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ROBESON AT RUTGERS      FISHMAN 

and decision-making, with demands to honor Paul Robeson, as stated publicly in the demands of black students. 
Getting back to Paul Robeson's early student days: 1916, his sophomore year, found him on the varsity team and playing regularly, and making tremendous contributions. And so... the time is Fall, 1916: Paul Robeson plays an important role for Rutgers in the game with Villanova. [[^]] 9 
The end of October, 1916: the same statement can be made about his role in the Rutgers-Brown game. Robeson is listed in the Rutgers line-up as left tackle. [[^]] 10
Mid-October, 1916: Rutgers plays another game, with Washington and Lee University, of Virginia. Robeson does not play. He is not injured. He is not incapable. He is not reluctant. He is jim-crowed!
Washington and Lee (with "Lee" standing for Confederate General Lee) remains, at this time, loyal to slaveocrat and white-supremacist traditions of the "New South." In addition, seeing an opportunity to cripple their opponent Rutgers by having a most valuable player - Paul Robeson - removed, Washington and Lee refuses to play the game with a Negro in the line-up. 
The Rutgers coach complies. Robeson does not play. This decision, of necessity, is intertwined with the top administration of the college. The year 1916 happens to be the 150th anniversary of Rutgers. A great celebration is planned. It includes a mammoth parade of alumni to "celebrate its traditions." The parade is to converge on the Rutgers football stadium. The game is to cap the entire sesquicentennial celebration. 
Washington and Lee is successful in its strategem. The lily-white game is played. The Virginia team holds the much more highly rated Rutgers team to a 13-13 tie. This outcome, Washington and Lee regards as a virtual victory. [[^]] 11 It is a victory for jim-crow handed out by Rutgers. 
This cowardly surrender to white-supremacy thinking was to be protested forthrightly by James Carr, the first Negro to graduate from Rutgers (1892). He protested the jim-crow treatment of the second Negro to graduate from Rutgers, Paul Robeson. 
James Carr had a brilliant record at Rutgers. He excelled in debating, literary endeavors, and scholarship. A Phi Beta Kappa honor student, he was admitted to the New York State bar in 1895 and became assistant district attorney and assistant corporation counsel of New York City. He died in 1920. 
His protest is dated June 6, 1919, almost three years after the 

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