Randall Robinson, lawyer, author, activist, and founder of TransAfrica was born #onthisday July 6, 1941, in Richmond, Virginia. Known particularly for his impassioned opposition to apartheid, and for his advocacy on behalf of Haitian immigrants and Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, he attended Norfolk State College and later transferred to Virginia Union University where he received his BA in 1967 and earned a law degree at Harvard Law School in 1970. 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), he 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 (American Africans and Caribbeans) who can trace their heritage back to the dispersion of Africans that occurred as a result of the Transatlantic slave trade) in the Caribbean and Latin America. He served in the capacity as TransAfricas president until 2001. During that period he gained visibility for his political activism, organizing a sit-in at a South African embassy in order to protest the African governments racial policy of discrimination against black South Africans, 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 Trade Representative in order to protest what he views as discriminatory trade policies aimed at Caribbean nations, such as protective tariffs and import quotas. In 2001 he authored a 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 Africans as a means of redressing what he perceives as centuries of discrimination and oppression directed at the group. The book argues for the enactment of race-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. Reviewers praised Robinson for delving into a controversial topic that had not been addressed in the mainstream media. In addition to The Debt, Robinson also wrote Defending the Spirit: A Black Life in America (biography), Dutton, 1998; Reckoning: What Blacks Owe to Each Other, Dutton, 2002; and Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man from His Native Land, Dutton, 2004.
Posted on: Sun, 06 Jul 2014 14:11:31 +0000
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