April 9 marks the hundredth birthday of the great actor and singer Paul Robeson, who strove to dignify the presence of African Americans on the American and British screens. Robeson was a Renaissance man-a football player and law-school graduate, a singer distinguished by an unforgettable rich bass-baritone, a Shakespearean stage actor, an outspoken intellectual and political activist officially excoriated for his communism, an inspirational and seemingly colossal figure who, on film, tried to present the black man as neither subhuman nor superhuman, but merely human.