A Brush with Greatness

A coalition of Rutgers organizations selected alumnus Alonzo Adams to paint a mural of Paul Robeson to be unveiled in SHI Stadium during the homecoming football game on October 19. 

When Alonzo Adams moved onto the College Avenue campus at Rutgers–New Brunswick as a freshman in 1979, he had never heard of Paul Robeson. 

Robeson, who had died three years earlier in 1976 at the age of 77, was a New Jersey native and the son of a runaway slave. He became valedictorian of the Rutgers Class of 1919 while excelling in four sports for the Scarlet Knights, twice earning football All-America selections in an era when racial segregation prohibited Black players at many colleges and universities. Robeson went on from Rutgers to a famed career as an actor, singer, scholar, and groundbreaking global activist.

While a student at Rutgers, Adams learned much about Robeson. Two years after Adams graduated from the Mason Gross School of the Arts in 1984, he painted a portrait of the iconic alumnus that hangs today in the Paul Robeson Cultural Center on the Busch campus.

Nearly four decades later, Adams again has painted Robeson—this time on a much larger scale. His mural of Robeson will be unveiled in SHI Stadium on October 19 during the Scarlet Knights homecoming football game against UCLA.

“A lot of people don't know who Paul Robeson was,” he says. “They don't know the man he was. I didn't know the man he was when I got to Rutgers, but I found out the giant that he was, the humanitarian, the man who fought for peace, the athlete, the celebrity, the activist. I want his image to be magnified. I want people to like, ‘Wow, okay, that’s who Paul Robeson was.’ And then I want them to go back and do research on Paul Robeson.”

Adams says it is remarkable that Robeson was so far ahead of his time as a “Black man to have that much presence and fortitude and commitment.”

Robeson’s success as an actor and singer after his time at Rutgers sometimes overshadows his athletic prowess as a young man. An inductee in the College Football Hall of Fame, he played four seasons for the Scarlet Knights, helping legendary Coach G. Foster Sanford lead the team to a 22-6-3 record in that period. In addition to four letters in football, he also earned three letters each in basketball and baseball, and two in track. After Rutgers, Robeson played pro football for three seasons, using that income to pay tuition while earning a law degree at Columbia University.

The stadium mural, which measures 24 feet wide by 8 feet high, will hang on a wall behind student seating in sections 142 and 143 in SHI Stadium. The mural in the stadium is a reproduction of the original painting by Adams, which measures 12 feet by 4 feet. Plans are underway to display it at Rutgers as well. 

Two art students at Mason Gross assisted Adams in painting the mural: senior Jocelynn Dow and recent graduate Beatryz Mendes Hornung.

Dow, who grew up in Monmouth County, says working on the Robeson mural with Adams was inspiring and insightful. “I've gained so much from working on this project, especially in honing my technical skills, and deepened my appreciation for Paul Robeson while working with Alonzo,” Dow says. “I'm very grateful for the experience.”

Hornung, who grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey, helped with the mural from the beginning stages through the final brush strokes. “Painting can be such an individual thing,” she says. “It has been a great learning experience to work on this project with Alonzo.”

The initiative for the Robeson tribute at SHI Stadium originated with Jim Savage, president of the Class of 1971, and ultimately involved a joint effort across the university that brought together a vast coalition: Rutgers Athletics, the Rutgers University Foundation, the Rutgers University Alumni Association, the Rutgers Alumni Association, the Rutgers Class of 1971, Ubuntu Cultural Pavilion (based in Somerville, New Jersey), the Rutgers African-American Alumni Alliance, Douglass alumnae, and the Blacks on the Banks Legacy Circle.

“I am extraordinarily proud of my classmates, these five other alumni organizations, and those two major Rutgers executive units for serving as champions of a lasting tribute to Rutgers and global legacy Paul Robeson,” Savage RC’71 says.

Savage collaborated on the mural closely with Kendall Hall, past president and co-founder of the Rutgers African-American Alumni Alliance. Both also worked on the creation of Paul Robeson Plaza on the College Avenue Campus, which was dedicated in 2019, the 100th anniversary of Robeson’s Rutgers graduation. 

Hall RC’88, who is founder and president of the Unbuntu Cultural Pavilion, says collaborators are thrilled about this venue for telling Robeson’s story.

“We wanted to make sure that we could continue to uplift Paul Robeson’s legacy,” Hall says. “This is another means for us to spread the great work and the legacy of Paul Robeson.”

Adams’ works have been showcased all over the country, including “Alonzo Adams: These Eyes Have Seen,” a show on display at Rutgers University–Camden’s Stedman Gallery through Nov. 16. His work was exhibited in a Rutgers–New Brunswick Zimmerli Art Museum show that ended earlier this year.

For more about Adams and the mural, read the press release, see the preview of a forthcoming video, and read this story and watch a video released in advance of his show at Rutgers–Camden.