Penn Collaborative History, Paul Robeson, Part IV: Erasure from Historical Memory

Records “a deliberate and largely successful campaign by federal agencies, mainstream media, and spiteful critics to efface the public’s memory of his exploits,” and that Robeson spent the last decade of his life (1966 to 1976) “largely in the care of his sister” at 4951 Walnut St. in West Philadelphia (the series summary gives 4949). Records that in 1958 a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling, “in a case that did not involve him directly,” ended his “harrowing eight-year passport ordeal”, the sold-out Royal Albert Hall concert that summer, and that he “died at West Philadelphia’s Presbyterian Hospital (today’s Penn–Presbyterian Medical Center), from complications of a stroke, on January 23, 1976.”