As Paul Robeson walked to the speaker's platform on Commencement Day, June 18, 1919, the audience rose as one to applaud him. They remained standing until he had reached the podium. He was an overwhelmingly popular choice as Valedictorian. For the second year in a row, he had been the top college football player, chosen as a first-team All-America end by all the major selectors. Not only had he now won the phenomenal total of 14 varsity letters: four each in football and baseball; three each in basketball and track. For the fourth year in a row he had led the Rutgers debating team and won the class oratorical prize. That year he had preserved his Phi Beta Kappa status and had been inducted into the Cap and Skull society which honored the four seniors who best represented the ideals of Rutgers.

Titled "The New Idealism," Paul's address linked freedom, individual rights and Black self-determination to national unity and white fairness:

Unity is impossible without freedom, and freedom presupposes a reverence for the individual and a recognition of the claims of human personality to full development. It is therefore the task of this new spirit to provide full opportunities for the development of everyone.

• We of this less favored race realize that our future lies chiefly in our own hands. On ourselves alone will depend the preservation of our liberties and the transmission of them in their integrity to those who will come after us. Neither the old-time slavery nor continued prejudice need extinguish self-respect, crush manly ambition, or paralyze effort generation.

• May I not appeal to you—to join us in continuing to fight—until in all sections of this fair land there will be equal opportunities for all and character shall be the standard of excellence, and until Black and white shall clasp friendly hands in the consciousness of the fact that we are brethren and that God is the father of us all.

My father's value system differed from the one taught by the traditional U.S. civic culture and rested upon six main ethical principles:

1. Strive for excellence; try to be the best that you can possibly be. Aim for perfection instead of merely trying to "beat" others.
2. Success without advancing the interests of our people as a whole, without helping those who have fallen behind, is worth little.
3. The human race is one family with diverse but equal members having different cultures, and a deeper understanding of one's own culture will inevitably lead to a better understanding of other cultures.
4. Personal growth is the mother of greatness, but its price is pain and perseverance.
5. Temper strength and power with gentleness and compassion; balance courage with wisdom.
6. Don't go along to get along. Be willing to sacrifice to do what you know is right.

These values led Paul to study languages, music and cultures throughout his life. Believing that language and music reflected the emotional tones of the cultures they represented, he wrote, "Languages are built on sound, accent and rhythm, rather than on anything that can be written down in black and white. There is a world body -- a universal body -- of folk music based on a universal pentatonic (five-tone) scale. My people, the Negro people of America, have been reared on the pentatonic scale and pentatonic melodies, in Africa and America.”

The Spirituals were folk hymns, the poetical embodiment of the sufferings and struggles of an entire people, of its philosophy of life and its character, of its hopes and aspirations.

Finally, my father was a person of deep faith—a faith that was nurtured in the A. M. E. Zion Church. As a young man of thirty-two, he wrote: How do I know anything about God? I think that most men know. When I sing my Spirituals, in which is the whole history of my race, it is then, more than at any other time, that I am liable to be caught away, and feel and know, that God exists, and God is love.

When the Rt. Rev. J. Clinton Hoggard, Presiding Prelate of the Sixth Episcopal District of the A. M. E. Zion Church eulogized my father at his funeral service in Mother A. M. E. Zion Church on January 27, 1976, he said: “Paul Robeson bears in his body the marks of Jesus, but it was worth it—No cross; no crown! Don't mourn for him, but live for freedom's cause during this Bicentennial of America.”