther King Jr. (who was viewed unfavorably by 66 percent of Americans in a 1966 Gallup poll) — were also attacked by red-baiters and conservatives, but their reputations outlasted their critics. Not Robeson. He is, at best, a footnote in history textbooks, little known outside a small circle of Americans with a special interest in the history of the civil rights and left-wing movements, although somewhat better known among African Americans than white Americans.

We are currently in the midst of a bit of a Robeson resurgence, however. Keith David performed his one-man show, Paul Robeson, directed by its playwright Phillip Hayes Dean, at the Ebony Repertory Theatre in Los Angeles in March and April this year. Another one-man show about Robeson, The Tallest Tree in the Forest, opened April 12 and goes through May 25 at The Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, with music written and performed by Obie Award–winner Daniel Beaty. A new book, Paul Robeson: A Watched Man (Verso), by Jordan Goodman, supplements Martin Duberman’s magisterial 1989 biography, Paul Robeson.

Robeson’s story is so incredible — indeed, mythic — that it would seem to be the stuff of fiction if there weren’t so many records, films, news clippings, Congressional testimonies, and memoirs by his friends, collaborators, and enemies to document its reality. His almost superhuman achievements, his rise from humble origins to great heights, only to fall, tragically, to ignominious depths — his amazing life seems like a fable, the moral of which has been subject to many different interpretations, each shaped by the political orientation of the interpreter...