Since the end of slavery, this country’s black leadership has periodically identified that method by which African-Americans as a group can best improve their lot, dependent on the circumstances of the time. Of course, discrepancies arise, particularly as social conditions change, and the early twentieth century found itself at a crossroads, saturated with different approaches to the solution of the American race problem. Across the board, movements were clashing, melding into one another, or transforming into something completely new. In this relatively new arena free of slavery, but still bound by intense political and economic oppression, the search for equality for African-Americans generated heated debate over which of the many proposed methods would have the best results.

Among those opinions offered in the first decades of the century were three general schools of thought:
1) acceptance of current social conditions with a focus on economic improvement
2) cultural and artistic development
3) militant civil rights/black separatism

The first, spearheaded by Booker T. Washington, although enormously important for the African-American community, was regarded by many as too passive a philosophy and past its usefulness. The militant demand for civil rights by W.E.B. DuBois and William Monroe Trotter through their Niagara Movement which was later adopted in the 1950s and 1960s, however, was much too radical for an America 40 years younger. Black separatism or nationalism, under Marcus Garvey, was determined to be unfeasible for a culture that is, for good or bad, indelibly a part of the United States.

Paul’s contributions belonged to the second category, which proved to be the most successful of the three within his time. The most notable movement to express this ideal was the Harlem Renaissance, a phenomenon consciously orchestrated by the American black leadership. In this effort, the decision was made to present to the country an image of black culture that could stand up against that white culture which had so long been held up as the ideal. No longer would assimilation be the goal and the path to equality. Blacks would prove their ability to bequeath a valuable heritage to the United States; they would now partake in the ownership of the land that had for so long owned them.

As demonstrated by his many interviews and the details of his career, it is clear that this was the path that Paul envisioned for his people. The development of pride in black culture and heritage, and the establishment in mainstream America of the acceptance of this culture as legitimate and influential were absolutely essential for the awesome gains of the civil rights movement and subsequent progress. Paul Robeson was a building block without which the structure of black equality could never have been built.