Randall Robinson

Randall Robinson (July 6, 1941 – March 24, 2023) was an American lawyer, author and activist, noted as the founder of TransAfrica. He was known particularly for his impassioned opposition to apartheid, and for his advocacy on behalf of Haitian immigrants and Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Due to his frustration with American society, Robinson emigrated to Saint Kitts in 2001.
Early life and education
Robinson was born in Richmond, Virginia, on July 6, 1941, to Maxie Cleveland Robinson and Doris Robinson Griffin, both teachers. The late ABC News anchorman, Max Robinson, was his elder brother. Randall Robinson graduated from Virginia Union University, and earned a J.D. degree at Harvard Law School. He also had an older sister, actress Jewel Robinson, and a younger sister, Pastor Jean Robinson. Both sisters live and work in the Washington, D.C. area.
Career
Robinson was a civil rights attorney in Boston (1971–75) before he worked for U.S. Congressman Bill Clay (1975) and as administrative assistant to Congressman Charles Diggs (1976). Robinson was a Ford fellow.
Robinson founded the TransAfrica Forum in 1977, which according to its mission statement serves as a "major research, educational and organizing institution for the African-American community, offering constructive analysis concerning U.S. policy as it affects Africa and the African Diaspora in the Caribbean and Latin America." He served in the capacity as TransAfrica's president until 2001.
During that period he gained visibility for his political activism, organizing sit-ins at the South African embassy in order to protest the Afrikaner government's racial policy of discrimination against black South Africans, beginning a personal hunger strike aimed at pressuring the United States government into restoring Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power after the short-lived coup by General Raoul Cédras, and dumping crates filled with bananas onto the steps of the United States Office of the Trade Representative in order to protest what he viewed as discriminatory trade policies aimed at Caribbean nations, such as protective tariffs and import quotas.
In 2001, he authored the book The Debt: What America Owes To Blacks, which presented an in-depth outline regarding his belief that wide-scale reparations should be offered to African Americans as a means to redress centuries of de jure and de facto discrimination and oppression directed at the group. The book argues for the enactment of lineage-based reparation programs as restitution for the continued social and economic issues in the African-American community, such as a high proportion of incarcerated black citizens and the differential in cumulative wealth between white and black Americans.
In 2003, Robinson turned down an honorary degree from Georgetown University Law Center.
Robinson began teaching at the Dickinson School of Law at Penn State University in the fall of 2008.
Emigration
In 2001, Robinson quit his position as head of TransAfrica and emigrated to St. Kitts, where his wife, who is a member of a prominent Kittitian family, was born. This decision was chronicled in his book Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man from his Native Land.
Robinson's decision to emigrate was caused by what he described as his antipathy towards America's domestic policies and foreign policy, both of which he believed exploit minorities and the poor.
Personal life and death
Randall Robinson and his former wife had a daughter, Anike Robinson, and a son, Jabari Robinson. He was married to Hazel Ross-Robinson and they had one daughter, Khalea Ross Robinson.
Robinson died in St. Kitts on March 24, 2023, at the age of 81 of aspiration pneumonia.
Publications
An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, Perseus Books Group, 2007.
Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man From His Native Land, Plume Books (Reprint), 2004.
The Reckoning: What Blacks Owe to Each Other, Plume (reprint), 2002.
The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks, Plume, 2001.
Defending the Spirit, Plume (1999).
References
External links
Randall Robinson interviewed on Conversations from Penn State
Randall Robinson on "An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President", Democracy Now, July 23, 2007
Huffington Post biography
African American Registry biography
"Randall Robinson: Aristide Says 'Tell the World It Is a Coup'". Interview by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!
In Depth interview with Robinson, February 3, 2013
Review of Randall Robinson, Alex Dupuy, and Peter Hallward books on Haiti NACLA, 2008
1941 births
2023 deaths
20th-century African-American lawyers
21st-century African-American lawyers
Activists for African-American civil rights
African-American non-fiction writers
American emigrants to Saint Kitts and Nevis
American human rights activists
American men's basketball players
American non-fiction writers
American reparationists
Harvard Law School alumni
Historians of Haiti
Hunger strikers
Lawyers from Richmond, Virginia
Norfolk State Spartans men's basketball players
Norfolk State University alumni
People from Saint Kitts
Recipients of the Order of the Companions of O. R. Tambo
Saint Kitts and Nevis people of African American descent
Virginia Union University alumni