Ray Robinson (activist) facts for kids

Perry Ray Robinson (12 September 1937 – c. 25 April 1973) was an African-American activist from Alabama during the Civil Rights Movement. He had been active in Mississippi and Washington, D.C., supporting the March on Washington and the Poor People's Campaign. Robinson disappeared while participating in the 1973 American Indian Movement (AIM) resistance in the Wounded Knee incident on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

Early life

Ray Robinson was born on September 12, 1937, in Bogue Chitto, Alabama. He attended local segregated schools. Strong and athletic, Robinson became a prizefighter.

Activism

After leaving boxing, Robinson became a civil rights activist and follower of Martin Luther King, Jr. He participated in the 1963 March on Washington and heard King's noted "I Have a Dream" speech. He also participated in organizing Resurrection City, a camp set up in 1968 at the Washington Mall to draw attention to the plight of poor people of color in the United States.

Robinson was affiliated with Bradford Lyttle, the founder of the United States Pacifist Party. Lyttle said about Robinson, "He was quite forthcoming and very vigorous and willing to take risks. He put himself out in front of the project. And we decided we would take him on into the South." Rose Sanders (since 2003 known as Faya Ora Rose Touré), the first black female judge in the state of Alabama, described Robinson as being called to the civil rights movement: "He was a true soldier. He was a true liberator. He really believed all people should be free."

In the late 1960s, Robinson supported the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), organized in 1967. While participating in a 1966 anti-war rally in Madison, Wisconsin, he met Cheryl Buswell; they later married. She had been raised in a Republican household, but dropped out of college to become politically active. Buswell returned with Robinson to Alabama, where they worked in grassroots movements for education and nutrition. They lived in Selma, Alabama, and had three children together from 1967 to 1972.

During a 1973 meeting of VVAW, Robinson learned of the ongoing occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, by American Indian Movement (AIM) activists at the Pine Ridge Reservation to protest federal government policies. AIM was appealing for supporters. According to his wife, Robinson decided to go to the reservation to support the occupation and work to align the rights movements of both groups of people of color. Four African Americans from Alabama went to Pine Ridge; three returned.

Disappearance

Cheryl Robinson never saw her husband again, and filed a missing person's report with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) when he failed to return home from Wounded Knee. In October 1974, Cheryl traveled to AIM offices in Rapid City, South Dakota, and its headquarters in St. Paul, Minnesota, but was not able to learn much more about her husband's fate. Robinson was later declared legally dead although his burial site has not been discovered, and his body has never been recovered.

Legacy

Robinson is survived by his widow, Cheryl Buswell-Robinson, and their three children, daughters Desiree Mark and Tamara Kamara, and son J. Marc Robinson.