Five African-American celebrities who risked their careers by joining the civil rights struggle

Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson was everything and not in a cliched kind of way. He was an actor, a singer, an intellectual and a lawyer.

Robeson’s sheer achievements were threatening to white establishment fantasies that the black man was inferior. So when Robeson too joined the civil rights struggle in the 1940s, his life and career were threatened.

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He was also a blacklisted entertainer in Hollywood.